scholarly journals ‘The enemy within’: Campaign attention and motivated reasoning in voter perceptions of intra-party conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406882090640
Author(s):  
Carolina Plescia ◽  
Sylvia Kritzinger ◽  
Jakob-Moritz Eberl
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Party Strategies ◽  
Voter Perceptions ◽  
Broad Interest ◽  
Over Time

In spite of broad interest in internal party dynamics, with previous literature relatedly demonstrating that voters are not oblivious to party infighting, very little attention has been paid to the antecedents of voter perceptions of intra-party conflict. This article addresses this research deficit with the support of empirical evidence gathered over the course of the 2017 Austrian national election campaign. The study examines variations in perceived intra-party conflict over time, both across parties and within the same party. We find that although voter perceptions largely mirror actual distinctions in intra-party fighting, conspicuous individual-level variations can also be identified owing to attention to the election campaign and motivated reasoning in information processing. These results have important consequences for our understanding of voter perceptions of intra-party conflict and the role of election campaigns, with potential implications for party strategies during election campaigns.

Dilemmas of Distrust: Conspiracy Beliefs, Elite Rhetoric, and Motivated Reasoning

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110345
Author(s):  
Scott Radnitz
Keyword(s):  
Relative Weight ◽  
State Level ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
The Individual

Conspiracy theories are playing an increasingly prominent role worldwide in both political rhetoric and popular belief. Previous research has emphasized the individual-level factors behind conspiracy belief but paid less attention to the role of elite framing, while focusing mostly on domestic political contexts. This study assesses the relative weight of official conspiracy claims and motivated biases in producing conspiracy beliefs, in two countries where identities other than partisanship are salient: Georgia and Kazakhstan. I report the results of a survey experiment that depicts a possible conspiracy and varies the content of official claims and relevant contextual details. The results show that motivated reasoning stemming from state-level geopolitical identities is strongly associated with higher conspiracy belief, whereas official claims have little effect on people’s perceptions of conspiracy. Respondents who exhibit higher conspiracy ideation are more likely to perceive a conspiracy but do not weight motivated biases or official claims differently from people with lower conspiratorial predispositions. The findings indicate the importance of (geopolitical) identities in shaping conspiracy beliefs and highlight some of the constraints facing elites who seek to benefit from the use of conspiracy claims.

scholarly journals Developing Improvisation Skills: The Influence of Individual Orientations

2020 ◽  
pp. 000183922097569
Author(s):  
Pier Vittorio Mannucci ◽  
Davide C. Orazi ◽  
Kristine de Valck
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Formal Training ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Stage Process ◽  
Development Trajectories ◽  
Live Action ◽  
Over Time

The growing relevance of improvisation for successful organizing calls for a better understanding of how individuals develop improvisation skills. While research has investigated the role of training and simulations, little is known about how individuals develop improvisation skills when formal training is not an option and how individual-level factors shape development trajectories. We explore these issues in a longitudinal qualitative analysis of live action role-playing. Our findings reveal a three-stage process of improvisation development shaped by the presence of task and social structures, which act as both constraints and resources. Moreover, our findings illuminate how collaborative and competitive orientations shape whether improvisers perceive these structures as a resource that they need to nurture and renew (i.e., collaborative) or to seize and exploit (i.e., competitive). We also show that individual orientations are not always enduring but can change over time, engendering four types of improvisation development trajectories. Our work provides a longitudinal account of how individual orientations shape the process of improvisation development. In so doing, we also explain why individuals who are skilled improvisers do not necessarily improvise effectively as a collective, and we reconcile different conceptualizations of improvisation.

scholarly journals Conceived in Harlesden: Candidate-Centred Campaigning in British General Elections

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin Milazzo ◽  
Joshua Townsley
Keyword(s):  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
General Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Increasing Trend ◽  
Candidate Characteristics ◽  
General Elections

Abstract Recent decades have seen an increasing trend towards the personalisation of election campaigns, even in systems where candidates have few structural incentives to emphasise their personal appeal. In this article, we build on a growing literature that points to the importance of candidate characteristics in determining electoral success. Using a dataset composed of more than 3700 leaflets distributed during the 2015 and 2017 general elections, we explore the conditions under which messages emphasising the personal characteristics of prospective parliamentary candidates appear in British general election campaign materials. Even when we account for party affiliation, we find that there are important contextual and individual-level factors that predict the use of candidate-centred messaging.

The Contrasting Effects of Education on Fertility over Time Casalguidi, 1819–1960

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Matteo Manfredini ◽  
Marco Breschi ◽  
Alessio Fornasin
Keyword(s):  
Birth Control ◽  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Control Methods ◽  
Reproductive Behaviors ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Transitional Phase ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Education has been frequently claimed to shape demographic outcomes. Mortality, fertility, and nuptiality have all been attested to be affected to some extent by education attainment. This article investigates the effects of education on fertility over time in a rural Italian community once controlled for potential confounders. Using individual-level data drawn from various sources, the study analyzes the role of education in shaping reproductive behaviors not only during the demographic transition (1890–1960) but also in the pretransitional period (1819–59). The results highlight the contrasting effects of literacy on fertility, which passed from a positive association in the ancien régime to a negative one in the transitional phase. Educated couples were therefore forerunners in the process of fertility decline because they were not only in the position to be the most pressed to control reproduction but also because they were likely aware of reproductive mechanisms, had the knowledge of more effective birth-control methods, had the economic possibility to get them, and had the necessary capacity to use them.

scholarly journals Retrospective economic judgments predict individual-level changes in vote preference in the US

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 272-289
Author(s):  
Hui Bai ◽  
Christopher M. Federico
Keyword(s):  
Economic Voting ◽  
Reciprocal Effects ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
The Us ◽  
Vote Preference ◽  
Level Shifts ◽  
Over Time

While many studies have investigated what predicts citizens’ vote preferences, less is known about what predicts change in citizens’ vote preferences over time. This paper focuses on the role of judgments about national economy in the recent past (i.e., “sociotropic economic retrospections”). Two longitudinal studies show that sociotropic economic retrospections (along with partisanship, ideology, and whether incumbent is running for re-election) at a given time point predict within-person changes in vote choice over time. Furthermore, cross-lagged panel analyses found that sociotropic economic retrospections and political preferences may have reciprocal effects on each other. Together, these results illustrate the temporal dimension of economic voting by suggesting that sociotropic economic retrospections not only predict votes at single points in time, but also individual-level shifts in vote preference over time. As such, the association between sociotropic economic retrospections and vote preference is more dynamic than past literature suggests.

scholarly journals "Three Attitudes to 140 Characters The Use and Views of Twitter in Political Party Communications in Sweden"

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Grusell ◽  
Lars Nord
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Party Strategies

Abstract Digital media in general, and social media in particular, are a distinctive feature of contemporary election campaign strategies. This article adds to the on going discussion of the political power of social media by exploring political party strategies behind the usage of social media. In this study we specifically focus on Twitter (a micro blog) during the latest National Election Campaign in Sweden in 2010. The study exams the degree and character of Twitter usage among parties and prominent party members, and relates content to the declared communication strategies regarding the role of Twitter in the campaign. Methodologically, the paper is based on a quantitative content analysis of all party tweets and on personal interviews with all party campaign managers. The results show campaign purposes. However, the content analysis confirms only a modest party use of Twitter messages and Twitter patterns where messages are most often related to current news media activities and are of a one-way character, with more focus on information dissemination than on interactive dialogue with voters.

scholarly journals Awareness of Spitzenkandidaten in the 2019 European elections: The effects of news exposure in domestic campaign contexts

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205316802091533
Author(s):  
Katjana Gattermann ◽  
Claes de Vreese
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Important Prerequisite

With the introduction of the so-called Spitzenkandidaten procedure, by which European party families nominate lead candidates for the post of President of the European Commission for European elections, the European Parliament (EP) sought to raise voter awareness and engagement by personalizing the campaigns. This article studies candidate recognition with respect to Spitzenkandidaten, which is an important prerequisite in the study of personalization effects on voter behaviour. We use novel survey data collected in 10 European countries in the 2019 EP election campaign ( n = 17,027). The article focuses on the role of voters’ news exposure in various media and argues that news exposure is crucial for candidate recognition, but its effect is contingent upon the domestic campaign context. The article is the first to show that the campaign context matters to the extent that news exposure is particularly relevant in those domestic contexts in which Spitzenkandidaten were not previously present. In other campaign contexts additional news exposure adds little to the effect of news exposure on candidate recognition. The results have important implications for understanding EP election campaigns.

scholarly journals Expectations, vote choice and opinion stability since the 2016 Brexit referendum

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Grynberg ◽  
Stefanie Walter ◽  
Fabio Wasserfallen
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Over Time

A surprising development in the post-referendum Brexit process has been that vote intentions have remained largely stable, despite the cumbersome withdrawal negotiations. We examine this puzzle by analyzing the role of voters’ expectations about the European Union’s willingness to accommodate the UK after the pro-Brexit vote. Using data from the British Election Study, we explore how these expectations are updated over time, and how they are related to vote intentions. We find that voters who were more optimistic about the European Union’s response were more likely to vote Leave. Over the course of the negotiations, Leavers have become more disillusioned. These adjustments, however, have not translated into shifts in vote intentions. Overall, we find evidence that motivated reasoning is an important driver of public opinion on Brexit.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document