Blueprints and fingerprints Politicians' use of emotional appeals in European democracies

The interplay between emotions and politics is an important aspect of understanding political behavior. However, there is a significant gap in our knowledge regarding the specific motivations and patterns behind politicians' use of emotional appeals, even though this has profound implications for democratic discourse and voter perception. In this dissertation, I approach this problem by examining the strategic use of emotional language in politics, as well as its intrinsic connection to the personal traits of politicians. My research design focuses on European democracies, relying on parliamentary speeches from national parliaments and politicians’ Twitter posts. I analyze these text data using a novel method that combines dictionary-based sentiment analysis with topic modeling, utilizing a semi-supervised sentiment-topic model. This approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of the emotional content in political speeches. The key results of this this dissertation, obtained by strictly following an open science approach, show that the use of emotional appeals by politicians is not only a strategic choice reacting to the political environment, but also a reflection of their inherent personality traits. These findings suggest that political language is both a dynamic and a stable element, shaped by immediate strategic needs and deep-seated personal characteristics. They have broader implications for our understanding of political communication, suggesting a dual nature of political rhetoric that intertwines strategic considerations with the authentic expression of individual politicians' personalities. This dissertation underscores the importance of considering both strategic and personal factors in the study of political language, providing insights into the multifaceted nature of political rhetoric.