Research Note: “Negative” Personalization: Party Leaders and Party Strategy

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Pruysers ◽  
William Cross
Keyword(s):  
Research Note ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Negative Campaigning ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Strategy ◽  
Opposing Party ◽  
Campaign Communication ◽  
Personalization Of Politics

AbstractWhile the negative campaigning literature has witnessed tremendous growth in recent years, the precise targets of campaign negativity have not been fully explored, as candidates and their parties are largely treated as the same target. Likewise, although scholars are increasingly writing about the personalization of politics, this literature has not considered whether parties can “personalize” their opponents by focusing their messaging and attacks more on individual leaders than the parties they lead. In an attempt to bridge the gap between these two literatures, we develop the concept of negative personalization. Negative personalization, as we define it, is an emphasis on opposing party leaders in campaign communication more so than on the parties that they lead. Exploring recent election campaigns in Canada's largest province, we document the extent to which parties engage in negative personalization and suggest hypotheses for the factors leading to increased negative personalization.

scholarly journals Avoidance, ambiguity, alternation: Position blurring strategies in multidimensional party competition

2021 ◽  
pp. 146511652110274
Author(s):  
Jelle Koedam
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Strategy ◽  
Political Outcome ◽  
Western European

In a multidimensional environment, parties may have compelling incentives to obscure their preferences on select issues. This study contributes to a growing literature on position blurring by demonstrating how party leaders purposively create uncertainty about where their party stands on the issue of European integration. By doing so, it theoretically and empirically disentangles the cause of position blurring—parties’ strategic behavior—from its intended political outcome. The analysis of survey and manifesto data across 14 Western European countries (1999–2019) confirms that three distinct strategies—avoidance, ambiguity, and alternation—all increase expert uncertainty about a party's position. This finding is then unpacked by examining for whom avoidance is particularly effective. This study has important implications for our understanding of party strategy, democratic representation, and political accountability.

scholarly journals Are microtargeted campaign messages more negative and diverse? An analysis of Facebook Ads in European election campaigns

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto López Ortega
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Negative Campaigning ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Campaign Messages ◽  
European Election

AbstractConcerns about the use of online political microtargeting (OPM) by campaigners have arisen since the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit the international political arena. In addition to providing conceptual clarity on OPM and explore the use of such techniques in Europe, this paper seeks to empirically disentangle the differing behaviours of campaigners when they message citizens through microtargeted rather than non-targeted campaigning. More precisely, I hypothesise that campaigners use negative campaigning and are more diverse in terms of topics when they use OPM. To investigate whether these expectations hold true, I use text-as-data techniques to analyse an original dataset of 4,091 political Facebook Ads during the last national elections in Austria, Italy, Germany and Sweden. Results show that while microtargeted ads might indeed be more thematically diverse, there does not seem to be a significant difference to non-microtargeted ads in terms of negativity. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of these findings for microtargeted campaigns and how future research could be conducted.

Do Campaigns “Go Negative” on Twitter?

2017 ◽  
pp. 178-191
Author(s):  
Marija Bekafigo ◽  
Allison Clark Pingley
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Gubernatorial Elections ◽  
Negative Campaigning ◽  
Negative Ads ◽  
Media Forum

The use of negative ads in traditional election campaigns has been well-documented, but we know little about the use of Twitter to “go negative.” We content analyze candidate tweets from four different gubernatorial elections in 2011 to understand how candidates are using Twitter. We coded 849 tweets to explain the determinants of “going negative” on Twitter. Our results show that while tweets are overwhelmingly positive, candidates go negative by tweeting about policy. We believe this supports the innovation hypothesis and argue that Twitter is a conducive social media forum for policy-based messages due to its highly partisan nature. However, other determinants of negative campaigning such as competitiveness of the race and campaign funding were consistent with the normalization hypothesis. Our mixed results are consistent with other studies on social media and suggest there is still much to be learned from this tool.

scholarly journals Are microtargeted campaign messages more negative and diverse? An analysis of Facebook ads in European election campaigns

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto López Ortega
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Negative Campaigning ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Campaign Messages ◽  
European Election

Concerns about the use of online political microtargeting (OPM) by campaigners have arisen since Cambridge Analytica scandal hit the international political arena. In addition to providing conceptual clarity on OPM and explore the use of such technique in Europe, this paper seeks to empirically disentangle the differing behavior of campaigners when they message citizens through microtargeted rather than non-targeted campaigning. More precisely, I hypothesize that campaigners use negative campaigning and are more diverse in terms of topics when they use OPM. To investigate whether these expectations hold true, I use text-as-data techniques to analyze an original dataset of 4,091 political Facebook Ads during the last national elections in Austria, Italy, Germany and Sweden. Results show that while microtargeted ads might indeed be more thematically diverse, there does not seem to be a significant difference to non-microtargeted ads in terms of negativity. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of these findings for microtargeted campaigns and how future research could be conducted.

scholarly journals Functions of Hybrid Media: How Parties and Their Leaders Use Traditional Media in Their Social Media Campaign Communication

2022 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Paatelainen ◽  
Elisa Kannasto ◽  
Pekka Isotalus
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Media Campaign ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Media System ◽  
The Media ◽  
Campaign Communication ◽  
Media Systems ◽  
Personalization Of Politics

Political campaign communication has become increasingly hybrid and the ability to create synergies between older and newer media is now a prerequisite for running a successful campaign. Nevertheless, beyond establishing that parties and individual politicians use social media to gain visibility in traditional media, not much is known about how political actors use the hybrid media system in their campaign communication. At the same time, the personalization of politics, shown to have increased in the media coverage of politics, has gained little attention in the context of today’s hybrid media environment. In this research we analyze one aspect of hybrid media campaign communication, political actors’ use of traditional media in their social media campaign communication. Through a quantitative content analysis of the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts of Finnish parties and their leaders published during the 2019 Finnish parliamentary elections, we find that much of this hybridized campaign communication was personalized. In addition, we show that parties and their leaders used traditional media for multiple purposes, the most common of which was gaining positive visibility, pointing to strategic considerations. The results have implications for both the scholarship on hybrid media systems and personalization of politics.

The effect of voters’ economic perception, Brexit and campaigns on the evaluation of party leaders over time

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-219
Author(s):  
Jan Berz
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Important Determinant ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Electoral Behaviour ◽  
Multilevel Growth Model ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Personalization Of Politics

When and why do voters change their evaluation of party leaders? Voters’ evaluations of party leaders are an increasingly important determinant of electoral behaviour. Which factors influence these evaluations of party leaders? Do voters evaluate party leaders who hold the office of prime minister differently from other party leaders, and do electoral campaigns and issues change these evaluations? I use a multilevel growth model with panel data from the United Kingdom to analyse effects over time. I find that campaigns play a significant role and that voters’ stance on Brexit has a considerable time-varying effect. In addition, voters use economic performance as a valence signal for party leaders holding the office of prime minister and therefore hold them accountable for bad economic performance, especially during election campaigns. These findings show that the personalization of politics may endanger the democratic function of elections to a lesser extent than is commonly feared.

Post as Much and as Diversely as Possible

2019 ◽  
pp. 983-1004
Author(s):  
Alem Maksuti ◽  
Tomaž Deželan
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Message Delivery ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Different Types

The daily interaction between political parties and voters is a driving force in election campaigns and can influence their outcomes. The theory of campaign intensity holds that the timing of message delivery in an election campaign is a key component of the strategies used by political actors. However, this theory also warns political actors to be cautious about the timing of different types of messages sent during the election campaign. Our objective is to examine the intensity and types of messages Slovenian political actors communicated through Twitter during different stages in the 2014 national election campaign. Our study conducts a content analysis of 7,113 tweets posted during the last four weeks of the official election campaign. It includes 17 official accounts of Slovenian parties, party leaders, and influential party twitterians. The results indicated that the stage of the campaign and the differences between established and fringe political parties significantly influenced the intensity of Twitter communications during the study period. The results also revealed that the political actors tweeted different types of political messages (e.g., to inform and to persuade voters) during different stages of the campaign.

Myths about leaders: personalities and strategy-making

2018 ◽  
pp. 24-44
Author(s):  
Timothy Noël Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Strategy Group ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Research Department ◽  
Party Strategy ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
Strategy Making

This chapter aims to demonstrate that both Labour and the Conservatives were far more strategically proactive when approaching Minority Government in the 1970s than has been assumed in popular and scholarly accounts. The analysis of the strategy-making processes in both main parties provides new insights by drawing on a combination of recently released papers of bodies including Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet meetings, the No. 10 Policy Unit, the Conservative Research Department (CRD), and correspondence between party leaders and their respective advisers. The examination of the often-overlooked impact of Minority Governments on the formation of strategy ranges from the transformation of established institutions to such innovations as Conservative leader Edward Heath’s ‘Party Strategy Group’, created primarily as a response to the Wilson Minority Government in 1974.

scholarly journals Centralized personalization at the expense of decentralized personalization. The decline of preferential voting in Belgium (2003–2014)

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 511-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bram Wauters ◽  
Peter Thijssen ◽  
Peter Van Aelst ◽  
Jean-Benoit Pilet
Keyword(s):  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Preferential Vote ◽  
Personalization Of Politics

For more than two decades, scholars have been debating the so-called personalization of politics. Some studies confirm such an evolution, while others demonstrate that evidence of personalization is at best mixed, or even absent. This article aims at shedding a new light on this controversy by looking at the evolution of the use of preferential voting in Belgium. Preferential voting has been constantly growing, but since 2007, the trend has been reversed and fewer voters decide to cast a preferential vote. We argue that this decline is not evidence against personalization. Rather, it illustrates the need to distinguish conceptually and empirically between two dimensions of personalization: ‘centralized’ and ‘decentralized’ personalization. The decline in the use of preference votes is not related to a decline in the former (which refers to a handful of political leaders). Instead, it is due to the decline of the latter form of personalization (referring to a large group of individual politicians). Candidates other than party leaders appear to have growing difficulties to attract votes. This negative relationship holds, even when we control for measures of electoral reform and the newness of parties. Our results also show that leadership effects are stronger in new parties.

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