Politics in the last decades has been marked by profound transformations. Three of them have raised concern for the quality of the democratic debate. First, political communication is characterized by increasing negativity. Second, societies have become more polarized: political and social groups increasingly feel apart from each other, both ideologically and affectively. Third, the increasingly widespread adoption of social media among elites (and citizens) has reinforced and encouraged these two phenomena. Social media – and particularly, X (formerly Twitter) – allow political elites to attack or discredit their adversaries more directly and ‘permanently’, while also amplifying extreme and polarized opinions. The acquisition of the platform by Elon Musk in April 2022 appears to have exacerbated these trends – as illustrated by the 2024 US elections and campaign. But to what extent are these trends observable in political elites’ discourse within a consensual democracy like Belgium?
This paper studies the evolution of negative campaigning and incivility on X over time and across political actors, based on a quantitative content analysis of more than 30,000 posts published by Belgian main political parties and their leaders between January 2022 and January 2025. Negativity is conceived both in terms of attacks between political actors (issue-based and personal) and in terms of attacks against non-political groups (socioeconomic, cultural etc.). The analysis first provides a descriptive overview of negativity and uncivility over time (including routine, campaign and post-electoral periods) and across parties. The paper then tests the influence of contextual political variables at two interconnected levels: the party level (opposition vs government; winner-loser; political ideology; performance in opinion polls; leadership change) and the electoral cycle (routine period or permanent campaign, pre-campaign, campaign, post-election, government formation).
