Timeless Strategy Meets New Medium: Going Negative on Congressional Campaign Web Sites, 2002–2006

Abstract

Abstract:In a few short years, the World Wide Web has become a standard part of candidates' campaign tool kits. Virtually all candidates have their own sites; and voters, journalists, and activists visit the sites with increasing frequency. In this paper, we study what candidates do on these sites-in terms of the information they present-by exploring one of the most enduring and widely debated campaign strategies: "going negative." Comparing data from over 700 congressional candidate websites, over three election cycles (2002, 2004, and 2006), with television advertising data, we show that candidates go negative with similar likelihoods across these media. We also find that while similar dynamics drive negativity on the Web and in television advertising, there are some notable differences. These differences likely stem, in part, from the truncated sample available with television data (i.e., many candidates do not produce ads). Our results have implications for understanding negative campaigning, and for the ways in which scholars can study campaign dynamics.

Emotional politics on Facebook. An exploratory study of Podemos’ discourse during the European election campaign 2014

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“…This confirms that Podemos' use of the Internet was electorally driven, since they mainly used it as a tool to deploy their persuasive-strategic discourse, instead of trying to recover a direct link with voters or promote citizen deliberation (Dader et al, 2011). In that sense, our results with regards to the topics and the limited "deliberability" (Valera, 2014b) of the posts contribute to ratify the normalization hypothesis (Schweitzer, 2009;Druckman et al, 2010).…”

Twitter Taunts and Tirades: Negative Campaigning in the Age of Trump

“…2 We attempt to examine all tweets in which one of the 17 Republican presidential hopefuls in 2016 mentions another candidate, investigating the degree to which candidates' relative standing and stage of the campaign predict propensity to attack one another on Twitter. We anticipate increasing negativity among all candidates as primaries and caucuses approach (Damore 2002 ;Haynes and Rhine 1998 ;Lau and Pomper 2001 ), either due to the narrowing of the fi eld (Haynes and Rhine 1998 ;Hale, Fox, and Farmer 1996 ;Lau and Pomper 2001 ;Druckman, Kifer, and Parkin 2010 ;Kahn and Kenney 2002) or because opportunities grow scarce as elections approach (Peterson and Djupe 2005 ;Haynes and Rhine 1998 ;Damore 2002 ). Alternatively, a fi eld of many plausible contenders may promote negative campaigning early on as candidates struggle to separate from the pack (Peterson and Djupe 2005 ;Djupe and Peterson 2002 ).…”

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Agenda y marcos en las webs de PP y PSOE en la cibercampaña de 2011

“…De este modo, la experiencia acumulada parece confirmar la hipótesis de la normalización, a saber, la idea de que las prácticas tecnopolíticas en la red reproducen las claves y tácticas electorales de las campañas offline (Druckman et al, 2007y 2010, Schweitzer, 2009a, 2009by 2010. De hecho, la investigación empírica coincide en señalar que la utilización partidista de las TIC en España ha obedecido fundamentalmente a estrategias de campaña con la intención de ofrecer una imagen de vanguardismo tecnológico y compromiso 2.0 (Sampedro, 2011, Dader et al, 2011, Campos, 2011, sin que en la práctica se tradujeran en verdaderas apuestas para fomentar la movilización, la autoorganización o la interacción de la ciudadanía.…”