Reassessing the Role of Inclusion in Political Communication Research

KEYWORDS:

• Global South
• political communication
• inclusion
• diversity

How can political communication embrace diversity if it continues to be guided by theories and models that were not developed to deal with the inclusion of different voices and perspectives? How can political communication move forward if scholarship produced across most of the world continues to be treated as ‘case studies’—which few want to learn from or engage with – while we continue to interpret reality through the lenses of exceptional and privileged societies?

Broad calls for inclusion and diversity have become the norm at conferences, roundtables, editorial board discussions, and other gatherings with varying levels of formality, but there is still little to show in terms of actual change in the types of scholarship we publish, value, prioritize, and cite. As International Liaison for the International Communication Association’s Political Communication Division (2020–2022), I analyzed submissions data in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and my observations – shared in our business meetings – were in alignment with evidence from some of our flagship journals already discussed in this forum (Bucy & Evans, 2022; Vaccari, 2022). While our field might be becoming less Anglocentric, and hence more “international,” this is due to scholarly activity emanating from and investigating a handful of countries in Europe – mainly, liberal democracies that are richer and less diverse than most countries in the world.

Scholars have consistently highlighted the lack of “non-Western” perspectives in political communication, as well as in communication and media studies more broadly (Waisbord & Mellado, 2014; Waisbord, 2022). But de-Westernizing political communication is easier said than done, partly because predominant research cultures developed in WEIRD – Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic – societies are perpetuated by non-Western researchers (Albuquerque, 2021). It is no coincidence that most scholars from the Global South referenced in this piece are based in universities from the Global North, and as such can leverage the voice and visibility they would not have in their home countries – myself included.

While it is tempting to focus on the role of structural barriers (e.g., resources, language, access) to explain (and sometimes justify) the scarcity of research on other parts of the world, I would also argue that the emphasis on issues that are too big and difficult for any research community, publisher, or organization to tackle can lead us to avoid recognizing our own role – as researchers, reviewers, event planners, and editors – in perpetuating the status quo.

A more productive way forward may be to ask a different question: why do we – as a field – fail to engage with, and value, diverse voices and perspectives that are presented and published in international journals and venues? Studies from and about countries in the Global South are often ignored or dismissed as context-specific case studies from which little of value can be learned that applies to the US or Western Europe. On the other hand, to get published, scholars from most corners of the world need to engage with dominant theories and methodologies that have been developed predominantly in WEIRD societies (Oliveira et al., 2021). Moreover, they often face heightened scrutiny from reviewers about the quality of their data or methods, and the applicability of their results. But what is the point of increasing the “diversity” of what is published if such knowledge continues to be dismissed? Why have we agreed to consider theories and findings from WEIRD societies as universal, and the rest of the world as a “case”?

In what follows, I argue that the failure to engage with research emerging from parts of the world that have been dealing with issues such as democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, political violence and hostility, civil unrest, attacks on press freedom and civil liberties, and many other threats to liberal democratic norms and values might have prevented scholars focused on so-called stable democracies from understanding signs of fragility – at best – and decay – at worst – in their own societies. By contrast, researchers from young democracies and mixed regimes are all too familiar with these challenges and can make important contributions to address them – and help us develop better theories, models, and analyses of key aspects of contemporary political communication.

How (Lack Of) Inclusion Challenges Knowledge Production

The past decade has seen a seismic shift in the political communication research agenda. Our scholarship has been struggling to adjudicate the normative expectations of different models of democracy, citizenship, and participation against the challenges of our increasingly diverse, interconnected, and fragmented societies. The rise of digital media is often blamed for these developments. However, I would argue that the reason why digital media challenges predominant models and theories in political communication has more to do with the fact that it facilitates inclusion of new voices and perspectives in our public debates than with the characteristics of the medium itself. This compels us to take stock, both normatively and empirically, of the democratic implications of inclusion.

Many of the dominant models of democracy – competitive, deliberative, participative—, and theories that guide our field – such as the model of the public sphere – refer to inclusivity as an ideal but prioritize and idealize specific (and sophisticated) types of discourse, participation, and opinion expression that are seen as worthy of inclusion. As such, they are exclusive by design. Critiques of these models have been made for decades, but received far less scholarly recognition (e.g., Fraser, 1990). Because our normative ideals and theoretical expectations are rooted in WEIRD societies at a particular time when there was a consensus among both elites and citizens on key democratic norms, scholarship has failed to predict that when more voices and actors are included, the types of attitudes and behaviors hitherto considered to be normatively desirable may have more problematic implications and, at times, even contribute to undermining democracy.

The struggle to reconcile normative expectations with the reality of our contemporary societies permeates crucial topics in the political communication research agenda, such as public discourse, misinformation, participation, and news use. Scholars are now challenged to adjudicate the imperative that being interested in politics, participating, and consuming information are normatively desirable to build an informed citizenry with the rise of mis- and disinformation (Freelon & Wells, 2020), “dark” participation (Quandt, 2018), and the realization that a high-choice information environment (Prior, 2007) also gives a platform to voices that do not abide by norms of factuality, fairness, and rationality. Those concerned with public discourse are urged to consider how dominant norms such as civility reveal underlying power dynamics to exclude minority voices (Bennett, 2011; Rossini, 2022). ‬‬These examples highlight how inclusion challenges our established norms‬‬. The ways in which digital media amplify some of these dynamics challenge the boundaries of our discipline because our dominant models and theories were not designed to deal with this kind of inclusivity in the first place.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Rethinking Inclusivity

This is a problem that scholars from non-Western backgrounds know all too well (Rojas & Valenzuela, 2019). Engaging with predominant theories and models – despite their limited ability to explain non-WEIRD societies – is a pre-condition to participate in international academic arenas. As our field tries to understand the relationship between communication, media, and democracy, amidst evidence of backsliding in so-called established democracies, a potential way forward is to broaden our understanding of these issues by actively considering research from and about countries that are more socially, racially, and economically diverse, and where democratic norms and institutions are less consolidated.

If we acknowledge that the lack of diversity in our field has led us to ignore the limitations and blind spots of our dominant theories and models, inclusion can take a different meaning: it is not just publishing work from hitherto underrepresented countries, but actively learning from them. Part of the reason many of us are shocked by disruption and backsliding in established democracies has to do with the fact that when scholars studying young democracies and mixed regimes were sounding the alarm, it often fell on deaf ears. If we were listening to scholars in India and Indonesia warning about the links between online disinformation, private social media, and political violence (Chauchard & Garimella, 2022), the invasion of the U.S. Capitol in 2022 would have been less of a surprise. If we were paying attention to the weaponization of social media in elections in Brazil and India (Badrinathan, 2021; Rossini et al., 2021), we could have been more prepared to confront and understand the same tactics in consolidated democratic regimes.

In a nutshell, if we continue to treat knowledge emerging from underprivileged and underrepresented countries as idiosyncratic, and neglect that in a globalized and interconnected world such knowledge, as context dependent as any knowledge is, can still teach us a great deal about the world, those studying so-called stable democracies will continue to play cat-and-mouse chasing democratic threats that emerged first, in some form, in more fragile regimes.

Redrawing the map of political communication research so that it more closely represents world population and incorporates the global challenges our knowledge can contribute to understanding will require concerted long-term action by a variety of institutions and actors. What I am advocating for is a more manageable and modest task. Each of us, as researchers and reviewers, can make a meaningful contribution toward that goal, by paying attention, citing, and building on scholarship from and about countries that are different than our own. This will not only help make our communities more open and inclusive, but also make the knowledge we build, and make available to society, more valid and comprehensive.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Jennifer Stromer-Galley and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen for their thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts of this piece. The reflections summarized here also benefited from insights shared by Danielle Brown, Cherian George, Sarah Jackson, Ulrike Klinger, Daniel Kreiss and Jo Lukito in the roundtable “Moving the Field of Political Communication Forward in Turbulent Times”, organized by the Political Communication leadership team at ICA in 2022, as well as by many conversations with colleagues who have been active in this discussion.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrícia Rossini

Patrícia Rossini, (PhD, Federal University of Minas Gerais) is a Senior Lecturer in Communication, Media & Democracy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, UK.