Linking Survey and Context Data to Analyze Elite and Mass Interactions

Grunddaten zu diesem Projekt

Beschreibung

Analyzing the communicative interactions between political and societal elites on the one hand and the public (or: the mass) on the other hand are of utmost interest to Political Communication research. Most generally, communication scientists assume elites to have an influence on the attitudes of citizens, voters or media users. In addition, many scholars also investigate the potential of the public to influence the positions and the behavior of political and societal elites. As is true for most subjects in social sciences, this branch of research has also greatly profited from a development towards ever increasing methodological standards, possibilities and capabilities. Yet, despite these developments, analyzing the effects of elite communication / positions on mass attitudes (and vice versa) is still faced with several empirical and methodological challenges. This is due to the fact that linking data from the elite and the mass level turns out to be a highly complicated task. The aim of this workshop is twofold: - 1) Identifying commonalties in elite and mass communication that enable us to link different sources of communication (i.e., what do we link?) - 2) Identifying mechanisms and developing tools for linking different kinds of data sources (i.e., how do we link?). The proposed workshop will thus bring together researchers that use individual linkages to analyze the interaction between elite and mass positions through various methods, contexts and with regards to different research questions. Doing so will provide us not only with an overview over the current state of research, but will also provide us with more information what problems still have to be dealt with, with the ultimate goal to move towards an actual understanding of the impact elite positions / communication have on mass attitudes (and vice versa). Apart from offering a forum to discuss innovative approaches and important challenges in linkage analysis, the organizers plan to put together a proposal for a Special Issue with a selected number of presented papers for publication in a relevant (methodological) journal, such as Political Science Research and Methods, Communication Methods & Measures or Communication Research.