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Franz Reiter ; Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des Verfassers ; Universität Innsbruck, Masterarbeit, 2018 ; (VLID)2741834

Dirty campaigning, which is understood as actions between elite politicians that violate social norms and democratic principles, is becoming an increasingly relevant phenomenon across the globe. Despite this development, we know little about which forms constitute dirty campaigning, how citizens perceive dirty campaigning, and how perceived dirty campaigning is associated with affective responses and political trust. We argue that the techniques and actions that constitute dirty campaigning go beyond uncivil campaigning and deceitful campaign techniques, as dirty campaigning also involves disinformation campaigning. Using data from a two-wave panel study ( N = 524) during the 2020 Viennese state election campaign, we examined the perceived structure of the dirty campaigning construct using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. We show that perceived dirty campaigning forms a hierarchical construct with three latent variables. Furthermore, we tested the associations of perceived dirty campaigning with negative emotions toward campaigns as well as outcomes related to political trust. Using structural equation modeling with longitudinal measurement invariance and controlling for autoregressive associations, we found that perceived dirty campaigning increases anger, frustration, and disgust toward campaigns, as well as increases distrust in politicians over time. We also observed that frustration toward campaigns decreases trust in democracy and that disgust toward campaigns increases distrust in politicians over time. We contribute to previous research by developing a framework for investigating perceived dirty campaigning as a hierarchical construct and demonstrating how perceived dirty campaigning can impair democratic outcomes.

Uncivil campaigning and deceitful campaign techniques are increasingly relevant phenomena in politics. However, it remains unclear how they share an underlying component and how partisanship can influence their associations with democratic outcomes. We introduce the concept of dirty campaigning, which is situated at the intersection of research on negative campaigning and political scandals. Dirty campaigning involves violations of social norms and liberal-democratic values between elite political actors in terms of style and practices, such as uncivil campaigning and deceitful campaign techniques. In a two-wave panel study (<em>N</em> = 634) during the 2021 German federal election campaign, we investigate the associations of perceived dirty campaigning by the least and most favorite party with distrust in politicians, trust in democracy, attitudes toward dirty campaigning regulation, as well as perceived harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy. We find that perceived dirty campaigning by the least favorite party increases perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy over time. In contrast, perceived dirty campaigning by the most favorite party decreases perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy as well as attitudes toward dirty campaigning regulation over time. Perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy increase distrust in politicians over time and vice versa. Our findings suggest that the outcomes of dirty campaigning can depend on partisanship and can have important implications for the quality of democracy.