Negative Campaigning in the Digital Age: Comparing Cost-Benefit Structures Across Parties, Issues and Communication Channels
Abstract
Research on negative campaigning in multiparty systems has outlined several potential
costs and benefits of “going negative.” However, most of these cost-benefit structures
relate to contextual factors and party characteristics, such as parties’ position
in the polls, their incumbency status or ideological extremity. What is often overlooked
is that the costs and benefits of negative campaigning can also differ across issues
and communication channels. Focusing on the 2017 Dutch General Elections, this study
examines how cost-benefit structures of negative campaigning do not just differ across
political parties, but also across issues and communication channels. Analyzing 1647
appeals that appeared in newspaper coverage, talk shows and in Facebook posts over
a course of two weeks, the results of this study show that opposition parties and
parties behind in the polls are more likely to use negative campaigning, that parties
are more likely to go negative on issues that they do not own and that negative appeals
are more common in newspaper coverage and talk shows than in political parties’ Facebook
posts. My findings complement a growing literature on negative campaigning in multiparty
systems and add more nuance to our understanding of political elites’ strategic calculus
to go negative during campaigns.
Type
Capstone projectDepartment
Graduate Liberal StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21082Citation
de Kleer, Dirck (2020). Negative Campaigning in the Digital Age: Comparing Cost-Benefit Structures Across
Parties, Issues and Communication Channels. Capstone project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21082.Collections
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