A propaganda negativa: estratégia e voto nas eleições brasileiras

Abstract

This PhD dissertation is a contribution to body of research that aims to understand the workings of elections in Brazil. Specifically, it investigates negative advertising during presidential elections. The dissertation is subdivided into five chapters. The first one situates the reader within the broader normative debate on the role of negative in democratic elections. It discusses the importance of attacks in contexts such as political mobilization, informational environment and vote decision. The second chapter contains a broad analysis of the content of negative ads broadcasted in the course of Public Electoral Advertising Programing during the presidential elections of 1989, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010, including second rounds when they happened. The methodology followed the guidelines suggested by Figueiredo et all. (1998), but was adapted to suit the specificities of negative ads. Interesting trends emerged, the most noteworthy of which was the low rate of attacks launched between candidates. The third chapter investigates the strategic employment of inserts during presidential campaigns. I debate the highly regulated model adopted for political advertisement in Brazil. Despite this, it is possible to trace the divergent strategic uses of negative inserts, being that nighttime programming is the preferred locus of attacks. In the fourth chapter I attempt to build a model of negative campaigns based on game theory. The model sets out to answer the following questions: who attacks whom, when and why? I argue that negative advertising is used as a last measure resort used by candidates in an attempt to shift the dynamics of the electoral game. For this reason it is used especially by trailing candidates in polls. The fifth and last chapter develop a statistical model in order to measure the impact of negative ads in voter intention.