Are Campaigns Getting Uglier, and Who Is to Blame? Negativity, Dramatization and Populism on Facebook in the 2014 and 2019 EP Election Campaigns
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6334732 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ulrike Klinger (0000-0003-4049-7173, Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, Berlin, Germany), Karolina Koc-Michalska (0000-0002-5354-5616, Audencia Business School, Nantes, France), Uta Rußmann (0000-0002-8684-6976, Universität Innsbruck, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 263-282 |
| Publication date | 2023-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1058-4609 • E-ISSN: 1091-7675 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10584609.2022.2133198 |
| OpenAlex | W4306254953 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 50 |
| References cited | 51 |
Relating to theories of dissonant public spheres and affective publics, we study negativity, dramatization, and populist content in political party Facebook posts across 12 countries during the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament Election campaigns. A quantitative content analysis of 14,293 posts from 111 (2014) and 116 (2019) political parties shows that negative emotion, negative campaigning, dramatization, and populist content has increased over this time. We show that political parties sought to evoke more negative emotions and generate more dramatization, engaged more in negative campaigning, and included more populist content in their Facebook posts in the 2019 EP election than in 2014. Further, we show that posts evoking negative emotions and dramatization and involving negative campaigning yield higher user engagement than other posts, while populist content also led to more user reactions in 2014, but not in 2019. Negative, exaggerated, and sensationalized messaging therefore makes sense from a strategic perspective, because the increased frequencies of likes, shares, and comments make parties’ messages travel farther and deeper in social networks, thereby reaching a wider audience. It seems that the rise in affective and dissonant communication has not emerged unintentionally, but is also a result of strategic campaigning
Dramatization · Media studies · Parliament · Political science · Politics · Social media · Sociology · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology
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| Unique citing works | 50 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 16,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 50 |