The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season

The 2016 presidential primary candidates expanded their social media marketing campaigns to include the image- and video-centered social network platform Instagram. To explore the role that images play in framing political character development and to identify which images received higher levels of engagement, content analyses were performed on the top seven primary candidates’ Instagram accounts. Results indicate that candidates most frequently employ the ideal candidate frame in their images, which also garnered the highest number of user likes and comments. Results also reveal that among Instagram image attributes, candidates frequently and successfully used text within their images, but filters were inconsistently applied across the candidates.     

Incumbency effects in U.S. presidential campaigns: Language patterns matter

Incumbent U.S. presidential candidates have been overwhelmingly successful over the past 150 years. Attempts to explain this success rate have examined both structural advantages enjoyed by incumbents and differences in rhetorical and linguistic style in campaigning, although it is less clear why incumbency conveys an advantage here. This article finds that the language used by U.S. presidential candidates over the past twenty years has an underlying structure associated with electoral success: 1. speech patterns of incumbents differ notably from those they used in their first-term campaign; and 2. speech patterns of winners are different from those of losers. Both differences are consistent, and can therefore be postulated to indicate strength of influence. The resulting inductive model of influential language is characterized by: increased positivity, complete absence of negativity, increased abstraction, and lack of reference to the opposing candidate(s). The greatest intensity of model language is used by incumbents in their second campaign and the least by losers in a first-cycle open campaign. Language improvement by incumbents occurs rapidly, suggesting that it is the result of changing self-perception rather than a conventional learning process. This finding has broader implications, suggesting that both success, and the presence of competing groups trying to make similar arguments, improve the quality of the influencing language used.     

What Does Credibility Look like? Tweets and Walls in U.S. Presidential Candidates’ Visual Storytelling

This study considers the social media visual messaging of four candidates in the 2012 U.S. Republican presidential primary campaign. The analysis is guided by symbolic convergence theory, its method of fantasy theme analysis, and visual rhetoric theory. Using a schema of visual attributes, this study analyzes a rhetorical strategy of candidates' campaigns: the pictorial “public diary” found on their official Facebook and Twitter pages. It reveals how the credibility character traits of trustworthiness and expertise appear in the candidates' visual narratives, what messages dominate, and how candidates differ in succeeding or failing to visually communicate credibility. This study has important implications for how political management can use images in crafting and assessing messaging strategies in a competitive environment.     

English Language Proficiency and the Earnings of Young Immigrants in U.S. Labor Markets

This paper studies the English language proficiency levels of immigrants to the United States as determined from scores on a standardized test explicitly designed to measure reading proficiency. The data are disaggregated by area of origin and year of immigration. The connection between English deficiency levels and wages is then examined. In contrast to previous studies, it is found that English deficiency unambiguously depresses the wages of immigrants below what their other human capital characteristics suggest they should earn in the U.S. labor market. At the same time, the data show that, among the sample of young adults examined, there is a remarkable correlation between learning of English and time lived in the United States. The study indicates that policies encouraging the acquisition of English as a second language may provide a high dividend in the form of economic progress among immigrants.     

It’s All in the Name: Source Cue Ambiguity and the Persuasive Appeal of Campaign Ads

As strategies for campaign political advertising become more complex, there remains much to learn about how ad characteristics shape voter reactions to political messages. Drawing from existing literature on source credibility, we expect ad sponsorship will have meaningful effects on voter reactions to political advertisements. We test this by using an original experiment, where we expose a sample of student and non-student participants to equivalent ads and vary only the paid sponsor disclaimer at the end of the message. The only thing that differs across stimuli is whether a political candidate, a known interest group, or an unknown interest group sponsors the advertisement. Following exposure to one of these ads, participants complete a posttest battery of questions measuring the persuasiveness of the message, source credibility, and message legitimacy. We find that ads sponsored by unknown interest groups are more persuasive than those sponsored by candidates or known interest groups, and persuasion is mediated by perceived credibility of the source. We conclude by discussing our findings and their implications for our understanding of contemporary campaigns.     

Campaign resources and electoral success: Evidence from the 2002 French parliamentary elections

We examine the factors that improve the candidates’ likelihood of winning an election by drawing on information from campaign resources used by candidates running in the 2002 French parliamentary election. The main effects that we wish to analyze are the candidates’ gender, political affiliation and possible incumbency. We find that the contributions the candidates received and their political affiliations determine their acceding to the second round of the elections. But surprisingly once they make it to the second round, the contributions cease to be relevant; only the candidates’ gender, incumbency and the actual spending rather than the contribution levels matter.     

Candidate Valence and Ideological Positions in U.S. House Elections

We examine the relationship between the valence qualities of candidates and the ideological positions they take in U.S. House elections based on a study of the 2006 midterm elections. Our design enables us to distinguish between campaign and character dimensions of candidate valence and to place candidates and districts on the same ideological scale. Incumbents with a personal‐character advantage are closer ideologically to their district preferences, while disadvantaged challengers take more extreme policy positions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, challengers can reap electoral rewards by taking more extreme positions relative to their districts. We explore a possible mechanism for this extremism effect by demonstrating that challengers closer to the extreme received greater financial contributions, which enhanced their chances of victory. Our results bear on theories of representation that include policy and valence, although the interactions between these two dimensions may be complex and counterintuitive.     

Credibility Enacted: Understanding the Meaning of Credible Political Leadership in the Dutch Parliamentary Election Campaign of 2010

In times of perception politics, the credibility of electoral candidates is a crucial asset in political marketing. This raises the question to which political leaders citizens attribute credibility and how political credibility is gained and lost through media performance. We analyze and compare two contrasting cases during the Dutch parliamentary election campaign of 2010. Whereas in this campaign Mark Rutte—leader of the liberal party VVD—gained credibility, the credibility of Job Cohen—at the time, leader of the social-democratic PvdA—waned substantially. To understand this we extend the source credibility approach with a dramaturgical approach, and as such we shed light on what happens in the dynamic, interactive process between leaders and audiences in which credibility is constructed.     

A Review of Literature on Language Anxiety

This paper is a review literature on language anxiety. It begins with a discussion of the concepts of general anxiety and language anxiety,and then continues with an introduction of the techniques for identifying language anxiety. Subsequently,literature on the relationships of language anxiety to learner variables and language learning/using are covered. Finally the dispute and theories concerning language anxiety are presented.     

Language policy and political strategy in India

The official language policy of India is described as a 3 ± 1 language outcome. The central question that guides this paper is to explain why, when Congress leaders attempted to provide for India a single indigenous language for official communication, have they suffered more opposition than have rulers of states that consolidated in earlier centuries? Standard explanations for the different outcome, relying on special attributes of Indian culture and history, are found to be inadequate. A game theoretic analysis of political strategy helps to highlight two variables that best explain India's language outcome: the world historical time of state consolidation; and the nature of politician/bureaucrat relations for postcolonial states.     

Resource allocation and voter calculus in?a?multicandidate election

This paper links campaign resources and voter calculus through a microeconomic optimization framework. I assume that candidate policy positions are fixed while personal valence scores and the salience of issue dimensions are malleable. Low valence candidates with many proximate competitors in the policy space will focus on building valence. High valence candidates who are relatively ??unclustered?? in the policy space will focus on manipulating issue salience. Resources devoted to diminishing others?? valence scores will increase as the number of viable candidates decreases. The model??s results are tested, where feasible, using data from the Democratic Party primary of 2004.     

Is electoral intraparty competition more intense in urban areas?

This article investigates whether intraparty competition at the election stage – measured by the distribution of preference votes over candidates running under the same party label – is more intense in urban areas. Earlier research on preferential-list PR systems shows that urban voters are less inclined to cast preference votes. Yet we do not know how these differences at the individual voter level translate to the degree of intraparty competition at the aggregate list level. We hypothesize that urban areas provide a more open electoral market and lead to lower levels of vote concentration on party lists. We leverage a novel dataset on preference voting in three Belgian elections by aggregating 461,049 preference vote scores for candidates-in-cantons to a dataset of intraparty competition scores for 3214 lists-in-cantons. The hierarchical models show that intra-party competition is impacted by the interactive effects of both the urban character of electoral competition and the presence of prominent office-holders. While rural contexts lead to greater vote concentration in presence of a larger number of office-holders, urban contexts often result in lower vote concentration. Our study provides novel insights into the contextual determinants of intraparty competition and personalization.     

Spin (and Pitch) Doctors: Campaign Strategies in Televised Political Debates

Political campaigns frequently set low expectations (using a low pitch) in televised political debates to make the later claim that their candidates have done better than expected. The limited credibility of campaign aides, coupled with the fact that perception often confirms expectations, makes this strategy psychologically problematic. In Study 1, when no post-debate information was provided, lowering expectations for a candidate led to lower ratings of performance. In Study 2, when positive feedback (a post-debate spin) was provided after a low pitch, participants did rate performance positively, but only when the spin was supplied by a credible media source. The same strategy when used by campaign strategists adversely impacted candidates, leading to lower ratings of debate performance and network coverage.     

Language nuances, trust and economic growth

Language serves two key functions. It enables communication between agents, which allows the set-up and functioning of formal and informal institutions. It also serves a less obvious function, as it provides a reassuring quality more closely related with issues linked with trust, social capital, and cultural identification. While research on the role of language as a learning process is widespread, there is no evidence on the role of language as a signal of cultural affinity. We pursue this latter avenue of research and show that subtle language affinity is positively linked with change in earnings when using English-speaking data for cities in the Golden Horseshoe area in Southern Ontario during the period 1991 to 2001. The results are robust to changes in specification, and a broad number of empirical tests.     

Campaign shocks and party support: evidence from Brazil’s 2014 presidential election

This article investigates the effect of exogenous shocks during an election cycle on electoral outcomes. Specifically, we examine the impact of the unexpected death of a prominent candidate, Eduardo Campos, in the 2014 Brazilian presidential election on support levels for the three main parties. Did the effects die out relatively quickly, providing only a temporary “bounce” or dip in support levels? Or did they alter the fundamentals of the campaign environment and produce a lasting change or “bump” in support levels that lasted until the election? Our results show that while the shock did have short-term effects on all parties’ support, it was only the party that lost its leading candidate where any longer lasting shift in support is detected; we estimate that the party received around 11 percentage points more support than they would otherwise have garnered, had Campos not died. While this was not enough to secure victory, it shows that individual candidates should be understood as a “fundamental” feature of the campaign environment, any change in which is likely to have a lasting effect on voter behavior.     

网络言语暴力及其种类分析

网络使网民能够直接参与社会问题的讨论,增强了网民的话语权,但同时也带来了一系列问题,网络言语暴力即其中之一。网络言语暴力带来的精神伤害具有隐藏性、长期性,其危害绝不比体罚小,并且极易引发现实社会问题。虽然网络言语暴力的发生不可预见,但是可以通过分析网络言语暴力的各种表现,揭露其产生的轨迹与规律,从而为杜绝和预防网络言语暴力的发生或将其危害控制在一定范围内提供帮助。     

Public Opinion Polls,Voter Turnout,and Welfare: An Experimental Study

We experimentally study the impact of public opinion poll releases on voter turnout and welfare in a participation game. We find higher overall turnout rates when polls inform the electorate about the levels of support for the candidates than when polls are prohibited. Distinguishing between allied and floating voters, our data show that this increase in turnout is entirely due to floating voters. When polls indicate equal levels of support for the candidates, turnout is high and welfare is low (compared to the situation without polls). In contrast, when polls reveal more unequal levels of support, turnout is lower with than without this information, while the effect of polls on welfare is nonnegative. Finally, many of our results are well predicted by quantal response (logit) equilibrium.     

Income of new retired workers by age at first benefit receipt: findings from the New Beneficiary Survey

Using data from the New Beneficiary Survey (NBS) of the Social Security Administration (SSA), this article examines how income sources and total monthly income received by newly retired social security beneficiaries vary with the age at which the first benefit check was received. The NBS respondents who received a first benefit at age 65 or older were better off economically than were those who received a first benefit at ages 62-64. At the time of the interview, 18-30 months after receiving a first benefit, these older beneficiaries had higher levels of total income and were more likely to have income from earnings and assets. Pension receipt rates did not vary by the age at which the first social security benefit was received except for married women retired workers, for whom the rate was higher at the older ages. The largest proportion of aggregate income (slightly more than one-third) was derived from social security benefits. More than 90 percent of the NBS Medicare-only respondents--a sample of nonbeneficiaries who were eligible for monthly cash benefits but had established their entitlement only for the purpose of enrolling in the Medicare program--reported earnings income. They had lower rates of pension receipt and higher rates of asset income receipt than the retired workers. The Medicare-only respondents had substantially higher incomes than did retired workers, and most of their aggregate income was from earnings. The NBS retirees were generally in better financial condition than a group of social security beneficiaries aged 65 or older from all benefit categories in the Current Population Survey Income Supplement with whom they were compared.     

Candidate Character vs. The Economy in the 1992 Election

The outcome of the 1992 U.S. presidential election has been explained largely as a function of perceptions of George Bush's economic performance. The economy submerged questions about Bill Clinton's character, awarding the advantage to the Democrat. In this article, we evaluate the effect of economic evaluations along with character attacks on candidate support in the 1992 presidential contest. Claims that the economy submerged character have been somewhat exaggerated. But while character remains an important issue in presidential evaluation, its role in judging candidates cannot be taken at face value. We show that both economic evaluations and character judgments are highly politicized. The findings indicate that those protesting Clinton's character turned almost exclusively to Bush. Those protesting Bush's economic record turned to both Perot and Clinton. Still, the economy did not trump character. The troubles of both major party candidates fueled a strong protest vote that contributed to Perot's strong showing.     

Norms and rage: Gender and social media in the 2018 U.S. mid-term elections

Previous research shows women candidates face double-standard with regard to fitness for office: women ought to be kind but leaders ought to be aggressive and agentic. At the same time, there is traditional division of what constitutes “women’s” issues (e.g. health-care) vs “male” (e.g. economy). Do these norms about what women politicians ought to be and talk about hurt or help them during elections? We investigate the case of U.S. 2018 mid-term elections on Twitter. Our findings suggest that engaging with “women’s” issues by female candidates as well as tweeting angrily is associated with higher likelihood of being elected. However, women candidates who use angry speech on Twitter, are more likely to also receive tweets with abusive language, in particular by other women. Thus, we show that social media could help female candidates to break stereotypes, and present themselves as nuanced candidates who can both stand for women’s issues but also be aggressive and leader-like.