Hackenburg Kobi, Brady William J, Tsakiris Manos
Department of Media and Communications, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton St, WC2A 2AE, London, UK.
Centre for the Politics of Feelings, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Malet St, WC1E 7HU, London, UK.
PNAS Nexus. 2023 Jun 9;2(6):pgad189. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad189. eCollection 2023 Jun.
During political campaigns, candidates use rhetoric to advance competing visions and assessments of their country. Research reveals that the moral language used in this rhetoric can significantly influence citizens' political attitudes and behaviors; however, the moral language actually used in the rhetoric of elites during political campaigns remains understudied. Using a data set of every tweet () published by 39 US presidential candidates during the 2016 and 2020 primary elections, we extracted moral language and constructed network models illustrating how candidates' rhetoric is semantically connected. These network models yielded two key discoveries. First, we find that party affiliation clusters can be reconstructed solely based on the moral words used in candidates' rhetoric. Within each party, popular moral values are expressed in highly similar ways, with Democrats emphasizing careful and just treatment of individuals and Republicans emphasizing in-group loyalty and respect for social hierarchies. Second, we illustrate the ways in which outsider candidates like Donald Trump can separate themselves during primaries by using moral rhetoric that differs from their parties' common language. Our findings demonstrate the functional use of strategic moral rhetoric in a campaign context and show that unique methods of text network analysis are broadly applicable to the study of campaigns and social movements.
在政治竞选期间，候选人运用言辞来宣扬对其国家的不同愿景和评估。研究表明，这种言辞中所使用的道德语言能够显著影响公民的政治态度和行为；然而，政治竞选期间精英阶层言辞中实际使用的道德语言仍未得到充分研究。利用2016年和2020年初选期间39位美国总统候选人发布的每一条推文（）组成的数据集，我们提取了道德语言，并构建了网络模型来说明候选人的言辞是如何在语义上相互关联的。这些网络模型带来了两个关键发现。首先，我们发现仅凭候选人言辞中使用的道德词汇就能重构党派归属集群。在每个党派内部，流行的道德价值观以高度相似的方式表达，民主党人强调对个人的谨慎和公正对待，而共和党人强调群体内的忠诚以及对社会等级制度的尊重。其次，我们说明了像唐纳德·特朗普这样的非传统候选人在初选期间如何通过使用与其党派常用语言不同的道德言辞来使自己脱颖而出。我们的研究结果证明了战略道德言辞在竞选背景下的功能性运用，并表明独特的文本网络分析方法广泛适用于竞选和社会运动的研究。
