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Incivility, that is, the breaking of social norms of conversation, is evidently prevalent in online political communication. While a growing literature provides evidence on the prevalence of incivility in different online venues, it is still unclear where and to what extent Internet users are exposed to incivility. This paper takes a comparative approach to assess the levels of incivility across contexts, content and personal characteristics. The pre-registered analysis uses detailed web browsing histories, including public Facebook posts and tweets seen by study participants, in combination with surveys collected during the German federal election 2021 (N = 739). The level of incivility is predicted using Google's Perspective API and compared across contexts (platforms and campaign periods), content features, and individual-level variables. The findings show that incivility is particularly strong on Twitter and more prevalent in comments than original posts/tweets on Facebook and Twitter. Content featuring political content and actors is more uncivil, whereas personal characteristics are less relevant predictors. The finding that user-generated political content is the most likely source of individuals' exposure to incivility adds to the understanding of social media's impact on public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do campaigns message to voters consistently across different media? And do competing candidates tend to converge over time on a single national style of campaign messaging? To address these questions, this article employs novel data from a content analysis of campaign spots and candidate tweets from the 2015 and 2019 presidential elections in Argentina. We find that the policy orientation of candidate messaging is similar across different media, with spots and tweets addressing specific issues in similar proportions. We also find that, consistent with the theory of success contagion, campaign messaging across candidates and election cycles varies along a wide range of variables as candidates have failed to converge on a similar campaigning style. Contrary to expectations drawn from prior research, we find that candidate tweets contain policy content and attacks on opponents just as often as do campaign spots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referendums differ from general elections in the choices that are offered to voters and in the cues that are available to them to reach a decision. This difference makes the quantity and quality of the information that is available during a referendum campaign crucial to the outcome. This paper uses a unique panel survey to examine the role of the campaign in shaping the outcome of the October 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum. We find that the political cues offered to voters – reflected most prominently in voters’ views about the major party leaders – were the most important campaign effects shaping the result. Interpersonal communication also mattered, but government-supplied information and mass media exposure had no effect. The findings highlight the central role that a campaign driven by elites plays in shaping the outcome of a referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines party strategies in the short run during election campaigns? In this paper, I highlight a novel aspect of party behavior pertaining to the connection between election programs and actual campaign statements issued by party elites in the media. I argue that party leaders may feel compelled to fine-tune their rhetoric and stances during campaigns and thus deviate from their party's election programs. Nonetheless, their ability to conduct ad-hoc adaptations is limited. The theory I propose posits that two features of party organizations will determine if party leaders can engage in short-term inconsistencies. First, membership-dominated parties will be less likely to be inconsistent because their leaders will fear alienating (the strong) party members and getting punished as a result. Second, parties with strong societal integration—those that maintain strong ties with society and an extensive network of local branches—are more likely to indulge in ideological inconsistency because they establish close bonds with voters based on problem-solving rather than broad ideological principles. I test these dynamics in 14 European democracies between 1972 and 2017 and find strong empirical support. The findings show that intricate party organizations and robust connections with normal citizens influence parties' short-term strategies during election campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TikTok is an influential social media platform. During the 2022 Australian Federal election, the major political parties used TikTok as a campaigning tool. This research analysed the TikTok videos from the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The analysis primarily considered how the posts use visibility labour and other TikTok-based performance tools. It was found that they actively engaged in visibility labour, and employed popular culture to frame political issues. For youth who may not be politically active, cultural references can serve as a shared symbolic resource, aiding them in navigating political expression. This makes such references crucial, as they can help engage young users. Although TikTok utilises a short-form approach, the videos can contain substantial content that has the power to persuade viewers. The ALP used popular culture trends and more traditional techniques such as negative campaigning and humour, to attract supporter attention, denigrate the opposition and, attract the attention of all voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines data-driven campaign (DDC) practices in Sweden. We explore the extent of data-driven practices adopted in Swedish political campaigns, and parties’ motivations to adopt them. Since this is a comparison of domestic parties, we test the importance of four party-level factors—resources, structure, attitudes toward data use, and ideology—using extensive interviews with key campaign managers in Sweden during the 2022 election year. Our results show that the differences among the eight parties studied are rather small, and that systemic factors are more important than party variables to explain the adoption of data-driven approaches. Zooming in on these finer differences we distinguish between top DDC adopters (Social Democrats, Center, and Conservatives) and a lower tier with lower levels of DDC implementation. To explain the differences between the two tiers, we find that economic resources are important, with richer parties being more advanced in DDC use. Party structure, attitudes to data, and ideology do not affect the likelihood of a Swedish party using data analytics in their strategic decision-making. Instead, we suggest party type (catch-all vs. niche) is a potentially more useful party-level factor in explaining variation.

Although modern data-driven campaigning (DDC) is not entirely new, scholars have typically relied on reports and interviews of practitioners to understand its use. However, the advent of public ad libraries from Meta and Google provides an opportunity to measure the scope and variation in DDC practice in advertising across different types of sponsors and within sponsors across platforms. Using textual and audiovisual processing, we create a database of ads from the 2022 US elections. These data allow us to create an index that quantifies the extent of DDC at the level of the sponsor and platform. This index takes into account both the number of unique creatives placed and the similarity across those creatives. In addition, we explore the impact of sponsor resources, the office being sought, and the competitiveness of the race on the measure of DDC sophistication. Ultimately, our research establishes a measurement strategy for DDC that can be applied across ad sponsors, campaigns, parties, and even countries. Understanding the extent of DDC is vital for policy discussions surrounding the regulation of microtargeting and data privacy.

The use of educational institutions for campaign activities is prohibited. In the application reviewed in Constitutional Court Decision Number 65/PUU-XXI/2023, it was argued that the Explanation of Article 280, paragraph (1), letter h could lead to constitutional harm for plaintiffs, both as voters and candidates for the DKI Jakarta Provincial DPRD. This harm arises from legal uncertainty concerning the prohibition of campaigns in government facilities, places of worship, and educational institutions. The legal uncertainty stems from a contradiction between the Article and its Explanation (contradictio in terminis). While Article 280, paragraph (1), letter h explicitly prohibits campaigns in these locations without exception, the Explanation contradicts this by allowing campaigns if they are invited by the responsible party and conducted without campaign materials. This discrepancy between two provisions—despite the Explanation not being a normative rule but rather a formulation of norms—creates ambiguity in the legal framework. This study employs library and normative research methods, examining legal materials from sources such as laws, court decisions, books, journals, and articles. The goal is to develop concepts and ideas related to campaign prohibitions from a democratic election perspective, drawing from the aforementioned literature.

The article is devoted to the activities of the Russian Public Movement, the analysis of the provisions of its Program and the identification of a place in the political spectrum of both the West Siberian region and the Russian Federation as a whole. The analysis of the transformation program is carried out with full consideration of the political activities of the Russian Public Movement and related organizations, as well as their structural units in the election campaigns of the mid-1990s. Referring to various sources of information, such as archive collections, the public press, reference publications, scientific articles and analytical materials, the author of the work aims to analyze the programmatic provisions of the Russian Public Movement, restoring a complex picture of its participation in the political events of the second half of the 1990s, to identify its place in the changing picture of the political forces of the Russian Federation. The analysis allows us to conclude that the Russian Public Movement was the result of the dispersion of the electorate of the Congress of Russian Communities, between many insignificant parties and movements that were artificially brought to participate in the elections. The further activity of the movement was associated with the presidential elections of the Russian Federation in 1996. The political fate of the movement reflected the evolution of the views of the ruling elite on the formation of their political image against the background of the rejection of the liberal doctrine by the population.

ÖZ: Siyasal iletişim süreçlerinin en yoğun yaşandığı dönemlerin başında seçimler gelmekte ve siyasal aktörlerin yürüttükleri siyasal pazarlama faaliyetlerinin görünür taraflarından birini seçim kampanyaları oluşturmaktadır. Siyasi aktörler siyasal pazarlama stratejileri ve reklam, halkla ilişkiler gibi tutundurma faaliyetleri ile kendilerini seçmenin gözünde bir marka olarak konumlandırmayı ve seçmen memnuniyetini yaratarak, seçmen desteğini kazanmayı ve oylarını artırmayı hedeflemektedirler. Dinamik ve süreklilik arz eden bir süreç olan siyasal pazarlama, iletişim teknolojilerinde görülen yeniliklerle birlikte gelişmiş ve dönüşüme uğramıştır. Profesyonel siyasal iletişim faaliyetlerinin uygulandığı ilk ülke Amerika Birleşik Devletleri (ABD)’dir ve değişen iletişim teknolojilerine bağlı olarak yürütülen seçim kampanyalarında farklı siyasal pazarlama stratejileri izlenmiştir. Başlarda gazete, dergi, broşür, el ilanı gibi yazılı mecralar ve radyo üzerinden kampanyalarını yürüten siyasi aktörler; teknolojinin gelişmesiyle birlikte önce televizyonu daha sonra ise internet ve onun bir uzantısı olarak sosyal medyayı kampanya süreçlerine dahil etmişlerdir. İletişim teknolojilerindeki gelişmeler; siyasi aktörler arasındaki rekabetin artması ve seçmene müşteri gözüyle bakılması, dolayısıyla da seçmen memnuniyetinin öncelenmesine ilişkin pazarlama yaklaşımlarının benimsenmesiyle birlikte seçim kampanyalarının daha bütünsel ve profesyonel anlamda yürütülmesi ihtiyacı gündeme gelmiştir. Çalışmanın literatür kısmında ilk olarak teknolojik yenilikler bağlamında seçim kampanyalarının tarihsel gelişimi, siyasal pazarlamanın evrimi ve siyasal reklam türleri ele alınmış; ardından sosyal medyanın kampanya ve pazarlama faaliyetlerinde siyasi aktörlere sunduğu avantajlara değinilmiştir. Çalışmanın uygulama kısmında ise 2023 cumhurbaşkanlığı seçimlerinin birinci ve ikinci turunda yarışan adayların yürüttükleri kampanyalarda izledikleri siyasal pazarlama stratejileri içerik analizi ve metin madenciliği yöntemleriyle incelenmiştir. Kullanılan analiz yöntemleriyle birlikte çalışmada, adayların kampanya stratejilerinin neler olduğunun, hangi konuları seçim gündemlerine taşıdıklarının ve söylemlerini hangi kavramlar üzerinden kurduklarının yatay düzlemde adaylar ve dikey düzlemde turlar bağlamında karşılaştırmalı olarak analiz edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. ABSTRACT: Elections are one of the periods when political communication processes are most intense, and election campaigns constitute one of the visible aspects of the political marketing activities carried out by political actors. Political actors aim to gain voters’ support and increase their votes by positioning themselves as a brand in the eyes of the voters through political marketing strategies and promotional activities such as advertising and public relations and by creating voter satisfaction. Political marketing, which is a dynamic and continuous process, has developed and transformed with the developments in communication technologies. The first country where professional political communication activities were implemented was the United States of America (USA), and different political marketing strategies were followed in the election campaigns according to the changes in communication technologies. At first stage to run election campaigns, political actors utilized written media such as newspapers, magazines, brochures, flyers, and radio; later on with the development of technology, they first included television, then the internet and, as an extension of it, social media in their campaign processes. With the developments in communication technologies, the increase in competition among political actors, and the adoption of marketing approaches to prioritize voter satisfaction due to the perception of voters as customers, the need for election campaigns to be carried out in more holistically and professionally has come to the fore. In the literature part of the study, firstly, the historical development of election campaigns and the evolution of political marketing in the context of technological innovations and types of political ads were discussed; then, the advantages that social media offers to political actors in campaign and marketing markets are mentioned. In the application part, the political marketing strategies followed by the candidates competing in the first and second rounds of the 2023 presidential elections were examined using content analysis and text mining methods. With the analysis methods used, the study aimed to comparatively analyse what the candidates' campaign strategies were, what issues they brought to the election agenda, and what concepts they based their discourse on, in the context of the candidates on the horizontal line and the tours on the vertical line.

The digital transformations of contemporary media systems have had severe consequences for democracy and public debates. This introductory article addresses key challenges of what we refer to as varieties of “digital disintegration” within democratic societies. The eight contributions in the special issue are thematised in three parts. The first part explores disintegration within the context of political communication during elections, including data-driven campaigning, populism, and politicised forms of news production. The second part delves into the role of alternative news curators, audience polarisation, and issues of self-censorship in digital information environments. The third part centres on deliberative norms connected to content moderation of user comments within legacy media and the consequences digitalisation has had on journalistic sourcing practices and source diversity over time. The contributions offer valuable empirical insights, as well as new lines of thinking concerning democracy and digital and disintegrative transformations in the Nordic region and beyond.

This article offers a longitudinal perspective on communications during election campaigns from a political-party perspective, where strategic considerations about digital media are compared across time. Our analysis is grounded on the concepts of hybridisation and data-driven campaigning, where digital technology tends to play a central role without replacing all traditional campaign features. Empirically, the study is based on a longitudinal analysis of four election campaigns in Sweden during 2010–2022. The analysis shows that Swedish political parties have gradually integrated digital campaign features in their structure and strategy. The process is not linear, but rather back and forth, as party perceptions of the importance of communication channels vary across time. The results imply a development where all parties, regardless of size and ideology, are increasingly making rational judgments of which combinations of old and new campaign methods and communication channels are most effective.

Classical electoral behaviour theories have associated possible benefits of negative campaigning with two-party plurality systems due to their zero-sum nature. Nevertheless, negative campaigning is a widely used electoral strategy outside of these contexts, despite scant evidence of its benefits for political parties and candidates who employ it. Our research question is simple – is negative campaign messaging effective for attackers in multiparty systems with multimember districts? Or does it create a ‘boomerang effect’ in this context, for which the producer of the message faces a backlash? Multiparty systems with multimember districts should, according to the literature, be scenarios where the effects of negative campaigning are most complex if not unpredictable. This paper uses Facebook political messages to inform a survey experiment design that tests the effects of negative political messaging on voters. We employ this survey in Ireland, which uses the single transferable vote, an electoral system which magnifies outcome uncertainty for attackers. Our results suggest that negative messaging in this context produces both the intended effect and a boomerang effect for the sponsor of the message. These countervailing results suggest a net null effect for the efficacy of negative messaging.

Political advertising on social media has increased dramatically in the last several years, reaching specific audiences with tailored messages. Political advertising is characterized by its primary objective, which is to attract voters through various means by a candidate, politician, or political party. By analyzing existing communication patterns that appeal to the general public during the electoral process, this study seeks to develop an intellectual framework that considers linguistic discourse. Using bibliometric analysis, this study examines and evaluates the body of literature on political advertising and how it is disseminated. It includes 114 publications published between 1996 and 2024 in the Scopus and WOS databases and were subjected to keyword analysis in the VOS viewer. This analysis produced six clusters, which eventually combined under three overarching themes. The results showed that the few previous studies conducted in this field only focused on the election season and that direct political actors were the source of these advertisements. More research on the sociopolitical context is desperately needed, along with scientific solutions, to address privacy concerns on digital platforms and disinformation in dialogic discourse. Considering all possible complexities in the persuasive communication process, this article offers concrete directions and propositions on efficiently targeting voters and implementing future regulations.

Copyright of Index.Comunicación is the property of Index.comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Larq Journal for Philosophy, Linguistics & Social Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite a recent boom in information and communication technologies (ICTs) in many developing countries, there is limited research on how social media is being used in political campaigns in emerging democracies. In these contexts, the introduction of electoral gender quotas often forms part of the constitutional reform. This paper investigates the gendered use of social media among political candidates during the 2019 parliamentary election campaign in Tunisia, which recently adopted an ambitious gender quota system. We have mapped the use of Facebook among a random sample of 400 men and women candidates and carried out interviews with 19 men and women candidates who ran in these elections. The results demonstrate how patriarchal structures interact with political-institutional features – the electoral gender quota system, the electoral system (a closed-list proportional-representation system), and the fragmented party system – in shaping the gendered use of social media among political candidates in Tunisia. We show that men are more likely to use Facebook for campaign purposes since they are more often placed at the top of the candidate lists. Hence, rather than having an equalizing effect, the study suggests that social media become a new tool for already privileged candidates in Tunisia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased use of social media has triggered a visual shift in digital political communication. One central strategy is visual (self-) personalization and many studies have analyzed why and to what extent political communication is focused on individuals. Yet, most research has concentrated on personalization, leaving aside the question of whether it comes at the expense of policy issues or whether people are brought into focus as facilitators of such issues. We fill this research gap by analyzing how visual (self-) personalization on Instagram pages of parties and politicians during election campaigns has changed over time and whether it comes at the cost of addressing policy issues. We use data from three quantitative content analyses of Instagram posts published by parliamentary parties (n = 7) and top candidates (n = 18) in the 'hot phases' before three national German elections (N = 2313), covering all nationwide elections since Instagram has become a common campaign tool. It is shown that personal depictions are very common in Instagram campaigns of parties and candidates while addressing policy issues in posts varies between elections. Using a multilevel binomial regression model, we show that addressing policy issues is negatively related to personalization but further analysis shows that it is not a zero-sum game at the cost of addressing policy issues. Our results provide insights into how the presentation of politics might change when image- and video-based platforms continue to gain importance in political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how inequalities in political media use develop throughout election campaigns, and in particular whether social media use helps counterbalance traditional news consumption gaps. Using a four-wave individual-level panel survey of the Norwegian 2017 national election campaign, we run a series of latent growth models to investigate whether differences in news consumption based on gender, age, education, and political interest increase or decrease during campaigns. We find that news consumption gaps are either stable or converge throughout the campaign. Importantly, social media provides political information to those groups that use traditional media channels the least and thereby reduce overall gaps in political media consumption. In this way, election campaigns, to some extent, equalize inequalities in political news consumption when it matters the most. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underrepresentation of women politicians in the media is a persistent feature in many contemporary democracies. Gender bias in election coverage makes it harder for women to reach positions of power in politics. Drawing on the special circumstances in Austria during the 2019 election campaign which saw the first female top candidate of a major party and a caretaker government containing equal numbers of men and women and which was led by the country's first woman as chancellor, we examine the effect of these developments on women politicians' representation in campaign coverage. We draw on quantitative content analysis of Austrian newspaper articles (N = 16,125) during four national parliamentary election campaigns (2008, 2013, 2017 and 2019). We show that for women politicians the media ceiling is slowly lifting at best, but that positions of power provide the most promising ways to evade gendered media bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the viewership of electoral debates extends to new distribution channels such as social media and on-demand streaming services. The research monitors the digital distribution channels of televised electoral debates during the 2023 elections in Spain, analysing uncivil comments from broadcasting accounts on Twitter (X). There is an uneven use of these new distribution channels among media groups, and a significant number of uncivil comments on X during televised events, although informative and neutral messages generate higher engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last moments of the highly polarized and contentious 2022 presidential elections campaigns, two final debates took place for the second-round of the election. This paper proposes an analysis of these debates using an iterated game theory perspective, where the debates are sequential decision-making environments, with the candidates' statements being classified as cooperative or defection. Cooperative actions denote constructive dialogue revolving around governmental plans, whereas defection encompasses negative campaigning tactics, including ad hominem attacks and the spread of misleading information. Through an exhaustive analysis of transcriptions from both debates, the candidates' strategic moves are extracted and categorized. The findings offer new insights into the role of strategies in shaping electoral outcomes, emphasizing the nuanced interplay of policy discourse and personal character assessments in a politically charged environment. Additionally, the research underscores the profound implications of such strategies on voter perceptions and decisions, offering a new perspective to the existing literature on political communication and electoral game theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networking sites have become important platforms for obtaining political information. Nevertheless, a crucial inquiry in this context pertains to the reliability of social networking sites (SNS) as a political information source. This study investigated the extent to which politically engaged online users perceive social networking sites (SNS) as trustworthy. The positivist philosophical stance was adopted to explain the phenomena. Moreover, the deductive approach was intricated in this study to test the framed hypotheses. A digital survey strategy was used for individuals who frequently engage with social media platforms. The data was electronically collected from October 19 to November 1, 2023. The target population for this study was active social media users in Pakistan who were between the ages of 18 and 34 and data was gathered using the purposive sampling technique. The ultimate sample comprised 384 users via using the cross-sectional study design. This study found social networking sites (SNS) the least credible among the various traditional and online sources. The strongest indicator of social networking site (SNS) credibility was found to be the extent of reliance on these platforms. Moreover, it is concluded that utilizing social network sites (SNS) can be an as effective means to convince voters to support their campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about why candidates decide to make use of emotional messages when campaigning for a political office, and under which conditions this is more likely to happen. We focus on the use of fear and enthusiasm appeals and assume that these are a function of profile of candidates and the nature of the context in which the election takes place. We use a new large-scale comparative dataset which includes information about campaigning strategies for 636 candidates having competed in 133 presidential and parliamentary elections in 101 countries between June 2016 and March 2020, based on judgments of 2000+ domestic and international experts. Our results show that candidates benefitting from a comparative advantage (incumbents and frontrunners) tend to rely on enthusiasm appeals, more extreme candidates prefer fear to enthusiasm, and more competitive races tend to foster the use of fear appeals. These findings have important implications for electoral competition, communication theory, and political marketing. All data and materials are openly available for replication. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2021.1930327. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections are one of the periods when political communication processes are most intense, and election campaigns constitute one of the visible aspects of the political marketing activities carried out by political actors. Political actors aim to gain voters' support and increase their votes by positioning themselves as a brand in the eyes of the voters through political marketing strategies and promotional activities such as advertising and public relations and by creating voter satisfaction. Political marketing, which is a dynamic and continuous process, has developed and transformed with the developments in communication technologies. The first country where professional political communication activities were implemented was the United States of America (USA), and different political marketing strategies were followed in the election campaigns according to the changes in communication technologies. At first stage to run election campaigns, political actors utilized written media such as newspapers, magazines, brochures, flyers, and radio; later on with the development of technology, they first included television, then the internet and, as an extension of it, social media in their campaign processes. With the developments in communication technologies, the increase in competition among political actors, and the adoption of marketing approaches to prioritize voter satisfaction due to the perception of voters as customers, the need for election campaigns to be carried out in more holistically and professionally has come to the fore. In the literature part of the study, firstly, the historical development of election campaigns and the evolution of political marketing in the context of technological innovations and types of political ads were discussed; then, the advantages that social media offers to political actors in campaign and marketing markets are mentioned. In the application part, the political marketing strategies followed by the candidates competing in the first and second rounds of the 2023 presidential elections were examined using content analysis and text mining methods. With the analysis methods used, the study aimed to comparatively analyse what the candidates' campaign strategies were, what issues they brought to the election agenda, and what concepts they based their discourse on, in the context of the candidates on the horizontal line and the tours on the vertical line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine campaign spending on Facebook during the 2020 U.S. congressional elections. We draw conclusions based on data from the Federal Election Commission and the Facebook Ad Library. This is one of the first articles on this topic. We point out and show how this data differs and how other researchers should treat it. Specifically, we focus on U.S. Democratic congresspeople who lost elections. Indeed, during the Democratic Party debate, voices were raised that its progressive wing was to blame for the loss of seats; in contrast, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star of the wing, argued that the lack of Facebook advertising was a factor in why seats were lost. The article concludes that the really well-known Democratic figures who lost the elections spent very little on Facebook ads compared to Ocasio-Cortez. We also compare Republican opponents with Democrats. In addition, we highlight how the Ocasio-Cortez campaign and the others differed with respect to the timing of campaign spending and the targeting of Facebook ads to specific states. Further, we compare data regarding campaigns available through the Federal Election Commission and Facebook and underscore the importance of the transparency of the Facebook Ad Library [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Yearbook of the Faculty of Political Sciences / Godisnjak Fakultet Politickih Nauka Beograd is the property of University of Belgrade, Faculty of Political Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the current hybrid media environment, politicians have manifold opportunities to be in contact with voters during elections. Legacy news media still constitute an important campaign tool for politi- cians, but a range of social media have gained ground in electoral campaigning over the last decades as well. Against this backdrop, the aim of this study is to shed further light on politicians’ campaign practices in a hybrid communication environment, and whether the introduction of social media have introduced new dynamics into election campaigns. The study does so through a case study of Dan- ish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and opposition party leader Alex Vanopslagh’s social media campaigns and online news pres- ence during the 2022 national election. The study finds that Freder- iksen was more in the news during the election than Vanopslagh, but that social media was central in both campaigns. However, Van- opslagh was on a broader set of social media and to a greater extent capitalised on the platform affordances than Frederiksen.

The study explores the perspectives of political parties regarding news media coverage in election campaigns. By analyzing official post-election analyses produced by Swedish political parties from 2010 to 2022, the study offers a novel approach to the study of political party views of news media. The findings largely support the arguments proposed by mediatization literature, highlighting the significance of media in party communication. Parties display eagerness to attract positive media attention while expressing regret over inadequate or negative publicity. More surprisingly, there is a lack of references to media bias in the reports, suggesting that the hostile media effect is not a major concern among Swedish parties. Despite criticisms related to irrelevant reporting and perceived negative coverage, party perceptions towards the media remains predominantly neutral. The study contributes to the understanding of the complex relationship between political parties and news media in the context of election campaigns.

Remote electronic voting (REV) as technology is gradually taking root in the political practice in Russia. As the technology is legally and chronologically new, it is both interesting and necessary to explain its implementation, as well as to identify the technological basis of the REV and, therefore, questions about the potential illegal use of this technology. This study aims at identifying the elements of the analysis of the implementation and legitimation of REV in cities and villages across Russia. The research is based on qualitative sociological and general logical methods: in general, the author uses the dialectical-materialistic approach, as well as the tools of comparative politics. A series of expert interviews were conducted in 10 regions of Russia. The results of the study showed that the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, the regional election commissions of the subjects of the Russian Federation, as well as regional and municipal authorities where the REV is being held, are at this stage looking for specific technologies to legitimize electronic voting. These practices will differ not only when comparing different regions, but also, most often, within one subject. One of the most significant differences will be noticeable with the introduction of REV in highly urbanized massifs and rural areas. Urban areas are characterized by the wide usage of political technologies to attract voters to electronic voting and legitimize it. Significantly larger budgets are invested in propaganda materials, including large, printed products (billboards, advertising at bus stops, and public transport). The idea of electronic voting is being promoted in social networks, mainly through VK, Telegram, Odnoklassniki, and WhatsApp. The rural areas, meanwhile, are characterized by activities aimed at personal contact with the voters and the use of informal connections. At the same time, today messages in social networks also reach rural residents, although most often it is not a purposeful activity, but a background capture of the audience. Concerning the improvement of the technological basis and the expansion of the geography of the REV, we can further elaborate on its legitimization and implementation, including in the context of the issues identified in this study.

The article deals with the interaction of the authorities and society during the election campaign to the Fourth State Duma of the Russian Empire and is based on the materials of Vologda Governorate. The decline in social activity after the end of the First Russian Revolution led to a certain weakening of the population’s attention to election campaigns, and interest in the parliament as a new political institution was clearly fading. However, in 1912, on the eve of the elections to the Fourth Duma, there was a clear revival of social and political life in Vologda Governorate as well as a shift of public sentiments to the left, which caused concern of the authorities at all levels. The article considers the actions of M. Shramchenko, the governor of Vologda, taken to ensure the election to the Duma of the right-wing candidates who were needed by the authorities. On the eve of the elections to the Fourth Duma, polarization of political forces in the governorate as well as throughout the country could be seen: the opposition relied on the Kadet Party and moderate socialists and stood against the right-wing candidates nominated by the authorities. Formally, the Kadets did not have their own organization, but they acted as a united group and enjoyed serious prestige with the voters of the city curia and, to some extent, peasant curia. The article analyzes electoral slogans of the right-wingers and the opposition, the course of the election campaign, and its results. Particular attention is paid to the mechanisms of support for right-wing candidates by the governorate administration and the use of administrative resources by it. The conclusion is made that the opposition sentiments, which were clearly manifested during the elections at the governorate level, tended to grow and the influence of the authorities tended to decline. Despite all the restrictions of the electoral law of June 3, 1907, the elections to the Fourth State Duma showed obvious social demand for reforming the country. However, at the level of Vologda Governorate, the governorate authorities failed to satisfy that demand by entering into a limited dialogue with the opposition and to properly consolidate the right-wing forces. Applying a wide range of administrative measures against the opposition, the governorate administration drove the situation into a dead end even deeper, which led to an increase in contradictions between the government and the public.

Social media platforms are crucial sources of political information during election campaigns, with datafication processes underlying the algorithmic curation of newsfeeds. Recognizing the role of individuals in shaping datafication processes and leveraging the metaphor of news attraction, we study the impact of user curation and networks on mobilization and polarization. In a two-wave online panel survey (n = 943) conducted during the 2021 German federal elections, we investigate the influence of self-reported user decisions, such as following politicians, curating their newsfeed, and being part of politically interested networks, on changes in five democratic key variables: vote choice certainty, campaign participation, turnout, issue reinforcement, and affective polarization. Our findings indicate a mobilizing rather than polarizing effect of algorithmic election news exposure and highlight the relevance of users’ political networks on algorithmic platforms.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long been considered a populist leader. This study attempts to investigate the evolution of Erdoğan’s populist discourse by examining his political campaign speeches throughout all years of his rule. Using computer-based quantitative content analysis, we analyze the dimensions of populism in Erdoğan’s speeches over time. Our data includes 42 election campaign speeches held between 2004 and 2018. We demonstrate how three dimensions of populism (people-centrism, anti-elitism, moralistic imagination of politics) manifest in Erdoğan’s speeches and how Erdoğan’s degree of populism varies from one election campaign to another. People-centrist approach constitutes the largest share of his discourse in comparison to other dimensions throughout all campaign speeches. Erdoğan’s anti-elitist rhetoric was insignificant during the initial period of his incumbency. However, it increased considerably in the 2014 and 2018 election campaigns. We connect these empirical trends to the particular events in Turkish politics. Thus, this study contributes to the field by providing an empirical approach to Erdoğan’s speeches.

In rally-intensive campaigns, the rally is an essential mode of political communication between politicians, parties and citizens. This article moves beyond the exclusive focus, in most literature, on rallies convened for presidents and presidential candidates to include similar rallies convened for others significant enough to act as a proxy but are not themselves presidential candidates. It develops a broader category of what it refers to as 'bigwig' rallies. In Zimbabwe, the bigwig rally constitutes a distinct sub-genre that occupies a distinct place in election campaigning. I ask: what do parties communicate through bigwig rallies? How do they produce rallies to generate those communications? Little prior research considers what is particular to the rallies convened in electoral-authoritarian regimes. In this article, I ask: what do ruling parties in electoral-authoritarian regimes communicate and how do they achieve this? It answers these questions through studying ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe's 2008 and 2013 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to find out the rhetoric of Lithuanian presidential candidates during the 2009, 2014 and 2019 election campaigns with respect to Russia and its threat to Lithuania’s national security, as well as how candidates’ rhetoric changed when comparing these three election campaigns. The 2009, 2014 and 2019 elections as the research object were chosen because the 2009 and 2014 elections were held just a few months after the beginning of the Russo-Georgian War in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbas in 2014, while the 2019 Lithuanian presidential election took place amidst the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In order to answer the research question, an analysis of candidates’ election programs and speeches during televised debates broadcasted by the Lithuanian National Broadcaster before all three elections, was performed. Comparative analysis of the election campaigns has shown that there was a significant shift in candidates’ rhetoric regarding Russia, Lithuania’s bilateral relations with Russia, and the assessment of the threat posed by Russia to Lithuania’s national security when comparing the 2009, 2014 and 2019 presidential elections. In 2014 and 2019, unlike in 2009, the majority of candidates began to refer to Russia as an aggressor country that posed a security threat to Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Derived from the reform to the Mexican Political Constitution of 2019, all political parties nominated a similar number of men and women for the 15 governorships in competition in 2021. The article presents a quantitative content analysis carried out on N=2450 news from 18 media of written press about the campaigns of these elections. The purpose was to record if there were differences in the journalistic approach of male and female candidates. For this, the analysis included: the presence of the issue and strategic game frames related to the gender of the candidate, the differences between feminine and masculine topics, and the differences between the types of strategic game frames (horse-race, strategic, conflict, and human interest). The findings show that the women candidates had less coverage in the issue frame, but without significant differences in terms of the type of issue. Concerning the strategic game, the conflict frame was linked to men, and the horse-race frame to women. It is concluded that the proposals of the female candidates had less projection than those of the male candidates, which translates into less opportunity to offer inputs to the citizens to vote for a woman. Likewise, it was registered that the candidacies of the women were at constant risk due to the judicial complaints of an electoral nature that were presented. Finally, the journalistic pieces narrated the women accompanied by someone else, which seems to give the intention that their candidacies were of co-responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamist political parties are a structural feature of politics across the Muslim world, raising persisting questions for scholars of democracy. Under what conditions will Islamists moderate to support democracy and pluralism? Under what conditions will they adopt more exclusive behavior? Taking a fresh approach, we focus on electoral competition and the conditions under which Islamic party candidates campaign using either inclusive nationalist appeals or exclusively Islamic appeals. Using a unique data source, we coded the appeals contained on the campaign posters of 572 Islamic party candidates in Indonesia. We found that demographics, urban–rural differences, and the level of government office (i.e., national or regional) affected the inclusive or exclusive nature of campaigns. We also highlight differences in appeals made by candidates from Muslim democratic and Islamist parties. The study illustrates the effectiveness of posters as a data source and presents a new approach to understanding the behavior of Islamic parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Televised election debates are considered as the most important single campaign event. While a large body of research has analyzed their content, processing, impact, and media coverage, it has not yet been examined under which conditions candidates agree to debate. This is remarkable, as debates are a matter of course in only a few countries, and candidates are always renegotiating their participation with the television networks. Using a dataset covering all German federal and state elections between 1994 and 2022 (N = 108), we demonstrate that the broadcasting of televised debates is more likely if (1) there was a debate in the last election, (2) the fragmentation of the party system is low, and (3) the race is close. Furthermore, the likelihood for debates increases over time; also, the introduction of debates on the national level has stimulated the broadcast of debates in state elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The political image, its formation, use and analysis are studied. Current approaches and methods of creating and effectively using a political image during communication between politicians and citizens are considered. The main goal is not only to generalize knowledge in this area, but also to identify key factors affecting the effectiveness of campaigning for political candidates. A historical review of the political image is carried out, starting from the first manifestations to modern trends. The author examines the importance of political image in modern election campaigns and its role in shaping public opinion and voters' decisions. Next, the influence of the individual brand of political figures on campaign effectiveness is investigated. The author draws attention to the need for consistency and appropriateness of the actions and speeches of political figures in order to achieve successful use of the political image. The article also analyzes modern tools and technologies that help political figures create and manage their image. The author examines the influence of social networks, television, advertising and other media channels on the formation of a political image. In the conclusion, the author sums up the results of the research and draws conclusions about the importance of political image in the modern political arena. The article provides useful guidelines for political actors and consultants, helping them to understand and use political image in their work.

This article proposes the concept of digital heuristics to model and explain political communication strategies in the complex environment of hybrid media systems. Insights from recent psychological and political research on heuristic decision-making are combined with literature on the current structural context and features of online communication in order to make the case for a heuristics-oriented approach to political communication strategies. I argue that despite the growing importance of data analytics, in increasingly dynamic and uncertain communication environments, political actors mainly design their strategies according to simple rules (heuristics) that rely on selective information (as well as trial and error) rather than to complex models. Analyzing interviews with communication managers from major political parties in Germany and the United Kingdom, I identify and conceptualize two types of digital heuristics in use: hybridity-based and algorithm-based. The article concludes with considerations for a future research agenda using the concept of digital heuristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand's 2020 General Election campaign was unusual, though not unprecedented, in featuring women as both Prime Minister (Jacinda Ardern, Labour) and Leader of the Opposition (Judith Collins, National). To explore the extent to which gender, party and style intersected in their social media positioning, we analysed all posts made on the two Party Leaders' public Facebook pages. We found both quantitative (post frequency and composition, main topic and policy issues, audience reactions) and qualitative differences (tone, presentational style) but importantly, our research suggests that neither woman 'performed' gender in normatively stereotypical ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]