The Online Battlefield: How Conflict Frames in Political Advertisements Affect Political Participation in a Multiparty Context

Emma van der Goot; Sanne Kruikemeier; Rens Vliegenthart; Jeroen de Ridder

doi:10.1177/00323217231178105

The Online Battlefield: How Conflict Frames in Political Advertisements Affect Political Participation in a Multiparty Context

Emma van der Goot^*
, Sanne Kruikemeier
, Rens Vliegenthart
, Jeroen de Ridder

^*Corresponding author for this work

Epistemology and Metaphysics

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

This article examines how politicians’ conflict framing strategies in online campaign advertisements affect citizens’ political participation in a multi-party context. We rely on a unique combination of innovative research methods to do so, including a four-wave panel survey, a content analysis of Facebook browser-tracking data and a mobile experience sampling survey with data donations. All data were collected during the 2021 Dutch general elections. We find that conflict framing can discourage citizens from engaging in low-effort forms of political participation, such as discussing politics, signing a petition and visiting political websites. The results show that conflict frames can demobilize citizens because they lower enthusiasm and are perceived as less informative. Our study provides insights into the potential unintended consequences of using conflict framing as a campaign strategy in a multi-party setting.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1112-1132
Number of pages	21
Journal	Political Studies
Volume	72
Issue number	3
Early online date	24 Jun 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231178105
Publication status	Published - Aug 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: The study was funded by NWO Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Grant number: 406.DI.19.055) and NORFACE Joint Research Programme on Democratic Governance in a Turbulent Age (Grant number: 822166). The authors would like to thank Michael Hameleers for his help during the revisions, the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and Roos van Riel, Amber de Wit and Roeland Dubel for their assistance with manual coding. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: The study was funded by NWO Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Grant number: 406.DI.19.055) and NORFACE Joint Research Programme on Democratic Governance in a Turbulent Age (Grant number: 822166).

Funders	Funder number
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek	406, 406.DI.19.055, DI.19.055, 822166

Keywords

conflict framing
negative campaigning
online political advertising
political participation

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10.1177/00323217231178105

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Cite this

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abstract = "This article examines how politicians{\textquoteright} conflict framing strategies in online campaign advertisements affect citizens{\textquoteright} political participation in a multi-party context. We rely on a unique combination of innovative research methods to do so, including a four-wave panel survey, a content analysis of Facebook browser-tracking data and a mobile experience sampling survey with data donations. All data were collected during the 2021 Dutch general elections. We find that conflict framing can discourage citizens from engaging in low-effort forms of political participation, such as discussing politics, signing a petition and visiting political websites. The results show that conflict frames can demobilize citizens because they lower enthusiasm and are perceived as less informative. Our study provides insights into the potential unintended consequences of using conflict framing as a campaign strategy in a multi-party setting.",

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doi = "10.1177/00323217231178105",

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AU - Vliegenthart, Rens

AU - de Ridder, Jeroen

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AB - This article examines how politicians’ conflict framing strategies in online campaign advertisements affect citizens’ political participation in a multi-party context. We rely on a unique combination of innovative research methods to do so, including a four-wave panel survey, a content analysis of Facebook browser-tracking data and a mobile experience sampling survey with data donations. All data were collected during the 2021 Dutch general elections. We find that conflict framing can discourage citizens from engaging in low-effort forms of political participation, such as discussing politics, signing a petition and visiting political websites. The results show that conflict frames can demobilize citizens because they lower enthusiasm and are perceived as less informative. Our study provides insights into the potential unintended consequences of using conflict framing as a campaign strategy in a multi-party setting.

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The Online Battlefield: How Conflict Frames in Political Advertisements Affect Political Participation in a Multiparty Context

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Keywords

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