Dual Screening in Comparative Perspective: Media Systems, Motivations, and Partisanship in Eight Western Democracies

• In Event: Comparing Contexts: Diverse Methodological Approaches in Comparative Research

Abstract

Political dual screening—following public affairs on television while reading and commenting about them on social media—has become a staple of citizens’ engagement with politics across Western democracies. So far, studies of dual screening have been based on single country case studies, which limits their external validity and our understanding of the role of systemic characteristics. To begin addressing this gap, this paper presents innovative theories on the factors shaping political dual screening and investigates them based an eight-country comparative research design.
We theorize that the degree of political parallelism in the mass media affects the partisan composition of the audience for televised political programs, and thus the characteristics and motivations of those who dual screen on them. We also theorize that the different incentives afforded to minor and major parties by majoritarian versus proportional electoral are related to who dual screens televised political programs and why. With respect to mass media systems, we hypothesize that political dual screeners in media systems with high levels of political parallelism will be (1) more partisan and (2) less interested in influencing others than in acquiring information while dual screening. With respect to electoral systems, we hypothesize that (3) political dual screening will be more common among supporters of major parties in countries with majoritarian electoral systems, and among supporters of minor parties in countries with proportional electoral systems; and that (4) major party supporters who dual screen will be more motivated to influence others in majoritarian electoral systems, while minor party supporters will be more motivated to influence others in proportional electoral systems.
The paper tests these hypotheses based on unique surveys of samples representative of the adult population with internet access in eight Western democracies—Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States—between 2015 and 2016.

Authors

• Cristian Vaccari, U of Bologna & Royal Holloway

• Augusto Valeriani, U of Bologna