The power of Trump-speak: populist crisis narratives and ontological security

Abstract

For most observers, the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States (US) came as a shock. This has been widely recast as the culmination of the American public’s long-standing dissatisfaction with the political elite and deep-seated frustrations with broader socio-economic conditions. We argue that the Trump campaign’s success also stemmed from its effective use of an emotionally charged, anti-establishment crisis narrative. With insights from political psychology, we examine the socio-linguistic mechanisms that underlie the effectiveness of ‘Trump-speak’ through both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Trump’s communications toolkit during the 2016?US presidential election campaign. We show that his leadership legitimation claims rest significantly upon ‘crisis talk’ that puts his audience in a loss frame with nothing to lose and explain why ‘crisis talk’ impacts on political behaviour. As we demonstrate, the crisis stories that political agents tell simultaneously instil ontological insecurity among the American public and serve to transform their anxiety into confidence that the narrator’s policy agendas are the route back to ‘normality’. Through these rhetorical mechanisms, the Trump campaign manipulated individuals’ ontological (in)security as a tool in the politics of reassurance at the broader, societal level.     

All News is Bad News: Newspaper Coverage of Political Parties in Spain

Spain has a highly partisan media system, with newspapers reaching self-selected partisan audiences and espousing explicitly partisan editorial preferences. Do the newspapers of the left and right differ in how they cover politics in ways that can be predicted by their partisan leanings? We review theories of issue ownership, journalistic standards, and information scarcity and test hypotheses derived from each. We find that the parties converge substantially in virtually every aspect of their coverage. Few differences emerge when we look at what topics are covered or in the dynamics of which topics gain attention over time. However, we confirm important differences across the papers when they make explicit reference to individual political parties. Journalistic norms result in a surprising focus on the faults of one’s enemies, however, rather than the virtues of one’s allies. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories in El País and El Mundo, Spain’s largest daily newspapers, from 1996 through 2011.     

Media Matter: How Newspapers and Television News Cover Campaigns and Influence Voters

The conventional wisdom in political communications research is that the media play a dominant role in defining the agenda of elections. In Bernard Cohen's words, the media do not tell us what to think, but they tell us what to think about. The present article challenges this conclusion. We present data on media coverage of the 1992 presidential election from the first nationally representative sample of American newspapers and compare these to the issue interests of the American public. We conclude that past claims that the media control the agenda-setting process have been overstated. Candidates messages are well represented in press coverage of the campaign, and coverage is even independent of a newspaper's editorial endorsement. We argue that agenda setting is a transaction process in which elites, the media, and the public converge to a common set of salient issues that define a campaign.     

Scary Pictures: How Terrorism Imagery Affects Voter Evaluations

Journalists, candidates, and scholars believe that images, particularly images of war, affect the way that the public evaluates political leaders and foreign policy itself, but there is little direct evidence on the circumstances under which political elites can use imagery to enhance their electoral chances. Using National Election Studies (NES) panel data as well as two experiments, this article shows that, contrary to concerns about the manipulative power of imagery, the effect of evocative imagery can enhance candidate evaluations across partisan lines when they originate from the news but are more limited when they are used for persuasive purposes. By looking over time, the three data sets demonstrate different circumstances in which terrorism images have different effects on candidate evaluations—crisis versus non-crisis times and through news exposure versus direct use by a candidate. The NES data reveal that exposure to watching the World Trade Center fall on television increased positive evaluations of George W. Bush and the Republican party across partisan boundaries in 2002 and 2004. The news experiment that exposed subjects to graphic terrorism news in a lab in 2005/2006 increased approval of Bush’s handling of terrorism among Democrats. Lastly, an experiment where hypothetical candidates utilized terrorism images in campaign communication in 2008 demonstrates that both parties’ candidates can improve evaluations of their foreign policy statements by linking those statements to evocative imagery, but it is more effective among their own party members.     

Presidential Agenda-Setting of Traditional and Nontraditional News Media

The president’s ability to influence the news agenda is central to the study of American politics. Although there is a large literature that examines presidential agenda-setting vis-à-vis traditional news sources, such as newspapers or broadcast television networks, there is little research that explores the effects of presidential agenda leadership of nontraditional media whether online or cable television. This study remedies this state of affairs by examining the relationship between the president’s daily agenda and traditional and nontraditional daily news agendas. I argue that although the president should find similar space on all news for topics he raises in his speeches, nontraditional sources are more likely to cover other stories that reference the president. Analysis of 748 stories on the presidency for 63 days in early 2012 from 7 traditional, cable, and online news sources provides support for my argument, with cable news providing the most presidential news coverage. I conclude with some implications about what my findings mean for presidential leadership of nontraditional media.     

The Transformation of Going Public: President Clinton,the First Lady,and Health Care Reform

This article examines the going public thesis in the context of U.S. President Clintons health care reform campaign in 1993 and 1994. This case study highlights the changing nature of presidential public relations. The novel use of the first lady as a public spokesperson for a presidential initiative also raises new questions about presidential public relations and its impact on congressional behavior. Data for the study include appearances and speeches by the president and first lady concerning health care reform over an 11-month period. Results suggest that certain presidential public activities assist presidents in gaining public support for their policies. However, most presidential public efforts may be thwarted by issue advertising from opponents in a more combative public environment. A going public strategy may not provide a forum to explain sophisticated policies and to build alliances in support of these policies over a substantial period of time.     

Know Me,Love Me,Fear Me: The Anatomy of Candidate Poster Designs in the 2007 French Legislative Elections

Candidates in many elections spend a significant amount of their budget on posters, yet we know virtually nothing about their communication roles. Based on party strategy and visual communication research, this article argues that poster content is the result of strategic choices by candidates, with major and niche candidates using significantly different poster designs in an effort to influence voters' evaluations. Using an original database of 256 candidate posters from the 2007 French legislative elections and content analysis computer software, I show that niche party candidates consistently emphasize partisan and factual information cues (through size and placement on posters), while major party candidates rely heavily on candidate-oriented visuals and on nonverbal cues (e.g., eye contact) to persuade voters. Preliminary analyses indicate that poster visual design strategies are significantly associated with both major and niche party candidates' electoral performance.     

How Political Elites Process Information From the News: The Cognitive Mechanisms Behind Behavioral Political Agenda-Setting Effects

Political agenda-setting studies have shown that political agendas are influenced by the media agenda. Researchers in the field of media and politics are now focusing on the mechanisms underlying this pattern. This article contributes to the literature by focusing not on aggregate, behavioral political attention for issues (e.g., parliamentary questions or legislation), but on Members of Parliament’s (MP) individual, cognitive attention for specific news stories. Drawing upon a survey of Belgian MPs administered shortly after exposure to news stories, the study shows that MPs are highly selective in exploiting media cues. They pay more attention to both prominent and useful news stories, but a story’s usefulness is more important for cognitive processes that are closely linked to MPs’ real behavior in parliament. In other words, aggregate political agenda-setting effects are a consequence of the way in which individual MPs process media information that matches their task-related needs.     

Presidential Influence of the News Media: The Case of the Press Conference

Can presidents influence news coverage through their press conferences? Scant research has explored this question leaving two possible answers. On the one hand, presidential news management efforts, combined with norms of journalistic professionalism and the cost of producing news, suggest that the nightly news will cover presidential press conferences. On the other hand, the costs of delivering press conferences espoused by some scholars insinuate that press conferences will have little impact on news coverage. To determine whether the press conference influences news coverage, I use plagiarism detection software to assess the propensity of television news to incorporate the president's rhetoric into stories that cover the president's press conferences. I find that news reports on the press conference rely heavily on the president's words, indicating that it is an important event for presidential influence of the news media and perhaps eventually the public.     

The irrelevance of negative campaigns to political trust: Experimental and survey results

This article examines how media and partisan mechanisms of accountability influence presidential agendas in Latin America. The authors argue that responsiveness increases in powerful presidential systems when opposition parties and free media help citizens hold presidents accountable between elections. Where presidents must contend with a cohesive, ideological opposition and effective constraints to their power, they turn to valence issues with broad appeal and over which they have greater control. A free media—one without significant economic, legal, or political constraints—pressures the president to respond to the electorate's concerns, which include crime and corruption due to the incentives that motivate news content and the media's agenda-setting powers. Analyzing more than 50 presidential terms across 18 countries, the authors show that when Latin American presidents face either free and competitive media or strong legislative oppositions, homicide rates and the level of perceived corruption tend to be lower. Thus, this study proposes that efforts to improve media or partisan environments, or both, would help address Latin America's accountability deficit and promote good governance in the region.     

Elite Domination of Public Doubts About Climate Change (Not Evolution)

This article examines the sources of ideological skepticism about two issues where there is a scientific consensus: climate change and evolution. The results indicate that self-identified conservatives doubt global warming in large part because of elite rhetoric, but that evolution beliefs are unrelated to reception of political discourse. News reception is perhaps the strongest predictor of conservatives’ climate change skepticism, but has no influence on their aversion to evolution. Moreover, the article leverages three sources of variation in elite discourse on climate change—temporal, cross-national, and experimental—to show that changes in the prevalence of ideological cues strongly affect public opinion about global warming. Politically attentive conservatives, in fact, were more likely to believe scientists about global warming than liberals were in the 1990s before the media depicted climate change as a partisan issue. The United States is also the only nation where political interest significantly predicts both conservatives’ skepticism about, and liberals’ belief in, climate change. Finally, evidence from a national survey experiment suggests that Americans would be less skeptical of manmade global warming if more Republicans in Congress believed in it, but a growing Congressional consensus about evolution would not diminish doubts about its existence.     

Presidential roles and rhetoric

Traditional literature on the public dimensions of the American presidency suggests that the office has a significant impact upon the political lives of Americans and that contemporary presidents frequently appeal for public support to pressure other government elites. This study systematically analyzes rhetorical references to the presidency by examining a president's articulation of presidential roles in public speeches and press conferences. This study finds that Johnson, Nixon, and Carter did rhetorically refer to presidential roles, especially when confronted by crisis and controversy. The implication is that when confronted by serious controversy, presidents tell Americans about the responsibilities of the presidency in an effort to mobilize public support.     

Issue Frame Ownership: The Partisan Roots of Campaign Rhetoric

Campaigns can shape vote choice decisions by effectively framing issues for voters. I examine how campaigns do this by studying the content of issues appeals in television advertisements from U.S. House and Senate candidates. The use of issue frames is partisan. The two parties develop their own distinct rhetorical strategies on particular issues, showing that each party owns particular issue frames. In addition, campaign messages are sensitive to the partisanship of voters. Campaigns are more likely to use conservative frames in Republican-leaning districts and liberal frames in Democratic-leaning districts. Models of campaign strategy should incorporate not just what issues are discussed, but also the rhetorical choices campaigns make to address these issues.     

Elite Polarization and Public Opinion: How Polarization Is Communicated and Its Effects

Elite polarization has reshaped American politics and is an increasingly salient aspect of news coverage within the United States. As a consequence, a burgeoning body of research attempts to unravel the effects of elite polarization on the mass public. However, we know very little about how polarization is communicated to the public by news media. We report the results of one of the first content analyses to delve into the nature of news coverage of elite polarization. We show that such coverage is predominantly critical of polarization. Moreover, we show that unlike coverage of politics focused on individual politicians, coverage of elite polarization principally frames partisan divisions as rooted in the values of the parties rather than strategic concerns. We build on these novel findings with two survey experiments exploring the influence of these features of polarization news coverage on public attitudes. In our first study, we show that criticism of polarization leads partisans to more positively evaluate the argument offered by their non-preferred party, increases support for bi-partisanship, but ultimately does not change the extent to which partisans follow their party’s policy endorsements. In our second study, we show that Independents report significantly less political interest, trust, and efficacy when polarization is made salient and this is particularly evident when a cause of polarization is mentioned. These studies have important implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization—and how polarization is communicated—for public opinion and political behavior in democratic politics.     

Playing to the Crowd: Agenda Control in Presidential Debates

Presidential debates allow candidates to send a message directly to voters. We use an experimental design complemented with a content analysis of all presidential debates in 1992, 2004, and 2008 to explore how candidates should and do use agenda setting, framing, and message tone to shape the agenda in debates. We find that candidates are differentially attentive to various topics, depending on the comparative advantage provided by the topic. Yet, this agenda control occurs only at the margins because topic salience in public opinion predicts candidate attention and conditions voters' receptiveness to debate rhetoric. Our findings thus suggest that topic salience constrains candidates' abilities to focus the agenda strategically.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resources: Experimental Sample and Randomization; Experimental Treatments; Experimental Results; and the Presidential Debate Rhetoric Codebook.]     

Procedural justice and perceived electoral integrity: the case of Korea's 2012 presidential election

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of scholars focusing on why voters around the world differ in their evaluations of electoral integrity. One group of scholars contends that perceived electoral integrity is determined by partisan status according to election results. Another group claims that individual perception of election quality is influenced by such political cues as institutional support for election management bodies. Although the two groups have developed this subject differently, they both underestimate the degree to which the election process affects electoral integrity. Based on the theory of procedural justice, this study argues that the more problems citizens see in the electoral process, the more negatively they tend to rate elections. An analysis of a public opinion survey conducted immediately after the December 2012 presidential election in South Korea provides credible evidence for our theoretical expectations and presents an important implication for elections of new democracies in a comparative perspective.     

The Influence of “Social Viewing” on Televised Debate Viewers’ Political Judgment

Social media could serve as an easy and fast window to the climate of public opinion. In the current study, we examined the influence of perceived opinion climate revealed via Twitter postings in shaping televised debate viewers’ candidate evaluation. We conducted two Web-based experiments in the high- and low-stimulus elections: (a) the 2012 Korean presidential election and (b) the 2014 Seoul mayoral election. Instead of using contrived stimulus materials, we were able to examine the influence of exposure to Twitter postings in voters’ judgment of candidate performance in real time. Using a custom-designed Web application, participants evaluated the candidates as debate-related Twitter postings were being fed in real time during each televised debate. Our results suggest that exposure to Twitter postings has induced significant bandwagon effects. Bandwagon effects were pervasive even among partisans and the knowledgeable. Our findings show that more policy efforts ought to be made to strengthen the informative role of social viewing.     

Weighted Content Analysis of Political Advertisements

This article proposes weighted content analysis as a methodological extension of traditional (unweighted) content analysis of political advertising. Weighted content analysis distinguishes between political ads that were produced but not aired and ads that actually aired in a particular media market. To illustrate the advantages of weighted content analysis, this article examines the 1996 presidential campaign in Columbus, Ohio. The tone of 132 presidential campaign ads produced by both candidates is compared with the tone of the 2,522 ads that aired on the three major network affiliates in Columbus. The price of the ad buy is used as an alternative weight that takes into account audience size and thus allows a further distinction between aired and watched ads. Both weighting procedures show that Republican advertising in 1996 in Columbus was more negative than Democratic advertising during the fall campaign, a result that remains undetected by unweighted content analysis. The article concludes by describing three different ways to obtain weighting data: political files kept by television stations and cable providers, commercial tracking data, and internal campaign records.     

Using Big Data and Algorithms to Determine the Effect of Geographically Targeted Advertising on Vote Intention: Evidence From the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election

We develop a new conceptualization of political advertising effects by looking at the effect of the marginal advertising dollar during the heat of presidential campaigns. We argue that in contrast to other studies investigating effects of political ads, our approach is more apt to capture the natural environment in which political ads are encountered during a presidential campaign. We focus on the intense inundation of political ads voters are confronted with in swing states in the weeks leading up to the presidential election, and argue that it is unclear a priori whether we should expect advertising to affect vote intention in that critical circumstance. We empirically validate this hypothesis using a trove of data from the 2012 campaign: daily polling in media markets around the country, detailed data on all registered voters in the country, all TV advertisements by market and exact airtime, and the entire Twitter corpus. We find that neither overall increases in advertising spending nor partisan imbalances in spending expanded the candidates’ electorate. In fact, total Designated Market Area (DMA)-level spending significantly moderates a negative relationship between spending advantages and advantages in vote intention, suggesting a boomerang effect of additional spending late in the campaign. In closing, we discuss the ramifications of our findings for future research, and stress the importance of research tracking advertising effects.     

Toward Conflict or Compromise? How Violent Metaphors Polarize Partisan Issue Attitudes

We know much about how opinion leaders drive mass partisan polarization with position-taking cues but little on how different message types polarize citizens, and who responds most to those messages attributes. This article contributes new insights by investigating how exposure to common violent metaphors interacts with audience personality traits to polarize partisans on issues. Building from research on conflict orientations, we theorize that aggressive rhetoric primes aggression in aggressive partisans, motivating greater intransigence on party positions. As a consequence, aggressive partisans are pulled further apart on issues, thereby reducing prospects for compromise. We find support for our predictions in two large nationally diverse survey experiments conducted in very different political contexts. Our results demonstrate the subtle power of aggression in public opinion and highlight the important moderating role of individual differences in the communication of partisan conflict.