Tracking the effects of negative political communication during election campaigns in on- and offline communication environments

追踪线上和线下沟通环境中竞选期间负面政治沟通的影响

• 批准号: 456395817
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Michaela Maier
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Kommunikationspsychologie und Medienpädagogik (IKM)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/456395817?language=en
• 关键词: Tracking; effects; negative; political; communication

During election campaigns many of the political messages citizens receive are negative – be it via strategic negative campaigning, media coverage or uncivil online conversations. Many studies in political communication and psychology have already focused on the effects of negativity on citizens’ reactions, e.g., attention and emotions, evaluation of politicians, or voting behavior. Most of these studies, however, investigated citizens’ political communication in isolation focusing on just one channel. Studies that focus on effects of negative information received from mass media as well as interpersonal communication environments online and offline (in the following “MIC”), are to the best of our knowledge non-existent – despite the obvious interactions in terms of processes and effects. In addition, most studies on negativity in campaigns either focus on “traditional” explanations of its effects on political outcomes through survey self-reports or they try to analyze the information processing of negative information, mostly within experimental designs. It has hardly been possible to observe the effects of negativity on fast-lived variables like attention and emotions in-situ and to analyze its effects on political outcomes in an integrated research design. As a consequence, the state of research regarding the overall impact of negative political communication on important political outcomes such as evaluation of political actors, voting behavior and affective polarization so far has been fairly inconclusive. In this project, we aim to comprehensively analyze the effects of negativity in MIC during election campaigns to make a fourfold contribution to the state of research: First, we examine the dynamic exposure of citizens to negative political communication in various communication environments during an election campaign. Thereby, investigating the different communication types in one research design also allows us to analyze the reciprocal relations between mediated and interpersonal communication online and offline. Second, we analyze the short-term effects of negative contents on attentional and emotional processing, and third, longer-term effects on political outcomes. By taking a longitudinal perspective, we conceptualize and measure exposure to and effects of negativity during campaigns as dynamic processes. Fourth, we methodologically contribute to the state of research by using an innovative methodology that allows us to observe the aforementioned processes in a real-world setting: we combine approaches of offline and online tracking to continuously observe citizens’ engagement in political communication, surveys to assess their short-term and long-term reactions, and automated content analysis to link participants’ reactions to concrete communication contents. The study will be conducted during the hot phase of the German federal election campaign in September 2021.

在竞选期间，公民收到的许多政治信息都是负面的-无论是通过战略性的负面竞选、媒体报道还是不文明的在线对话。许多政治传播和心理学的研究已经集中在消极对公民反应的影响上，例如，注意力和情绪，对政治家的评价，或投票行为。然而，这些研究中的大多数都是孤立地调查公民的政治沟通，只关注一个渠道。关于从大众媒体以及在线和离线人际传播环境（以下简称“MIC”）接收到的负面信息的影响的研究，据我们所知是不存在的-尽管在过程和效果方面存在明显的相互作用。此外，大多数关于竞选中消极性的研究要么关注于通过调查自我报告对其对政治结果影响的“传统”解释，要么试图分析负面信息的信息处理，大多数是在实验设计中。它几乎是不可能观察到的影响，消极的快速生活的变量，如注意力和情绪在现场，并分析其对政治结果的影响，在一个综合的研究设计。因此，关于负面政治沟通对重要政治结果（如政治行为者的评价、投票行为和情感极化）的总体影响的研究状况迄今为止还相当不确定。在本项目中，我们的目标是全面分析在竞选期间的MIC的负面影响，使研究状态的四个方面的贡献：第一，我们研究的动态曝光的公民在各种通信环境中的负面政治传播在竞选期间。因此，在一个研究设计中调查不同的沟通类型也使我们能够分析在线和离线中介和人际沟通之间的相互关系。其次，我们分析了负面内容对注意力和情绪处理的短期影响，第三，对政治结果的长期影响。通过采取纵向的角度来看，我们概念化和测量的负面影响，在运动作为动态过程中的曝光。第四，我们在研究方法上做出了贡献，采用了能够在现实世界中观察上述过程的创新方法：我们结合了联合收割机的方法，通过离线和在线跟踪来持续观察公民对政治传播的参与，通过调查来评估他们的短期和长期反应，并通过自动内容分析将参与者的反应与具体的传播内容联系起来。该研究将在2021年9月德国联邦竞选活动的激烈阶段进行。