IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v50y2020i2p497-509_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tones from a Narrowing Race: Polling and Online Political Communication during the 2014 Scottish Referendum Campaign

Author

Listed:
  • Brie, Evelyne
  • Dufresne, Yannick

Abstract

The use of negative political communication is a predominant characteristic of modern politics. However, literature doesn't provide an answer to the following question: what explains fluctuations in the use of negative messages within political organisations during a given political campaign? The present paper examines this question in the context of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Data consists of all tweets distributed by the official Twitter account of both campaign organisations (@YesScotland and @UK_Together) between June 16, 2014 and September 17, 2014. Results are obtained by a non-parametric local regression and by time-series regression analyses. Our model demonstrates that having an advance in the polls had a statistically significant influence on the tweet sentiment of at least one organisation during the referendum campaign: Better Together's messages were more negative when it was ahead in the polls. Meanwhile, Yes Scotland's messages were more negative after each of the leaders' debates.

Suggested Citation

  • Brie, Evelyne & Dufresne, Yannick, 2020. "Tones from a Narrowing Race: Polling and Online Political Communication during the 2014 Scottish Referendum Campaign," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(2), pages 497-509, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:50:y:2020:i:2:p:497-509_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007123417000606/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:50:y:2020:i:2:p:497-509_5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.