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Tweeting for Hearts and Minds? Measuring Candidates’ Use of Anxiety in Tweets During the 2018 Midterm Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2020

Bryan T. Gervais Open the ORCID record for Bryan T. Gervais [Opens in a new window] ,
Heather K. Evans Open the ORCID record for Heather K. Evans [Opens in a new window]  and
Annelise Russell Open the ORCID record for Annelise Russell [Opens in a new window]
Bryan T. Gervais
Affiliation:
University of Texas at San Antonio
Heather K. Evans
Affiliation:
University of Virginia’s College at Wise
Annelise Russell
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
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Abstract

This article considers whether candidates strategically use emotional rhetoric in social media messages similar to the way that fear appeals are used strategically in televised campaign advertisements. We use a dataset of tweets issued by the campaign accounts of candidates for the US House of Representatives during the last two months of the 2018 midterm elections to determine whether candidate vulnerability predicts the presence of certain emotions in social media messages. Contrary to theoretical expectations, we find that vulnerability does not appear to inspire candidates to use more anxious language in their tweets. However, we do find evidence of a surprising relationship between sad rhetoric and vulnerability and that campaign context influences the use of other forms of negative rhetoric in tweets.

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 652 - 656
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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References

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