In this article, the authors address the question of to what extent negative political campaigning differs when looking at different communication channels. They compare paid publicity, election debates, and newspaper coverage for the 2006 Dutch parliamentary elections and conduct an elaborate content analysis. Results show that the level of negative campaigning does not differ greatly across these channels, although election debates clearly show the highest amount of this type of campaigning. Notably, negative campaigning takes a different form in newspaper coverage, where appeals are more personal, focusing on character traits as opposed to being directed to political parties and dealing with political issues. The authors explain those results by pointing to the different levels of control politicians exert over communication channels. They also make a plea to other researchers investigating negative campaigning, asking them to fully consider that their results might be seriously biased by the communication channel they investigate.
This article describes how political parties in parliamentary election campaigns in Western Europe make use of negative campaigning and examines whether their behaviour differs from that of candidates competing in US presidential election campaigns. Furthermore, it theorises how the differences and similarities between negative campaigning in these countries can be explained. First of all, this comparative study adds to the development of a more general theory on negative campaigning. Second, the study presents interesting new data measuring the use of negative campaigning by 31 political parties in 23 parliamentary election campaigns in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands between 1980 and 2006. Results show that there are no signs of an increase in negative campaigning and that the majority of attacks are issue attacks. However, there are systematic differences in the overall level of negative campaigning between these countries and we suspect that the type of party system could be the main explanatory factor.
What explains conspiracy thinking in Europe and America? This is the first and largest comparative study of conspiracy thinking to date, presenting findings using a representative sample of 11,523 respondents in nine countries. First, it shows that the overall level of conspiracy thinking in Europe is equal to or slightly lower than the United States, contradicting the notion that conspiracy theories is an especially American phenomenon. Second, people more inclined to conspiracy thinking position themselves towards the right of the political spectrum, engage in magical thinking, feel distrust towards public officials and reject the political system. Finally, we find that – surprisingly – the country context in which respondents reside has hardly any effect as predictor of levels of conspiracy thinking or as a moderator of individual-level determinants. Heterogeneity in conspiratorial thinking seems to be largely a function of individual traits.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.