Recognizing Campaign Effects on Social Media: A Computerized Text Analysis of the 2015 Canadian General Election on Facebook

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dc.contributor.advisorSayers, Anthony M.
dc.contributor.advisorTuxhorn, Kim Lee
dc.contributor.authorCzarnecki, Lucas
dc.contributor.committeememberStewart, David K.
dc.contributor.committeememberLucas, Jack
dc.contributor.committeememberBrodie, Ian
dc.date2019-11
dc.date.accessioned2019-09-16T16:10:38Z
dc.date.available2019-09-16T16:10:38Z
dc.date.issued2019-09-13
dc.description.abstractPrevious research demonstrates that traditional campaign strategies such as door-to-door canvassing and advertisement have minimal persuasive effects on voters’ political attitudes and vote choice while simultaneously demonstrating strong activation effects on voters’ existing preferences. From this literature, numerous theoretical perspectives on campaign contact have emerged. The most predominant is the minimal effects thesis, which posits that campaigns have minimal effect influencing voters’ political attitudes, vote choice, and consequently, election outcomes. In contrast, the activation effects thesis posits that campaigns are consequential to election outcomes because campaign contact activates voters’ existing political preferences and mobilizes the electorate to vote. This thesis proposes to reconcile the two theoretical perspectives by demonstrating that the same type of campaign contact may have both minimal persuasive effects on voters’ political preferences and strong activation effects on voters’ emotions. The thesis hypothesizes then that campaign contact evokes emotional responses that encourage rather than discourage voting. To this end, the thesis examines campaign effects online from a unique dataset queried from Facebook consisting of federal party leaders’ campaign messages (N = 1,711) and the responses to those messages from everyday Facebook users (n = 92,813) during the 2015 Canadian general election campaign. Computational social science methods are employed to directly measure campaign contact’s persuasive and activation effects on partisan and nonpartisan Facebook users. The results demonstrate that campaign contact online has a minimal persuasive effect on Facebook users’ self-expressed political preferences as well as strong activation effects on those preferences. Activation effects manifest as emotional responses that are most pronounced when individuals react to attitude-divergent rather than attitude-consistent campaign messaging. Exposure to attitude-divergent contact evokes Facebook users to experience discrete negative emotions such as anger, which previous research has shown to increase the electorate’s propensity to vote. The efficacy of negative emotions, however, may incentivize political parties to adopt strategies that demonize political opponents and which may, therefore, contribute to negative partisanship online.en_US
dc.identifier.citationCzarnecki, L. (2019). Recognizing Campaign Effects on Social Media: A Computerized Text Analysis of the 2015 Canadian General Election on Facebook (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.en_US
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/37001
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1880/110936
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisher.facultyArtsen_US
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen
dc.rightsUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.en_US
dc.subjectsocial media, political parties, campaign effects, emotions, persuasion, activation, Facebooken_US
dc.subject.classificationEducation--Social Sciencesen_US
dc.subject.classificationPolitical Scienceen_US
dc.subject.classificationPsychologyen_US
dc.titleRecognizing Campaign Effects on Social Media: A Computerized Text Analysis of the 2015 Canadian General Election on Facebooken_US
dc.typemaster thesisen_US
thesis.degree.disciplinePolitical Scienceen_US
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Calgaryen_US
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts (MA)en_US
ucalgary.item.requestcopytrueen_US
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