Political conversations on Twitter in a disruptive scenario: The role of “party evangelists” during the 2015 Spanish general elections

During election campaigns, candidates, parties, and media share their relevance on Twitter with a group of especially active users, aligned with a particular party. This paper introduces the profile of “party evangelists,” and explores the activity and effects these users had on the general political conversation during the 2015 Spanish general election. On that occasion, the electoral expectations were uncertain for the two major parties (PP and PSOE) because of the rise of two emerging parties that were disrupting the political status quo (Podemos and Ciudadanos). This was an ideal situation to assess the differences between the evangelists of established and emerging parties. The paper evaluates two aspects of the political conversation based on a corpus of 8.9 million tweets: the retweeting effectiveness, and the sentiment analysis of the overall conversation. We found that one of the emerging party’s evangelists dominated message dissemination to a much greater extent.     

First and second-level agenda-setting in the 2014 Indian general election: a time-series analysis of party-media relation

The role of the press as a political watchdog is crucial to the functioning of democracy. Especially in the run-up to elections, voters depend on the media's presentation of parties and candidates to make informed, responsible choices at the ballot box. But who, then, influences the news media? Empirical evidence in the United States and Europe suggests that political party campaigns and election coverage in the news media are interconnected and influence each other. This study tests whether such agenda-setting effects between party campaigns and the media also take place in the general elections in the world's largest democracy, India. India's western-type political system has a distinct media system characterized by high competition, diversification, non-consolidation and formal and informal ties between the media, commercial interests and political actors. Content analysis and Granger's causality test of newspaper coverage (N?=?716) and party campaign messages (N?=?458) found that agenda-setting effects do occur in India, but are largely bi-directional. We also found an overwhelming focus of both newspapers’ election coverage and of all major party campaigns on one single candidate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s Narendra Modi. This, we argue, is a result of the broader trends that have shaped Indian politics in recent years. The significant correlations and non-significant causal effects between party campaign and media coverage also indicate a trade-off situation between political power negotiation and political balance in the press.     

Issue competition and presidential debates in multiparty systems: evidence from the 2002, 2007, and 2012 Korean presidential elections

Which issues do political parties emphasize in campaigns? Selecting the issues to emphasize in campaigns is treated with the same importance as policy positioning. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to understanding parties’ strategies of issue competition in presidential elections under multiparty systems. By analyzing statements of presidential candidates in the 2002, 2007, and 2012 Korean presidential debates, we find that presidential candidates use their issue emphasis strategies differently in presidential elections according to party size and ideological relationships with other parties. Specifically, a small party’s candidates have been more likely than mainstream parties’ candidates to pursue their issue ownership advantage. In addition, a mainstream party’s candidates have emphasized the issues of a small party more than those of his own party when the two parties have had a similar ideological foundation, whereas, when there were no such ideological similarities, a mainstream party’s candidate has only focused on issues of the mainstream party. Our results imply that the political communication used by political parties and candidates is conditioned not only by political contexts such as electoral systems or party systems but also by the size and ideology of parties.     

Engagement@web 2.0 between the government and citizens in Singapore: dialogic communication on Facebook?

Responding to the rapid adoption of new technologies, political parties, both incumbent parties and minor ones, have been quick to leverage web 2.0 technologies for party communication and mobilization. A coterie of work addressed how social media such as Facebook are used as political tools for the promotion of candidate and party campaign platforms. However, a present bias is observed as current literature focus on western democracies. To bridge the gap, this study examines the gradual, yet significant, evolution in technology deployment by the ruling elite in Singapore. This paper traces the developments in e-engagement to bridge the affective gap between the ruling elite and an increasingly IT-savvy population, one which has demonstrated its astuteness in using new media to articulate its disenchantment. Developments in the last five years indicate that the government's earlier endeavor to centralize and streamline its political engagement via a single portal, REACH, is insufficient to say the least. Between the general election in 2006 and the watershed election in May 2011, the repertoire of media tools deployed by the political elite has broadened, with the inclusion of personal blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. In this paper, we apply Kent and Taylor's public relations dialogic communication framework to examine how Facebook fosters greater mutuality, propinquity, and empathy between the government and the electorate. However, problems arising from new technologies themselves inadvertently create risks and challenge the government's ability to commit to dialogic communication.     

Jumping the Shark

What is the effect on media coverage of politics when political actors conform to market aspects of media logic by “jumping the shark”—staging dramatic political events to fit the demands of the media—thus reflecting what Strömbäck characterizes as the fourth phase of mediatization? Our paper answers this question with a large-scale, longitudinal analysis of how The Globe and Mail, Canada's leading national newspaper, covered 13 Canadian party leadership contests held between 1975 and 2012. We analyzed changes in the amount and style of reporting over the course of this 37-year time period, finding that the Globe has provided less coverage of party leadership competitions overall. The diminishing number of stories printed on the subject increasingly feature opinion writing, photos, combative language and the elevation of the individual candidate over the party organization. Our findings support a key element of the mediatization thesis: the shift from political logic to media logic as an organizing principle for political communications.     

Books received

This study examined issue learning outcomes in three intra‐party political debates during the 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The results indicated that intra‐party political debates produce significant viewer learning (1) about the issue positions of each participating candidate, (2) about most issues, and (3) among all categories of viewers. In addition, the study found that intra‐party political debates produce distinct outcomes, including: variation in learning between debates about candidate positions on particular issues; significant increases in learning about the positions of the Democratic candidates on the part of Democratic, Republican, and nonaffiliated viewers; and a negative effect on viewer knowledge about nonparticipating incumbent Ronald Reagan's positions on the issues.     

EARLY POLITICAL PARTIES AS MEDIATED COMMUNITIES

It has been well documented that forms of media help create new communities, such as the public sphere and the nation. However, the origin of one major political institution has rarely been considered in this light: the political party. This paper brings together the theory on early party formation in North America and the theory on mediated communities to argue that the first public political organizations in Canada, which resembled modern parties in many ways, should be seen as constituted by the media. The paper presents the case of Upper Canada (1820–1841) where newspaper distribution linked partisans into new communities, and editors and politicians ‘imagined’ new political communities in the pages of their newspapers. Modern political parties should thus be seen as essentially mediated communities.     

负面竞选广告研究综述

本文梳理归纳了负面竞选广告相关研究的切入角度和结论,总结存在的分歧,指明未来研究的方向。综述发现,负面竞选广告研究大都基于西方文化背景和传统媒体,广告的使用受到候选人在任与否、民意支持度、所属政党、竞选阶段和文化的影响;广告发挥了候选人所预期的效果,但也可能产生反弹效果。此外,负面竞选广告对政治参与是促进还是抑制作用,已有研究结果尚存分歧。     

Parties,media and public opinion: A study of media's legitimation of party politics in Hong Kong

Political groups have long existed in Hong Kong since 1949. The ‘consultative government’ was hostile towards groups which were critical of government policies. Before the 1980s, in a minimally‐integrated media‐political system, mass media, in compliance with the government served to undermine their legitimacy. Party politics and political parties were framed as ‘dirty polities’. However, the move towards a representative government since the 1980s in face of the power transfer to China, together with the 4 June incident, have transformed the public's stance towards the newly established democratic groups. In response to the changing public opinion, the media started in the late 1980s to give consent to the emergence of party politics in the democratic system. In the first direct Legislative Council in 1991, mass media ‘incorporated’ party politics as part the local political system.     

Phases of Mediatization

As election campaigns changed substantially in Western countries, it is generally hypothesized that this change in campaign communication is rooted in a revolution in communications, with the media rejecting its former role as mere transmitters and becoming a major actor in the campaigning process. Regarding the analysis of the “mediatization of politics”, Strömbäck presented a four phases model which offers a way to explore such a process in an explicit and systematic fashion. The resulting struggle between political parties and the media over who shall control the agendas of campaigns forces politicians to adapt to and, finally, to adopt media logic. By operationalizing these four phases in order to allow for empirical research, we investigated the roles of the news media and the political parties in Austrian campaign communication in the last four decades. Taking the agenda-setting power as an indicator for changes in this relationship, our study is based on the concepts of agenda-building and policy agenda-setting as extensions of the agenda-setting model. To establish party and media agendas, a content analysis was conducted on news releases of all Austrian parliamentary parties, the main evening newscasts of all Austrian broadcasters, as well as the political coverage of two quality papers and two major tabloids during the “hot phase” of the campaign. For examining the “struggle over agendas”, a time-series cross-section design (including data on 20 different policy dimensions) was applied. First results are based on the analysis of five election campaigns in 1970, 1983, 1990, 1999, and 2008.     

The Role of Political Identity and Media Selection on Perceptions of Hostile Media Bias During the 2012 Presidential Campaign

Viewing a hostile media bias against one’s group (e.g., political party) is a perceptual effect of media use. When it comes to the portrayal of political parties in the United States, prior research suggests that both Democrats and Republicans see mainstream media coverage as favoring the other side, regardless of the orientation of the political news coverage. Although prior research has not identified all factors that make this perceptual bias more likely, or at explaining how or why this perceptual effect occurs, we do know that it is related to one’s group identity. In this study, we examined salient predictors of hostile media bias during the 2012 presidential campaign. Individual (i.e., political cynicism) and group identity related (i.e., group status, intergroup bias, political ideology) differences of media users predicted such perceptions. But, the medium selected for political information about the campaign also mattered. The use of two media in particular—TV and social networking sites—appear to have blunted hostile media bias perceptions, whereas the use of two other media—radio and video sharing sites—appear to have accentuated perceptions that the media were biased against one’s party     

Examining verbal style in presidential campaign spots

Presidential candidates rely on political television spots to communicate their messages to voters, and the language used in spots conveys the verbal style of the candidate. This analysis of 1267 presidential spot units from 1952 through 1996 uses computerized content analysis to identify the presence of verbal style previously identified by Roderick Hart: optimism, realism, activity, and certainty. Findings show different patterns for different presidential candidates, but overall trends suggest that optimism, realism, and certainty has been decreasing. Differences in verbal style for political parties, incumbents and challengers, and winners and losers are also explored.     

Which candidates do the public discuss online in an election campaign?: The use of social media by 2012 presidential candidates and its impact on candidate salience

The effects of new communication technologies on election campaigns, and the effectiveness of media-centered campaign strategies more broadly, remain ongoing subjects for debate in political science. This study provides some of the first empirical evidence about the potential impact of social media on the 2012 U.S. presidential elections, by testing the association between “candidate salience” and the candidates' level of engagement in online social media sphere. We define “candidate salience” as the extent to which candidates are discussed online by the public in an election campaign, and have selected the number of mentions presidential candidates receive on the social media site, Twitter, as means of quantifying their salience. This strategy allows us to examine whether social media, which is widely recognized as disruptive in the broader economic and social domains, has the potential to change the traditional dynamics of U.S. election campaigns. We find that while social media does substantially expand the possible modes and methods of election campaigning, high levels of social media activity on the part of presidential candidates have, as of yet, resulted in minimal effects on the amount of public attention they receive online.     

Candidates’ use of informal communication on social media reduces credibility and support: Examining the consequences of expectancy violations

ABSTRACT

This experiment (N= 476) investigates how individuals evaluate political candidates who use informal communication on social media. We use expectancy violations theory (EVT) to predict that informal communication will lead to negative evaluations. Our results suggest that politicians’ use of informal communication on social media leads to expectancy violation, which decreases perceived credibility and lessens intention to support a candidate. This effect was not moderated by sex (male versus female) or age (young versus old) of the candidate, nor of participants being the same sex as the candidate. These findings suggest that political figures should use informal communication on social media with caution.     

MySpace Politics: Uses and Gratifications of Befriending Candidates

This study examines the uses and gratifications (U&G) of accessing political candidate profiles on social network Web sites. An online survey of visitors to the MySpace profiles of 2008 primary candidates revealed that voters are drawn to this source of political information mainly by the desire for social interaction with other like-minded supporters, followed by information-seeking, and entertainment. While information seeking and entertainment are common U&G of consuming online political content, they were weaker factors compared to the social interaction factor that seems to distinguish MySpace, possibly SNSs in general, from other online sources of political content.     

Voting intentions on social media and political opinion polls

Opinion polls play an important role in modern democratic processes: they are known to not only affect the outcomes of elections, but also have a significant influence on government policy after elections. Recent years have seen large discrepancies between polls and outcomes at several major elections and referendums, stemming from decreased participation in polls and an increasingly volatile electorate. This calls for new ways to measure public support for political parties. In this paper, we propose a method for measuring the popularity of election candidates on social media using Machine Learning-based Natural Language Processing techniques. The method is based on detecting voting intentions in the data. This is a considerable advance upon earlier work using automatic sentiment analysis. We evaluate the method both intrinsically on a set of hand-labelled social media posts, and extrinsically – by forecasting daily election polls. In the extrinsic evaluation, we analyze data from the 2016 US presidential election, and find that voting intentions measured from social media provide significant additional predictive value for forecasting daily polls. Thus, we demonstrate that the proposed method can be used to interpolate polls both spatially and temporally, thus providing reliable, continuous and fine-grained information about public opinion on current political issues.     

Television coverage of the 1995 legislative election in Taiwan: Rise of cable television as a force for balance in media coverage

This research examines how television reported the campaign, parties, and candidates during the 1995 Legislative Election in Taiwan. Results of this study showed that state‐owned broadcast television stations were far more likely than privately owned cable television channels to give greater coverage to the ruling party and its candidates, to use ruling party officials as news sources, and to offer more news coverage favorable to the ruling party than to other parties. We conclude that cable television has become a force for balance in coverage, diluting a pervasive pro‐government party bias. The rise of cable television from virtual “outlaw” status to government‐licensed status appears to have responded to a more liberal society and made a contribution to the development of democracy, as have the expanded elections themselves.     

Predicting elections from social media: a three-country,three-method comparative study

ABSTRACT

This study introduces and evaluates the robustness of different volumetric, sentiment, and social network approaches to predict the elections in three Asian countries – Malaysia, India, and Pakistan from Twitter posts. We find that predictive power of social media performs well for India and Pakistan but is not effective for Malaysia. Overall, we find that it is useful to consider the recency of Twitter posts while using it to predict a real outcome, such as an election result. Sentiment information mined using machine learning models was the most accurate predictor of election outcomes. Social network information is stable despite sudden surges in political discussions, for e.g. around elections-related news events. Methods combining sentiment and volume information, or sentiment and social network information, are effective at predicting smaller vote shares, for e.g. vote shares in the case of independent candidates and regional parties. We conclude with a detailed discussion on the caveats of social media analysis for predicting real-world outcomes and recommendations for future work.     

Another Look at What Moves Public Opinion: Media Agenda Setting and Polls in the 2000 U.S. Election

This study examined two levels of media agenda effects on aggregatepublic opinion from different news sources. The effects wereinvestigated immediately and cumulatively. Content analysisdata from the 2000 U.S. presidential election coverage by fournational news organizations were related to the Gallup pre-electionpoll standings of each candidate. Regression analyses foundthat both the salience of a candidate and the salience of theattributes of a candidate cumulatively, but not immediately,influenced his standing in the polls. An analysis of news sourcessupported the finding that the two levels of agenda-settingeffects seemed mostly cumulative rather than immediate. Newsfrom different sources, however, tended to have effects of differentdegrees and sometimes different directions on candidate pollstandings. Cumulative effects of candidate salience on aggregateopinion change were found for non-partisan and neutral newssources—reporters, poll reporting and public documents—whereasthe effects of candidate attribute salience mostly came frompartisan sources—the candidate himself and members ofthe competing political party. Possible political implicationsof these findings are discussed.     

Dialed In: Continuous Response Measures in Televised Political Debates and Their Effect on Viewers

As a result of emerging debate formats and technological advancements over the years, the media started using continuous response measures (CRMs) in the form of on-screen trackers, allowing select audiences to rate candidate performances in political debates in 2004. Given the limited amount of scholarly research that has tackled this issue, this study aims to investigate the effect of CRMs on college students’ voting choices and perceptions of political candidates. This experimental study has found that these trackers did influence the participants’ evaluations of the political candidates shown in the debate regardless of previously stated political affiliation.