In the last decade, we have witnessed a new stage in the mainstreaming and normalization pro­cess of populist radical right policies and ideas in the Western world. This has resulted in in­creasing politicization of issues related to immigration. In Sweden, this politicization took off when the radical right-wing populist (RRP) party the Sweden Democrats (SD) was voted into the parliament in 2010. Even though the party was isolated by the mainstream parties, its presence in the parliament still contributed to the politi­cization for a long time. Additionally, increased “gang”-related shootings have pushed the po­liticization even further since the shootings in the public and political discourse have often been connected to immigration. Apart from this, certain mainstream right-wing parties, especially the Moderates (M) and the Christian Democrats (KD), have questioned the isolation of SD lately, which led to the presentation of a collaboration between the three parties in the fall of 2021. With this collaboration as a background, the aim of this study is to show the particular roles M and KD play in the process of mainstreaming and normalization of the RRP discourse, espe­cially related to immigration and its alleged connection to criminality. The study draws on crit­ical discourse analysis of political and public discourse in the context of RRP to analyze how M, KD, and SD construct themes and arguments around immigration, immigrants, and crimi­nality on their official Facebook pages. The study argues that there is an ongoing process of normalization of RRP policy and ideas in Swedish public and political discourse. Largely, SD is the strategical enacting actor in this pro­cess. How­ever, both M and KD take part in the process by contributing to gradually changing the existing discourse on immigration towards new forms and new norms. This is conducted by employing strategies, concepts, and rhetoric well-known from RRP discourse.

The presented Thesis "Political Communication and Politainment in the Presidential Election in the Czech Republic in 2013" analyses political communication in the historically first presidential election campaign in the Czech Republic. I saw the presidential election as an opportunity to research a new platform of political communication that politainment is. The primary aim of the Thesis is to introduce this concept in the context of the current nature of political communication and at the same time to identify variables defining this phenomenon in the Czech environment. Analysis of the elements of politainment is performed on campaigns of the two most successful candidates aspiring for the office of the President of the Czech Republic - Miloš Zeman and Karel Schwarzenberg. I focused primarily on the television appearance of both candidates in TV debates broadcasted by Czech Television, which were the climax of the entire presidential campaign. I was interested in the content of communication of both candidates and the overall character of the debates. The Thesis answers the following questions: What is political communication and its role in politics? How does its form change over time? Does personalisation of election campaigns result in the emergence of politainment as a phenomenon of political...

<p>This dissertation identifies an important strategy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses to manage crisis events online: the entertainment-oriented narrative. It appears in three forms: (1) likening the reality to an unreal TV show or a fictional scene; (2) using cute emojis and anthropomorphism to represent crisis-related concepts; and (3) framing the country as a pop star (idol) and encourage citizens to defend it regardless. The CCP uses these tactics to trivialize the importance of crises, deflect public criticism, and discourage the public from critical thinking. Case studies show that this strategy has become a regular practice of the government that worked effectively when the crises do not seriously and massively affect local citizens' lives.</p>

Recognizing the importance of civic engagement to the health of local communities and the overall success of a democracy, this research sought to better understand the relationship between online media use and civic engagement. Specifically, the constructive potential of the social networking site Facebook was explored using the theoretical framework of communication infrastructure theory (CIT; Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001). Results of a cross-sectional survey with a national sample of 375 participants indicated that Facebook does hold potential for civic engagement. The two most important findings of the research were that Facebook facilitated connection to neighborhood storytelling and that connection to storytelling was positively associated with civic engagement. As such, results indicated that Facebook holds potential for civic engagement insofar as the site facilitates connection to neighborhood storytelling. Additionally, Facebook was a regular part of participants’ daily routines, a means to maintain social capital, and a forum for occasional civic participation. Cumulatively, these results highlight a number of strengths that citizens and communities can build upon to improve social capital and increase civic engagement.

This thesis examines the factors behind politicians' ‘missing tweets’. Missing tweets are posts that were once available on Twitter but are no longer accessible. Despite numerous studies on the Twitter behavior of politicians, few explore the dynamics around politicians’ missing tweets. This study fills this research gap by examining the extent of, and possible factors associated with, missing tweets among parliamentarians active on Twitter in 2018 in six Western European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Sweden). Empirically, this study uses replication material from Castanho Silva and Proksch (2021a) to identify the number of missing tweets per parliamentarian, finding that 21.8% of the tweets from 2018 had disappeared from the platform by October 2021. To determine the factors associated with these missing tweets four hypotheses are tested, examining mass deletion, gendered incivility, intra-party conflict, and populism. The results find that there is no association between gender or intra-party conflict and missing tweets. Furthermore, parliamentarians generally do not engage in mass deletion of tweets, but when they do those who have since left parliament are overrepresented. Lastly, there is a positive association between the level of populism and the number of missing tweets. The results of this thesis highlight both the theoretical and empirical importance of examining missing tweets when analyzing the behavior of politicians on Twitter.

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The introduction of the Low Power FM (LPFM) service by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provided a unique glimpse into media policy-making. Because usual allies disagreed over the service, the usually invisible political nature of the debate was made transparent. The project of this thesis is to contextualize the histories of radio policy, non-commercial radio, and the public interest standard to shed light on why it was so challenging to implement even a small, local radio service. Secondly, the thesis will explore the theoretical understandings of the various players in the LPFM debate, as well as the practical functioning of these tiny stations. This project also challenges the low power advocates and media reform movement to actively fight for more substantive media policy regarding civic protections.

Participatory democracy depends on formations of community and social relations, places and spaces for critical discourse, and the organizational and technical capacity for collective action. This study seeks to better understand how these processes are at work in the virtual realm, and more broadly examine the changing nature of political information and discourse in the online context. Toward this end, I examine two sites that embody different yet highly successful models of user participation, collective content production, and increasingly, political action: the political blogging community of Daily Kos and the social news site Reddit. This study is based on three broad theoretical frameworks of community, discourse, and action. I use work by Michele Willson (2006) to explore how community exists in the virtual realm. Drawing upon the scholarship of Jurgen Habermas (1991) and more recent adaptations and extensions of Habermasian public sphere theory from Aaron Barlow (2006), I ask can online communities set the foundation for a public spheres, and if so, how do they function as virtual public spheres? Building upon understandings of online community and virtual public sphere(s), I utilize work by Manuel Castells (1997) and Jeffrey Juris (2005) to understand how community and discourse can enable collective action. These lines of analysis provide the structure through which I examine Daily Kos and Reddit. Using ethnographic methods, I place the voices and perspectives of users within this theoretical structure to produce a comprehensive look at the function of collaborative online political information communities.

This study examined factors important in determining the acceptance of racially charged humor. It utilized a 2 x 3 design in which race of joke teller and group targeted by the jokes were manipulated. It measured people’s level of acceptance regarding the jokes and recorded participants’ behaviors. This study found that under the conditions in which comedians derogated their in-group, White participants demonstrated higher levels of acceptance and a greater likelihood to perform the jokes. This pattern was especially true when the comedian was Black.