Studies shows that politicians’ negativity usage fails to enhance their approval ratings among the general public, yet politicians regularly use it. Why?

A new study by Željko Poljak in The International Journal of Press/Politics offers some interesting clues (my emphasis):

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.

A good summary by Mark Coddington & Seth C. Lewis at NiemanLab.

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‘Give the Media What They Need: Negativity as a Media Access Tool for Politicians – Željko Poljak, 2024’. Accessed 5 May 2024. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19401612241234861.