Understanding the Social Media Strategies of U.S. Primary Candidates

This paper examines the social media strategies of candidates seeking their party’s nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We use textual analysis to understand what candidates focused on. We assess eight themes covered in Twitter posts. For example, Clinton focused on GUN CONTROL, while Sanders focused on climate change. Using Facebook data, we introduce a topic modeling approach, latent Dirichlet allocation, to the political marketing literature. This allows us to uncover what topics the candidates focus on without researcher intervention and, using a dynamic model, show how this changes over time. We note that Clinton’s focus on Trump increases toward the end of the primary campaign.     

Anthony King and the United States

Anthony King was a keen follower of American politics. His writings on the subject combined his respect for democratic practices with a strong concern for deliberation in governance. These concerns, familiar from his writings on the UK, caused him to worry that American politicians campaigned too much and governed too little.     

How party‒issue linkages vary between election manifestos and media debates

Abstract

Existing research on party behaviour has largely focused on the drivers of issue salience in direct party communication. However, less is known about party?issue linkages in election campaigns covered by the mass media, from which most voters get their information about party positions. Against this background, this article explores how two important drivers of issue salience in direct party communication – issue ownership and systemic salience – play out in the media. Based on considerations about the news value of specific party?issue associations, one would expect both relationships to be particularly important in the media. Despite substantial similarities in party?issue linkages across platforms, a comparison of manifestos and newspaper content reveals evidence for this claim. In particular, smaller parties are hardly covered in the news on issues they do not own, while large parties are especially covered on salient topics. These findings contribute to our understanding of issue competition in mediated environments.     

The broadcast media: A persuasive institution

At present, the broadcast media (radio and television) because of their pervasive presence in society are a “taken‐for‐granted” part of the social environment, as natural as the air one breathes. The persuasive power of the media is not so readily ascertained by all who watch and listen. Looking at the growth and spread of the media in three highly industrialized countries, namely Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, each with its own particular broadcast system, one can see the variety of emphasis on commercial and public broadcasting. Since the media have more in common with interpersonal communication than they have differences, the public is constantly open to media messages, continuously processing as well as responding to information received via media sources. The persuasive effect of these broadcast media in terms of the latent function of commercial messages needs deep and careful analysis.     

What Voters Want From Political Campaign Communication

Implicit and explicit norms in broadcasting require that interviewees be treated in a fair and objective manner and given an equal chance to express themselves, regardless of interviewers' personal liking or preference. Nonverbal behavior of seven Israeli televison interviewers was investigated to discover whether they treated politicians from opposing camps and other interviewees in a differential or fair manner. Very brief clips (averaging 7 seconds) showing the interviewer alone were judged by American students who had no comprehension of speech content. In Study 1, all six interviewers were found to demonstrate differential nonverbal behavior toward interviewees, and four of them treated Labor versus Likud camp politicians in a differential manner. A range of individual differences in effect magnitudes of the differential behavior effects was found. Study 2 focused on two lengthy parallel interviews conducted by a prominent interviewer during the 1996 election campaign with the two candidates for prime minister. The interviewer's nonverbal behavior was found to be blatantly preferential in favor of one candidate. Study 3 examined micro behaviors contributing to the formation of global negative/positive impressions. Correlational analyses yielded several global (presumably universal) mediators: smiling, rhythmical beating hand movements, leaning forward, sarcasm, and attempts to regulate the interviewee. Each interviewer was found to demonstrate a unique personal style in which different nonverbal behaviors mediated the overall impression. The tentative conclusion is that more dominant and aggressive interviewers show more differential/preferential behavior. Social and ethical implications, as well as implications for nonverbal research, are discussed.     

A Watershed in White House Journalism: Explaining the Post-1968 Rise of Aggressive Presidential News

Presidential journalism is known to have grown substantially more aggressive through the 1970s and beyond, but a definitive explanation for this trend remains elusive. Some suggest that events surrounding Vietnam and Watergate transformed the professional norms of journalism. However, the trend could also be a more superficial and transitory response to other circumstantial factors that converged in the same time period, such as president-level characteristics (the prevalence of Republicans, Washington outsiders, and more vigorous news management efforts), the political environment (the rise of official discord), and the economic environment (a downturn in the business cycle). This study disentangles these various factors and assesses their relative success in explaining trends in journalistic conduct in the postwar era. Data are drawn from a large sample of presidential news conferences from 1953 through 2000, focusing on the aggressiveness of journalists' questions. The results strongly support the normative shift hypothesis, although economic factors have also been consequential. These results suggest a punctuated equilibrium model of journalistic change in relations between the White House press corps and the presidency.     

Blogging in the Shadow of Parties: Exploring Ideological Differences in Online Campaigning

Blogging is an increasingly important practice in election campaigns, showing interesting variations across contexts. Recent research has shown that the adoption and use of blogs is strongly shaped by national institutional settings, that is, the different roles given to parties within political systems. However, intra-national differences in the practice of political blogging are yet to be explained. This article investigates the variation in usage of blogs in electoral campaigns in Sweden, a country characterized by strong political parties and a party-centered form of representative democracy. The central argument is that different parties utilize blogging in different ways. Just as blogging is shaped by how institutions support persons or parties, we propose that political blogging is shaped by party affiliation and ideological positions on individualism and collectivism. The empirical analysis, based on a survey among over 600 blogging politicians, confirms that ideological positions towards individualism and collectivism have a great impact on the uptake and usage of political blogs, portraying political blogging as a strongly ideologically situated practice of political communication.     

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.     

The 2000 E-Campaign for U.S. Senate

Abstract

The 2000 election saw another increase in the number of Web sites produced by candidates for the U.S. Senate, to over 90% for the major party candidates and nearly 60% for third-party candidates. A content analysis of these campaign Web sites finds an increase in design elements that advance campaign purposes, such as online and credit card contributions. At the same time, few features or services were directed to the mass electorate. The absence of voter registration information and privacy policies from the large majority of Web sites is particularly striking. Sites often lacked basic navigation tools, making it difficult to find desired information. They also took little advantage of the interactivity that makes Web sites such a powerful communication and marketing tool. Third-party candidate Web sites lagged behind those of Democrats and Republicans in most respects, with the notable exceptions of mentioning their party names and the candidates at the tops of their tickets. The study concludes that campaign Web sites have not leveled the playing field for third parties, nor become a vehicle for increasing voter education and activation of the mass electorate. Neither are these Web sites employing a relationship     

Heterogeneity and the calculus of turnout: Undecided respondents and the campaign dynamics of civic duty

Accounts of turnout often maintain that citizens participate in elections because the expressive, instrumental and normative benefits associated with the act of voting outweigh the respective costs. Although the impact of those benefits has been empirically assessed in many studies, we know little about when and for whom this impact is stronger. To this end, this paper examines 1) how the effect of those benefits and particularly that of civic duty increases over the election campaign and 2) whether this increase can be attributed to voter heterogeneity. Survey respondents who have not yet decided how they are going to vote will be increasingly swayed to cast a vote on the basis of their civic duty and not other predictors of turnout. The empirical hypotheses are being tested by utilising recent rolling cross-section election studies from Britain. The results suggest that the influence of civic duty on turnout is stable for decided but increases for undecided voters the closer the election day looms.