Electoral communication in 2024: Responding to a year of turbulence in media and politics

The Department of Linguistics and Communication at the University of Birmingham will host the PSA Media & Politics Specialist Group Annual Conference 8-9 January 2025. This will be a hybrid event. 

In 2024, political campaigning from across the globe and political spectrum took center stage across multiple mediated spaces. From legacy media outlets to social media tech giants and on to social movements and citizen journalists, the range of (dis/mis)information available to voters is broader than ever before.

This conference has contributions from across many disciplines that explore how politicians, strategists, social movements, journalists, the electorate, citizens, and other political actors are responding to the challenges faced in this mediated landscape. Over the two days we will ask, in what ways did mediated political communication change in 2024? Are new actors and new ways of campaigning emerging? And how do we, as media and politics scholars, respond?

Day 1 - Wednesday 8 January 2025

Welcome and Keynote

• Dr Patricia Rossini (University of Glasgow) on polarization, political intolerance, and the role of social media and messaging apps in the 2022 Presidential election in Brazil 

Panel 1a: Checking the truth: facts, moderation and news

• Nursi ER - Examining Claim Selection and Debunking Processes in Fact- Checking: A Mixed Methods Study on Two Different Fact-Checking Models in the UK
• Natalie Martin - The “contest around truth”: news, journalism and disordered information
• Hsiao-wen Lee - Content Moderation and Political Disputes: an ideological analysis 

Panel 1b: Social media and politics

• Dimitrios Souliotis and Vasileios Rousopoulos - Tik Tok as new tool in Greek political communication campaigning
• Sadia Zamir - Navigating Constraints Through Digital Resilience: The 2024 Pakistan Elections
• Shamail Zehra - Visual politics on official TikTok pages of Pakistani political parties and its effects on perceived credibility of political leaders
• Paul Reilly - Ethical dilemmas in researching sousveillance on YouTube Revisited 

Panel 2a: News media and political journalism

• Nick Anstead - Focus groups and the new public opinion infrastructure
• Boitshwarelo Rantsudu - The media, electoral process coverage and ‘contested spaces’ in Botswana
• Sarah Francis Wadie Kswat - Transforming Electoral News Narratives: The Impact of Solutions Journalism on Shifting from Horse-Race to Constituent-Focused Coverage
• Iris Simón-Astudillo, María Iranzo-Cabrera and Asbel Bohigues - A ministry and a new political party on the Spanish political scene. Yolanda Díaz's duality through stories on Instagram 

Panel 2b: Trust and the media in the (Mis)information society

• Tao Wang and Han-yu Hsu - The Enemy Behind the Scenes: How China’s Propaganda Shores up Support for Russia’s War in Ukraine
• Cristian Vaccari et al. - Credibility as a Double-Edged Sword: How Attributing News to a Trusted Source Affects Users’ Responses to Misinformation on Personal Messaging
• Hugo Tai - Belief in Online Conspiracy Theories, Voter Satisfaction with Governance, and Public Support for Self-Defence
• Antal Wozniak and  Zixiu Liu - Framing of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in opinion pieces in news outlets from Brazil, India, and South Africa

 Panel 3a: Political Party Election Campaigning

• David Deacon, Jilly Kay, Brendan Lawson, Nathan Ritchie, David Smith and Dominic Wring - A Plague on Both Your Houses? How the Press and Broadcasters Reported the 2024 UK General Election
• Maike Dinger and Michael Higgins - “The next king of Scotland”: Authenticity and personalisation of Scottish politics in the 2024 UK General
• Dan Jackson - The online campaign: UK parties’ use of Facebook during the 2024 election campaign

This session will include a discussion of the UK Election Analysis 2024 Report 

Day 2 - Thursday 9 January 2025

Keynote

• Professor Darren Lilleker (Bournemouth University), on Turbulent Times: Nostalgic Societies. Everyday talk, political campaigns and our culture wars 

Panel 4a: Culture Wars and Polarisation

• Anastasia Veneti, Stamatis Poulakidako, Savvas Voutyras - Comparing visual political communication across European political leaders’ Tik Tok accounts
• Anna Nordström and Pratichi Chatterjee - The political role of emotions and racism in Reform UK’s Facebook communication leading up to the 2024 UK General election
• Kait Bolongaro - Mainstreaming the populist radical right and the Brussels Press Corps: EU media’s coverage of the European elections 2024
• Katy Parry - Military veteranhood in the 2024 UK Election: Examining Johnny Mercer’s aggressive style of political campaigning through the lens of militarized celebrity populism 

Panel 4b: Voters and election campaigns

• Maike Dinger et. al - No longer the periphery? Reactions to the election campaign and coverage in “red wall” seats
• Jón Gunnar Ólafsson and Hafsteinn Einarsson - Political news consumption leading up to election day: Icelandic voters and their engagement during the 2021 campaign
• Sara García Santamaría - Winning votes one TikTok at a time: An analysis of how TikTok was used in the UK General Elections
• Jooyeon Lee - Assessing Professionalisation in South Korean Election Campaigns Through Historical and Contemporary Lenses: An Analysis from 1997 to 2022 

Panel 5a: Advancing Methods for Clearer Political communication

• Jen Birks - Stoking the culture wars: the risks of a more hostile form of polarised politics
• Caroline Leicht - Feminist Humor vs. Media Sexism: Representations of Women Candidates in Political Comedy Coverage of the 2016 and 2024 US Presidential Elections
• Costanza Azzuppardi - The compelling narrative of civil disobedience. Ultima Generazione through pictures
• Hagos Nigussie - Polarizing political differences: Polarization and hate speech in the Ethiopian media 

Panel 5b: Social and protest movements and elections

• Lluis de Nadal - Digital activism and climate policy resistance in the UK: A qualitative content analysis
• Abi Rhodes - Social Movements in Elections: Environmental Communication & the 2024 UK election
• Lone Sorenson, Matthias Revers, Michael Brüggemann - Happy to disagree: Drivers of affective and ideological polarization in interpersonal discussions
• Lior Ayali and Keren Ketko Ayali - Self-made protest signs and the socio-political dynamics expressed in the linguistic landscape of political demonstrations 

Panel 6a: Gender representation in the media and elections

• Ceri Hughes, Wyl Jones and Olivia Noden - Question (uneven) Time: Why an increase in female panellists does not guarantee equal participation
• Emily Harmer and Rosalynd Southern - Notifications off: Women politicians’ experiences of online harassment and abuse and how they manage it. 
• Susana Sampaio-Dias - “That type of harassment? Oh gosh, yes! Every single day!” - early career women journalists’ experiences of online abuse 

Panel 6b: AI and APIs in political communication

• Kostas Maronitis - Artificial Campaigns and the Intelligence of Labour Relations
• Abirlal Mukherjee - Wade Meme, A Social Parasite: Anonymity, Threats, and Vulnerability
• Dean J. Hill - Linguistic Fingerprints of Deepfakes: Implications for UK and US Electoral Integrity in 2024 

Registration fees

In person registration is now closed.

The cost of remote attendance for online participants is £50 for salaried academics and £25 for PGR/low waged.

Online registration is now open via the 'Register for this event' button at the top right of this webpage.

Travel

The University of Birmingham is accessible via a direct train from London Euston to Birmingham in around 90 minutes. There are also direct train services from Birmingham International Airport. Information on directions to Birmingham and to our Edgbaston campus are available on the Getting here page.  The conference will be held in the Alan Walters Building R29 in the red zone on  our campus map