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The second speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Juan Antonio Guevara, whose interest is in polarisation in the 2023 Spanish general elections. His focus here is especially in affective polarisation, which can mean different things depending on how the idea is conceptualised. Here, polarisation is approached through a ‘fuzzy-set’ approach drawn from mathematics.

I presented the second paper in this session, on patterns of communication in the failed 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum on improving representation and participation for Australia’s Indigenous peoples. As part of this we also developed a new methodology we describe as practice mapping – more detail on this later. Here are the slides:

And the final speaker in this last session at the P³: Power, Propaganda, Polarisation ICA 2024 postconference is Frederik Henriksen, with a paper on the transformation of the digital far right as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. From a focus on anti-immigration arguments it moved towards an anti-establishment angle; it also transformed and coordinated organisationally; and found new topics especially in anti-vaccination discourse as a widely popular topic.

And the final (!) session at the P³: Power, Propaganda, Polarisation ICA 2024 postconference starts with the great Giada Marino, presenting today on the work of the Vera.ai research project, which seeks to develop AI tools to monitor and combat mis- and disinformation on social media. This part of that project examines digital traces on Facebook during the 2018 and 2022 Italian elections.

The post-lunch session at the P³: Power, Propaganda, Polarisation ICA 2024 postconference starts with my excellent QUT colleague Tariq Choucair, whose interest is in measuring polarising discourses during election campaigns. Tariq and the team have developed a method to measure polarisation at the level of specific discourses: it is rooted in core principles and operationalised approaches that are adaptable to other contexts. Measuring polarisation at the discourse level is important; so far, so much of the work on polarisation has been done using surveys on self-reported political positioning or feelings towards leaders or parties, or has drawn on voting patterns in parliaments – but in recent years there has been a growth in attention to polarising rhetoric.

The final speaker in this ICA 2024 conference session is Jisoo Kim, whose interest is in the shaping of communication flows about Ukraine across English, French, and German communities. Such efforts are part of information warfare, aiming to win the battle for public opinion and perception; Russia, in particular, is employing state media and troll armies to disseminate its propaganda about the causes and progress of its war against Ukraine. More recently, this has also include nuclear threats, rhetoric, and diplomacy.

The next speaker in this ICA 2024 conference session is the great Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos, whose interest is in visual political communication across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in Brazil in the 2018 and 2022 presidential elections. Visual affordances are critically important in political campaigning, and such affordances continue to change; this works differently across different platforms, and cross-platform and/or multi-platform studies are therefore also critically important.

The next session at the ICA 2024 conference that I’m attending is presenting articles accepted for a special issue of Political Communication

The Monday morning session at the ICA 2024 conference begins with Jakob Bæk Kristensen, presenting a study on cross-platform alternative news sharing. Cross-platform studies are highly necessary, but still remain rare: even if many platforms are designed to keep users on-platform, users themselves often act and share content across platforms – but it is difficult to trace those practices across multiple platforms.