Appealing to war images in political advertisements incite voters’ anger toward the government? Examining the effects of visual populist messages on voter populist attitudes in the Taiwan case

In early 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukrainian territories. While the Russia-Ukraine war has been ongoing for two years, this war has awakened international attention to the regional uncertainty in East Asia. In particular, international political leaders (e.g., U.S. President Joe Biden and President of EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen) have repeatedly emphasized their significant concerns about China’s military invasion of Taiwan. Domestically, similar concerns are politicalized and have caused intense debates among parties holding opposing ideological positions regarding Cross-strait relations in recent years. They are also one of the dominant issues in the upcoming Taiwan 2024 national election. While DPP, the incumbent party, appeals to deepen international cooperation with democratic countries and improve the national defense capacity in the next four years, KMT, the primary opponent of DPP, strongly accuses DPP’s policies of leading Taiwan to war. Against the backdrop, this study examines the message effects of war via populist communication. Several research blanks are emphasized. First, despite a large amount of populism research, fewer have scrutinized the effects of war messages on voters’ political attitudes. Second, the textual persuasiveness of populist messages has been widely examined. Whereas, the power of visual information (e.g., images) is under-investigated. Third, while negative emotions effectively mobilize voters, most research has ignored the roles of positive ones in populist communication. The arguments of this study are three-fold. First, we argue that visual populist messages of the Cross-strait war create greater persuasive effects on voters’ populist attitudes than textual messages. Exposing to visual populist messages, electorates feel more anger toward the government. Second, following Wirz’s (2018) study, we claim that positive and negative discrete emotions increase the persuasion of populist messages. While populist messages mainly appeal to the emotion of fear, the emotion of hope positively encourages voters to actively change the status quo of politics that they are dissatisfied with. Third, voters’ blame attribution functioning as the psychological mechanism in voters’ information processing strengthens the effects of visual populist appeals on voters’ populist attitudes. Method-wise, this study designs a 2 (people-centrism message frame: yes/no) x 2 (anti-elitism message frame: yes/no) x 3 (emotional valence of images: positive/negative/no image) between-subjects experiment. Twelve versions of political advertisements customized for Taiwan’s national election are examined. The study aims to broaden scholarly debates about populism attitudes via visual political communication and political advertising. Also, it demonstrates how war messages affect democratic elections which emphasizes its practical contributions to policy-makers.