Introduction

Do news media strengthen or undermine democracy? What are the democratic consequences of fake news, negative campaigning, and uncivil political language? Can social media contribute to protest, repression, or even political violence?

The course approaches these questions through the interaction between three central actors in political communication: the media, political actors, and citizens. It examines how journalists select and frame political information; how politicians design campaigns and communication strategies; and how citizens acquire political knowledge, form opinions, participate in politics, and select the information they consume.

Throughout the course, classical theories are combined with recent empirical research, comparative cases, videos, podcasts, and current political events. Particular attention is paid to the fact that political communication is context-dependent: media systems, political institutions, electoral rules, and national contexts can fundamentally shape how communication works and what effects it has.

Learning goals

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

  • Recognize and explain central concepts, theories, and empirical findings in political communication, and assess their strengths and limitations.
  • Compare theories systematically, connect them to one another, and apply them to new examples and empirical evidence.
  • Critically evaluate everyday claims about politics and media using political communication theory and research.
  • Analyze the strategic choices and possible consequences of communication by politicians, journalists, interest groups, and citizens.
  • Identify how political, institutional, and media contexts condition political communication processes and effects.
Course format
  • An introductory session establishes the core concepts and historical development of political communication.
  • Three foundational modules on media, political actors, and citizens are taught through guided self-study and web lectures, followed by an application class.
  • Five advanced modules deepen the course through research on misinformation, polarization, populism and incivility, dissent and repression, and colonial legacies in news coverage.
  • Application classes use integrative exercises modeled on the analytical reasoning required in the final assessment.
Main readings
Additional readings
Course material

Media: agenda-setting, priming, and framing

The first foundational module examines the media as an actor in political communication. It introduces three core mechanisms of media influence—agenda-setting, priming, and framing—and asks how they differ conceptually and empirically. The module also considers the direction of influence between politics and journalism: do media set the political agenda, do politicians shape the media agenda, or does influence run in both directions?

Comparative research illustrates how these processes operate across different political and media contexts, including Belgium, Sweden, Nigeria, and the changing social-media environment.

Main readings
Additional readings
Course material

Political actors: campaigning and political marketing

The second foundational module turns from journalism to political actors and organizations. It introduces political marketing and examines how politicians strategically communicate with voters. Particular attention is paid to negative campaigning, personalization, and the incentives that make some politicians more likely than others to adopt confrontational or simplified communication strategies.

The module also uses the Belgian cordon médiatique to examine the relationship between journalistic norms, political strategy, and the boundaries of legitimate political communication.

Main readings
Additional readings
Course material

Citizens: media effects and selective exposure

The third foundational module examines the public. It asks how news and digital media affect political knowledge, political trust, political participation, and political attitudes. It also considers the increasingly fragmented information environment: do citizens selectively expose themselves to congenial information, and to what extent do they actually live in partisan or ideological echo chambers?

The module connects classic work on motivated reasoning and selective exposure to newer evidence on digital media, political participation, knowledge gaps, and online news diets.

Main readings
Additional readings
Practice material
  • Application class I: integrative exercises on media, political actors, and citizens, designed around the analytical reasoning required in the final assessment.

Fake news and fact-checking

This module examines the contemporary information disorder. It distinguishes misinformation, disinformation, and fake news, asks who is most likely to believe and disseminate false information and conspiracy theories, and evaluates interventions designed to reduce their spread.

A central question is whether fact-checking and corrective information actually work. The readings connect early research on failed corrections to newer experimental evidence on misinformation interventions, partisan sharing, ideological segregation, and the conditions under which fact-checking is most effective.

Main readings
Additional readings
Course material

Emotions and polarization

Political communication does not operate through information alone. This module examines how emotions shape political persuasion and how contemporary communication environments may contribute to polarization.

Students distinguish different dimensions of polarization and consider how emotional political discourse affects citizens. The module also evaluates prominent claims about social-media algorithms and ideological echo chambers: does exposure to like-minded sources polarize citizens, or are the relationships between media choice and polarization more complicated?

Main readings
Additional readings
Course material

Populism and political incivility

This guest module, taught by Dr. Ine Goovaerts, examines populism as a form of political communication and the democratic consequences of uncivil political discourse.

The module asks what distinguishes populist communication from populism more broadly, why political actors may rely on simplistic or uncivil rhetoric, and how such communication affects citizens and democratic norms.

Main readings
Additional readings

Online dissent, mobilization, and repression

Digital media can facilitate political participation and collective action, but they can also create new opportunities for surveillance, censorship, and repression. This module therefore studies the relationship between online communication and offline political conflict.

It asks whether and how social media can mobilize citizens, why governments censor information, and how authoritarian authorities attempt to suppress digital dissent. Cases from Belarus, Russia, and Saudi Arabia illustrate the interaction between online activism and state repression.

Main readings
Additional readings
Course material

Colonial legacies and foreign news

The final substantive module, taught by Peter Verlinden, turns to the representation of colonial history in contemporary news. It places debates about Belgium’s colonial past within the broader study of how international events become news and how journalistic selection shapes representations of foreign societies and conflicts.

The session returns to one of the foundational questions of the course: why do some events become news while others do not, and what are the consequences of those choices for how citizens understand the world?

Main reading
Practice material
  • Application class II: integrative exercises connecting the advanced modules to the foundational theories of political communication.