During the first years of the 21th century we have witnessed many events in our societies, some of them without precedent at all in our recent history, which have involved irreversible changes. The attacks to the Twin Towers in New York City, the resulting sequence of wars in the Middle East, and the international financial collapse are very good examples of these happenings. All these developments of international consequences have led to a new dimension of political communication, and have reoriented some of its traditional meanings, after a very clear dynamic has irrupted in our lives: the crisis. Many new dynamics have introduced significant changes and altered the nature of international relations, the processes of policy making, the governmental performances, the citizen's demands, the electoral campaigns, and the geographical tensions, among other socio-political developments. The revolutionary wave of demonstrations, protests, riots and civil wars in the Arab world starting in 2010 (Arab spring); the waves of human asylum seekers as a direct consequence of this reality; the so-called colour revolutions that overthrew governments in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Lebanon; the territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine; the intensification of the anti-globalisation movements; the outraged protests around the world; the conflict between Israel and Palestine, one of the hardest and longest conflicts to date that has been reactivated over and over; the terrorist attacks in Madrid, London, Boston and Paris; or the recent global threat created by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS); all this leads societies to an unprecedented present in the realm of political communication. Some of those topics are treated in this volume, approaching the main questions with the googles of political communication, since most of these developments have a very visible communicational dimension. This book comprises several chapters divided into five different sections. These stimulating pieces of research were presented by 30 international contributors, from almost 10 different nationalities.

Timely text authored by leading political communication scholars on the effects of tCovid-19 on political communication. How governments, journalists, and the public communicate is of interest within the disciplines of political science, media studies, communication studies, and journalism.

This edited collection compares and analyses the most prominent political communicative responses to the outbreak and global spread of the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus within 27 nations across five continents and two supranational organisations: the EU and the WHO. The book encompasses the various governments’ communication of the crisis, the role played by opposition and the vibrancy of the information environment within each nation. The chapters analyse the communication drawing on theoretical perspectives drawn from the fields of crisis communication, political communication and political psychology. In doing so the book develops a framework to assess the extent to which state communication followed the key indicators of effective communication encapsulated in the principles of: being first; being right; being credible; expressing empathy; promoting action; and showing respect. The book also examines how communication circulated within the mass and social media environments and what impact differences in spokespersons, messages and the broader context has on the success of implementing measures likely to reduce the spread of the virus. Cumulatively, the authors develop a global analysis of the responses and how these are shaped by their specific contexts and by the flow of information, while offering lessons for future political crisis communication. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of politics, communication and public relations, specifically on courses and modules relating to current affairs, crisis communication and strategic communication, as well as practitioners working in the field of health crisis communication. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched www.knowledgeunlatched.org

This book explores the role of elected leaders in disaster management. Filling a significant gap in disaster literature, the authors take a pragmatic approach to the relationships between the public under threat, the operational response, and the interests and actions of elected officials. Key tactics are explored, from the ways operational managers strategically deal with unreasonable political demands to what disaster officials argue is the responsibility of elected officials at all levels of government – that is, to ensure vital life-saving information reaches the people who need it most. The book draws on case studies such as the mismanagement of public perceptions by President George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the widely acclaimed, heartfelt messages delivered by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh during the 2010–11 South-East Queensland floods in Australia. Drawing on a series of interviews with senior disaster managers in ten countries, this book is highly relevant for students, scholars and practitioners interested in disaster communication.

This volume covers research paradigms regarding the shifts in political discourse and the media in times of continuous crisis. In particular, in the covid-era Europe is facing a second consecutive crisis, after the financial, social and political crisis in 2008.

The Emerald Handbook of Digital Media in Greece: Journalism and Political Communication in Times of Crisis presents the empirical applications of digital media in political communication and in a number of social settings including the environment, homelessness, migration and social movements.

Since its development shaped by the turmoil of the World Wars and suspicion of new technologies such as film and radio, political communication has become a hybrid field largely devoted to connecting the dots among political rhetoric, politicians and leaders, voters' opinions, and media exposure to better understand how any one aspect can affect the others. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson bring together leading scholars, including founders of the field of political communication Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, Doris Graber, Max McCombs, and Thomas Paterson,to review the major findings about subjects ranging from the effects of political advertising and debates and understandings and misunderstandings of agenda setting, framing, and cultivation to the changing contours of social media use in politics and the functions of the press in a democratic system. The essays in this volume reveal that political communication is a hybrid field with complex ancestry, permeable boundaries, and interests that overlap with those of related fields such as political sociology, public opinion, rhetoric, neuroscience, and the new hybrid on the quad, media psychology. This comprehensive review of the political communication literature is an indispensible reference for scholars and students interested in the study of how, why, when, and with what effect humans make sense of symbolic exchanges about sharing and shared power. The sixty-two chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication contain an overview of past scholarship while providing critical reflection of its relevance in a changing media landscape and offering agendas for future research and innovation.