Onderzoeksartikel

To debate, or not to debate?: de impact van verkiezingsdebatten op de toehoorders

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Abstract

Despite the existence of a rich research tradition on the impact of televised presidential debates, there has been little research on debate-induced opinion change of life audiences in proportional electoral systems. With this paper we will try to fill this void because debates are becoming a crucial political communication tool in political campaigns. Using a quasi-experimental design, we investigate a local not-mediatized debate conducted in the early stages of the electoral campaign with respect to the Belgian federal elections of May 2003. We find that a substantial part of the audience are changing their voting intentions due to the debate. Compared with televised debates the influence of life debates seems to be much stronger. Additionally, we conclude that electoral debates are conductive to the personalization of politics since the preference scores for all individual debaters are improving, while generally the opposite seems to be true for the political parties they represent.

How to Cite:

Thijssen, P., (2004) “To debate, or not to debate?: de impact van verkiezingsdebatten op de toehoorders”, Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap 32(3), 222–239. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvc.93104