Mobilization without Persuasion: How Extreme Rhetoric Works

• In Event: The Electoral Impacts of Media and Messaging

Abstract

This paper argues that the electoral function of extreme rhetoric is mobilizing one’s preexisting supporters without relying on the updated belief about its user's type, i.e. policy position or valence. Rather, it mobilizes the preexisting supporters by increasing their psychological utility of voting through the following mechanism: the friend-enemy grouping inherent in extreme rhetoric restricts their reference group to the newly defined friend group, decreasing social pressure for self-censorship and increasing desire for high within-group status. It, however, similarly mobilizes the opponent's supporters to vote against the user, for they come to view the user as an internal enemy. Thus, unlike conventional wisdom, other things equal, high popularity promotes the mainstream politicians’ use of extreme rhetoric, maximizing the mobilization of their own supporters and minimizing the backlash from the opponent’s supporters. This study presents evidence from OLS and time-series regressions for the unique electoral logic behind extreme rhetoric based on automated text analysis of 63,471 press releases and commentaries of major parties in South Korea from 2012 to 2023.

Author

• Joon Hyuk Chung, University of California, San Diego