Say it again with feeling: Issue ownership and candidate communication using Twitter

Adam M. Enders, Jason Gainous and Kevin M. Wagner

Social Science Quarterly, 2022, vol. 103, issue 4, 959-974

Abstract: Objectives We investigate to what extent partisan political candidates in the United States pay attention to different issues in their campaign communication, and whether they systematically deliver messages using different types of sentiment. Methods We analyze the 267,538 tweets issued by candidates for the U.S. Congress during the 2018 midterm elections using a combination of latent topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and regression analysis, estimating both issue emphasis and the emotional tone of communications. Results We find that candidates discussed a small number of distinct issues. Sentiment analysis reveals that the emotions used to convey these topics varied considerably more than interparty emphasis. Moreover, we observe that Democrats and Republicans discussed the same topics in very different ways, with Democrats—the out‐party at the time—proving more negative in their messaging. Conclusions When partisans discuss those issues their respective parties “own,” there are asymmetries in the emotion they use to communicate about these issues. The concept and measurement of issue ownership are complicated.

Date: 2022
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