Robot Strategies for Combating Disinformation in Election Campaigns

2021 ◽  
pp. 132-145
Author(s):  
Eva Campos‐Domínguez ◽  
Cristina Renedo Farpón ◽  
Dafne Calvo ◽  
María Díez‐Garrido
Keyword(s):  
Election Campaigns

Everybody Follows the Crowd?

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Obermaier ◽  
Thomas Koch ◽  
Christian Baden
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Bandwagon Effect ◽  
Political News ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Opinion Polls ◽  
Electoral Preferences

Abstract. Opinion polls are a well-established part of political news coverage, especially during election campaigns. At the same time, there has been controversial debate over the possible influences of such polls on voters’ electoral choices. The most prominent influence discussed is the bandwagon effect: It states that voters tend to support the expected winner of an upcoming election, and use polls to determine who the likely winner will be. This study investigated the mechanisms underlying the effect. In addition, we inquired into the role of past electoral performances of a candidate and analyzed how these (as well as polls) are used as heuristic cues for the assessment of a candidate’s personal characteristics. Using an experimental design, we found that both polls and past election results influence participants’ expectations regarding which candidate will succeed. Moreover, higher competence was attributed to a candidate, if recipients believe that the majority of voters favor that candidate. Through this attribution of competence, both information about prior elections and current polls shaped voters’ electoral preferences.

Nation, Locality and Radical Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Control ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Political Left ◽  
National Model ◽  
Selection Of

Concentrating upon the years between the 1924 and 1929 general elections, which separated the first and second minority Labour governments, this chapter traces the rise of a modernised, national vision of Labour politics in Scotland. It considers first the reworking of understandings of sovereignty within the Labour movement, as the autonomy enjoyed by provincial trades councils was circumscribed, and notions of Labour as a confederation of working-class bodies, which could in places include the Communist Party, were replaced by a more hierarchical, national model. The electoral consequences of this shift are then considered, as greater central control was exercised over the selection of parliamentary candidates and the conduct of election campaigns. This chapter presents a study of the changing horizons of the political left in inter-war Scotland, analysing the declining importance of locality in the construction of radical political identities.

Political Finance Reforms: How to respond to today’s policy challenges?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yukihiko Hamada ◽  
Khushbu Agrawal
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Finance ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Transparency And Accountability

Money is a necessary component of any democracy: it enables political participation, campaigning and representation. However, if it is not effectively regulated, it can undermine the integrity of political processes and institutions, and jeopardize the quality of democracy. Therefore, regulations related to the funding of political parties and election campaigns, commonly known as political finance, are a critical way to promote integrity, transparency and accountability in any democracy. Political finance regulations must adapt and adjust to political, economic and societal changes. This report contributes to the discussion of the future of political finance by exploring the following trends, opportunities and challenges related to money in politics that need to be taken into consideration when improving political finance systems: • mainstreaming political finance regulations into an overall anti-corruption framework; • supporting the implementation of existing political finance regulations and monitoring their performance; • harnessing digital technologies to ensure transparency and accountability in political finance; and • designing targeted political finance measures to encourage the inclusion of underrepresented groups in politics.

Do Election Campaigns Matter?

2019 ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
J. Alexander Branham ◽  
Christopher Wlezien
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Electoral Preferences

Do election campaigns matter? This chapter examines whether and how they do. It considers when they occur, what they do, and what effects they can have. Although candidates and parties would like to directly persuade individuals, it is difficult to detect those kinds of effects at the aggregate level since the effects are small and polling is imprecise. The chapter then introduces the “timeline” of elections and how we can observe preferences change and harden as the election approaches. This method allows us to test various hypotheses, such as whether political institutions matter for the evolution of electoral preferences over the timeline. The chapter concludes with a discussion of mobilization, which is a cost-effective way that campaigns can persuade people to vote who would not have otherwise.

scholarly journals Introduction to special issue about election reporting: Why journalism (still) matters

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 985-993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion ◽  
Daniel Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Campaign Coverage ◽  
Election Coverage ◽  
Social Media Platforms

This introduction unpacks the eight articles that make up this Journalism special issue about election reporting. Taken together, the articles ask: How has election reporting evolved over the last century across different media? Has the relationship between journalists and candidates changed in the digital age of campaigning? How do contemporary news values influence campaign coverage? Which voices – politicians, say or journalists – are most prominent? How far do citizens inform election coverage? How is public opinion articulated in the age of social media? Are sites such as Twitter developing new and distinctive election agendas? In what ways does social media interact with legacy media? How well have scholars researched and theorised election reporting cross-nationally? How can research agendas be enhanced? Overall, we argue this Special Issue demonstrates the continued strength of news media during election campaigns. This is in spite of social media platforms increasingly disrupting and recasting the agenda setting power of legacy media, not least by political parties and candidates who are relying more heavily on sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to campaign. But while debates in recent years have centred on the technological advances in political communication and the associated role of social media platforms during election campaigns (e.g. microtargeting voters, spreading disinformation/misinformation and allowing candidates to bypass media to campaign), our collection of studies signal the enduring influence professional journalists play in selecting and framing of news. Put more simply, how elections are reported still profoundly matters in spite of political parties’ and candidates’ more sophisticated use of digital campaigning.

Rhetorical moves in political discourse: closing statements by presidential candidates in US primary election debates

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Schubert
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Sample Analysis ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Primary Election ◽  
Presidential Primary ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Political Persuasion

Abstract Presidential primary debates in the USA are commonly concluded by brief closing statements, in which the competitors outline the central messages of their election campaigns. These statements constitute a subgenre characterized by a set of recurring rhetorical moves, which are defined as functional units geared towards the respective communicative objective, in this case political persuasion. Located at the interface of rhetorical move analysis and political discourse studies, this paper demonstrates that moves and embedded steps in closing statements fulfill the persuasive function of legitimizing the respective candidate as the most preferable presidential successor. The study is based on the transcripts of 98 closing statements, which were extracted from eight Democratic and eleven Republican primary debates held between August 2015 and April 2016. Typical moves, such as projecting the speaker’s future political agenda or diagnosing the current situation in America, are presented with the help of illustrative examples, frequencies of occurrence, and a sample analysis of a complete closing statement.

The Element of Surprise: Election Timing and Opposition Preparedness

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402199717
Author(s):  
Charles T. McClean
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Alternative Mechanism ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Electoral Accountability ◽  
Fixed Effects Models ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Election Timing

How can incumbent governments benefit when they control the timing of elections? The conventional wisdom is that incumbents gain an advantage by timing elections to coincide with favorable economic conditions. An alternative mechanism that has received less attention is the element of surprise: the incumbent’s ability to exploit the opposition’s lack of election preparedness. I theorize and empirically test this surprise mechanism using candidate-level data from Japanese House of Representatives elections (1955–2017). The results show that in surprise elections, opposition parties recruit fewer, lower-quality candidates, spend less money campaigning, coordinate their candidates less effectively, and ultimately receive fewer votes and seats. Evidence from fixed effects models and exogenously timed by-elections further suggest that surprise matters more in shorter, competitive election campaigns and helps incumbents more with confronting inter-party as opposed to intra-party electoral competition. These findings add to our understanding of how strategic election timing can undermine electoral accountability.

Does policy motivation drive party activism? A study of party activists in three Asian democracies

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406882090802
Author(s):  
Sejin Koo
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Party Activist ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Party Characteristics ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Policy Motivation

Studies of party activism highlight that party activists are driven by various motivations and that these affect their level of activism. However, it remains unclear whether policy-motivated activists are more engaged in party activities than those motivated by other incentives and whether the motivation–activism link varies with party characteristics. This article investigates these questions by focusing on political actors linking parties and voters in the local community. I use a party activist survey data set collected during recent national election campaigns in three Asian young democracies: Taiwan, Korea, and Mongolia. The results demonstrated the prominence of policy motivation as an impetus for activists’ intraparty commitment. I also found that the positive effect of policy motivation is especially robust in small parties, while it is muted in large parties and that party membership increases the probability of intraparty commitment, challenging the widely held belief that formal membership is pointless in Asian parties.

Fake News im Wahlkampf

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Flint
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Forming Process ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
The Future

The urgency of regulating fake news on social networks regarding election campaigns is more evident than ever. This poses considerable difficulties for legislative practice. It is important to consider the fundamental rights of the parties involved without the state's influence on the formation of public opinion becoming too great. The current options of reacting to fake news do not suffice to ensure a free opinion-forming process. This publication makes an innovative proposal as to how social networks – especially Facebook – can be regulated in the future in such a way that the discourse is strengthened and the alarming influence of private companies on the formation of opinion is limited.

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