Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Analysis of political communication is an important aspect of political research.
Thematic content analysis has yielded considerable success both with manual and
automatic coding, but Semantic Network Analysis has proven more difficult, both
for humans and for the computer.
This paper presents a system for an automated Semantic Network Analysis of
Dutch texts. The system automatically extracts relations between political actors
based on the output of syntactic analysis of Dutch newspaper articles. Specifically,
the system uses pattern matching to find source constructions and determine the
semantic agent and patient of relations. Subsequently, political actors are identified
using name matching and resolution of pronominal and NP-anaphora.
The performance of the system is judged by comparing the extracted relations to
manual codings of the same material. We present three validity measures:
Concurrent validity is defined as the agreement on the level of the units of
measurement, while construct validity and predictive validity are determined by a
comparison at the level of units of analysis. Overall, concurrent validity is found to
be acceptable (0.65 F-score), while the construct validity is good (correlation 0.83 and
0.61). The predictive validity is high. Tests of political communication hypotheses
regarding indexing, opportune witnesses and issue ownership reveal precisely the
same outcomes, regardless whether they are based on automated semantic network
analysis or on Semantic Network Analysis by human coders.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: A study of the relative effectiveness of television and print to transmit news information was undertaken by exposing 100 university students to television stories that contained different text-picture formats and by comparing memory for these versions to other participants� memory for the same news presented in print. The study was designed to retest the validity of two rival explanations for the relative effectiveness of television and print news (the reading control hypothesis versus the semantic overlap hypothesis). Results of a cued-recall test were in favor of the semantic overlap hypothesis. The study suggests that higher levels of semantic overlap between verbal and visual information on television news are decisive for the relative effectiveness of television and print.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Internet has transformed organizations� communicative behavior, the social system, and perhaps the values embedded within both. Organizations have been impacted by these changes within society, especially related to globalization and increased behavioral expectations. To cope with these external influences, organizations grapple with the question of �who we are� as evidenced in publicized statements of values. Further, corporate values statements, available on organizations� websites, are strongly influenced by internal and external messages within the social system. Results from a semantic network analysis of the 2005 list of Forbes Global 2000 presented an accurate picture of the values of the current global economic system. North American, European, and Asian corporations were examined. Within the North American data, successful organizational functioning predominated with an external focus on all stakeholders. References to moral expectations of society tempered performance-related goals and reinforced the image of traditional American work ethic. The European data also emphasized organizational functioning and stakeholders. Superior performance, future-orientation, and accountability to society, emerged as important components. The data also linked culture, of which values are embedded, to organizational survival. In the Asian data, a long-term orientation and collectivistic dimension prevailed. Harmony and balance underlie all references to organizational operations. Though variations within all data sets appear, they focus on organizational functioning. Attention to the customer, as a value, was addressed within the context of performance, integrity, and balance. With the exception of the Asian data set, with its emphasis on balance, all stressed future, success-oriented approaches. A recognition of internal and external stakeholders predominated, along with an eye to global, social, and environmental concerns.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: A study of Machiavelli?s Prince (with brief notes on the Discourses). By using simple instruments of semiotic analysis I argue that the text construes the political as the domain of the public whereas the moral is relegated into the private sphere.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Norms matter. But where do they come from? While the “influence” of norms and ideas has been demonstrated for virtually every aspect of global affairs since their study became en vogue some twenty years ago, the question of normative change remains undertheorized. Conventional accounts refer to exogenous factors such as the appearance of norm entrepreneurs or environmental changes thus merely transposing the problem to a different level. Why do these external factors change in the first place? How do norm entrepreneurs come to entertain certain ideas and why and under what circumstances do they resonate? Modern systems theory provides a promising way to tackle these questions to the extent that it situates normative expectations in the context of an ongoing communicative evolution of world society. However, the light modern systems theory sheds on communicative processes remains a functionalist one, leaving dynamics of power and authority unclarified and downplaying the contentious character of processes of social differentiation. In contrast to the idea of self-sufficient lateral world systems put forth in a theoretical context informed by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory the paper will thus argue that the notion of global differentiation needs to be politicized, i.e. stripped of its functionalist logic, in order to be capable of grasping how struggles for the recognition of political authority respond to relations of power rather than functional demands. Power relations under conditions of functional differentiation can then be described in terms of processes of semantic colonization, which seem to indicate that the very process of drawing functional boundaries is itself a political one. However, re-politicizing questions of governance and differentiation should not lead to hasty optimism. The paper will thus end on a sceptical note as to how the prospects for democracy might look like if struggles for the recognition of political authority are de-territorialized and take place along the lines of functional differentiation and in terms of semantic colonization.Mutual understanding is not something Habermas would take to be ubiquitous in modern capitalist societies. Quite the contrary, the diagnosis of contemporary Western societies which Habermas has to offer is centered around the idea of a systemic colonization of the lifeworld increasingly impinging on the residual potentials of communicative freedom. Politics and the economy are conceived of as functionally differentiated subsystems of modern society integrated through abstract steering media such as power and money. From a systemic perspective the economic system encroaches upon the private sphere by means of monetary exchange while the political system trades administrative decisions for mass loyalty in terms of power. Even though the potential of communicative rationality is introduced as an ineradicable element of everyday language, Habermas thus ends up with a scenario where the communicative rationality situated in the lifeworld is acutely threatened with extinction. The image of systemic colonization serves to refine an argument which had been developed already in the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, that communicative freedom was increasingly curtailed as the process of rationalization proceeded.