Evaluation Of Politicians Research Articles

The role of sexism in holding politicians accountable for sexual misconduct

Experimental research on the impact of the #MeToo movement on the evaluation of politicians has focused on how the impact is conditioned by partisan motivation. Beyond partisanship, gender identity and sexist attitudes may also act as a barrier to the success of #MeToo in challenging sexual misconduct in politics. In a conjoint experiment, we examine the extent to which sexism and gender identities (feminine/masculine identity and self-identified gender) condition how individuals respond to politicians accused of sexual misconduct. Respondents were shown two profiles of fictional British male candidates accused of sexual misconduct where the characteristics of the candidate and the scandal were (the number of allegations made, whether they apologized for the misconduct, their partisanship, and their stance on Brexit). We find that in general, more severe misconduct has a more negative impact on evaluations but that respondents who expressed attitudes consistent with hostile sexism were less likely to punish politicians for multiple offenses and less likely to reward a recognition of wrongdoing. Categorical gender identity, whether the respondent was a man or a woman, did not condition the electoral consequences of the scandal and a feminine and masculine identities moderated the impact of the political stance of the candidate. We conclude by discussing the importance of measuring gender attitudes, especially sexism and non-categorical measures of gender identity, in future studies on the political consequences of #MeToo.

Social Sharing of Political Disinformation: Effects of Tie Strength, Message Valence, and Corrective Information on Evaluations of Political Figures

Two studies investigated the effects of exposure to disinformation on citizens’ evaluation of politicians and the impact of corrections. Study 1 tested the roles of message valence and relational closeness of social media connections sharing disinformation. Study 2 examined whether corrections on social networking sites could mitigate the influence of disinformation. Results of the first study indicate a limited persuasive effect of disinformation, with negative disinformation being more entertaining but potentially less credible than positive disinformation. Effects of corrections in Study 2 were strong. There was no consistent influence of whether disinformation was shared by a close versus distant friend.

Trust Nobody: How Voters React to Conspiracy Theories

AbstractHow does exposure to conspiracy theories affects voters’ political attitudes? Using an online experiment among US subjects, we show that exposure to conspiracy theories decreases voters’ trust in the domestic informational environment. Subjects were exposed to conspiracy theories that are entirely unrelated to American domestic politics, which further underscores such narratives’ danger. However, we fail to reject the null hypothesis that voters do not weigh unrelated conspiracies in their evaluation of politicians’ performance and domestic political institutions. Overall, our findings illustrate that an informational environment permeated by conspiracy theories could impede the functioning of democracy by eroding trust in information providers and undermining the credibility of political information.

Trust in the Age of Social Media: Populist Politicians Seem More Authentic

The current debate about declining media trust is related not only to the disruptive changes in the media but also to the general decline of trust in institutions and politicians. This article combines the perspectives of media trust and political trust, by examining to what degree voters perceive politicians as “honest” in the contexts of various media and communication forms. Comparing the voters’ evaluation of politicians’ trustworthiness in talk shows, news interviews, speeches, flyers, social media, and opinion pieces makes it possible to measure the impact of media contexts on the level of trust. A key finding is that voters deem politicians as more honest in social media and opinion pieces, compared to talk shows and news interviews. Second, voters tend to evaluate politicians as more honest in the media formats they most often consume; a finding that confirms the virtuous circle theory; young people typically found politicians to be more dishonest in mainstream media compared to social media A third finding is that the voters tend to evaluate populist politicians as more authentic than traditional politicians and that female politicians were regarded as more authentic compared to male politicians. These findings have implications both for journalistic ideals for coverage of politics in and for political strategic communication.

How Citizens React to Political Scandals Surrounding Government Leaders: A Survey Study in Hong Kong

Public opinion research has suggested that the negative impact of scandals on public evaluation of the politicians involved is not always strong. Part of the reason is that people may hold varying perceptions regarding the nature, factuality, and importance of the scandals. According to the theory of motivated reasoning, people develop varying perceptions by processing information in ways that reconfirm their existing views. This study applies such insights to analyze how citizens react to political scandals surrounding government leaders in Hong Kong, where such scandals have arguably become increasingly prominent in recent years. This study constructs a theoretical model linking prior political attitudes, scandal-related perceptions, response evaluation, and evaluation of politicians. Analysis of survey data confirms most of the hypotheses in two cases. External efficacy and support for democracy substantially influence perceived factuality and acceptability of the scandals. Such perceptions shape people's evaluations of the responses by the government and the officials involved, which in turn affect evaluation of the officials.

The “Resurgent” Youth Voter in the United States

The 2008 U.S. Presidential election was a voting booth landslide for Democratic candidate Barack Obama over Republican candidate John McCain among 18-to-29 year old voters. This research analyzes 2008 National Election Pool exit poll data and seeks to explain why candidate Obama did so well in this election among this category of voters. The author finds that the evaluation of politicians' personalities is a critical part of explaining young voters' choice of candidate Obama as president. This research also found that young voters favored Obama because he was a Democratic Party candidate and liberal on political and social issues. In addition, the author finds some evidence of political parties reaching out to young voters as favorably affecting their voting choice which is important to analyze further given that both parties—in particular the Democratic Party—heavily favored the use of social media to do so. This cross-sectional analysis studies groups by age, party identification, and political ideology, in their general likelihood to support candidates in the 2008 presidential election. Lastly in analyzing young voter behavior from the 1992-2012 presidential elections, this research did not find evidence of a strong turnout of youth voters translating into an advantage for Democratic presidential candidates within that demographic group.

The Effect of Twitter Use on Politicians’ Credibility and Attitudes toward Politicians

This study examined how Korean young adults evaluate the use of Twitter by Korean politicians, perceive politicians’ credibility, and evaluate politicians who use Twitter, and the relationships among these 3 variables. Although respondents gave slightly positive, but nearly neutral, answers to questions regarding Twitter use, perceived credibility, and overall evaluation of politicians, the model represented by these 3 variables fits the responses of young Korean voters. In other words, this study shows that attitudes toward the use of Twitter by Korean politicians positively influenced perceived credibility, which, in turn, positively influenced attitudes toward Twitter-using politicians. In addition, attitudes toward Twitter use directly influenced attitudes toward politicians in a positive way. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in this article.

When political expertise moderates the impact of scandals on young adults' judgments of politicians

This short note investigated how expertise in a political scandal moderates whether the activation of this scandal produces assimilation in the evaluation of politicians in general and contrast in the evaluation of specific politicians. It was hypothesized that participants with a rich knowledge about the scandal would display the assimilation and contrast effects whereas those with a poorer knowledge would not. Results tended to support this prediction, suggesting that the impact on judgment of a specific context depends on the amount of knowledge participants possess about this context. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Wählen als Gruppenerfahrung?

Lazarsfeld et al. have formulated a voting model, which is based on the influences of group embedding. This essentially means that people adapt their voting behaviour according to their social embeddings. However, the individualisation thesis has recently claimed that group embeddings have become looser and more often contradictory. Can the empiric findings of Lazarsfeld therefore still be valid? This analysis, which is based on a panel study on the Styrian Local Elections 2000, sets out to test the applicability of this voting model. It can be shown clearly, that people are still more likely to vote for the parties, which are popular within their social surroundings. However, when put under cross pressures, people tend to change their party preferences, whereas relevant cross pressures are not only resulting from social embeddings, but also from the evaluation of politicians, issues and so on.

The Theory of Political Ambiguity

The ambiguity of politicians' words and actions is sometimes attributed to rational seeking of support or votes. Such an explanation must clearly specify the preferences and decision processes among constituents and the calculations by politicians which make ambiguity seem attractive.The leading effort of this sort is Shepsle's lottery theory, in which politicians take probabilistic stands on issues in order to appeal to risk acceptant, expected-utility-maximizing voters. But the lottery theory suffers from several difficulties. Its predictions are not strong; it can at best account for only certain kinds of observed ambiguous behavior; its main condition for the prediction of ambiguity—risk acceptance among constituents—may not be met; and the expected utility model of risky decision making is not well supported by available evidence.An emphasis allocation theory is suggested as an alternative. According to it, ambiguity involves an effort to reduce the salience of conflictual matters (such as specific policy alternatives) in the evaluation of politicians, so that attention will be paid to consensual appeals (peace, prosperity, honesty in government).