We should beware the rhetoric of ‘tough talking’ politicians – they almost certainly have an agenda

Recent crises such as the riots in England and the military campaign in Libya have led to an upswing in ‘tough talking’ by politicians. Nick Anstead explores how this style of rhetoric really operates and the agendas that often lie behind

Shouting across each other: post-debate coverage of the Clegg and Farage broadcasts

In the wake of the two Clegg vs. Farage debates, most have agreed that Farage came out on top. Nick Anstead finds that there were in fact different discussions going on as the two party leaders talked across each other. He writes that Clegg seems to have lost the debates because he was perceived to be the representative of the political class against Farage’s plucky everyman. Breaking this dynamic is the real challenge for mainstream politicians

Discourses about austerity among British political elites, 2003-2013

This text analysis is based on a dataset of more than 37 million words of think tank publications. The aim of the research was to understand how discussions about austerity have changed on the political left and right because of the financial crisis

The debates between candidates for Commission President have a long way to go if they are to generate real engagement with EU citizens

One of the key innovations in the 2014 European Parliament election campaign has been the inclusion of televised debates between candidates for the next President of the European Commission. Nick Anstead assesses the debates which have taken place so far. He writes that while televised debates are a good option for improving citizen engagement with the campaign, the discussions so far have suffered from the limited expression of Eurosceptic views and a lack of genuinely representative audiences

The idea of austerity in British politics, 2003-13

Employing a dataset of 1,843 think tank publications containing 37 million words, Computer-assisted Text Analysis (CATA) was used to examine the idea of austerity in British politics between 2003 and 2013. Theoretically, the article builds on the ideational turn in political research. However, in contrast to much ideational work which argues that ideas are important at times of crisis because they can address uncertainty, this article argues that moments of crisis can lead to the reformulation of ideas. Empirically, this article demonstrates the transformation of the idea of austerity. Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, austerity was largely understood either in historical terms or as a practice applied in other countries. In the aftermath of the crisis, both the political right and left attempted to co-opt the idea of austerity for their own ends, combining it with various other ideational strands on which they have historically drawn

Transparency has to be open to all and designed with a purpose in mind

Nick Anstead, Assistant Professor in the Department of Media & Communications at LSE, outlines a number of important issues related to the growing role of algorithms – be it in government, banking, information sharing or security – and the impact they are having on wider society

We need to look at other parliamentary democracies for ideas about how to run televised debates

Among a number of political ramifications, the recent UKIP by-election success in Clacton has raised tough questions about the organization of televised debates during the 2015 general election campaign. LSE’s Nick Anstead looks to Germany and Canada for more inclusive models that the UK could follow

New Research: How to save the 2015 televised debates

Just as the UK’s Prime Minister takes a strong position on televised debates LSE’s Nick Anstead announces his new research concluding that the format of any 2015 UK debates should follow Canadian and German models in order to recognize the regional dynamics of British politics and that the general election selects both the executive and legislature

Data-driven campaigning in the 2015 UK general election

While we know something of data-driven campaigning practices in the US, we know much less about the role of data in other national contexts. The 2015 UK General Election offers an important case study of how such practices are evolving and being deployed in a different setting. This article draws on 31 in-depth interviews with political practitioners involved in the use of data for six major UK parties and electoral regulators. These interviews are employed to explore the perceived importance of data in contemporary British campaigns, to understand the data-based campaign techniques being used by UK parties, and to assess how data-driven practices are interacting with the pre-existing institutional context of British politics. Going beyond the specifics of the UK case, this study raises questions about the comparative, theoretical, and normative dimensions of data-driven politics

A different beast? Televised election debates in parliamentary democracies

Research on televised election debates has been dominated by studies of the United States. As a result, we know far less about other national contexts, including the many parliamentary democracies that now hold televised election debates. This article makes two contributions to address this. Theoretically, the study argues that traditional approaches for understanding the development of campaign communication practices (particularly, Americanization and hybridization) are limiting when applied to television debates, and instead offers an alternative theoretical approach, the concept of speciation drawn from biological science. This is then applied in the empirical section of the article in a comparative analysis of the evolution of televised election debates in four parliamentary democracies: Australia, Canada, West Germany/Germany and the United Kingdom. Based on this analysis, the article argues that the logic of parliamentary democracy coupled with more diffuse party systems has created a distinctive type of televised debate, generally more open to smaller parties based on their success at winning seats in the legislature