Recent studies indicate that politicians’ negativity usage fails to enhance their approval ratings among the general public, yet politicians regularly use it. This begs the following question: why are politicians so negative if this strategy does not bolster their prospects for re-election? In this paper, I argue that the media, driven by audience engagement, plays a pivotal role in shaping politicians’ propensity for negativity. Specifically, politicians resort to negativity because it aligns with the media’s negativity bias, thereby increasing their chances of securing media access and public attention. I test this expectation on the less-likely case of Belgium, using data on politicians’ negativity usage in parliament and their presence in prime-time TV news (2010–2020). The results show that using negativity significantly increases politicians’ chances of gaining media access, particularly when using uncivil negativity. The more media access politicians start to attract due to negativity, the more they resort to negativity.

中文翻译：

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为媒体提供他们所需要的：消极作为政客的媒体接触工具

最近的研究表明，政治家使用负面言论并不能提高他们在公众中的支持率，但政治家却经常使用它。这就引出了以下问题：如果这一策略不能增强政客们连任的前景，为什么他们如此消极？在本文中，我认为，在受众参与的推动下，媒体在塑造政客的消极倾向方面发挥着关键作用。具体来说，政客诉诸消极情绪是因为它符合媒体的消极偏见，从而增加了他们获得媒体访问和公众关注的机会。我在比利时不太可能的情况下测试了这一预期，使用了政客在议会中使用负面言论以及他们在黄金时段电视新闻中的表现（2010-2020）的数据。结果表明，使用负面言论会显着增加政客获得媒体采访的机会，特别是在使用不文明的负面言论时。政客因消极情绪而开始吸引的媒体接触越多，他们就越会诉诸消极情绪。