How to Win the UK Referendum on the European Constitution

Opinion polls suggest the UK Government faces an uphill task in winning the forthcoming referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty. This article provides a detailed analysis of the factors that are likely to decide the referendum outcome. Using recent survey data, we analyze the factors that influence individual-level support for the Constitutional Treaty. These results show that it is not only general attitudes towards European integration which are likely to play an important role, but also partisanship and satisfaction with the government. Given the low levels of information about the Constitution and the large number of undecided voters, the campaign itself will be crucial to the outcome. We argue that while information alone will not necessarily persuade voters, a successful campaign strategy by the yes-camp could make a decisive difference by motivating and informing voters, as well as setting the agenda for the debate.     

Advances in the Study of Political Advertising

One of the biggest recent advances in the study of political advertising has been the availability of systematic sources of data on when and where ads air—and their content. In this piece, we review the various data sources that scholars have used to study political advertising, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses. We then discuss recent studies that have employed data on political advertising to examine the effects of ad exposure on citizens' attitudes and political behaviors, how the content of advertising varies, and how ads have been targeted in recent political campaigns. We follow that with our own empirical contribution—an analysis of trends in advertising content, including negativity and policy focus—over the past 16 years.     

创建平安广东与“三打”行动长效机制建设思考

尽管平安广东创建和“三打两建”工作已取得实效,当前的“三打”、“两建”和平安广东创建工作中仍然存在着许多的困难和问题。因此,将“三打”行动长效机制建设和创建平安广东行动相结合,既具有必要性,亦具有可行性。二者的结合,是广东维护社会稳定、促进经济协调发展的重要手段,是创建平安广东的有效途径,是维稳理念具体到平安广东社会建设中的创新发展。     

Going Negative

SUMMARY

In this paper we explore the relationship between candidate attack messages and news coverage during the earliest stages of the presidential nomination process. How effective are attack messages in generating media coverage? Are certain types of negative content more likely to gain coverage? Using data from the 1996 Republican presidential nomination campaign, we examine the candidate press releases that issued an attack on an opponent and the subsequent news coverage linked to it. We find that while candidates are more than willing to go negative even during the early stages of the campaign, these negative messages are no more or no less likely to generate press coverage during the early months of the presidential nomination campaign than are other types of candidate messages.     

Greek Political Marketing Online

Abstract

The new communication system of interconnected computer networks is altering the nature of political communication in many innovative and significant ways. In Greece, the development of the Internet as a mass communication medium has a history of no more than five years, and it is far from being a fully fledged medium of political communication. With the exception of relatively few cases, the use of the Internet has been shown to increase during the pre-election campaign periods. This paper presents the results of a research project, which explores the personal Web sites of the Greek parliamentarians in an off-campaign period. The research was conducted through the systematic observation, examination, and analysis of a sample of personal Web pages owned by cross-party elected members of the Greek Parliament.     

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.     

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.     

Robbing Peter to pay Paul: changing clientelist patterns in East Timor’s 2017 parliamentary elections

This article examines the adverse impact of clientelist relations between political parties and campaign donors on parties’ relations with voters. Clientelism is generally conceptualized as a vertical, pyramid structure, whereby resources are distributed from politicians to voters at the base through brokers or programmatic politics. As Gherghina and Volintiru¹1 Gherghina and Volintiru, A New Model of Clientelism.View all notescontend, what is often overlooked is that in tandem with this vertical relationship with voters there is a complementary horizontal relationship with party donors. Parties with a weak organizational base focus on relations with party donors, such as private contractors, at the expense of their relationship with voters. Drawing on fieldwork conducted during East Timor’s 2017 parliamentary elections, I engage with Gherghina and Volintiru’s framework to argue that a bi-dimensional approach is integral to both understanding electoral outcomes and economic trajectories in developing country contexts. In East Timor, despite a decade of rampant patronage politics, the incumbent CNRT party’s prioritization of their relationship with party donors cost them the election. In turn, this focus on party donors has distorted policy and public spending priorities, with severe implications for future development.     

Campaigns Matter: How Voters Become Knowledgeable and Efficacious During Election Campaigns

Election campaigns are more than simple competitions for votes; they also represent an opportunity for voters to become politically knowledgeable and engaged. Using a large-scale Web panel (N ≈ 5,000), we track the development of political knowledge, internal efficacy, and external efficacy among voters during the 2011 Danish parliamentary election campaign. Over the course of the campaign, the electorate’s political knowledge increases, and these gains are found across genders, generations, and educational groups, narrowing the knowledge gap within the electorate. Furthermore, internal and external efficacy increase over the course of the campaign, with gains found across different demographic groups, particularly narrowing the gaps in internal efficacy. The news media play a crucial role, as increased knowledge and efficacy are partly driven by media use, although tabloids actually decrease external efficacy. The findings suggest that positive campaign effects are universal across various media and party systems.     

Circumnavigating de-Westernisation: Theoretical reflexivities in researching political communication in Africa

Abstract

Based on theoretical considerations in the course of the author's current research on the conducting of and changes in political campaign communication in post-1990 Cameroon, this article revisits central discourses on the de-Westernisation of communications studies and outlines culturally-nested theoretical considerations to comprehensively study the practices and changes in political campaign communication in Africa. The article argues that although drawing on supposedly ‘Western’ theories, overall the proposed theoretical considerations constitute an example of a more viable approach to de-Westernise communications theory. The considerations have strong potential to improve our understanding of political campaign communication practices and the changes they may effect in Africa, if they are incorporated into research and not discarded simply on the grounds of regional exceptionalism, as is predominantly the case in Africa.