Does the messenger matter? A comparison of the effects of Eurosceptic messages communicated by mainstream and radical right-wing parties on citizens’ EU attitudes

ABSTRACT

The fact that the European elections in 2014 resulted in an unprecedented success for Eurosceptic parties raises questions concerning the influence of political elites on citizens’ Euroscepticism. This paper examines whether Eurosceptic messages have a different impact when communicated by mainstream right-wing parties vs. their more radical counterparts. We do so using data from a survey experiment conducted in Germany in 2013. Our results show that Eurosceptic messages from mainstream parties significantly increase Euroscepticism among voters but that those effects are confined largely to “in”-partisans. Furthermore, when a message is effective among “out”-partisans, it is due to a combined effect of source and message credibility. This holds true for both mainstream and radical right parties suggesting that contrary to expectations, the former do not enjoy any advantage over the latter in terms of perceived credibility.

Acknowledgements

We thank Julian Erben, Stefan Krause, Andrea Retzbach, and Frank Schneider for their work on the development of the instruments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Michaela Maier is professor for communication psychology at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Her research priorities are interactions between political actors and media, and the effects of strategic communication on citizens.

Silke Adam is professor of political communication at the University of Bern. Her research focuses on the content, interactions and selection logics of online and mass media.

Jürgen Maier is professor for political communication at the University of Koblenz-Landau. His current research focuses on the content and effects of campaign communication with a particular interest on televised debates.

Notes

1 It is important to note that party identification and credibility are not independent: For in-partisans, the perception of source and message credibility is influenced by party attachment (see e.g. Campbell et al. 1960). However, according to current research, credibility should be a distinct factor of message evaluation for out-partisans.

2 The gfk online panel is representative for online users in Germany. However, because the representation of the total citizenship was important for our study, a quota sample was drawn taking into account the variables age, education, gender, and geographic region. The quotas were chosen in accordance with the distribution of the criterion in the total national population. A deviation of 20% from the specific quota was regarded as tolerable.

3 Initially, 1758 people were invited to participate in the study per email. Of the 1752 persons who responded, a quota sample of 1089 persons was drawn taking into account the variables age, education, gender, and geographic region. The selected participants received a link to the online-questionnaire; one reminder was sent out to increase the response rate. The quality of the interviews was ensured by using the GfK-tool TIGO. This tool (a) detects specific patterns of participants’ answers to standardized questions (e.g., straightlining); (b) evaluates the length of answers to open questions; and (c) takes into account the time that a participant spent in filling out the questionnaire (min. 11 minutes, max. 60 minutes). Interviews which were evaluated as “not satisfactory” according to these criteria were removed from the sample (N = 44). In addition, 125 incomplete interviews were excluded. Two hundred and forty one participants belonged to a third treatment group which received a positive campaign advertisement as treatment and which is not considered in this analysis.

4 The wording of the advertisements can be found in the Web appendix to this paper.

5 Participants assigned to the control group filled out the questionnaire without being exposed to any treatment. The wording of all variables can be found in the Web appendix.

6 Message credibility in this paper is conceptualized as one predictor of the persuasiveness of party ads and theoretically distinct from the dependent variable (EU attitudes). The empirical correlation between perceived ad credibility and the dependent variable supports our argument that both concepts are theoretically related but not identical (r = −.31; p < .001; N = 481).

Additional information

Funding

Our work on this paper was supported by grants from The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) as well as by the Research Group Communication, Media and Politics at the University of Koblenz-Landau to Michaela Maier, Silke Adam and Jürgen Maier.