This essay is studying the Parliament parties´ use of negative campaigning in party leader debates in the connected Swedish general election in 2014. The research questions in this essay are: How does the use of negative campaigning appear in the Swedish party leader debates 2014? In what way does the use of negative campaigning differ due to: - The time lasting until the election day? - Whether the party is a government party or an opposition party? - The party’s latest result (positive or negative) in the polls? - The party’s position in the ideological left-right scale? The method used to perform the study is a quantitative content analysis. The objects that are analyzed are four party leader debates connected to the general election 2014. The variables used in the research are Negative and Not negative (in the latest variable both positive and neutral messages are included). The debates analyzed are videos of the entire debates. The total speech time and the use of negative campaigning for each party is calculated in seconds and translated to percent (how many percent each party use to negative campaigning in total for each debate). The results show that negative campaigning is more used during the election process than before it has started. There is no clear pattern between the use of negative campaigning and closeness of the election day. The political parties that are in opposition tend to use more negative campaigning than the parties that are in the government. The polls and the ideological left- right scale shows no significant pattern related to the use of negative campaigning.

Inför riksdagsvalet 2018 syntes en ny aktör inom fältet för politisk marknadsföring; influencern. Denna studie är skriven i syfte att granska vilka strategier som används då influencers försöker påverka människor politiskt. Med fokus på personalisering och negativ politisk marknadsföring genomfördes en retorisk textanalys av åtta bloggar drivna av svenska influencers i syfte att besvara frågeställningen: Vilka strategier använder sig influencers av för att påverka människors politiska åsikter?  Studien resulterade i slutsatsen att både personalisering och negativ politisk marknadsföring är strategier som används då influencers försöker påverka människors politiska åsikter. Personalisering användes dock i högre grad vilket antas bero på att influencers också i en mer kommersiell marknadsföring använder sig av en personlig relation till sina följare när de vill sälja en produkt.

In recent years, negativity has become a dominant theme in the political campaign. However, there are no comprehensive studies to measure the amount of negativity and to examine how parties and candidates adopt these negative strategies, particularly in the Canadian context. Although some studies have focused on a particular aspect of negative campaigning in a Canadian election, the question remains of how and to what extent parties adopt negative strategies in an election. In this thesis, I have collected and analyzed parties’ press releases in the 2015 federal election to examine and explain negativity in parties’ political campaigns. I have tested my results according to five primary theories of negative campaigning, including competitive positioning, ideological proximity, party organization, coalition or minority effect, and negative personalization, to see if these theories apply in the Canadian context. My results indicate that the 2015 federal campaign was a highly negative one, and most of the negative attacks have been directed towards the leader of the Conservative Party, Stephen Harper, while the Conservative Party published the least amount of negative attacks during the campaign. I also found that the Liberal Party has published the most negative statements during the campaign. My results also show that one of the influential factors in shaping parties’ negative campaign strategies is the other parties’ status in public opinion polls, particularly the federal voting intention factor. Although the results show that most of the attacks in the 2015 campaign targeted leaders of parties, I did not find enough support in my models to verify the negative personalization theory. The overall findings of this thesis show that Canadian elections are moving toward a presidential-style campaign, similar to the United States, by becoming more negative and more personalized, which can have significant implications for Canadian democracy.