Jeremiad or Weapon of Words?

Bryan, Amanda C.; Ringsmuth, Eve M.

doi:10.1086/684788

Cited by 29 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…We measure campaign sentiment using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program (Pennebaker, Booth and Francis, 2007). 8 This is a tool for conducting automatic sentiment analysis widely used in the social sciences and increasingly in political science (Bryan and Ringsmuth, 2016;Corley and 7 Although manifestos have several desirable properties for testing our hypotheses, we do examine the strategic use of emotive language in other types of campaign messages -televised election debates, party election broadcasts, and party websites -in a case study of the 2013 German elections in Online Appendix D. The results are remarkably similar to those presented in the main text and in line with our theoretical predictions. Among other things, these supplementary analyses provide further support for the claim that parties adopt a consistent message across different forms of campaign media Wedeking, 2014; Wedeking, 2011, 2012;Settle et al, 2016).…”

Section: Measuring Campaign Sentimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

It Is Not Only What You Say, It Is Also How You Say It: The Strategic Use of Campaign Sentiment

Crabtree

Golder

Gschwend

et al. 2020

The Journal of Politics

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Section: Measuring Campaign Sentimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

It Is Not Only What You Say, It Is Also How You Say It: The Strategic Use of Campaign Sentiment

Crabtree

Golder

Gschwend

et al. 2020

The Journal of Politics

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“…8 This is a tool for conducting automatic sentiment analysis widely used in the social sciences and increasingly in political science (Bryan and Ringsmuth, 2016;Corley and 7 Although manifestos have several desirable properties for testing our hypotheses, we do examine the strategic use of emotive language in other types of campaign messages -televised election debates, party election broadcasts, and party websites -in a case study of the 2013 German elections in Online Appendix D. The results are remarkably similar to those presented in the main text and in line with our theoretical predictions. Among other things, these supplementary analyses provide further support for the claim that parties adopt a consistent message across different forms of campaign media (Adams, Ezrow and Somer-Topcu, 2011).…”

Section: Measuring Campaign Sentimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s Not Only What you Say, It’s Also How You Say It: The Strategic Use of Campaign Sentiment

Crabtree¹,

Golder²,

Gschwend³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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What explains the type of electoral campaign run by political parties? We provide a new perspective on campaigns that focuses on the strategic use of emotive language. We argue that the level of positive sentiment parties adopt in their campaigns depends on their incumbency status, their policy position, and objective economic conditions. We test these claims with a novel dataset that captures the emotive language used in over 400 party manifestos across eight European countries. As predicted, we find that incumbent parties, particularly incumbent prime ministerial parties, use more positive sentiment than opposition parties. We find that ideologically moderate parties employ higher levels of positive sentiment than extremist parties. And we find that all parties exhibit lower levels of positive sentiment when the economy is performing poorly but that this negative effect is weaker for incumbents. Our analysis has important implications for research on campaign strategies and retrospective voting. (Downs, 1957;Ansolabehere and Snyder, 2000; Schofield, 2003;Adams, 2001;Adams, Merrill and Grofman, 2005;Adams, Scheiner and Kawasumi, 2016). The second dimension captures campaign focus -whether parties adopt campaign messages that focus on themselves or their opponents (Skaperdas and Grofman, 1995;Lau and Pomper, 2002;Geer, 2006;Elmelund-Praestekaer, 2008Hansen and Pedersen, 2008). One aspect of campaigns that is ignored in this two-dimensional framework is campaign sentiment, which refers to the emotive content of campaigns. Whereas campaign content and campaign focus address what parties say and who they say it about, campaign sentiment addresses how they say it.Scholars are increasingly looking at how the emotive content of campaign messages affects voter behavior Roseman, Abelson and Ewing, 1986;Weber, Searles and Ridout, 2011;Utych, 2018). The common thread in this literature is that voters are not merely influenced by the substantive content of campaigns but also by their emotive content. Studies have repeatedly shown that electoral campaigns can be manipulated to trigger emotional responses that, in turn, produce predictable changes in voter behavior. This raises a natural question. If campaign sentiment influences voter behavior, political actors should be strategic about its use. Are they? To date, there has been little research that explicitly looks at the strategic use of emotion in election campaigns. What research there is tends to focus on the historically majoritarian systems in the United States and the United Kingdom (Ridout and Searles, 2011; Kosmidis et al., Forthcoming). 1 In this article, we examine the strategic use of emotive language in European election campaigns.Studies that look at emotion in campaigns often focus on the use of images and music . However, language can also engender different types of sentiment, such as fear, anxiety, sadness, or optimism (Roseman, Abelson and Ewing, 1986;Pennebaker, 1993;Pennebaker and Francis, 1996). We build on a long tradition that emphasizes...

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“…Judicial opinions are sophisticated documents, reflecting the concerns of several people with highly technical knowledge and complex policy preferences. They are not, typically, conceived as documents that would reflect the emotional makeup of its authors (however, see Black et al., 2011; Bryan and Ringsmuth, 2016; Hume, 2019; Dietrich, Enos, and Sen, 2019; Zilis and Wedeking, 2020). Majority opinions especially, as contrasted with the jeremiads (Bryan and Ringsmuth, 2016) of dissents, take on a tone not of the outsider railing against the status quo, but a sophisticated analytical document meant to guide and limit policymakers, and justify the Court's use of power.…”

Section: Judicial Ideology and Opinion Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They are not, typically, conceived as documents that would reflect the emotional makeup of its authors (however, see Black et al., 2011; Bryan and Ringsmuth, 2016; Hume, 2019; Dietrich, Enos, and Sen, 2019; Zilis and Wedeking, 2020). Majority opinions especially, as contrasted with the jeremiads (Bryan and Ringsmuth, 2016) of dissents, take on a tone not of the outsider railing against the status quo, but a sophisticated analytical document meant to guide and limit policymakers, and justify the Court's use of power. This, however, makes the tests of the following theory more stringent than other forms of judicial behavior would be; for example, judicial statements at oral argument are immediate and reactive in a way that opinions are not.…”

Section: Judicial Ideology and Opinion Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology and Risk Focus: Conservatism and Opinion‐Writing In the U.S. Supreme Court

Ballingrud

2020

Social Science Quarterly

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Neuroscience proffers evidence that self-described conservatives have stronger fear responses and aversion to risk than self-described liberals. Combined with studies showing that judicial ideology drives the content of Supreme Court majority opinions, I argue that conservatism is linked to risk focus in Supreme Court majority opinions. I use the Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software on a sample of Supreme Court majority opinions, and find that conservative opinions score higher on the LIWC dimension called Risk Focus than liberal opinions. This effect is enhanced in criminal procedural cases. If conservative judges' perceptions of risk are inflated, and if such perceptions are reflected in the binding opinions that they author, then such opinions' heightened sense of risk may influence the perceptions of risk of lower-court judges, which may in turn affect their decision-making in such important areas as sentencing and convictions. Such a pattern raises important questions for the thousands of lower-court decisions which impact the basic liberties of American citizens. Objective. To determine whether judicial ideology affects the focus on risk of Supreme Court opinions. Methods. Original, random sampling of 1200-1300 Court opinions; use of LIWC software to analyze risk focus of each opinion; regression analysis of ideology on risk focus. Results. As ideology becomes more conservative, the Court's opinions demonstrate increased evidence of focus on risk. This effect is pronounced in criminal procedure cases. Conclusion. The theory is supported. Increasingly conservative Court opinions demonstrate an increased focus on risk.

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Jeremiad or Weapon of Words?

Cited by 29 publications

References 25 publications

It Is Not Only What You Say, It Is Also How You Say It: The Strategic Use of Campaign Sentiment

It Is Not Only What You Say, It Is Also How You Say It: The Strategic Use of Campaign Sentiment

It’s Not Only What you Say, It’s Also How You Say It: The Strategic Use of Campaign Sentiment

Ideology and Risk Focus: Conservatism and Opinion‐Writing In the U.S. Supreme Court

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