TY - JOUR A1 - Gil de Zúñiga, Homero A1 - Koc Michalska, Karolina A1 - Römmele, Andrea ED - Gil de Zúñiga, Homero T1 - Populism in the era of Twitter: How social media contextualized new insights into an old phenomenon JF - New Media & Society N2 - With the advent of social media, political communication scholars have systematically revised theories and empirical corollaries revolving media use and democracy at large. Interestingly, in about the same period of time, a reinvigorated political populism trend has taken place across different latitudes in the world. This widespread populist movement has expanded regardless of whether these political systems were established democracies, emerging democracies, or societies immersed in political contexts at peril. This essay serves as the introductory piece to a special issue on populism. First, it highlights the ways in which “populism,” being an old phenomenon, has further transpired into the political realm in the era of social media. Second, the essay seeks to better contextualize what populism is and how it has developed within today’s hybrid media society. Finally, this introduction also lays out the ground to six central theoretical and data-driven papers that encapsulate many of the important issues revolving the phenomenon of populism today. KW - - KW - democracy KW - Facebook KW - populism KW - social media KW - Twitter Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819893978 SN - 1461-4448 SN - 1461-7315 VL - 22 IS - 4 SP - 585 EP - 594 PB - SAGE Publications CY - Sage UK: London, England ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koc-Michalska, Karolina A1 - Klinger, Ulrike A1 - Bennett, Lance A1 - Römmele, Andrea T1 - (Digital) Campaigning in Dissonant Public Spheres JF - Political Communication N2 - With the advent of digital media and social media platforms, the speed of innovation and technology adoption in campaigns have increased tremendously. At the same time, the campaign environment and its rules are in constant flow, as platform logics, party operations, and voter alignments both reflect and create instability in many political systems. Additionally, disinformation, foreign interference in cam-paigns, hyper-partisan media ecologies, and hyperactive users have all created changes in opinion climates. In light of these develop-ments, and building on the theoretical concept of increasingly dis-rupted and dissonant public spheres (developed by Barbara Pfetsch and Lance Bennett), this special issue seeks to expand research on campaigning beyond assumptions of well-functioning political sys-tems, to better understand the erosion of institutional legitimacy and trust, and their effects on communication processes. The special issue is organized within two conceptual approaches. The first cluster of manuscripts observes how political candidates, organizations, and parties optimize their behaviour within the dissonant political envir-onment. The second part examines responses, perceptions, and con-sequences of the disrupted environment on the public. Finally, four integrated forum essays look into how dissonant public spheres may disturb democratic processes, discuss the role of data-driven cam-paigning, and address how limited access to platform data affects our understanding of dissonant public spheres. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2173872 ER -