The yearly ICA lottery is once again finished, and this time around I am pleased to announce that I will be involved in the following presentations:

Larsson, Anders Olof (2023). Death of a Platform? A longitudinal and comparative study of political party Twitter use in Scandinavia. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

Tønnesen, Hedvig; Bene, Márton; Haßler, Jörg; Larsson, Anders Olof; Magin, Melanie; Skogerbø, Eli and Wurst, Anna-Katharina (2023). Between anger and love: Comparing citizen engagement with party posts during election campaigns across three countries. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

Kaun, Anne; Larsson, Anders Olof and Masso, Anu (2023). Automating Public Administration: Citizens’ Experiences with Automated Decision-Making Across Three Welfare Regimes. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

Strand, Cecilia; Larsson, Anders Olof and Svensson, Jakob (2023). Understanding Twitter-logics at the margins – an analysis of the Ugandan LGBT+ community’s performative activism. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

Svensson, Jakob; Larsson, Anders Olof and Strand, Cecilia (2023). Who relates to whom and according to which rationale? Stratification and meaning negotiation in the Ugandan LGBT+ organization ecology on Twitter. Paper accepted for the 73rd Annual ICA Conference. Toronto, Canada, 25-29 May.

… And before the main conference even starts I have the pleasure of co-organizing the Comparative Digital Political Communication: Comparisons across Countries, Platforms, and Time preconference. It looks like it will be a pretty busy week in Toronto.

On May 24th, preceding the 73rd annual ICA conference, yours truly in collaboration with Shelley Boulianne and Mireille Lalancette will arrange the ICA-affiliated “Comparative Digital Political Communication: Comparisons across Countries, Platforms, and Time” preconference. Information on the what, the how and the when follows below:

Comparative Digital Political Communication:
Comparisons across Countries, Platforms, and Time
ICA Preconference for the Political Communication Division
Wednesday, 24 May, 2023

For over a decade and in several countries and contexts, digital communication technologies such as social media have grown increasingly important in political processes like elections, public consultations, and advocacy work done by civil society actors. In addition, these technologies are important for facilitating and documenting everyday interaction among citizens across the globe as well as between political actors/groups and their supporters. Indeed, our current “fourth age” (Bennett & Pfetsch, 2018; Magin et al., 2016) or “fourth era” (Klinger & Koc-Michalska, 2022; Roemmele & Gibson, 2020) of political communication is often defined by the characteristics of various digital tools and approaches. Research on these themes have flourished, giving rise to a series of different theoretical viewpoints, methodological perspectives, and empirical starting points.

While the diversity of digital political communication research is largely beneficial, recent work has pointed out a lack of comparative approaches in dealing with issues like online political campaigning and the political participation of citizens (Boulianne, 2020; Esser & Pfetsch, 2020; Jacobs et al., 2020; Kreiss et al., 2017), mirroring tendencies discernable in the broader field of media and communication studies (Liu et al., 2020; Matassi & Boczkowski, 2021).

This preconference seeks contributions that feature one or more comparative aspects as distinctive characteristics of their respective study designs. We ask for contributions relating to comparative aspects including, but not limited to:

• Country comparison: As political and media systems differ across countries and contexts, so can we expect differences with regards to digital political communication across countries and contexts (Vaccari & Valeriani, 2021). Submissions drawing on this variety of comparison could, for instance, employ most-similar or most-different designs (Seawright & Gerring, 2008) in order to tease out differences and similarities across borders.
• Platform comparison: Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have different affordances or architectures (Bossetta, 2018) and feature different user groups making it necessary to adapt communication efforts to fit with each specific platform. We invite contributions to engage with the different ways that platforms are used for political communication purposes.
• Time period comparison: As both political practices and digital communication technologies are constantly evolving and changing (Boulianne, 2020), longitudinal insights are necessary to further our knowledge (Larsson, 2021). We invite submissions that deal with overtime developments, for instance during one or several election years in one or more specific contexts.

Select abstracts from the preconference will be invited to submit full papers to a special issue of Social Science Computer Review.

Submission process

Please submit abstracts (250 words) using this form

The abstract submissions are due January 25. In the preconference abstract submission form, please be prepared to answer questions about which of the three comparison approaches are used (country, platform, time), the identity of all co-authors on your paper, and demographic questions about the corresponding/presenting author to help the organizers ensure diversity in presentations (junior vs. senior scholars, gender, country, racial and ethnic identity, etc.). 

Preconference decisions will be made by the end of February and we will require registration for the preconference by March 31 to draft the program and confirm catering (two coffee breaks, lunch). 

Venue and practical details

The preconference will be held at Toronto Metropolitan (formerly, Ryerson University). The preconference is located less than 1.6 km/1 mile away from Sheraton Centre Toronto (ICA conference hotel). Public transportation is available; otherwise, the venue is less than a 20 minute walk from the hotel. At this time, we do not plan to have an online component, but we reserve the right to alter plans if necessary.  

Questions? Please send all questions to 2023icapolcommpreconf@gmail.com.

There is no registration fee for this preconference due to the generous support of the following sponsors and organizers, presented in alphabetical order:

– Centre for the study of Democratic Citizenship
– Groupe de recherche en communication politique at Université Laval
– Fonds d’aide à la recherche (FAR) Grant, L’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.

Organizers

Anders Olof Larsson, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway.
Shelley Boulianne, ESPOL – Université Catholique de Lille, France
Mireille Lalancette, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières (Québec), Canada. 

Today I had the opportunity to present some of my ongoing work regarding what kind of political party content gets shared on Facebook at the Political Participation Networks on Facebook colloquium, hosted by ICNOVA (NOVA Institute of Communication) in Lisbon. I managed to re-use a title for a presentation based on a previous project – “Anger is an energy”. For various reasons (Reviewer 2), I could not use that particular title for that previous project once it was published – I hope to be able to do so once this current project finds a home in a journal somewhere. Fingers crossed.

At the end of may, in the middle of the virus craziness, I had the opportunity to take part of an online seminar on anti-democratic and extremist responses to Covid19 – mobilisations in and around Sweden organised by the research platform Rethinking Democracy at the Faculty of Culture and Society, Malmö University in collaboration with the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm. In my contribution, I tried to sketch out some of the tendencies that could be discerned in relation the Facebook engagement enjoyed by right-wingers in the political sphere and in the media sector. In short, right-wingers appear to be utilising virus-related news in order to “re-frame” their typical key issues, such as immigration. The entire seminar can be viewed here.

Informative panel on “Agenda Setting & Issue Framing” addressing indigenous representation and voices and discourses on immigration in Canadian 2019 election, Digital Ecosystem Research Challenge Ottawa #digitalelxn pic.twitter.com/Olgy0ISzKq

— Megan Boler (@meganboler) February 21, 2020

I am back in Oslo after a few days in Ottawa where I presented some of my ongoing work (with lead author Shelley Boulianne) on social media use during the 2019 Canadian elections. The tweet embedded above shows during the Q & A portion of our presentation. This collaboration has so far resulted in a report which can be accessed here. Indeed, as this research deals with the Canadian context, the report is also available en français.

I’m wrapping up my stay at QUT in Brisbane where I have participated in the #AoIR2019 conference. This year, I presented some ongoing work about the changing nature of popular political party posts over time. I also served as an advisor in the Early Career Scholars Workshop which was organised as a preconference.

Acceptance letters for the 2019 ICA conference are out, and this year I am fortunate enough to be involved in four presentations:

• Larsson, Anders Olof (2019). Coherent Clusters’ or ‘Fuzzy Zones’ – Understanding attention and structure in online political participation.
• Skogerbø, Eli and Larsson, Anders Olof (2019). Comparing Twitter and Instagram as platforms for party leader communication – Findings from the 2017 Norwegian election.
• Russmann, Uta; Svensson, Jakob and Larsson, Anders Olof (2019). Portraying Politics – Instagram use in Scandinavian election campaigns. 
• Rustad, Gry Cecilie and Larsson, Anders Olof (2019). Spreading Skam: Social media television reception and textual engagement.

A healthy mix of political communication and television studies – no journalism presentations for me this year, it would seem. All in all, it looks like I will have a busy conference once when the International Communication Association convenes in Washington D.C. at the end of may.

Outside…

… and inside (thanks to Rossella Rega for tweeting and to Eli Skogerbø for co-authoring)

The dust has settled following the review process for the seventh bi-annual European Communication Conference, to be held this year in Lugano, Switzerland. Three submissions that I was involved with were accepted for presentation:

• Larsson, Anders Olof (2018). Winning and losing on social media – Comparing the popularity of political posts across platforms. Abstract accepted for presentation at the 7th European Communication Conference (ECREA). Lugano, Switzerland, october 31-november 3.
• Skogerbø, Eli and Larsson, Anders Olof (2018). Crossing over? Parties and politicians on Twitter and Instagram. Abstract accepted for presentation at the 7th European Communication Conference (ECREA). Lugano, Switzerland, october 31-november 3.
• Rustad, Gry Cecilie and Larsson, Anders Olof (2018). Spreading Skam. Social media television reception and textual engagement. Abstract accepted for presentation at the 7th European Communication Conference (ECREA). Lugano, Switzerland, october 31-november 3.

… sort of a “mixed bag” of my research interests – mostly political communication, but also a presentation based on my ongoing collaboration with Gry Cecilie Rustad (university of Oslo) regarding Instagram fan engagement with the popular Norwegian webb-tv-series Skam.