The democratization of the public communications language extends to the election campaigns as well. The desire to find convincing messages that set the political organization apart from its opponents has made us witness a violation of the good tone of political speech. In order to trace the language used during the July 11 parliamentary election campaigns, a review of the online publications of parties and coalitions (websites and Facebook profiles) was conducted. The research shows hostile rhetoric from almost all parties, using different methods of hate speech, incl. doublespeak, veiled hostility, presenting opponents as a public threat, etc.
The term personalization refers to a news factor and to a tendency of media coverage. Personalization as a news factor means that topics and events, where individuals act respectively are affected by actions or events are more likely to become news than topics and events that cannot be portrayed as actions of individuals. A personalized reporting style puts destinies of individuals (and celebrities) in the foreground and/or connects topics and events on personal stories of individuals. As a tendency of media coverage, personalization means an increasing orientation towards (prominent) people (e.g., Blöbaum, 2013; Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Handstein, 2016). Field of application/theoretical foundation: Personalization is widely analyzed in communication science. Probably most often personalization (as a news factor) is analyzed in news value studies respectively studies that analyze journalistic news selection criteria. Furthermore, personalization as a concept is a considerable issue in political communication research. Here, personalization means that, on the one hand, individual politicians (for example election campaign candidates) are becoming increasingly important in the context of political communication (e.g., Rahat & Sheafer, 2007; Van Aelst et al., 2012), whereas less emphasis is being placed on parties, political institutions and/or political issues and content. This form of personalization is also referred to as 'individualization'. On the other hand, personalization also means that, in order to describe and evaluate individual politicians, apolitical characteristics, i.e., their personal characteristics and their personal life, are becoming increasingly relevant in political communication and election coverage. This aspect is also known as 'privatization' (e.g., Adam & Maier, 2010; Kriesi, 2012; Van Aelst et al., 2012). In principle, personalization can be analyzed in almost all subject areas, for example also in science communication, sports coverage and many more. References/combination ...
We provide a game‐theoretical model of manipulative election campaigns with two political candidates and a Bayesian voter. The latter is uncertain about how good the candidates are. Candidates take unobservable, costly actions to manipulate voter's opinion about their positions. We show that if the candidates differ in campaigning efficiency, and the voter receives the biased campaign messages with some noise, then the cost‐efficient candidate can win the election with higher probability than her opponent even when she is ex‐post an inferior choice for the voter. Our paper offers a novel informational justification for imposing limits on campaign spending and encouraging diversity in the supply of political information.
The term negativity in communication science refers to a news factor and to a tendency of media coverage. To put it simply, negativity as a news factor means that negative events (like controversies, conflicts, aggression, damage and so on) or so-called 'bad news' is more newsworthy than good ones (e.g., Galtung & Ruge, 1965). However, negativity is quite a complex concept and it is defined differently in research depending on the focus of the study. Lengauer et al. (2011) differentiate between actor-related and frame-related dimensions of negativity. At the 'actor level', negativity describes the tonality directed towards individual actors (for example political representatives or their organizations) in media coverage. At the 'frame-related level', negativity describes, for example, the overall tonality of the news story (predominantly negative), a pessimistic outlook in the story and/or a story focus on conflict or incapability and misconduct (Lengauer et al., 2011, pp. 183-185). Field of application/theoretical foundation: Negativity is widely analyzed in communication studies. The focus of this article lies on negativity in election (campaign) coverage. Furthermore, negativity (as a news factor) is often analyzed in news value studies respectively studies that analyze journalistic news selection criteria, in news bias studies as well as in video/media malaise or framing research (and others). References/combination with other methods of data collection: The analysis of negativity in media coverage may be combined or compared with journalist and population surveys (for example in news value studies or in framing research) as well as with so called "extra media data" (Rosengren, 1970, p. 96) (for example in news bias research). Furthermore, experimental studies that analyze the potential effects of a negative tonality of news coverage on recipients are possible. Example: The concept of negativity lacks an agreed-upon operationalization. Lengauer et al. (2011) review and systematize existing concepts and ...
