New Perspectives on Negative Campaigning: Why Attack Politics Matters
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New Perspectives on Negative Campaigning: Why Attack Politics Matters
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| ISBN-13: | 9781785521942 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/14/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 398 |
| Sales rank: | 737,523 |
| File size: | 35 MB |
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About the Author
Annemarie Walter is a Marie Curie Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. She received her PhD in 2012 from the University of Amsterdam. Prior to that she was an Assistant Professor in the Communication Science Department at VU Amsterdam. Dr Walter is currently working on a three-year Marie Curie/ NRF research project (2014-2017) entitled CSNCC: Comparative Study of Negative Campaigning and its Consequences. She has published numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Political Studies, Party Politics, Acta Politica and the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics.
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New Perspectives on Negative Campaigning
Why Attack Politics Matters
By Alessandro Nai, Annemarie S. Walter
ECPR Press
Copyright © 2015 A. Nai and A. S. WalterAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78552-194-2
CHAPTER 1
The War of Words: The Art of Negative Campaigning
Alessandro Nai and Annemarie S. Walter
In probably one of the most notorious and beloved radio broadcasts, aired in October 1938, actor and soon-to-be filmmaker Orson Welles portrayed an on-going alien invasion via a series of mock news bulletins. The described attack on earth reportedly provoked panic in those who listened and, later, widespread outrage in the media once the deception was uncovered. Beyond the guilty amusement of the anecdote, Welles' scam perfectly illustrates how news media can arouse attention, anxiety, and outrage.
The attacks that this volume will deal with are – fortunately – not as deadly as those described in Welles' mock invasion. They do, however, arouse attention and anxiety, and they certainly stimulate public outrage. As with Welles' examples, they also receive substantial media coverage. The attacks we deal with here make up a considerable share of today's political campaigns and debates.
In contemporary political history, examples of negative campaign messages abound, from the disturbing 'Daisy' advertisement of Lyndon Johnson attacking his Republican opponent Barry Goldwater in the 1964 United States (US) presidential election campaign, to the famed 'Willie Horton – Dukakis on crime' advertisement that tries to disqualify democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in the 1988 US presidential election campaign, or the more recent NRA advertisement criticising Barack Obama for his support for public schools as 'gun free zones' in the 2012 US presidential election campaign. Outside the US notorious examples of political attacks can also be found, from Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's catchy 'you don't have monopoly on hearts, Mr. Mitterrand' in the 1974 French presidential election campaign, to the quite distressing 'demon eyes' poster with the text 'New Labour, New Danger' portraying hostility towards Tony Blair in the 1997 United Kingdom (UK) general election campaign.
Attacks constitute an important part of campaign messages. To illustrate, Freedman and Goldstein (1999: 1194) found that about half of the advertisements aired during the 1997 Virginia Gubernatorial race were negative; Lau and Pomper (2004: 29) showed that the share of negative statements of the Republican and Democratic candidates for US Senate elections was on average about 35 per cent between 1992 and 2002; Geer (2006: 37) reports that on average 30 per cent of the advertisements aired in US presidential campaigns were negative; Walter (2014b: 29) claims that the average level of negative appeals in party election broadcasts aired in parliamentary election campaigns in the Netherlands, Britain and Germany between 1980 and 2006 was 30 per cent; and Nai (2013: 55) reports that about 8 per cent of the advertisements were negative in Swiss direct-democratic campaigns between 1999 and 2005. Negative campaigning is thus a universal phenomenon.
Negative messages are not only a key component of today's political campaigns and debates, but also of its coverage. Nowadays, it is far from rare that media coverage of political races focuses on the extent that candidates attack each other, the increasingly aggressive nature of these races and its detrimental effects on voters (see Brooks 2006; Geer 2012; Ridout and Smith 2008). Voters exposed to negative campaign messages would not only potentially lower their evaluation of the attacker's target, but also lose trust in politicians, the political system and are eventually less likely to participate in the electoral process (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Lemert et al. 1999). If there lies any truth in these claims there is a good reason to be worried, as elections are cornerstone to any functioning democracy. Public opinion on negative campaigning is quite clear: voters are not fond of negative campaign messages and dislike trait attacks even more so than issue attacks (see e.g. Fridkin and Kenney 2011a; Johnson-Cartee and Copeland 1989). In addition, a substantial part of the electorate thinks that modern campaigns are 'too negative'. In this sense, concerns raised by politicians, journalists and voters make the use and effects of negative campaigning an important topic in the public debate.
However, the debate about negative campaigning not only takes place in the public domain, as academic attention for negative campaigning has grown considerably over the years. This becomes apparent when conducting a quick and simple bibliometric check. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 show that the number of academic articles referring to negative campaigning has dramatically increased; for the first decade of the twenty-first century, about one out of 100 articles on politics referred somehow to negative campaigning, and one out of 2,000 articles on politics had references to negative campaigning in its title. To compare, one out of 1,500 articles on politics published between 2000 and 2010 referred to the term 'issue ownership' in its title. See also Fridkin and Kenney (2014).
Since the seminal work of Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995) that marks the beginning of negative campaigning as a new field, a considerable amount of research has been conducted. Was negative campaigning mainly associated with harmful effects on voters' attitudes, behaviour and the political system (e.g. Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Ansolabehere et al. 1994; Ansolabehere et al. 1999; Lemert et al. 1999)? Nowadays a nonnegligible part of academia points to its potentially beneficial effects (see e.g. Finkel and Geer 1998; Freedman and Goldstein 1999; Martin 2004; Geer 2006). Next to research on effects, scholars have been actively trying to map the occurrence and features of negative campaigning, increasingly also outside the US (see e.g. Geer 2006; Benoit 1999; West 2005; Van Heerde-Hudson 2011; Walter 2014b). These studies show that negative campaigning is a universal phenomenon (Fridkin and Kenney 2014). In addition, researchers have been puzzled by the question: what makes political actors decide to 'go negative'? Do they attack their opponent out of strategic considerations or is the use of negative tactics rooted in their personality or ideology? They have found various explanatory factors for negative campaigning, but have not solved this puzzle yet (e.g. Skaperdas and Grofman 1995; Theilman and Wilhite 1998; Haynes and Rhine 1998). Finally, some scholars (Jamieson, Waldman and Sherr 2000; Freedman and Goldstein 1999; Sigelman and Kugler 2003; Fridkin and Kenney 2008) took it upon themselves to reflect on the concept of negative campaigning itself, and more specifically about what does it entail and whether and how it can be measured. Is what is negative not in the eye of the beholder?
The work on negative campaigning looks predominantly at the US case. This is likely to come from the hegemonic position of the US in the discipline of political science and the prominent role that election campaigns play in the US political arena. The length and the large amount of money spent in the US presidential election campaign exceeds campaign practices in all other countries, as far as we know. The prominent role of election campaigns in US politics make the study of election campaigns in the US a field of study in itself, unlike in many other countries. In addition, negative campaigning is commonly associated with US political culture; according to Scher (1997: 27) negativity is endemic in the US culture, 'as American as apple pie'. Assuming that the study of negative campaigning is limited to the context of US elections is, however, wrong. Negative campaigning has been studied in other countries than the US and outside the context of presidential and parliamentary elections, for instance in direct-democratic votes (e.g. Nai 2013, 2014; Nai and Sciarini 2015; Bernhard in this volume; Bol and Bohl in this volume), Buddhist Brahmanical law texts (Freiberger 2009) and in elections for supranational on non-governmental organisations, such as the 2012 election for Chair of the African Union (AU) Commission (Maru 2012) or the 2011 election for the FIFA presidency.
Table 1.1 provides an overview of research mentioning negative campaigning beyond the US case. The overview is most likely biased towards Western countries, as we are limited by our language abilities when listing studies written in a language other than English. It has to be noted that some studies listed do not provide empirical analyses, but are just descriptive case studies of specific elections or periods (e.g. Dolez and Laurent 2007; Hutcheson 2001; Kersting 2009; Taiwo 2013; Williams 2003). Furthermore, some studies listed do not have negative campaigning as their main focus, but touch upon its occurrence in a more general discussion of a specific case. Especially in emerging democracies such as, e.g. Cambodia, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia or Sierra Leone, the use of mud-slinging and attacks during election campaigns is discussed within a more general framework of electoral malpractices, corruption, violence and the quest for electoral integrity (e.g. Glover 2000; Harris 2003; Kagwanja 2009; Southall 1994; Sullivan 2005). Table 1.1 illustrates that although many studies outside the US case do refer to negative campaigning, research in countries outside Western democracies is less abundant, more recent, and primarily descriptive.
Regardless, the numerous and wide array of articles published, the field of negative campaigning is still in its infancy (Fridkin and Kenney 2012). One of its limitations is its predominant focus on the US and lack of comparative work (Fridkin and Kenney 2014; Walter 2012), which is a prerequisite to come to a general theory on negative campaigning and to be able to take contextual variables into account that are likely to affect the use and effectiveness of negative campaigning. However, before this endeavour of truly comparative work can be undertaken a great deal of path-clearing needs to be done. Scholars are likely to face various challenges, such as the extent to which the concepts, indicators and methods developed in the US can be used to study negative campaigning in other geographical contexts or in general whether the concepts, indicators and methods used to study attack behaviour in the present also capture attack behaviour in election campaigns of the past.
This edited volume brings together work of American and non-American scholars for the first time, examining negative campaigning and its effects in various (geographical) contexts. With this volume we aim not only to increase awareness among these two groups of scholars of each other's work and foster international collaboration, but identify and take away the hurdles for large cross-national and temporal studies in the future which could bring us closer to a general theory on negative campaigning.
Existing literature examines negative campaigning along the three core questions that dominate the field, namely what is negative campaigning and how can we measure it? What are the causes of 'going negative'? What are the effects of negative campaigning? These are the three questions that guide this volume and they will be further introduced in the next part of this chapter.
What is negative campaigning and how can we measure it?
How to define and measure the concept of negative campaigning is an essential but difficult task that scholars face. In the literature definitions of negative campaigning abound (see Table 1.2 for some examples), they differ in which aspects they emphasise, but are similar in their core principle: negative campaigning refers to the act of attacking the opponent on his programme, values, record or character instead of advocating his own programme, values, record or character (e.g. Benoit 1999; Geer 2006; Lau and Pomper 2004). This is called the directional dimension of the concept of negative campaigning. The way that most researchers define negative campaigning nowadays excludes an evaluative dimension, the notion that negative discourse is bad, unfair, dishonest and illegitimate in contrast to positive discourse that is good, fair, honest and legitimate (e.g. Mayer 1996; Jamieson 1992). These are considered to be empirical issues rather than matters of definition or judgement. However, this evaluative dimension is commonly used to describe negative campaigning by journalists, politicians, campaign managers and the public. To illustrate, a study among political consultants (Swint 1998) shows that the majority considers a campaign message to be negative only if it contains information that is untruthful, deceptive or irrelevant to the campaign. It does not matter to them whether it is an attack on the issues or traits of the candidate. To voters it does, they regard trait attacks as more unfair than issue attacks (Kahn and Kenney 1999a). The exclusion of these aspects from the definition of negative campaigning employed by scholars is why journalists, politicians, political consultants, voters and scholars often fail to understand each other when discussing negative campaigning. In addition, it helps to understand that what academics define as negative campaigning is not necessarily perceived as such by the public. This is, according to some scholars (see Sigelman and Kugler 2003), one of the reasons that research on negative campaigning effects is so inconclusive. However, the choice to exclude the evaluative dimension when defining negative campaigning is also most likely to be motivated by measurement issues. Defining negative campaigning solely on the basis of its directional dimension avoids subjective judgement, i.e., negative campaigning being in the eye of the beholder (Brooks 1997). Scholars do not only agree to the directional dimension of negative campaigning, they also concur on its function: negative campaigning is a means to diminish the positive feelings voters might have towards a political opponent (Lau et al. 2007).
As well as the decision of how to define negative campaigning, scholars also have to choose how to measure the phenomenon. These two decisions are not independent, as the chosen definition affects the measurement of negative campaigning. Scholars strive to guarantee the validity and reliability of their measurements. Negative campaigning can be gauged in various ways; two frequent methods used are systematic content analysis and survey analysis among voters. Each of these two methods requires researchers to make difficult decisions and face shortcomings.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
ContentsAbbreviations ix
List of Figures and Tables xiii
Contributors xix
Preface and Acknowledgements xxv
Chapter One – The War of Words: The Art of Negative Campaigning 1
Alessandro Nai and Annemarie S. Walter
PART ONE: DEFINING AND MEASURING NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING
Chapter Two – Functional Theory: Negative Campaigning in
Political Television Spots 35
William Benoit
Chapter Three – What is Negative about Negative Advertisements? 47
Barbara Allen and Daniel Stevens
Chapter Four – Comparing Measures of Campaign Negativity: Expert
Judgements, Manifestos, Debates, and Advertisements 63
François Gélineau and André Blais
Chapter Five – Attack, Support, and Coalitions in a Multiparty System:
Understanding Negative Campaigning in a Country with a Coalition
Government 75
Wouter de Nooy and Jan Kleinnijenhuis
PART TWO: THE CAUSES OF NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING
Chapter Six – Explaining the Use of Attack Behaviour in the Electoral
Battlefield: A Literature Overview 97
Annemarie S. Walter and Alessandro Nai
Chapter Seven – Negative Campaigning in Proportional Representation
(Yet Non-Coalition) Systems: Evidence from Switzerland 115
Damien Bol and Marian Bohl
Chapter Eight – Do Female Candidates Feel Compelled to Meet Sex-Role
Expectations or Are They as Tough as Men? A Content Analysis on the
Gender-Specific Use of Attacks in German Televised Debates 129
Jürgen Maier
Chapter Nine – Going Negative in Direct-Democratic Campaigns 147
Laurent Bernhard
Chapter Ten – When Do Parties Attack their Competitors? Negative
Campaigning in Austria, 2002–08 165
Martin Dolezal, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik and Wolfgang C. Müller
Chapter Eleven – The Strategy of Electoral Spots in Brazilian Presidential
Campaign: The Decision on When and Where to Broadcast an Attack 183
Felipe Borba
Chapter Twelve – Understanding Negativity Within and Among Different
Levels of Governments: Evidence from Turkey 201
Emre Toros
Chapter Thirteen – An OCEAN of Negativity: An Experimental
Assessment on Personality Traits and the Chances to ‘Go Dirty’
in Debates on Political Issues 217
Alessandro Nai, Valentina Holecz, Mario Marchesini,
Adrien Petitpas and Ben Sanogo-Willers
PART THREE: THE EFFECTS OF NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING
Chapter Fourteen – How Negative Campaigning Impinges on the Political
Game: A Literature Overview 235
Alessandro Nai and Annemarie S. Walter
Chapter Fifteen – The Effects of Advertising Tone on Information
Processing and Vote Choice 249
Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk
Chapter Sixteen – How the News Media Amplify Negative Messages 267
Travis N. Ridout and Annemarie S. Walter
Chapter Seventeen – When Do Attacks Work? Moderated Effects on Voters’
Candidate Evaluation in a Televised Debate 287
Wouter de Nooy and Jürgen Maier
Chapter Eighteen – Feeding the Negative? Referendum Votes in Ireland 307
Theresa Reidy and Jane Suiter
Chapter Nineteen – Where to Go From Here in the Study of Negative
Campaigning: The Comparative Challenge Ahead 327
Annemarie S. Walter and Alessandro Nai
Bibliography 335
Index 385