When a Man Meets a Woman: Comparing the Use of Negativity of Male Candidates in Single- and Mixed-Gender Televised Debates

Much work has been done to analyze the consequences of the increasing representation of women in politics. Usually, this research compares male and female politicians from a female perspective. For instance, many studies in political communication investigate how and why female candidates show campaign styles similar to or different from their male colleagues. In contrast to this, few studies are interested in how men change their behavior when women enter the political arena. Some of these studies have demonstrated that men limit their negativity when confronted with female candidates. Unfortunately, these analyses focus predominantly on (a) the United States and (b) gender differences in campaign advertising. We seek to provide empirical evidence for non-U.S. campaigns from the most important single campaign events: televised debates. To do so, we analyze data covering all German televised debates broadcast since 1997 where male politicians participated in a two-candidate single- or mixed-gender debate. Our results indicate that the gender of the political opponent affects incivility but not the use of attacks in general. In mixed-gender debates there is less incivility. However, differences in the treatment of male and female opponents tend to decline over time. We conclude that female candidates transform campaign communication—not only because they communicate differently from men, but also because they influence male politicians’ political communication.     

The Campaign Disconnect: Media Coverage of the 2000 South Carolina Presidential Primary

Campaigns are an interactive process in which candidates, outside groups, the media, and voters communicate with each other to create an information environment that allows the various participants to construct meaning and form an understanding of the candidates and the campaign. Presidential primaries add a layer of complexity to this process as candidates and the press deal with both local and national audiences. In this article, we analyze the campaign communications in the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina—including candidate ads, mailings, and phone calls; local and national newspaper coverage; and network television coverage. We find that there was a disconnect as news media often focused on events and issues that diverged from the messages of the candidates' campaigns. In addition, we find substantial differences between local and national media coverage of the primary resulting from their distinct audiences and the reporters' own understanding of the local context that created significantly different information environments for voters in the state and those out of the state. We consider the implications of these findings for how voters and journalists understand the candidates as well as the challenges presidential candidates face in simultaneously campaigning locally and nationally.     

Capitalizing on Contention: Issue Agendas in U.S. Senate Campaigns

This abstract addresses the divergent views that political scientists and members of Congress have about the role of issues in congressional campaigns. The scholarly perspective is based on the assumption that issues and policy are relatively unimportant in the relationship between members and their constituents. In contrast, the political parties in Congress devote a substantial amount of time and attention to developing an effective issue agenda for the campaign season. The research presented in this article is a systematic study of U.S. Senate candidates' campaign messages that assesses the impact of the parties' agenda setting efforts during the election year session. The parties' efforts are compared with mass media, major legislative accomplishments, and party issue ownership as alternative sources of agenda setting in campaigns. The results of this study indicate that Senate candidates do emphasize certain issues in their campaigns and that the contentious election year issues associated with party strategy along with major legislative accomplishments are the issues that the candidates are likely to discuss.     

The Effects of Political Talk Radio On Political Attitude Formation: Exposure Versus Knowledge

The effects of political news on the mass audience are usually difficult to establish empirically. Recent models of mass communication effects have held that political knowledge is a better indicator of media reception than traditional measures of exposure. This claim is tested in two studies of attitudes toward Democratic and Republican leaders during the 1996 U.S. presidential primary campaigns. The impact of messages from three types of political talk radio (PTR) is examined: Rush Limbaugh, other conservative hosts, and liberal/moderate hosts. Political knowledge and exposure to talk radio are found to be equally good predictors of attitudes toward political leaders when studied separately. However, when tested against one another, exposure is the more effective measure. Agreement between Rush Limbaugh's messages and his audience's attitudes toward political figures is consistent and strong. Biased processing of PTR content by audience members with partisan predispositions contrary to those of the host is also examined.     

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.     

Daring to Be Heard: Advertorials by Organized Interests on the Op-Ed Page of The New York Times , 1985-1998

Advertorials are a form of outside lobbying that organized interests use to influence policymakers and attentive publics. It is apparent from their popularity that organized interests consider them to be an effective form of political communication. This article analyzes 2,805 organized interest advertorials that appeared on the lower right quadrant of The New York Times op-ed page from 1985 to 1998. Advertorials take two broad forms: (a) image advertorials, which are paid messages by organized interests designed to create a favorable climate of opinion, and (b) advocacy advertorials, which are sponsored messages intended to win support for an interest's viewpoints on controversial issues. Typologies of advertorials (11 categories), organized interests (21 categories), corporate and noncorporate economic interests (29 categories), and policy content (28 categories) are used to document annually and over time who is sponsoring advertorials, what types of advertorials are being used, what interests avail themselves of advertorial campaigns, which issue areas are receiving attention, what images and policy messages are being communicated, which organizations sponsor the most advertorials, and the timing of such political advertising campaigns. We find over time an increasing number of advertorials, an increasing number and diversity of sponsoring interest organizations, an increasing trend toward advocacy advertorials, a continuing but declining sponsorship dominance by corporate interests, a shifting policy issue emphasis that corresponds to events in the political environment, and evidence that organized interests employ a variety of sponsorship strategies.     

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.     

Technology Firms Shape Political Communication: The Work of Microsoft,Facebook, Twitter,and Google With Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle

This article offers the first analysis of the role that technology companies, specifically Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google, play in shaping the political communication of electoral campaigns in the United States. We offer an empirical analysis of the work technology firms do around electoral politics through interviews with staffers at these firms and digital and social media directors of 2016 U.S. presidential primary and general election campaigns, in addition to field observations at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. We find that technology firms are motivated to work in the political space for marketing, advertising revenue, and relationship-building in the service of lobbying efforts. To facilitate this, these firms have developed organizational structures and staffing patterns that accord with the partisan nature of American politics. Furthermore, Facebook, Twitter, and Google go beyond promoting their services and facilitating digital advertising buys, actively shaping campaign communication through their close collaboration with political staffers. We show how representatives at these firms serve as quasi-digital consultants to campaigns, shaping digital strategy, content, and execution. Given this, we argue that political communication scholars need to consider social media firms as more active agents in political processes than previously appreciated in the literature.     

Presidential Campaigns and the Knowledge Gap

The knowledge gap hypothesis holds that when new information enters a social system via a mass media campaign, it is likely to exacerbate underlying inequalities in previously held information. Specifically, while people from all strata may learn new information as a result of a mass media campaign, those with higher levels of education are likely to learn more than those with low levels of education, and the informational gap between the two groups will expand. Though this hypothesis has received widespread attention in other disciplines, it has attracted relatively little attention in political science. Using data from the National Election Studies, this article investigates how well the knowledge gap hypothesis describes information acquisition in presidential campaigns from 1976 to 1996. The results of the analysis show that knowledge gaps do not always grow over the course of presidential campaigns and that some events, such as debates, may actually reduce the level of information inequality in the electorate.     

Strategic Leaders: Determining Successful Presidential Opinion Leadership Tactics Through Public Appeals

Most scholars find presidents generally fail at moving the public's views on policy; however, although presidents may fail at opinion leadership at the aggregate level, examining specific communication tactics may yield a more nuanced view of when presidents succeed or fail at leadership. In this article, using a comprehensive data set spanning 1953 to 2001, several strategic communication tactics through which the president might influence temporary opinion movement are examined. Findings show that presidential use of nationally televised addresses is the most consistently effective strategy to enhance presidential leadership, but the effect is lessened for later serving presidents. Strategies involving domestic travel never positively affect leadership, while televised interactions with the media always negatively affect leadership success. The cumulative results imply that presidents can momentarily lead public opinion with particular tactics and that the conditions enhancing leadership are partially in their control, suggesting presidential capability to strategically lead public opinion.     

Fragmentation of presidential elections and governability crises in Latin America: a curvilinear relationship?

Part of the literature views high numbers of presidential candidates as a threat to political stability in presidential democracies. A contradictory model proposes that an overconcentration of the presidential party system is problematic. Both models are hard to reconcile. We approach this puzzle by arguing that the relationship between the level of presidential election fragmentation and governability crises is curvilinear: both very low and very high effective numbers of presidential candidates increase the risk of governability crisis. We test this theoretical claim with ordered logit models drawing on a sample of 108 presidencies in Latin America between 1978 and 2013 and using an ordinal index of the intensity of crisis as the dependent variable. We explore the operation of the theorized causal mechanisms through case studies and argue that they are different at both extremes, high and low levels of fragmentation. Finally, we formulate implications for the design of presidential electoral rules drawing on the debate contrasting runoff and plurality rules.     

Attention to Counter-Attitudinal Messages in a State Election Campaign

Research following the "selective exposure" model has focused on avoidance of political messages with which a person might disagree. But positive attention to such "counter-attitudinal" messages is worthy of study, in part because normative theories of democracy value exposure to information that might disturb citizens' political predispositions. Surveys of youth (N = 417) and parents (N = 430) examine attention to newspaper, television, and Web messages about candidates. While there is somewhat more attention to messages about and for a person's favored political candidate or party, forms of political involvement (knowledge, curiosity, and discussion) that predict this "attitude-consistent" attention also predict counter-attitudinal attention at least as strongly. Parents' education and students' exposure to civics lessons also predict both kinds of attention. These results suggest that attention to counterattitudinal political messages is worthy of further study as an important goal of political socialization and a criterion of citizen performance in democracy.     

The Tech Industry Meets Presidential Politics: Explaining the Democratic Party’s Technological Advantage in Electoral Campaigning, 2004–2012

Drawing on theories in organizational sociology that argue that transpositions of people,/ skills, and knowledge across domains give rise to innovations and organizational foundings that institutionalize them, we conducted a mixed-methods study of the employment biographies of staffers working in technology, digital, data, and analytics on American presidential campaigns, and the rates of organizational founding by these staffers, from the 2004 through the 2012 electoral cycles. Using Federal Election Commission and LinkedIn data, we trace the professional biographies of staffers (N = 629) working in technology, digital, data, or analytics on primary and general election presidential campaigns during this period. We found uneven professionalization in these areas, defined in terms of staffers moving from campaign to campaign or from political organizations to campaigns, with high rates of new entrants to the field. Democrats had considerably greater numbers of staffers in the areas of technology, digital, data, and analytics and from the technology industry, and much higher rates of organizational founding. We present qualitative data drawn from interviews with approximately 60 practitioners to explain how the institutional histories of the two parties and their extended networks since 2004 shaped the presidential campaigns during the 2012 cycle and their differential uptake of technology, digital, data, and analytics.     

Liar,Liar, Pants on Fire: How Fact-Checking Influences Citizens’ Reactions to Negative Advertising

Electoral campaigns are dynamic and an important change in recent elections is the growth of fact-checking; the assessment of the truthfulness of political advertisements by news media organizations and watchdog groups. In this article, we examine the role that fact-checks play in shaping citizens’ views of negative commercials and political candidates. We rely on an Internet survey experiment where we vary people’s exposure to negative advertisements and a follow-up fact-check article (i.e., no fact-check, accurate fact-check, inaccurate fact-check). The results of our experiment show that fact-checks influence people’s assessments of the accuracy, usefulness, and tone of negative political ads. Furthermore, sophisticated citizens and citizens with low tolerance for negative campaigning are most responsive to fact-checks. The fact-checks also sway citizens’ likelihood of accepting the claims made in the advertisements. Finally, negative fact-checks (e.g., fact-checks challenging the truthfulness of the claims of the negative commercial) are more powerful than positive fact-checks.     

Field Experimental Designs for the Study of Media Effects

Field experimentation is a promising but seldom used method for studying the effects of media messages on political attitudes and behavior. The practical challenges of conducting media experiments in real-world settings often come down to securing cooperation from research partners, such as political campaigns. To do so, researchers must be prepared to adapt their experimental designs to satisfy the constraints imposed by research partners and the media environment in which they operate. This article provides an overview of some alternative field experimental designs that allow researchers to maintain the advantages of random assignment while addressing practical considerations. Examples are drawn from the growing field experimental literature examining the effects of television, radio, and online communication.     

The Contingency of Voter Learning: How Election Debates Influenced Voters’ Ability and Accuracy to Position Parties in the 2010 Dutch Election Campaign

Election campaigns are expected to inform voters about parties’ issue positions, thereby increasing voters’ ability to influence future policy and thus enhancing the practice of democratic government. We argue that campaign learning is not only contingent on voters’ characteristics and different sources of information, but also on how parties communicate their issue positions in election debates. We combine a two-wave panel survey with content analysis data of three televised election debates. In cross-classified multilevel auto-regression models we examine the influence of these debates in the 2010 Dutch parliamentary election campaign on voters’ knowledge of the positions of eight parties on three issues. The Dutch multiparty system allows us to separate voters’ ability to position parties from their accuracy in ordering these parties. We reach three main conclusions. First, this study shows that voters become more able and accurate during the campaign. However, these campaign learning effects erode after the elections. Second, whereas voters’ attention to campaigns consistently contributes to their ability to position parties, its effect on accuracy is somewhat less consistent. Third, televised election debates contribute to what voters learn. Parties that advocate their issue positions in the debates stimulate debate viewers’ ability to position these parties on these issues. In the face of the complexity of campaigns and debates in multiparty systems, campaigns are more likely to boost voters’ subjective ability to position parties than their accuracy.     

Ripping Yarn: Experiments on Storytelling by Partisan Elites

This article explores the role of personalized storytelling by partisan elites using a content analysis and two experiments. By personalized storytelling, I mean a political message in the form of a narrative that includes a specific reference to an individual affected by an issue. Using a content analysis of party convention speeches, this article shows that presidential candidates tell an increasing amount of stories, particularly from 1980 onward. Through randomized Internet experiments and a general population sample, I demonstrate that personalized stories have a unique influence on the public by parsing out the independent causal effect of the storyteller’s partisanship, the personalization of the story, and the content of the story. Not only can stories change attitudes about issues, but personalized stories can also change how individuals evaluate the candidate telling the story. However, an impersonal story that only references a generic group, rather than a singular individual, does not improve the partisan storyteller’s favorability. Results suggest that modern presidential candidates might be motivated to tell more stories because personalizing an issue may improve their standing with the public.     

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.     

Campaign Advertising and the Stimulation and Activation of the Authoritarian Personality

This research examines whether authoritarianism can be stimulated and activated by politicians. The traditional belief is that psychological traits are basically quasipermanent structures that consistently determine behavior, but newer research suggests that these traits can be stimulated. This research tests whether campaigns can stimulate traits with targeted messages. I do so by exposing subjects in an experiment to political television advertising that was designed to stimulate known correlates of authoritarianism, such as fear. The results show that authoritarianism is stimulated in treatment groups that watched advertising designed to invoke threat and the strong-father metaphor and the treatment effect is greater on conservatives. I also show that watching these commercials leads to an activation of authoritarianism that influences its predictive power over support for torture. This suggests that politicians can use emotional appeals to stimulate advantageous personality traits, and that these ads also influence the public's attitudes through activation.     

Do Bilinguals Respond More Favorably to Candidate Advertisements in English or in Spanish?

Candidates for political office in the United States can appeal to constituents in either English or in Spanish. We investigate the consequences of this choice in a series of survey experiments conducted on large, diverse samples of both monolingual and bilingual Americans. We take advantage of parallel advertisements produced in both English and Spanish by real candidates for national office—one presidential and two congressional. Because our design holds constant candidates’ policy positions, we can attribute the effects on vote choice directly to the choice of language over and above other candidate attributes. In two of our three experiments, the Spanish-language advertisements increased candidates’ electoral support by 5 percentage points among bilinguals. We find the opposite pattern of results among English-speaking monolingual Americans, who respond very negatively to Spanish-language advertisements. Our results shed light on the strategic calculus of candidates who must appeal to multiple linguistic communities at once.