The Quality of Political Information
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Author | Konstantin Vössing |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920917618 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920917618
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(4) 574 –590
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920917618
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The Quality of Political
Information
Konstantin Vössing
Abstract
The article conceptualizes the quality of political information and shows how the concept can be
used for empirical research. I distinguish three aspects of quality (intelligibility, relevance, and validity)
and use them to judge the constituent foundations of political information, that is, component claims
(statements of alleged facts) and connection claims (argumentative statements created by causally
linking two component claims). The resulting conceptual map thus entails six manifestations of
information quality (component claim intelligibility, connection claim intelligibility, component claim
relevance, connection claim relevance, component claim validity, and connection claim validity). I explain
how the conceptual map can be used to make sense of the eclectic variety of existing research, and
how it can advance new empirical research, as a guide for determining variation in information quality,
as a conceptual template for the analysis of different types of political messages and their common
quality deficiencies, and as a generator of new research questions and theoretical expectations.
Keywords
political information, concept formation, typology, information quality
Accepted: 16 March 2020
Introduction
Information is the principal political currency. It shapes what and how we think of politics;
political actors acquire, manipulate, and disseminate it to achieve their objectives; and the
institutionally prescribed relations between people and policy-makers in both democratic
and autocratic regimes cannot function without it. Even the less cerebral forms of political
interaction, such as emotional appeals, hot cognitions, and group identities, need to be sus-
tained by information. But when is information good enough to serve its purpose, and what
happens when the quality of information is too low? What is the quality of political informa-
tion, and how can different aspects of information quality be distinguished?
The article offers answers to these questions in order to advance theory-guided empiri-
cal research about the causes and consequences of variation in the quality of political
Department of International Politics, City, University of London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Konstantin Vössing, Department of International Politics, City, University of London, Northampton Square,
London EC1V 0HB, UK.
Emails: konstantin.voessing@city.ac.uk; konstantin.voessing@gmail.com
917618PSW0010.1177/1478929920917618Political Studies ReviewVössing
research-article2020
Article
Vössing 575
information. This is particularly important during a time in which disinformation, misin-
formation, and fake news have become serious concerns in both mass politics and inter-
national affairs, while traditional quality claims based on evidence, established procedures
of news reporting, and scientific methodology are under attack from populist politicians
and movements. However, despite the great significance of political information, and
despite the fact that many fields of scholarship are concerned with it, political science and
cognate disciplines have not yet engaged in systematic attempts to make sense of the
quality of political information and its manifestations.
Existing studies use a wide variety of partially overlapping and less than perfectly
demarcated terms to identify different aspects and deficiencies of information quality,
such as diagnostic value (Kuklinski et al., 2001), political clarity (Dalton, 1985), argu-
ment strength (Areni and Lutz, 1988), argument quality (Clark and Wegener, 2009),
information accuracy (Shikano et al., 2017), misleading statements (Jerit and Barabas,
2006), fake news (Lazer et al., 2018), and imperfect information (Weyland, 2014). The
eclectic terminology used in prior research reflects the absence of a commonly accepted
and well-defined concept of the meaning and manifestations of the quality of political
information. Empirical studies relying on the existing concepts frequently fail to pinpoint
the particular manifestation of information quality that affects certain political outcomes.
The purpose of this article is to remedy that problem, by developing a concept of the qual-
ity of political information, and by showing how the concept can be used not only to make
sense of existing studies but also to advance new empirical research.
In the first part of the article, I develop a simple model of political information based
on the principles of argumentation by Toulmin (2003). The model identifies component
claims (statements of alleged facts) as the atoms of political information and connection
claims (argumentative statements created by causally linking two component claims) as
the most basic molecules. In the second part of the article, I conceptualize quality as an
intrinsic feature of the content of political information. In the beginning, I invoke Grice’s
(1975) conversation rules to develop a concept of the meaning of quality that distin-
guishes three aspects of quality, namely, intelligibility, relevance, and validity. After that,
I establish a conceptual map of the quality of political information by applying the three
quality judgments to the two previously introduced building blocks of information. The
quality of political information thus entails six manifestations, that is, component claim
intelligibility, connection claim intelligibility, component claim relevance, connection
claim relevance, component claim validity, and connection claim validity. I use the con-
ceptual map to classify existing studies of information quality from a wide range of the-
matic fields, including political behavior, party politics, public administration, political
communication, political development, and international relations. In the third part of the
article, I show how my model can be applied to empirical research. I discuss, in turn, how
the model can be used to determine variation in information quality, how it can serve as a
conceptual foundation for studying the quality of different kinds of political messages,
and how it can help generate new research questions and theoretical expectations. The
fourth part of the article offers a brief conclusion and discussion.
A Simple Model of Political Information
My concept of information quality rests on a simple model of political information, which
I develop from the bottom up beginning with the constituent rhetorical foundations. I
conceive of the foundational units of political information as component claims
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