This Research Note investigates party advertising in newspapers and on social media (Facebook) during the 2019 general elections in Flanders, the largest region of Belgium. The 2019 elections saw a marked increase in the use of social media advertising by parties, whereas newspaper advertising saw a decline. Prior research that compares multiple types of advertising, particularly advertising on social and legacy media remains limited. As such, based on a quantitative content analysis we investigate not just the prevalence of party advertising on both types of media, but also compare the level of negativity, presidentialisation, and issue emphasis. Our analysis reveals substantial differences: we find that not only the type of advertisements varies across the platforms, but also that social media ads tend to be more negative. Finally, parties’ issue emphasis varies substantially as well, with different issues being emphasized in newspaper and Facebook advertisements.

Sub-constituency campaigning occurs when parties focus their campaign resources on specific geographical areas within an electoral district. This behaviour was traditionally thought to occur only in single-member plurality elections, but recent research demonstrates that proportional systems with multi-member districts can also elicit sub-constituency campaigning. However, most studies of sub-constituency campaigning rely on self-reported measures of campaigning, not direct measures of campaign intensity in different regions and communities. We present novel data on geographical variations in the intensity of Flemish parties’ campaign advertising during the 2014 general elections in Belgium, which provides a direct measure of sub-constituency campaigning. Our findings show clear evidence of sub-constituency campaigning: parties campaign more intensely in municipalities where they have stronger electoral support and in municipalities with greater population density.

De manier waarop vraag naar en aanbod van arbeid bij elkaar komen, is met de komst van het internet en sociale media drastisch veranderd. Dit brengt kansen met zich mee: werkgevers kunnen zich bij de werving veel directer op potentiële werknemers richten en zijn niet meer gebonden aan de doelgroep van bijvoorbeeld een dagblad. Het geeft echter ook risico’s, omdat het tot uitsluiting van groepen kan leiden. De positieve keerzijde van deze technologische medaille is dat algoritmes en big data weliswaar nieuwe manieren van discriminatie in de hand werken, maar dat ze tevens kunnen worden ingezet om deze discriminatie te traceren en te bestrijden. In dit artikel worden beide zijden van de medaille toegelicht.

This contribution describes civil service professionalism from a functionalist perspective: the most important function of civil service professionalism is creating, developing and maintaining the authority of governments. Contrary to common opinion, moral authority in our day appears to be of prime importance. Citizens appreciate moral authority, but this important source of authority is often underused by political-administrative officials (especially by them). By making better use of moral authority, civil servants – policy officials and executive officials – could play a much bigger role. In order to achieve this, their professionalism must be improved by creating a broad civil service charter from which (to a certain extent) they can derive a right for civil service professionalism. In the context of the present political debate in the Netherlands on the normalization of the legal status of civil servants, there is an opportunity now to make real progress in this matter. It would be a good thing if civil servants would make themselves heard in this debate. Looking after the moral dimension of the work of civil servants and the accountability in this respect is not only a matter for the Dutch cabinet and those preparing the civil service charter, but also for the civil servants in different parts of the Dutch civil service themselves.

This article is one of the first to systematically examine parties’ use of YouTube in Dutch election campaigns and to consider its effects. Content analysis of 406 YouTube ads and additional research show that nine political parties made use of this new campaign instrument in the 2010 Dutch parliamentary election campaign. However, unlike U.S. presidential candidate Obama, the parties did not really use YouTube to mobilize and involve voters. Instead, YouTube was used only as a means to broadcast advertisements for the party. These ads only reached a small audience and had little influence online as well as in the print media. Furthermore, this study examines which of these ads were more likely to reach a large number of viewers. The results demonstrate that short, comparative ads that contain the party leader, that are uploaded early on in the campaign, that stem from small or winning parties and that have numerous links on external websites are likely to reach more viewers.

During the last decades, election campaigns in Western Europe have undergone major changes. In response to an altered electoral market, political parties have started to campaign more offensively, making use of campaign tactics such as negative campaigning. Negative campaigning strongly conflicts with the political culture of consensus and cooperation that is inherent to many West European political systems, especially in the Netherlands, in which coalition building has always been a necessity. Taking the Netherlands as a case-in-point, this article demonstrates that even in a consensual multiparty system like the Dutch one negative campaigning is on the rise. Indeed, by exploring the last four election campaigns this study demonstrates that negative campaigning is part-and-parcel of the Dutch electoral politics ever since 2002.