Negative Campaigning Research Articles

ПОВЫШЕНИЕ УЗНАВАЕМОСТИ БРЕНДА НА ПРИМЕРЕ ПРОДУКЦИИ АГРОПРОМЫШЛЕННОГО ХОЛДИНГА «МИРАТОРГ»

The article discusses the tools to increase brand awareness on the example of the products of the Miratorg Agro-industrial complex. The analysis of the use of SMM marketing, promotion of the company's website, collaboration with bloggers, brand ambassadors, negative advertising and changes to the company's retail stores is given.

ECONOMIC JUSTIFICATION FOR THE USE OF INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN TRANSPORT

The article identifies the relevance of the introduction of innovative modes of transport, in particular, cars running on hydrogen fuel. Publications related to this issue are analyzed. Based on the SWOT analysis, a scientific approach to assessing the competitiveness of innovative modes of transport has been formulated. Among the factors of internal strengths it is proposed to consider such characteristics as: the level of competitiveness of fuel prices, breadth of consumer coverage, consumer demand, high production capacity, global supply chain, innovative organizational structure, possible human resources and others. Among the factors of internal weaknesses it is suggested to consider: insufficient level of market share, dependence on suppliers, unavailability of funds needed to change strategy, loss of depth and flexibility of management, negative advertising, problems with market capture, etc. External favorable factors include: business expansion, weakening of restrictive legislation, favorable changes in exchange rates, growing concern about environmental pollution, the growth of countries with favorable development opportunities, serving additional consumer groups and others. External threats include: threats from competitors in different countries, price regulation, the threat of economic downturn, adverse demographic trends, rising commodity costs, adverse exchange rate changes, changing tastes and needs of consumers. It is proposed to assess the development opportunities of a particular subject of development, taking into account the different degrees of probability of their formation and impact on the results of the business entity. It is proposed to separately assess the level of threats and the integrated indicator "threat / opportunity". A comparative analysis of competitive advantages and disadvantages for traditional cars, electric cars and cars on hydrogen fuel.

A campanha negativa como estratégia eleitoral na perspectiva dos consultores políticos: quem atacar, quando atacar e como atacar

Abstract This article analyzes negative advertising as an electoral strategy. The objective is to assess three basic questions: who to attack, when to attack and how to attack. To do so, we conducted a research survey with a sample of Brazilian political consultants in order to understand how negative campaign strategies vary according to the circumstances. The results indicate that the decision to attack the opponent should be used in the final stage of the campaign, focusing on the opponent’s proposals and preferably via social networks. The decision about who to attack is influenced by the expectation of victory and positioning in the polls, but the dynamics of voting intentions change the target of the attacks and the intensity with which negative advertising should be used.

Campaign Finance Transparency Affects Legislators’ Election Outcomes and Behavior

AbstractDo audits by executive agencies impact the behavior of those audited? Does revealing negative information about legislators affect electoral results and behavior? Institutions that encourage transparency, such as campaign finance disclosure, influence mass and elite behavior. Campaign finance transparency provides information to voters during legislative campaigns about the character of candidates, and this information affects voter and legislator behavior. The US Federal Election Commission conducted random audits of 10% of US House members in the 1970s. This FEC program is the only randomized experiment a US agency has conducted on federal legislators and their electorates. We find that audited legislators were more likely to retire and faced more competitive reelections relative to the control group, an effect that is amplified among incumbents whose audits revealed campaign finance violations. Further, campaign finance scandals are associated with lower incumbent vote shares and approval and more negative advertisements in the 2000s.

Etiology of Smoking Tendency: A Qualitative Examination of the Experiences of Young Smokers

Etiology of Smoking Tendency: A Qualitative Examination of the Experiences of Young Smokers

Telescope Matching for Reducing Model Dependence in the Estimation of the Effects of Time-Varying Treatments: An Application to Negative Advertising

Abstract Time-varying treatments are prevalent in the social sciences. For example, a political campaign might decide to air attack ads against an opponent, but this decision to go negative will impact polling and, thus, future campaign strategy. If an analyst naively applies methods for point exposures to estimate the effect of earlier treatments, this would lead to post-treatment bias. Several existing methods can adjust for this type of time-varying confounding, but they typically rely on strong modelling assumptions. In this paper, we propose a novel two-step matching procedure for estimating the effect of two-period treatments. This method, telescope matching, reduces model dependence without inducing post-treatment bias by using matching with replacement to impute missing counterfactual outcomes. It then employs flexible regression models to correct for bias induced by imperfect matches. We derive the asymptotic properties of the telescope matching estimator and provide a consistent estimator for its variance. We illustrate telescope matching by investigating the effect of negative campaigning in US Senate and gubernatorial elections. Using the method, we uncover a positive effect on turnout of negative ads early in a campaign and a negative effect of early negativity on vote shares.

National Insights and Youth Political Attitudes in Rural Lampung Against Negative Campaigns

Indonesia is a heterogeneous country that requires an inclusive and tolerant attitude to live in harmony. However, with the implementation of direct elections in Indonesia, there are many hoaxes and black campaigns through the mass media. The purpose of this study is to examine the national insight and political attitudes of rural youth in social media-based election campaigns. The method used is in-depth interviews through structured focus group discussions (FGD) with young students in rural South Lampung. The results showed that Lampung rural youth realized the importance of Pancasila as a unifying tool for the nation. Furthermore, the youth of Lampung strongly disapprove of hoaxes and black campaigns in the general election. This finding is very important to maintain harmony in Indonesia and can serve as a model Indonesia merupakan negara heterogen yang membutuhkan sikap inklusif dan toleran agar dapat hidup rukun. Namun, dengan diterapkannya pemilihan langsung di Indonesia, banyak bermunculan hoax dan kampanye hitam melalui media massa. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengkaji wawasan kebangsaan dan sikap politik pemuda pedesaan dalam kampanye pemilu berbasis media sosial. Metode yang digunakan adalah wawancara mendalam melalui diskusi kelompok terfokus (FGD) terstruktur dengan mahasiswa generasi muda di pedesaan Lampung Selatan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pemuda pedesaan Lampung menyadari pentingnya Pancasila sebagai alat pemersatu Bangsa. Lebih lanjut, pemuda Lampung sangat tidak setuju dengan hoaks dan kampanye hitam dalam pemilihan umum. Temuan ini sangat penting untuk menjaga kerukunan di Indonesia dan dapat menjadi model bagi daerah lain di Indonesia.

The Influence of the Negative Campaign on Facebook: The Role of Political Actors and Citizens in the Use of Criticism and Political Attack in the 2016 Spanish General Elections

Social media has become an essential platform in the field of digital political communication. In the context of accommodating electoral campaigns to digital media and the absence of barriers to freedom of expression existing on these platforms, attacks on political rivals and negative campaigns are increasing on social media. This research analyzes the use of criticism on Facebook by political actors during the electoral campaign and citizens’ reactions to these messages. The sample (n = 601) contains the publications disseminated on Facebook by political parties and leaders during the electoral campaign of the general elections of 26 June 2016 in Spain. The results show that criticism is an emerging resource in the digital communication strategy of political actors, mainly used by the opposition parties and their candidates, who focus their attacks on the party and leader of the Government. Attacks are mainly focused on the professional side of their rivals, although they also give a central role to emotions. Citizens are attracted to these attacks and are prone to interact with posts that include this resource.

Reexamining the Effects of Electoral Competition on Negative Advertising

Prior research suggests that campaigns become more negative when the election environment becomes more competitive. Much of this research suffers from data and design limitations. I replicate and extend prior analyses using a much larger number of cases. Using advertising data drawn from 374 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns contested from 2000 through 2018, I find evidence that electoral competition encourages candidates to engage in more negative advertising campaigns and that incumbency status conditions these effects. Incumbents of both parties use more negative messaging strategies as competition increases. The effects of competition among challengers and open seat candidates is mixed. These results add to what we know about campaign advertising behavior and suggest that researchers should take care to avoid ignoring important contextual factors that underlie candidates’ strategic choices.

Gender differences in politicians’ Facebook campaigns: Campaign practices, campaign issues and voter engagement

The study pursues a line of inquiry into male and female candidates’ political campaign strategies on Facebook, drawing a sample from the 2019 National elections in Greece. The findings suggest that both genders disseminate one-way campaign information and address a wider palette of political issues than the ones typically associated with their gender. Some stereotypical patterns regarding traits and issue expertise seem to persist; females are more expressive in terms of visual content and use of emoticons, choose personalization and dialogic communication more frequently and emphasize culture and women’s issues. Men are more often associated with negative campaigning, prioritize “masculine” issues such as employment and foreign affairs, and generate a greater level of user engagement. The results indicate that social media do not constitute an alternative communication channel that equalizes existing power structures. Instead, they seem to reflect the status quo and may hinder women candidates’ efforts to gain visibility and communicate with the public.

When conflict fuels negativity. A large-scale comparative investigation of the contextual drivers of negative campaigning in elections worldwide

We investigate the contextual conditions under which campaigns in elections worldwide are fought “negatively”, that is, rely on attacks against political opponents. We test the overarching intuition that societal, political, and cultural conflicts in the country are associated with greater negativity in election campaigns; conflicts, we argue, sow political discord. We test this intuition via a large-scale comparative dataset that covers 136 national elections across more than 100 countries worldwide that happened between June 2016 and March 2020, based on the expert judgments of more than 2000 scholars - to the best of our knowledge, the single largest comparative dataset about the content of elections worldwide. Our results show that countries in which elections are fought under a majoritarian or plurality rule tend to witness higher campaign negativity, and so are countries characterized by higher income inequality, deeper ethnic fragmentation, and higher individualism. Similarly, election competitiveness and ideological diversity of competing actors both tend to be associated with a greater use of negative campaigning, and so is news media preference for sensationalism.

Why Are Patients Switching from Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate/Emtricitabine (Truvada) to Tenofovir Alafenamide/Emtricitabine (Descovy) for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis?

Safety differences between tenofovir alafenamide/emtricitabine (TAF) and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/emtricitabine (TDF/FTC)-formulated pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) appear to have little clinical significance for most PrEP users. Furthermore, generic TDF-formulated PrEP is projected to decrease the price of PrEP. Thus, efforts to shift PrEP users to TAF-formulated PrEP should be considered in light of their potential to undermine efforts to scale-up PrEP nationally. Data are taken from Together 5,000, a US national cohort study predominantly composed of cisgender gay and bisexual men. In 2019-2020, 5034 participants completed their 24-month assessment, which measured whether participants were switching from TDF (Truvada) to TAF (Descovy) for PrEP, and why. Of those reporting PrEP-use (n = 1009), 277 reported using Descovy for PrEP, and 223 provided a reason for switching to Descovy. A content analysis was used to code participant's reasons for switching. Over half (56%) of participants reported that their doctor recommended switching to Descovy. Without mentioning a provider recommendation, 32% of participants reported that perceived improved safety of Descovy, compared with Truvada, motivated their decision to change their prescription. Other factors cited included the smaller size of the pill and "newness" of Descovy. Further, several participants mentioned negative advertising about Truvada as rationale for switching. Although scientific consensus supports the safety of both TDF/FTC and TAF, our results suggest that current messaging through physicians and other sources have emphasized superior safety of TAF-implying that TDF/FTC may not be safe in the long term. Efforts to shift users onto TAF may undermine public perception of TDF-formulated PrEP.

National Presidential Election Turnout: 1952 to 2020

In an era when elections scholars expected American national presidential election turnout to increase, its steep, prolonged post-1960 decline sparked deep concern and generated an avalanche of individual-level analyses searching for explanation. The post-1960 decline, however, no longer dominates turnout’s trajectory; it has been on the upswing since 1996. This complicates our understanding as we have yet to settle on turnout’s description, much less its explanation. Here we introduce the first political science-oriented, multivariate modeling of American national presidential election turnout. Our results offer a mix of important confirmatory and original findings. First, we discover that modeling turnout’s decline as a post-1968 secular disturbance reveals turnout’s expected steady increase across the modern era (1952–2020). Second, we show that turnout’s increase can be traced to increased polarization working its influence indirectly through the direct, positive turnout affects of voter external efficacy and negative presidential campaign advertising (1960–2012).

Targeting Reputation: A New Vector for Attacks to Critical Infrastructures

A substantial portion of critical information infrastructures in advanced economies comprises former public utilities, which in the 1980s/90s were fully or partially privatized, a change justified mainly on economic efficiency grounds. This entailed that these utility companies had to compete in the free market, thus being exposed to the same risks/opportunities as private companies. Much like businesses in other industrial sectors, utility companies have increasingly joined social media over the last decade, as ‘digital’ visibility through social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram has become fundamental. The new (privatized) utilities have relied on marketing and ad campaigns to promote their business and generate revenues. Trust and reputation for companies are primary resources to attract new customers and/or keep old ones, especially for companies with a wide customer base. Trust and reputation are difficult assets to preserve on social media, as they can be subject to negative attacks, including fake campaigns. This paper is a probe that explores a potential attack vector to critical infrastructures via weakening customer and investor trust in (the now private) utilities by blemishing CII-utilities’ reputation on social media. More specifically, the paper considers the possibility of attacks that have the potential to undermine the stability and reliability of critical infrastructures and advances a preliminary justification of why that may happen. We do this by looking at cases in which negative social media campaigns with fake content have been successfully implemented via digital tools.

Are Political Attacks a Laughing Matter? Three Experiments on Political Humor and the Effectiveness of Negative Campaigning

Research on the effectiveness of negative campaigning offers mixed results. Negative messages can sometimes work to depress candidate evaluations, but they can also backfire against the attacker. In this article, we examine how humor can help mitigate the unintended effects of negative campaigning using data from three experimental studies in the United States and the Netherlands. Our results show that (1) political attacks combined with “other-deprecatory humor” (i.e., jokes against the opponents) are less likely to backfire against the attacker and can even increase positive evaluations of this latter—especially when the attack is perceived as amusing. At the same time and contrary to what we expected, (2) humor does not blunt the attack: humorous attacks are not less effective against the target than serious attacks. All in all, these results suggest that humor can be a good strategy for political attacks: jokes reduce harmful backlash effects against the attacker, and humoros attacks remain just as effective as humorless ones. When in doubt, be funny. All data and materials are openly available for replication.

Analisis Strategi Perlawanan Indonesia Dalam Diskriminasi Kelapa Sawit Oleh Uni Eropa

This study aims to determine how Indonesia's resistance strategy in oil palm discrimination by the European Union. Researchers use the perspective of liberalism and idealism, and the basic assumptions are peace and war avoidance. The results show that EU discrimination against Indonesian CPO products requires players in the palm oil industry and the Indonesian government to work together to design and develop intensive diplomatic efforts aimed at the EU government and its people. The Indonesian government's efforts to oppose the EU's incentives for the use of palm oil are 1) filing claims and challenges against the EU incentives to reject palm oil restrictions, 2) The Indonesian government emphasizes the importance of distributing Indonesian palm oil globally 3) Lobbying the leadership of the APEC organization to ensure the safety of Indonesia's palm oil industry 4) Undertake Join Capaign efforts by the world's largest palm oil producer to protect the stability of palm oil shipments and take action against negative campaigns against palm oil, and unite voices in drafting an agreement to jointly support industrial development palm oil to be more resilient against the global backlash on palm oil.

South Africa’s 2016 municipal elections How the ANC and DA leveraged Twitter to Capture the Urban Vote

This paper focuses on how South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), and main opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), leveraged microblogging site Twitter. This was part of their urban election campaign arsenal in the 2016 local government elections (LGE) to promote party-political digital issue ownership within an urban context. Using each party’s corpus of 2016 election-related tweets and election manifestos, this three-phased grounded theory study found that each party used Twitter as a digital political communication platform to communicate their election campaigns. The DA notably leveraged the social networking site more for intense focused messaging of its negative campaign against the ANC while simultaneously promoting positive electoral messages around its own core issues and metro (urban) mayoral candidates. Furthermore, battleground metros were identified, narrow-cast and subsequently audience.segmented by the party in Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, Tshwane (in Gauteng) and Nelson Mandela Bay (in the Eastern Cape). This led to an emphasised campaign to either activate the party’s own urban support base and/or to suppress the ANC’s turnout in these highly-contested areas. The results of this study further indicate that the ANC and DA both used Twitter to claim explicit and implicit digital party-political issue ownership in the 2016 LGE.

Social Advertising Effectiveness in Driving Action: A Study of Positive, Negative and Coactive Appeals on Social Media.

Background: Social media offers a cost-effective and wide-reaching advertising platform for marketers. Objectively testing the effectiveness of social media advertising remains difficult due to a lack of guiding frameworks and applicable behavioral measures. This study examines advertising appeals’ effectiveness in driving engagement and actions on and beyond social media platforms. Method: In an experiment, positive, negative and coactive ads were shared on social media and promoted for a week. The three ads were controlled in an A/B testing experiment to ensure applicable comparison. Measures used included impressions, likes, shares and clicks following the multi-actor social media engagement framework. Data were extracted using Facebook ads manager and website data. Significance was tested through a series of chi-square tests. Results: The promoted ads reached over 21,000 users. Significant effect was found for appeal type on engagement and behavioral actions. The findings support the use of negative advertising appeals over positive and coactive appeals. Conclusion: Practically, in the charity and environment context, advertisers aiming to drive engagement on social media as well as behavioral actions beyond social media should consider negative advertising appeals. Theoretically, this study demonstrates the value of using the multi-actor social media engagement framework to test advertising appeal effectiveness. Further, this study proposes an extension to evaluate behavioral outcomes.

“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”: A Panel Study on the Reciprocal Effects of Negative, Dirty, and Positive Campaigning on Political Distrust

ABSTRACT Negative campaigning is a central concept in political communication research. However, most conceptualizations of the term are rather broad, summarizing all kinds of negativity such as substantial criticism and offensive behaviors. In this paper, we distinguish negative, dirty, and positive campaigning. While negative campaigning refers to critical, civil, and non-disrespectful arguments, dirty campaigning, by contrast, is defined as “below-the-belt” attacks including incivility and unfair campaign methods. In a two-wave Austrian national election panel study, we tested the reciprocal effects of perceived negative, dirty, and positive campaigning on distrust in politicians. Using auto-regressive models, we found that perceived dirty campaigning positively predicted distrust in politicians over time. Furthermore, distrust in politicians led to increased perceptions of dirty campaigning over time, suggesting a reciprocal relationship. However, perceived negative and positive campaigning were unrelated to distrust in politicians. Theoretical and methodological implications of distinguishing negative, dirty, and positive campaigning are discussed.

Targeted Negative Campaigning: Complexity and Approximations

Given the ubiquity of negative campaigning in recent political elections, we find it important to study its properties from a computational perspective. To this end, we present a model where elections can be manipulated by convincing voters to demote specific non-favored candidates, and study its properties in the classic setting of scoring rules. When the goal is constructive (making a preferred candidate win), we prove that finding such a demotion strategy is easy for Plurality and Veto, while generally hard for t-approval and Borda. We also provide a t-factor approximation for t-approval for every fixed t, and a 3-factor approximation algorithm for Borda. Interestingly enough - following recent trends in political science that show that the effectiveness of negative campaigning depends on the type of candidate and demographic - when assigning varying prices to different possible demotion operations, we are able to provide inapproximability results. When the goal is destructive (making the leading opponent lose), we show that the problem is easy for a broad class of scoring rules.