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

Abstract

What drives candidates to "go negative" and against which opponents? Using a unique dataset consisting of all inter-candidate tweets by the 17 Republican presidential candidates in the 2016 primaries, we assess predictors of negative aff ect online. Twitter is a free platform, and candidates therefore face no resource limitations when using it; this makes Twitter a wellspring of information about campaign messaging, given a level playing-fi eld. Moreover, Twitter's 140-character limit acts as a liberating constraint, leading candidates to issue sound bites ready for potential distribution not only online, but also through conventional media, as tweets become news. We fi nd tweet negativity and overall rate of tweeting increases as the campaign season progresses. Unsurprisingly, the front-runner and eventual nominee, Donald Trump, sends and receives the most negative tweets and is more likely than his opponents to strike out against even those opponents who are polling poorly. However, candidates overwhelmingly "punch upwards" against those ahead of them in the polls, and this pattern goes beyond attacks against those near the top. Sixty of 136 dyads are characterized by lopsided negativity in one direction and only one of these 60 involves a clearly higher status candidate on the off ensive.

The “Need for Chaos” and Motivations to Share Hostile Political Rumors

“…Hostile political rumors simultaneously portray politicians and political groups negatively and possess low evidential value (Rosenstiel, Mitchell and Jurkowitz, 2012;Vosoughi, Roy and Aral, 2018). They encapsulate conspiracy theories (Uscinski and Parent, 2014), "fake news" (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017), discussions of political scandals (Warner, McGowen and Hawthorne, 2012) and negative campaigns (Gross and Johnson, 2016). Although these different types of news vary in substance and form, they nonetheless share two crucial features: they seek to incite hostility toward a specific target and are difficult to verify or categorically disprove.…”

Untitled

“…By contrast, we found simple and direct solutions based on the struggle between the elites and the people, the crisis or breakdown and the "others" (Moffit & Tormey, 2016). In line with the negative campaign (Auter & Fine, 2016;Gross & Johnson, 2016) the opposition parties were identified emphatically with a negative frame. This frame was based on corruption, cowardice, privatization, with "revolving doors" -the direct relation from politicians to companies-and humans' rights attack.…”

“…Another characteristic of the electoral campaign is the attack on the opposition and the negative campaign (Auter & Fine, 2016;Gross & Johnson, 2016). In this line, the parties used the opposition criticism issue, especially to criticise the social inequalities as a consequence of their political management (BeC= 5.63%; ICV= 8.65%; P=20%; PC=2.63%; EUiA=10.71%).…”

Contrapropaganda: aplicação da estratégia negativa nos cartazes das eleições legislativas e presidenciais portuguesas de 2001 a 2016

“…Ressalvamos ainda a utilização de um conceito que se aproxima da contrapropaganda -a "campanha política negativa" -, que é objeto de estudo de investigações recentes, que discutem a sua importância, sublinhando a sua relevância (e.g. Dolezal, Ennser-Jedenastik & Müller, 2016;Dolezal, Ennser-Jedenastik & Müller, 2015;Gatterman, 2017;Gross & Johnson, 2016;Russmann, 2014;Sampaio, 2011;Walter, 2013).…”