DISSERTATION / DOCTORAL THESIS Titel der Dissertation /Title of the Doctoral Thesis The dark side of campaigning. Negative campaigning and its consequences in multi-party competition. verfasst von / submitted by Mag. Martin Haselmayer angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doktor der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) Wien 2018 / Vienna 2018 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 784 300 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Dissertationsgebiet lt. Studienblatt / Politikwissenschaft / Political Science field of study as it appears on the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang C. Müller Assoc. Prof. Thomas Meyer, PhD Contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1 The road thus far: Research on negative campaigning 4 Enhancing the understanding of negative campaigning 16 Implications 22 Plan of the dissertation 27 2 Sentiment Analysis of Political Communication: Combining a Dictionary Approach with Crowdcoding ............................................................................................................. 29 Introduction 30 Measuring sentiment in political texts 31 Employing crowdcoding to create a sentiment dictionary 34 Building a negative sentiment dictionary 35 Scoring sentences and texts 40 Validating the procedure 41 Applications 45 Conclusions 50 3 Friendly fire? Negative Campaigning Among Coalition Partners ............................ 53 Introduction 54 Negative campaigning among coalition parties 55 Case selection, data and methods 57 Results 61 Conclusions 68 4 Defending the Home Turf or Attacking Rival Strongholds? Issue salience, issue- competence and negative campaigning strategies of parties ......................................... 71 Introduction 72 Issue ownership, issue competence and issue salience 74 Negative campaigning 75 Data and methods 79 Results 82 Conclusions 92 i 5 Fighting for Attention. Media Coverage of Negative Campaign Messages .............. 95 Introduction 96 Media coverage of negative campaign messages 98 Data and methods 103 Results 111 Conclusion 117 6 Love is Blind. Partisan Bias in the Perception of Campaign Messages ................... 121 Introduction 122 Partisan bias in the perception of campaign messages 124 Partisan perceptions, negative campaigning and campaign tonality 126 Data and methods 129 Results 136 Conclusions 144 7 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 149 Summary of findings 149 Implications 152 Limitations and future research 157 8 References...................................................................................................................... 165 Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 193 Abstract 224 Curriculum Vitae 228 ii Acknowledgements This thesis could never have been completed without the support of numerous people. First of all, I am grateful to my two supervisors, Prof. Wolfgang C. Müller and Assoc. Prof. Thomas M. Meyer for their advice, their comments, availability and motivation throughout the entire process. Beyond supervising my thesis, I am thankful for their continuous support of and advice for my research and my career. I would also like to thank my co-authors, Lisa Hirsch, Marcelo Jenny, Thomas M. Meyer and Markus Wagner for their contributions. I learned a lot from collaborating with them and it was inspiring to work with them on these (and other) projects. With regard to helpful comments on my work and manuscripts, I would especially like to thank (in alphabetical order), Anita Bodlos, Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Alejandro Ecker, Indridi H. Indridason, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, Heike Klüver, Sylvia Kritzinger, Carolina Plescia, Stuart Soroka, Daniel Strobl, Wouter van Atteveldt, Rens Vliegenthart, Markus Wagner, Annemarie Walter, participants of conferences or seminars, and the anonymous reviewers of the journals that have published my research. This research would not have been possible without generous financial support. Manuscripts 1-4 of this thesis, were supported by the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES), a National Research Network (NFN) sponsored by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [S10902-G11]. Manuscript 5 was supported by the city of Vienna’s Hochschul- jubiläumsstiftung [H-304565/2015]. I would also like to thank my (former) colleagues at the Department of Government for their support while working on this thesis. Besides helpful comments on my dissertation and stimulating discussions, I particularly enjoyed the joint lunch and coffee breaks as well as the CCRG research sessions: (in alphabetical order and in addition to those already mentioned above): Mariyana Angelova, Katharina Coleman, Michael Imre, Matthias iii Kaltenegger, and Paul Preuer. I would also like to thank our (super) student assistants for their valuable contributions and for the great atmosphere (in particular at the 4th floor). I am particularly grateful for my office mates at the department, Katharina Coleman and Anita Bodlos, who made workdays more fun and pleasant (even during the 2018 early elections). I also like to thank a couple of former colleagues and floor-mates at the Department of Communication and Computer Science. More particularly, I am thankful for sharing the AUTNES-Media Side experience with Jakob-Moritz Eberl and for meeting (and collaborating with) Michael Sedlmair, who introduced me to Elena Rudkowsky, Stefan Emrich and Matthias Wastian. Then, I am indebted to Marcelo Jenny who recruited me to the Department of Government and encouraged me to start writing this thesis. This dissertation and many other projects are rooted in joint discussions. His passion for research (in its purest sense) and his enthusiasm to explore new ideas have always been inspiring and motivating for me. As there is a life after work (and before), I also like to thank my friends and my family for supporting me throughout the years. I am particularly grateful for the continuous and unconditional support of my parents. Last but not least, I am forever indebted to Vanessa and Lisbeth for their never-failing patience, sympathy and encouragements. iv v 1 1 Introduction The origins of negative campaigning probably concur with the emergence of political campaigns. Sources go back to 64 BC, when Quintus Tullius Cicero, probably among the first spin-doctors in the world, drafted a letter of advice to his brother, Marcus Tullius Cicero, then running for the consulate. He insisted on including ‘negative campaigning’ in the campaign, to remind the people ‘(…) of what scoundrels your opponents are and to smear these men at every opportunity with the crimes, sexual scandals, and corruption they have brought on themselves’ (Cicero 2012). Several centuries later, negative campaigning ‘took off’ in early US campaigns. A prominent example is the 1800 presidential race opposing John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Notably, this was also the first and only example in US history, when a president was running against his former vice president. In the campaign, both camps launched strong, sometimes anonymous, personal attacks in newspapers or secretly funded pamphlets. Americans were warned that ‘murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest, will openly be taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries and distress, the soil soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes’1 if Jefferson were to be elected. Similarly, John Adams was characterized as ‘hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman’ (Callender 1800) by his opponents. Jumping to modern elections, the twentieth century saw the emergence of professional spin doctors and campaign ads, which have been at the core of negative campaigning in contemporary US elections. In 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson released a TV spot that entered the ‘annals of negative advertising’. The ‘Daisy-Spot’2 unsubtly suggested that 1 Quote from The Connecticut Courant, September 15, 1800, Gardner (1993: 161). 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k [16.01.2018] Introduction 2 electing the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, would bring on nuclear war and destroy the future of American children. Today, parties and candidates around the world ‘go negative’ and they may choose among a palette of tools. In 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign team used footage of Hillary Clinton’s collapse at a campaign event for an ad suggesting a lack of ‘stamina’ to face the challenges of presidency.3 In the 2010 British election, the Tories produced a series of posters attacking Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was held responsible for, ‘taking billons from pensions’, having ‘doubled the national debt’ or having ‘let 80,000 criminals out early’. Austria’s most recent national election saw a ‘dirty campaigning scandal’ featuring a campaign adviser of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) running an anonymous Facebook group defaming Christian Democratic (ÖVP) chancellor candidate Sebastian Kurz. Insidiously, the site tried to attribute these attacks to the Freedom Party trough racist and anti-Semitic posts. Information about the SPÖ’s involvement leaked to the media and the story broke the news in the last weeks of the campaign and compromised the party’s campaign strategy. Notably, the