Call for Papers: Passionate Europe. An expressive turn in European parliamentary election campaign communication and media discourses
Call for Papers
Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics (IEEJSP) invites original research papers for its thematic issue on Passionate Europe. An expressive turn in European parliamentary election campaign communication and media discourses (edited by Gabriella Szabó, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences).
Although passions have always been part of politics, so far scholars have claimed their presence exceptional and being harmful to a healthy democracy. But what if emotional appeals are becoming mainstream ways of campaigning and discussing politics in democracies? During the campaign, prior to the recent European Parliamentary elections, one could frequently see politicians talking about Europe in an emotionally overwhelmed tone, or ignoring political correctness and good manners when attacking opponents. Journalists also tended to leave neutrality behind by declaring enthusiastic adherence to specific political leaders or political programs. Last but not least, citizens seemed to eagerly express their positive or negative feelings and specifically in their online communication voters often use disrespectful tone toward the discussion forum, its participants, or its topic.
There is a growing concern among scholars that new discursive practices shattering traditional norms and decorum have moved to the center of politics. The new ‘normality’ has brought, among others, the widespread use of verbal and visual vulgarity and emotionally overwhelmed communication. That is an especially valid claim in the case of Central and Eastern Europe where populist sentiments have become the mainstream of politics, and where political history shows that specific emotional strategies have proved extremely successful; the xenophobic, anti-semitic and anti-Roma campaigns seem to have been efficient in arousing fear and public anxiety.
The Thematic Issue aims to bring together media and communication scholars and provide a broader and deeper understanding of the expressive turn in campaign communication. We call for conceptual and empirical papers that will make it possible to describe the main forms, explain the reasons, and assess the impact of emotions in the EP election campaigns. We invite contributions dealing with public incivility and obscenity, publicly expressed feelings and emotions regarding politics, emotionally biased media coverage of EP campaigns, affect-driven motivated reasoning and character assassination. Cross-country comparisons and single case studies are equally welcome, reflecting either quantitative or qualitative approaches. Papers proposing computational methods are particularly encouraged to be submitted. Any investigation on the visual manifestations of feelings related to EP election campaigns is within the scope of our interest.
In this Thematic Issue, we hope to highlight new possibilities for theory development, methodological innovation and cross-national approaches to the study of electoral campaigns and emotions. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Expressivity in campaign communication
Strategic use of emotions in election campaigns
Effects of expressivity
Exposure to emotional political messages
Single case studies or cross-national comparisons of elite or popular incivility
Audience reception of emotionally biased media coverage
Visual depictions of feelings in politics
Paper proposals (not more than 300 words) should be submitted to Gabriella Szabó (szabo.gabriella@tk.mta.hu) until September 30, 2019.
In case of a positive editorial decision, full papers will be due on January 15, 2020, to be sent to double-blind review. Accepted papers will be published in issue 2/2020 of the Journal.
Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics (IEEJSP) is a peer-reviewed journal promoting multidisciplinary and comparative thinking on Eastern and Central European societies in a global context. IEEJSP publishes research with international relevance and encourages comparative analysis both within the region and with other parts of the world. Founded by the Centre for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, IEEJSP provides an international forum for scholars coming from and/or working on the region. The Journal is indexed by CEEOL, ERIH, Google Scholar, and Scopus. The evaluation process is at an advanced stage with: ProQuest Sociological Abstracts, EBSCO, JSTOR, Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index, Index Copernicus, and DOAJ.
