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Democratic politics is increasingly organized around struggles not only over preferences, issues, and information, but also over what becomes visible, emotionally salient, and difficult to ignore. This panel examines attention as a political resource and as an arena in which political actors, media organizations, digital platforms, activists, citizens, and increasingly AI-mediated systems compete to shape public priorities.
The panel invites theoretical, empirical, and comparative papers that investigate how attention is produced, captured, distributed, redirected, and sustained in contemporary political communication. Contributions may address electoral campaigns, political leadership, governing communication, protest and activism, crises and conflicts, or everyday forms of political engagement. We particularly welcome work on visibility and invisibility, personalization and political performance, emotional mobilization and fear, visual and video-based communication, influencers and intermediary actors, disinformation, agenda-setting, algorithmic amplification, platform logics, and generative AI.
A central concern is the relationship between changing attention dynamics and democratic uncertainty. Under what conditions does intensified competition for attention broaden participation and make previously marginalized actors or issues visible? When does it instead encourage strategic distraction, affective polarization, simplified political performances, manipulation, or unequal access to public visibility? How do technological and institutional changes alter the capacity of political actors to attract attention and the ability of citizens to allocate it autonomously?
The panel is intentionally open to different theoretical traditions, methodological approaches, political systems, and regional contexts. It welcomes qualitative, quantitative, computational, experimental, and mixed-method research, as well as conceptual contributions. By bringing these perspectives together, the panel aims to advance a broader understanding of how struggles over attention are reshaping political communication, political power, and the conditions under which democratic politics operates.