Campaign Agenda-Building Online: The Effects of Online Information Source and Interactivity on Affective Evaluations and the Salience of the Election

ABSTRACT

The 2 × 3 experimental design study was conducted with 300 undergraduate participants during Florida's 2010 gubernatorial election. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six different conditions based on type of online site (campaign Web site vs. social network sites) and level of interactivity (user-to-system, user-to-document, and user-to-user), and emotional and evaluative responses to online campaign information were examined. Interaction effects in one campaign notwithstanding, the emotions and evaluations elicited by the other campaign were positively associated with public agenda-building. Thus, those responding favorably to the winner's campaign considered the election more important and were more likely to vote.

Keywords:

• Campaign agenda-building
• social media
• interactivity
• emotions