Twitter has become one of the most important online spaces for political communication practice and research. Through a hand-coded content analysis, this study compares how British and Dutch Parliamentary candidates used Twitter during the 2010 general elections. We found that Dutch politicians were more likely to use Twitter than UK candidates and on average tweeted over twice as much as their British counterparts. Dutch candidates were also more likely to embrace the interactive potential of Twitter, and it appeared that the public responded to this by engaging in further dialogue. We attribute the more conservative approach of British candidates compared to the Netherlands to historic differences in the appropriation of social media by national elites, and differing levels of discipline imposed from the central party machines.

Studies that have engaged parasport broadcasting, particularly through a narrative lens, have almost exclusively relied on textual and/or content analysis of the Paralympic Games as the source of cultural critique. We know far less about the decisions taken inside Paralympic broadcasters that have led to such representations. In this study – based on interviews with senior production and promotion staff at the United Kingdom’s Paralympic broadcaster, Channel 4 – we provide the first detailed examination of mediated parasport from this vantage point. We explore the use of promotional devices such as athletes’ backstories – the ‘Hollywood treatment’ – to both hook audiences and serve as a vehicle for achieving its social enterprise mandate to change public attitudes towards disability. In so doing, we reveal myriad tensions that coalesce around representing the Paralympics, with respect to the efforts made to balance the competing goals of key stakeholders and a stated desire to make the Paralympics both a commercial and socially progressive success.

The relationship between media, sport, nations and nationalism is well established, yet, there is an absence of these discussions at the intersection of communication, Paralympics and disability studies. This omission is particularly significant considering the rapid commodification of the Paralympic spectacle, exacerbated by the entry of Channel 4 (C4) as the UK Paralympic rights holders, that has seen the games become an important site of disability (re-)presentation. In this article, we focus on the construction of national, normative, disabled bodies in Paralympic representation drawn from an analysis of three integrated datasets from Channel 4's broadcasting of the Rio 2016 Paralympics: interviews with C4 production and editorial staff; quantitative content analysis, and qualitative moving image analysis. We highlight the strategic approach taken by C4 to focus on successful medal winning athletes; the implications this has on the sports and disability classifications given media coverage; and the role of affective high-value production practices. We also reveal the commercial tensions and editorial decisions that broadcasters face with respect to which disabilities / bodies are made hyper-visible-and thereby those which are marginalized-as national disability sport icons that inculcate preferred notions of disability and the (re)imagined nation. 'hyper-visibility' of disability (Pullen et al., 2018), our focus herein is on the media's role in the social construction of disability and the production of Paralympic media texts as those through which political/ national discourse can be traced (Whannel, 2013). Critically engaging with representations of disability and disabled Paralympic bodies raises important questions, especially when held relational to a celebrated and 'normative' national body politic, one derived and cultivated from enhanced forms of neoliberal embodiment (sculpted, healthy, fit, sexual, heteronormative, and attractive) (Turner, 1996). With death, age and disability often positioned as the antithesis to such a normative body politic, media depictions of disability have, for the most part, drawn on a limited number of stereotypes, including: helpless, passive victims; vulnerable and pitiable and childlike dependents; and 'supercrips' predicated on inspirational stories of determination and personal courage to overcome adversity (Barnes & Mercer, 2010). Yet, the hyper-visibility and celebration of disability in and through the Paralympics that intends to provide a global sporting spectacle for the empowerment of disabled people for a more equitable society (See, Howe, 2008) could challenge such dominant narratives. In this paper, our interests centre on the very particular and specific construction of national, normative, disabled bodies in, and through, Paralympic representations. Building upon extant media and disability scholarship, we draw on three integrated datasets (interviews with production and editorial staff, quantitative content analysis, and qualitative moving image analysis) t...

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Through the use of experimental methods, this study examines the claim that strategic news engenders political cynicism. First, it builds upon previous theory by conceptualizing and measuring political cynicism at both issue-specific and global levels. Second, the contingency of framing effects is a contested but crucial area of the framing paradigm and deserves greater attention in strategic framing studies. The study therefore examines this in detail by testing a number of individual characteristics for their moderating effects. The author found that relative to issue-based coverage, strategic news frames increased issue-specific political cynicism, but this effect was only evident for those who were less politically engaged and knowledgeable. The effects of the strategy frame on more global measures of political cynicism were minimal. The findings are discussed in the light of ongoing debates about framing effects and the media’s role in democratic engagement.