A core part of my research focuses on party competition and political communication. Specifically, I investigate how parties try to connect themselves with different social groups, how they use social group appeals as a distinct communication strategy and in combination with policy issues, and the importance of social groups and group appeals for political representation.
Huber, L. M. & Dolinsky, A. O.: ‘How parties shape their relationship with social groups: A roadmap to the study of group-based appeals.’ Pre-print
Huber, L. M. & Haselmayer, M.: ‘Strategic Alienation: The Dynamics of Group Appeals in Negative Campaigning.’ Revise and Resubmit.
Dolinsky, A. O., Huber, L. M. & Kinski, L.: ‘Group Appeals and Representative Claims: A Conceptual Map.’ Work in Progress.
Another part of my research focuses on political behavior and public opinion formation. Here I investigate voters’ responses to group appeals and how group sympathy and perceptions of group representation influence party choice.
Dolinsky, A. O. & Huber, L. M.: ‘Claim and Response: How Group Appeals Shape Voters’ Perceptions of Representation.’ Work in Progress.
Huber, L. M. & Haselmayer, M.: ‘Group-Based Appeals and Attacks: Effects on Sender and Target Party Evaluation.’ Work in Progress.
An additional strand of my research focuses on manual and automated text analysis for the study of social group appeals, issue emphasis, policy positions, and inter-party communication. For example, in a current project together with Alona O. Dolinsky and Will Horne, we develop a new supervised machine learning classifier for the extraction of social groups mentions and appeals from election manifestos.
Dolinsky, A. O., Huber, L. M. & Horne, W.: ‘Who Do Parties Speak To? Introducing the PSoGA: A New Comprehensive Database of Parties’ Social Group Appeals.’ Revise and Resubmit. Pre-print
Horne, W., Dolinsky, A. O. & Huber, L. M.: ‘Using LLMs to Detect Group Appeals in Parties’ Election Manifestos.’ Pre-print