2024/09/16 by Tobias Widmann, Kristina Bakkær Simonsen · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Social and Intergroup Psychology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/psrm.2024.34
openalex publication_date 2024/09/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Abstract Whether a topic is seen in a moral or moral-emotional light has significant political implications. Yet, we lack knowledge about the process of moralization: Who defines the way topics are communicated about? Where prior research has investigated the relative power of different actors to place a topic on the agenda or shape opinions, we study who sets the moral and moral-emotional tone of debate. To do so, we zoom in on immigration discourse in Germany and analyze fine-grained social media data from politicians, political parties, newspapers, and members of the public over a period of more than four years. After employing a transformer model to identify moral and moral-emotional appeals, we use structural vector autoregression models to demonstrate the important role of radical-right challengers in shaping public discourse in a negative moral-emotional direction. The results inform theories of moralization and political entrepreneurship.