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What explains the type of electoral campaign run by political parties? We provide a new perspective on cam- paigns 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...
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... (Boas and Hidalgo, 2011;Di Tella and Franceschelli, 2011;Durante and Knight, 2012;Gehlbach and Sonin, 2014;Stanig, 2015;Qian and Yanagizawa-Drott, 2017;Lai, 2025) and contributes to the burgeoning body of work on the influence of autocracies abroad (DellaVigna et al., 2014;Peisakhin and Rozenas, 2018;Bail et al., 2020). Finally, this study joins a growing body of scholarship incorporating automated sentiment analysis into applied research (Crabtree et al., 2020;Lajevardi, 2021;Osmundsen et al., 2021). ...
Can autocratic governments influence foreign media? This study finds that political pressures from autocrats can motivate the media in democracies to tone down their negativity. Exploiting China's sudden expulsion of American journalists in March 2020, I show that US news outlets targeted by the expulsion adopted a more positive tone toward China in their subsequent coverage, compared to outlets that were not targeted. Further analyses confirm that the observed pattern is not due to unexpelled outlets presenting more negative coverage of China, and that the expulsion has similar chilling effects on media outlets that could have been affected. The findings highlight the overt threats autocracies pose to media freedom, a fundamental pillar of democratic societies.
... Indeed, political campaigns have long been recognized for their intentional use of emotional appeals to sway public opinion and behavior (e.g., Brader, 2006;Crabtree, Golder, Gschwend, & Indriđason, 2020). Increasing evidence suggests that political movements often rely heavily on negative emotional appeals (Gerstlé & Nai, 2019). ...
... While there is no dearth of research on the consequences of emotional appeals in electoral processes and the use of such appeals among high-profile politicians during election campaigns (e.g., Brader, 2005;Crabtree et al., 2020;Jones, 2003;Marcus, 2000;Widmann, 2021), empirical research on how members of parliament make strategic use of emotive rhetoric during legislative debates remains fairly scant. Existing research on emotive content in politicians' day-to-day work in legislatures has largely focused on the role and implications of negative emotions and attack behaviour among political actors during campaign periods (Lau et al., 2007;Poljak, 2022;Walter & Vliegenthart, 2010). ...
... Rheault et al. (2016) posit that incumbent parties have been generally more positive than opposition parties in the United Kingdom over the past decades. Crabtree et al. (2020) argue that because incumbent parties seek to prime positivity among voters, they use more positive sentiments in campaign messages compared to opposition parties. Extending this body of work, Müller (2022) shows that incumbent parties express more positive emotions than opposition parties only when discussing the past and present, but not when addressing the future. ...
... These results underscore the need for greater scholarly attention to the communication styles of representatives in legislatures. Advocating a shift in empirical research from the question of 'what' to 'how', recent studies have emphasized the importance of moving beyond merely examining the content of elite communication to focusing more on how elite messages are constructed and delivered (Crabtree et al., 2020;Osnabrügge et al., 2021). Given the relative effectiveness of elite cues that contain highly emotive content (Westen, 2008), legislators wishing to maximize their influence in electoral politics may pay careful attention to emotional displays that can help broaden the reach of their messages. ...
The use of emotive rhetoric in legislative debates has attracted increasing scholarly attention in political science research. Building on recent scholarship, I examine the conditions under which emotive rhetoric dominates legislative speeches in the UK House of Commons between 2001 and 2015. By coding nearly half a million legislative speeches according to Ekman's six basic emotions-anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise-I argue that members of parliament (MPs) strategically use emotions in their speeches to maximize their influence and visibility. The findings reveal modest but discernible effects related to electoral safety, seniority, and party status. Specifically , the results show that speeches by electorally vulnerable, junior, and opposition MPs contain higher levels of emotive language compared to those by other MPs. Notably , despite considerable similarity in the correlates of individual emotion categories, there are also significant differences. For example, opposition MPs and electorally vulnerable MPs rely more heavily on negative emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, and sadness than government MPs and electorally safer MPs. While junior MPs use fear, sadness, and surprise at higher rates compared to their senior counterparts, they are statistically indistinguishable from senior MPs in their use of anger, disgust, and joy. Overall, these results underscore the need for greater scholarly attention to the communication styles of representatives in legislatures and emphasize the importance of examining the nuanced strategies behind the use of different types of emotions.
... We observed, but did not systematically analyze, a difference between politicians where (anti-establishment) politicians at the poles of the leftright spectrum appear to bash bureaucratic entities more frequently than their more "moderate" counterparts. Looking at the extant research on political discourse during election campaigns, measures on ideological intensity produce mixed results with regard to the valence politicians attach to their discourse about one another (Crabtree et al., 2020;Elmelund-Praestekaer, 2010). As such, it is worth addressing in future research how different attributes of a politician-including, but not limited to their ideology-influence the valence of the frames they utter. ...
Politicians frequently voice criticisms vis‐à‐vis bureaucracy, its organizations, and its employees. Previous studies point at the negative impact of this “bureaucratic bashing” on public sector morale, recruitment, retention, and citizen perceptions. Yet, systematic evidence on bashing remains sparse, with even less known about its counterpart: bureaucratic praising. This article aims to fill this gap by conceptualizing both phenomena as forms of framing, by distinguishing macro‐, meso‐, and micro‐levels, and by innovatively using organizational reputation theory to develop a multidimensional framework for the systematic analysis of bureaucratic framing. Empirically, we apply this framework to a novel dataset of 70,853 hand‐coded tweets posted by 33 Dutch politicians, covering a wide range of ideological viewpoints. We find that politicians do not so much frame the civil service performatively, in terms of being lazy (or hard working), but rather bash or praise bureaucratic organizations for their (im)morality, whereby four moral subdimensions can be identified.
... Emotional appeals have been measured in different ways, also depending on the respective modality of the communicative text under investigation. The methods employed include manual content analysis of text (e.g., Bil-Jaruzelska & Monzer, 2022) or audiovisual content (e.g., Brader, 2006;), crowd coding of facial expressions (Bossetta & Schmøkel, 2023), sentiment analysis (Choi et al., 2021;Crabtree et al., 2020), word embeddings and neural network classifiers (Widman, 2022), and computer vision to capture emotional expression in human faces in pictures (Bossetta & Schmøkel, 2023;Choi et al., 2021). Importantly, what the majority of these methodological approaches have in common is that they try to assess the emotions that the author of the text, video, or image in question aims to induce in their audience. ...
... This illustrates that it is necessary for research to distinguish emotional appeals in communicative texts (e.g., political ads, speeches, social media posts, or poster campaigns) from the reactions these appeals provoke in viewers (Brader, 2006;Bil-Jaruzelska & Monzer, 2022;Bossetta & Schmøkel, 2022). While emotional content utilized as part of persuasive strategies by political/societal actors or groups may invoke corresponding perceived (elicited) emotions in media users during and after exposure (Crabtree et al., 2020), this is not necessarily the case: emotional appeals in campaign communication do not inevitably lead to an increase in perceived corresponding emotions in viewers (e.g., heightened feelings of pride after exposure to a positive message). Instead, they may even lower emotional reactions particularly for those viewers who do not agree with the original message, leading to a backlash effect (e.g., Marquart et al., 2022). ...
The entry discusses emotional appeals as part of persuasive strategies by political and societal actors or groups in an attempt to influence audience behavior. It provides an overview of relevant research areas with a special emphasis on emotional appeals on social media, summarizes methodological approaches to the detection and measurement of emotional appeals, and highlights the need to distinguish between emotional appeals in a communicative text (be that words, imagery, or audiovisual content) and emotional reactions in the audience.
... 9 Opposition parties that lack incumbency perks of office and policy success throughout the electoral cycle find themselves in a loss situation as proximity to elections increases. This makes them particularly prone to risktaking by employing different strategies at elections (e.g., Crabtree et al., 2020) and potentially attacking retrospective decisions taken by governing and mainstream parties that enjoyed gains throughout the electoral cycle (Müller, 2022). Furthermore, parties that are losing in public approval polls might be more willing to engage in negative campaigning regardless of its potential backlash effect (Skaperdas and Grofman, 1995). ...
Studies examining parties' attack behaviour, also called negative campaigning, largely neglect temporal dynamics. Therefore, this paper examines how the electoral cycle, the period between two elections, impacts parties' attack behaviour in parliaments. We argue that parties attack all the time but that the (i) level, (ii) type, and (iii) nature of attacks are affected by the electoral cycle as parties adapt their objectives. Analysing longitudinal data on parties' attacks in the parliaments of Belgium, Croatia, and the UK (2010-2020), we find that when elections draw closer parties' use of attacks, trait attacks, and uncivil attacks increases. We also find support for the notion that not all parties' attack behaviour is equally impacted by the electoral cycle, as parties differ in sensitivity to the electoral cycle based on risk acceptance. Overall, the impact of the electoral cycle on parties' strategic choices in general, and attack behaviour specifically, should not be ignored.
... Emotions play a vital role in campaigns, as they are key in processing political information and thereby affect voters' attitude formation and voting decisions (Brader & Marcus, 2013;Crabtree et al., 2020;Nai & Maier, 2021;Weeks, 2015). They are evoked through the ways in which parties say something: how they frame their message. ...
... Fear appeals "are very common in modern electoral campaigns" (Nai, 2018, p. 225). Especially extremist parties use negative emotions like anger, fear, or anxiety in their messages (Crabtree et al., 2020;Widmann, 2019), preferring fear to enthusiasm in campaign communications (Nai & Maier, 2021). Nai (2018, p. 241) sees negative and fear-fueled campaigns as "detrimental forces in modern democracies, fostering depressed turnout, cynicism, apathy, and a gloomier public mood." ...
... Negative emotions: Fear and anger are the most prevalent of negative emotions that campaign communications may seek to evoke (e.g., Crabtree et al., 2020;Widmann, 2019). Following Bobba (2019), fear refers to messages presenting explicit elements related to alarm, anxiety, apprehension, confusion, nervousness, panic, pessimism, worry, danger, and unease, among others. ...
... 2 Materials and methods 2.1 Central eastern RRPs as transmitters of emotions: theoretical considerations Increasing attention has been paid to the research of emotions in politics (Lynggaard, 2019(Lynggaard, : p. 1201(Lynggaard, -1202. It is important not only what politicians say and to whom they address their message; the emotional style matters, too (Crabtree et al., 2020). Emotions and structural conditions play crucial roles in mobilising radical right voters (Kriesi, 2014;Salmela and von Scheve, 2017) and radical right online communication in general (Gerbaudo et al., 2023;Tuomola and Wahl-Jorgensen, 2023). ...
The paper examines how the radical right parties´ leaders work with emotions while addressing their voters and sympathizers on Twitter/X social media. We focus on the “supply side” on the level of leaders´ discourses. The goal is to demonstrate how they work with emotions, especially those of fear and anger. The context represents Russian aggression against Ukraine, because, typically, circumstances of a crisis bolster the ability of radical right leaders to use emotional rhetoric devices. Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia represent three particularly relevant and distinctive cases among the CEE countries according to the relevance, relative strength, and stability of radical right parties. We examined social media, particularly Twitter, since it is one of the most prominent tools of political communication today, especially for populists. We collected the data of all Tweets between February 24, 2022 and February 24, 2023. We combined a systematic quantitative content analysis with a more in-depth qualitative analysis of the key characteristics of the discursive construction of the two most salient emotions: anger and fear. We did not confirm the assumption that they would utilise the war in Ukraine since most tweets addressed issues related to domestic politics. The research, however, confirmed that despite differences, anger and fear play a substantial role in the emotional repertoire and represent necessary rhetorical devices. Our findings concur with the literature on radical right populism and its employment of emotional discourse. We found that even a crisis in international politics has been reframed primarily as a domestic issue and integrated into classical discursive practices.
... Die Kausalkette, die Programminhalte und Wählerwahrnehmungen verbindet, ist zudem in der Literatur gut dokumentiert. So ist die Sprache von Parteiprogrammen sorgfältig für Kommunikationszwecke konzipiert (Crabtree et al. 2020), KandidatInnen nutzen das Programm ihrer Partei als Leitfaden für den Wahlkampf (Eder et al. 2017), Medien greifen Programminhalte auf (Helbling und Tresch 2011) und Wahlversprechen werden in der Regel in politische Maßnahmen umgesetzt (Thomson et al. 2017). Es gibt also guten Grund zu der Annahme, dass Manifestopositionen ihren Weg über Wahrnehmungen in das Stimmverhalten finden. ...
********** ENGLISH: This chapter analyzes issue voting in the German federal election of 2021. A general model of “negative voting” is used to explain centrifugal tendencies in party support (following Weber 2021 in Electoral Studies). Results show that voters evaluate party platforms primarily on the basis of issue positions that they dislike. If the current party system remains relatively cohesive, it is due to factors other than policy. ********** GERMAN: Die Bundestagswahl 2021 ergab eine deutliche Auffächerung der Parteienunterstützung. Doch spiegelt das Stimmverhalten auch eine entsprechende Befürwortung divergierender Standpunkte zu politischen Sachfragen wider? Eine solche Verbindung von Wähler- und Parteipositionen wird oft als Anzeichen funktionierender Repräsentation gewertet. Dieses Kapitel zeigt indes, dass sich die Wahlentscheidung besonders nach solchen Parteipositionen richtet, die einer WählerIn zuwider sind, und nur wenig nach Positionen, die der WählerIn zusagen. Die Wählergunst ist also überwiegend durch Vermeidung unliebsamer Politik geprägt denn durch die Befürwortung subjektiv erstrebenswerter Gesellschaftsentwürfe—ein typisches Muster „negativen“ Verhaltens. Die Bedeutung dieses Befundes wird kritisch diskutiert. Insbesondere zeigt sich, dass der verbliebene Zusammenhalt des deutschen Parteiensystems auf anderweitige Faktoren zurückzuführen ist, welche der negativen Sachfragenorientierung entgegenwirken.
... We find that the strategic constraints identified by Crabtree et al. (2020) hold: incumbents are generally more positive than the opposition, while extreme and populist parties are more negative. We also find that the government and opposition are closest in terms of sentiment in electoral campaigns, with governing parties exhibiting a more negative tone than usual, while opposition parties usually become more positive. ...
... Therefore, it is unsurprising that political actors deliberately modulate their tone depending on the prevailing political circumstances. Crabtree et al. (2020) were among the first to investigate the patterns of negative and positive tones in partisan campaign communication across countries, looking at electoral manifestos from eight European democracies between 1980 and 2012. Based on retrospective voting theories, they find that governing parties, particularly prime minister (PM) parties, communicate more positively and that extremist parties are the most negative. ...
... At the same time, the opposition and extremists want to portray the state of the world more negatively and highlight a need for change. However, Crabtree et al. (2020) also find that parties in democracies are limited in their depictions: objective economic conditions moderate the effects of political variables. When the economy performs poorly, all partiesincluding incumbentscommunicate with a greater negative sentiment. ...
It is well known that politicians speak differently when campaigning. The shadow of elections may affect candidates' change in tone during campaigns. However, to date, we lack a systematic study of the changes in communication patterns between campaign and non-campaign periods. In this study, we examine the sentiment expressed in 4.3 million tweets posted by members of national parliaments in the EU27 from 2018 to 2020. Our results show that (1) the opposition, even populists and Eurosceptics, send more positive messages during campaigns, (2) parties trailing in the polls communicate more negatively, and (3) that the changes are similar in national and European elections. These findings show the need to look beyond campaign times to understand parties' appeals and highlight the promises of social media data to move beyond traditional analyses of manifestos and speeches.
