Call for Papers: Passionate Europe. An expressive turn in European parliamentary election campaign communication and media discourses

Details of the CfP

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 November 30, 2019, to be sent to double-blind review. Accepted papers will be published in issue 2/2020 of the Journal.