I BEG TO DIFFER: UNDERSTANDING DISAGREEMENT, AGREEMENT, AND EMOTIONAL APPEALS IN GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION

Abstract

This study explores gubernatorial candidates’ presentation of disagreement, agreement, and use of emotional appeals to frame messages during the 2016 primary and general election periods. Using content analysis, I examined 7,111 tweets to understand how candidates craft their image as they separate themselves from some ideas/people/groups and align themselves with others. Overall, findings complicate the construct of political disagreement itself, showing that disagreement presented by candidates can take multiple forms (e.g. same party, opposing party, Washington insiders). Specifically, results suggest a strong tendency for candidates to highlight disagreement with the opposing political party, even during the primary period. Results also showed that while messages pertaining to policy issues often include disagreement, references to an opponent’s character almost always include disagreement. This project also helps to explain when and how candidates use emotional appeals to frame messages, even in a truncated and text-heavy medium like Twitter. For instance, results suggest a strong relationship between anger appeals and use of uncivil disagreement on Twitter, which raises concerns about the tone potential leaders use to convey disagreement during elections. Perhaps most importantly, this research contributes to an understanding of how open race candidates fit within the overall landscape picture of candidate communication, demonstrating that such candidates have unique communication styles and, overall, communicate differently with voters than incumbents and challengers on a wide range of factors. This framework can be used to study candidate communication on social networking sites like Twitter as such interactive media become even more important for political campaigns.