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

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活动、媒体报道还是不文明的在线对话。政治传播学和心理学中的许多研究已经集中在消极对公民反应的影响上，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。就我们所知，关于从大众媒体以及线上和线下的人际传播环境中收到的负面信息的影响的研究是不存在的--尽管在过程和影响方面存在明显的相互作用。此外，大多数关于竞选中的负面信息的研究要么集中在通过调查自我报告对其对政治结果的影响的传统解释上，要么试图分析负面信息的信息处理，主要是在实验设计范围内。在一项综合研究设计中，很难在现场观察消极情绪对注意力和情绪等快速变量的影响，并分析其对政治结果的影响。因此，到目前为止，关于负面政治沟通对重要政治结果(如对政治行为者的评价、投票行为和情感两极分化)的总体影响的研究状况相当不确定。在这个项目中，我们旨在全面分析竞选活动中负面政治沟通的影响，以对研究现状做出四点贡献：首先，我们考察了公民在竞选期间在不同的沟通环境中对负面政治沟通的动态暴露。因此，在一个研究设计中考察不同的沟通类型也可以让我们分析线上和线下中介沟通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和情绪加工的短期影响，以及第三，对政治结果的长期影响。通过纵向视角，我们将竞选期间的负面暴露及其影响作为动态过程来概念化和衡量。第四，我们通过使用一种创新的方法来改善研究状态，使我们能够在现实世界中观察上述过程：我们结合线下和在线跟踪的方法来持续观察公民参与政治沟通的情况，调查以评估他们的短期和长期反应，以及自动内容分析将参与者的反应与具体的沟通内容联系起来。这项研究将在2021年9月德国联邦竞选活动的激烈阶段进行。

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.