Fueled by ever-growing amounts of (digital) data and advances in artificial intelligence, decision-making in contemporary societies is increasingly delegated to automated processes. Drawing from social science theories and from the emerging body of research about algorithmic appreciation and algorithmic perceptions, the current study explores the extent to which personal characteristics can be linked to perceptions of automated decision-making by AI, and the boundary conditions of these perceptions, namely the extent to which such perceptions differ across media, (public) health, and judicial (...) contexts. Data from a scenario-based survey experiment with a national sample (N = 958) show that people are by and large concerned about risks and have mixed opinions about fairness and usefulness of automated decision-making at a societal level, with general attitudes influenced by individual characteristics. Interestingly, decisions taken automatically by AI were often evaluated on par or even better than human experts for specific decisions. Theoretical and societal implications about these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The underlying psychological processes that enable framing effects are often described as cognitive. Yet, recent studies suggest that framing effects may also be mediated by emotional response. The role of specific emotions in mediating the framing effect process, however, has yet to be fully empirically investigated. In an experimental survey design, this study tests two positive and two negative emotions as mediators of framing effects. Our results show that while anger and enthusiasm mediate a framing effect, contentment and fear do (...) not. These findings deepen our understanding of which discrete emotions are relevant when studying mediated framing effects. (shrink)

This article focuses on how leaders of new right-wing populist parties are portrayed in the mass media. More so than their established counterparts, new parties depend on the media for their electoral breakthrough. From a theoretical perspective, we expect prominence, populism, and authoritativeness of the party leaders' media appearance to be essential for their electoral fortunes. We used systematic content analyses of 17 Dutch media outlets during the eight weeks prior to the 2006 national elections and compared the appearances of (...) four right-wing populist and seven mainstream party leaders. This article makes two contributions to the existing literature: First, we develop valid and reliable indicators of authoritativeness and populism and apply them to a systematic content analysis. Second, we show that more successful right-wing populist leaders were more prominent during the election campaign and that the most successful right-wing populist leader also appears more authoritative in the news. (shrink)

This article examines the effects of strategic and substantive news on political cynicism, turnout intention and voter uncertainty, drawing on two experiments. We found that among less politically knowledgeable citizens, all news mobilizes, but strategic news also induces cynicism. For the more knowledgeable citizens, we found that the combination of strategic and substantive news yields slightly less cynicism and that substantive news makes these citizens reconsider their voting choice. Overall, we only found favorable or neutral effects among the more knowledgeable, (...) while we found both favorable and unfavorable effects among the less knowledgeable. The implications for news effects research are discussed. (shrink)

This article investigates how voters made sense of the Dutch EU constitutional referendum. Based on a series of focus group interviews, it identifies what information people based their understandings on, and traces the relations they draw between concepts in their own accounts of their vote choices. Applying a cognitive connectionist perspective on the construction of meaning, it models people's considerations as paths across semantic networks. It finds that people shared considerable parts of the knowledge underlying their constructions, but used this (...) information quite differently. They strategically selected frames from their information environment, and reframed contrary arguments to fit their constructions. Yes- and No-voters drew in systematically different additional information, while simultaneously engaging idiosyncratic concerns to personalize their accounts. People's understandings are thus informed and constrained, but by no means determined, by public discourse. Highlighting people's activity and creativity, this paper calls for a stronger audience perspective in political communication research. (shrink)

This study investigated the extent to which values play a role in affecting citizens’ political attitudes when exposed to different media news frames and political speech sources. To test this, we designed a survey experiment which used news coverage of a political speech concerning the cultural practices of immigrants. We manipulated the manner of how the news was framed and the source of the speech. Our main finding shows that citizens who scored high on ‘universalism’ were more affected by a (...) foreign source in an episodic news frame, compared to those scoring low on ‘universalism’ in a thematic news frame. On the other hand, in a thematic news frame, the difference between citizens scoring high and low on ‘universalism’ was found for the domestic source. This suggests that values are a fundamental moderator of media effects in determining citizens’ political attitudes. (shrink)

Religion can affect public support for the European Union. However, specifying the circumstances under which religion may become a stronger predictor of EU-support has so far been neglected. This article shows that the media play a role in this process and it is investigated to what extent the presence or absence of references to religious issues in EU news coverage primes people's religious attitudes to contribute to their evaluation of the EU. For this purpose, a content analysis of the amount (...) of religious news items in EU coverage in German and Dutch newspapers between 1997 and 2007 was conducted. Two points in time were chosen — 1998, when only a small amount of religious news items appeared in EU coverage, and 2005, when religious items reached a peak. Eurobarometer data were used to test the media priming proposition. The findings show that an increasing religious dimension in media coverage about the EU primes a linkage between religious and political considerations and thus influences the strength of the impact of religion on attitudes towards the EU. (shrink)