ABSTRACT

How political actors convey information–that is, the discursive frames they use–can alter individuals’ attitudes, preferences, and behaviors, especially during campaigns. Although scholars have shown that discursive frames using populist rhetoric evoke particularly strong reactions, we do not yet know how the individual elements that make up the populist frame, like anti-elitism or pro-people, fare relative to other ways of seeing the political world or what kinds of messages engage individuals beyond populist ones. In this paper, I evaluate the effectiveness of thirteen frame elements in stimulating online engagement. I derive frame elements not only from populism, but from competing discursive frames, including technocracy, pluralism, and neutral rhetoric. I find support for my argument that frame elements using populist rhetoric, are less cognitively demanding, and evoke emotions produce observable framing effects. To test my argument, I evaluate campaign Tweets from 18 actors in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Italy, and Spain (N = 1,577). My findings affirm the existence of framing effects in campaigns while identifying the generalizable content of the messages that produce these framing effects, as well as identifying the type of message content that most effectively competes with populist frame elements in this sample.

摘要

政治行动者如何传达信息——即他们使用的话语框架——可以改变个人的态度、偏好和行为，尤其是在竞选期间。尽管学者们已经表明，使用民粹主义修辞的话语框架会引起特别强烈的反应，但我们尚不知道构成民粹主义框架的个别元素，如反精英主义或亲民，相对于其他看待政治世界的方式而言如何或者什么样的信息能够吸引民粹主义之外的个人。在本文中，我评估了 13 个框架元素在刺激在线参与方面的有效性。我不仅从民粹主义中获取框架元素，还从相互竞争的话语框架中获取框架元素，包括技术统治、多元化和中性修辞。我找到支持我的论点，即使用民粹主义修辞来构建元素，认知要求较低，唤起情绪会产生可观察的框架效应。为了验证我的论点，我评估了来自巴西、墨西哥、哥伦比亚、意大利和西班牙（N = 1,577）的 18 位演员的竞选推文。我的发现肯定了竞选活动中框架效应的存在，同时确定了产生这些框架效应的消息的可概括内容，以及确定了最有效地与本样本中的民粹主义框架元素竞争的消息内容类型。