In information environments characterized by institutional distrust, fragmentation and the widespread dissemination of conspiracies and disinformation, citizens perceive misinformation as a salient and threatening issue. Especially amidst disruptive events and crises, news users are likely to believe that information is inaccurate or deceptive. Using an original 19-country comparative survey study across diverse regions in the world (N = 19,037), we find that news users are likely to regard information on the Russian war in Ukraine as false. They are more likely to attribute false information to deliberative deception than to a lack of access to the war area or inaccurate expert knowledge. Russian sources are substantially more likely to be blamed for falsehoods than Ukrainian or Western sources – but these attribution biases depend on a country's position on the war. Our findings reveal that people mostly believe that falsehoods are intended to deceive them, and selectively associate misinformation with the opposed camp.

Social media has become a key space for young people to experiment with their political voice and to hone it through interaction with others. However, authors Neta Kligler-Vilenchik and Ioana Literat argue that in order to seriously consider social media as a space for youth political expression, we need to put aside conventional expectations about the forms that political expression should take. This empirical and theoretically-based investigation sets the stage for a normative discussion, asking how the forms of expressive citizenship identified throughout the book might bolster-or hinder-democratic engagement. Ultimately, the book considers what it means to take youth political expression on social media seriously, and what the stakes are for political socialization and democratic participation.

This article presents a conceptual and methodological framework that focuses on the interactivity, creativity, and variability of Holocaust images in digital media. Our argument unfolds in three stages. First, we introduce the concept of playful images: historical images that undergo recontextualisation, serving memetic, personal, and interactive engagements in and by digital media. Secondly, drawing on pivotal scholarship in digital methods, anthropology, sociology, and visual analysis, we identify a lacuna in contemporary methodologies and provide a rationale for an innovative approach to visual memory analysis in digital media that considers both digital media affordances and the appropriation of visual and historical materials in digital media. For that purpose, we thirdly outline a visual walkthrough method (VWM), a pragmatic performance of our approach tailored for analysing interactive digital experiences featuring playful images. By examining the playful appropriation of historical images in the video game Call of Duty: WWII (2017), we demonstrate how the interactive experience of playful images can be analysed with the help of the VWM. We conclude by discussing the position of our proposed conceptual and methodological framework within media and memory studies in the digital age.

The COVID-19 pandemic raised interest in the question of digital participation and expression during crises. Our study contributes to this debate through a deep dive into differential effects the pandemic had on the social and political expression of Twitter users. We report results from a mobile experience sampling method survey of intense users from Jerusalem, Israel. As the study was in the field when lockdown measures were implemented, it can trace changes in expressive behaviors as the crisis emerged. Our data demonstrate differential patterns in use intensity and communication about the pandemic. Many people intensified their Twitter use, but some turned away. Compared with younger users, older people used Twitter less and communicated about the pandemic less. More educated users intensified their use, compared with less educated users. Rather than causing complete realignments of expression, the pandemic intensified existing differential patterns. Our study demonstrates how, in a moment of uncertainty, a situation-specific information elite formed within a set of intense Twitter users, one that could gain disproportionate power in shaping public understanding of the pandemic.

Communication research has long explored the association between media trust and news consumption. However, the strength and direction of this relationship have remained elusive. This study suggests a new approach for investigating these complex relations, differentiating between usage and trust associated with different sources over time. Focusing on the 2022 French election and drawing on data from a four-wave panel survey (N = 1,294), we utilized Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM) analysis to uncover two key over time effects: a selection effect, wherein trust reinforces usage; and a media effect, wherein usage influences trust. While a selection effect driven by news trust was observed in a right-wing political alternative channel, a media effect leading to news trust was linked with more traditional television channels. By identifying these effects and their associations with various types of outlets, this study advances the ongoing scholarly debate around the role of trust in news consumption.

This study investigates how elected representatives make promises to the electorate as part of their routine, everyday parliamentary discourse. Departing from the dominant focus on pre-election pledges in existing scholarship, we examine how representatives’ practices of making promises vary systematically over time (before/after elections/mid-term), by government role (government/opposition), party membership (catch-all/identity-based parties), and addressed electorate (inclusive/exclusive). Drawing upon research in speech acts, political discourse, and corpus pragmatics, we employ manual and computational text analysis on session transcripts from the Israeli parliament to identify variations in representatives’ use of direct or indirect action promises (N = 709), expressing different orientations of commitment. Documenting that promises continue to be prevalent after elections (especially among coalition members), we argue that the practices of making promises fulfill a critical role in representation that extends far beyond the election campaign, maintaining continuous accountability throughout the electoral cycle.

The rapid adoption of digital technologies during COVID-19 lockdowns offers a unique perspective on differences in privacy cultures. In this study, we compare how cultural predisposition and identities relate to privacy during the transition to remote learning in higher education in Estonia, France, and Israel. We conducted 83 in-depth interviews with academics, who talked about their adoption of communication technologies and strategies for managing their self-presentation and relations with others. Patterns of tech adoption were most reflective of distinct privacy predispositions, with those coming from privacy-sensitive cultures conveying an individual and institutional resistance to privacy-invasive technologies. However, strategies for self-management in response to new patterns of visibility were similar across countries. Our findings make three contributions to privacy research: they (1) show how different identities (professional, national) underpin privacy attitudes and behaviors; (2) demonstrate the multidimensionality of privacy; and (3) point to institutional decision-making as the critical point for privacy-protecting interventions.

While political scientists regularly engage in spirited theoretical debates about elections and voting behavior, few have noticed that elected politicians also have theories of elections and voting. Here, we investigate politicians’ positions on eight central theoretical debates in the area of elections and voting behavior and compare politicians’ theories to those held by ordinary citizens. Using data from face-to-face interviews with nearly 1,000 politicians in eleven countries, together with corresponding surveys of more than 12,000 citizens, we show that politicians overwhelmingly hold thin, minimalist, “democratic realist” theories of voting, while citizens’ theories are more optimistic and policy oriented. Politicians’ theoretical tendencies – along with their theoretical misalignment from citizens – are remarkably consistent across countries. These theories are likely to have important consequences for how politicians campaign, communicate with the public, think about public policy, and represent their constituents.

How do national stories shape voter behavior? Do they affect all voters equally, or are some groups more influenced by these narratives? This article examines the impact of "boundary national stories," which highlight clear distinctions between "us" and "them" in national identity, on voting patterns for populist radical right parties (PRRPs). Using original representative election surveys conducted in four Western democracies, we find that voters who embrace a Boundary national story are more likely to vote for Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) than those who do not hold such stories, and that the electoral effect of such stories is more salient for marginalized groups in society. Our findings demonstrate that, while national stories can foster cohesion, they can also drive us apart and polarize our politics. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of these findings for the study of populism in political science.

In this paper we link between two scholarly traditions that share the goal of understanding how people accomplish the achievement of living together: linguistic-politeness and diplomacy. We look at a specific speech event—presidential introductory conversations during credential ceremonies, in which the interlocutors are simultaneously talking on behalf of themselves and the states they represent. On the basis of 23 introductory conversations at Israel’s presidential residence. We aim to understand how good relations are cultivated in diplomatic conversations and the resources and strategies hosting presidents and foreign ambassadors employ to establish amicable interpersonal and interstate relations. The infusion of elite discourse, institutional discourse, and initial interactions brought forth in our study a gamut of bonding strategies applied in the process of rapport management between state representatives. The president and ambassadors did their best to avoid sensitive issues and managed the attending audience as a resource for enhancing interpersonal relations, advancing the interaction, and solving problems at both the interstate and interpersonal levels. In the Conclusion we underline the importance of analyzing actual conversations between individuals who simultaneously embody themselves and their states in order to understand how relationships between large social entities are managed.