“The good, the bad, and the ugly”. A panel study on the reciprocal effects of negative, dirty, and positive campaigning on political distrust

Autor(en)

Franz Reiter, Jörg Matthes

Abstrakt

Negative campaigning is a central concept in political communication research. However, most conceptualizations of the term are rather broad, summarizing all kinds of negativity such as substantial criticism and offensive behaviors. In this paper, we distinguish negative, dirty, and positive campaigning. While negative campaigning refers to critical, civil, and non-disrespectful arguments, dirty campaigning, by contrast, is defined as “below-the-belt” attacks including incivility and unfair campaign methods. In a two-wave Austrian national election panel study, we tested the reciprocal effects of perceived negative, dirty, and positive campaigning on distrust in politicians. Using auto-regressive models, we found that perceived dirty campaigning positively predicted distrust in politicians over time. Furthermore, distrust in politicians led to increased perceptions of dirty campaigning over time, suggesting a reciprocal relationship. However, perceived negative and positive campaigning were unrelated to distrust in politicians. Theoretical and methodological implications of distinguishing negative, dirty, and positive campaigning are discussed.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Journal

Mass Communication and Society

Band

25

Seiten

649-672

Anzahl der Seiten

24

ISSN

1520-5436

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2021.1934702

Publikationsdatum

06-2021

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Communication

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-a-panel-study-on-the-reciprocal-effects-of-negative-dirty-and-positive-campaigning-on-political-distrust(f5da8134-342b-4912-862a-6e77e9bd5c63).html