Health by Words—A Content Analysis of Political Manifestos in the Portuguese Elections of 1975
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Manifestos and Political Manifestos—A Review of the Literature
2.1. Manifestos as an Object of Multidisciplinary Studies
- (1)
- The manifesto as a “product of equilibrium” in the electoral market, composed of the ideological party offer, the main responsibility of the party, and the demand assumed by the electorate;
- (2)
- The manifesto as a social reflection of the surrounding context.
2.1.1. The Manifesto as Output in the Electoral Market
2.1.2. The Manifesto as a Social Reflection
2.2. The Socioeconomic Context of the Manifestos of the Portuguese Election of 1975
- DL (Decree Law) 621/74 (Articles 21 and 27 in particular, which dealt with the way in which citizen/party groups participated in the electoral process). This DL was composed of three depending documents: DL 621-A/74 (focused on general eligibility of citizens), DL 621-B/74 (focused on the restriction of eligibility related to citizens having had political connections with the former dictatorship), and DL 621-C/74 (focused on the number of eligible citizens for the parliamentary seats).
- DL 93-c/75 (which defined the electoral capacity and eligibility of citizens).
2.3. Research Question and Current Hypothesis: Manifestos as Combined Products
- Messages of evident collective needs,
- Messages of potential collective needs,
- And messages of structuring ideals.
2.3.1. Obvious Collective Needs
2.3.2. Potential Collective Needs
2.3.3. Structural Ideals
3. Methodological Section—Empirical Analysis and Discussion
Empirical Analysis
- (1)
- Editing the document to be analyzed in a .txt file. The texts of each party are then separated by theme. The final document, including all manifestos from all parties with all topics covered, was recorded with a .txt extension.
- (2)
- This .txt file is then loaded into the Iramuteq software. The software then allows the selection of various parameters, namely the identification of the source language dictionary, the analysis of each word, or the reduction of each word to its root form (for example, the reduction of a verb form to its verb in the infinitive). The software also allows the identification of the priority word class (active). In our case, the active words were only three: verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This procedure minimizes, for example, problems arising from translation, while also minimizing the difference in frequency/quotation of the number of words in a sentence translated into different languages.
- (3)
- The software then allows the separate parameterization of several lines of analysis:
- (a)
- Descriptive statistical analysis;
- (b)
- Content/words factor analysis;
- (c)
- Reinert method of distribution of messages by variables;
- (d)
- Analysis of similarity by variables and analysis of text centrality.
“According to this method, the software first establishes a list of the vocabulary in the entire text, reducing words to their roots, on the basis of pre-established dictionaries (e.g., nurse and nursing reduced to a common entity nurs+). It then constructs different patterns of vocabulary distribution in order to identify discourse classes; these patterns are obtained by using automatic iterative descending hierarchical classifications to the analysed text. In other words, on the basis of their co-occurrences, pairs of words and sentences that are statistically frequently associated are gathered into the same class of discourse, and words that are less frequently associated form distinct classes. Chi-square tests provide a statistical indication of the strength of the association between vocabulary and classes: for a given class, words or excerpts that are statistically over-represented are referred to as typical, whereas those that are statistically under-represented (but relevant for other classes) are referred to as anti-typical. It is then up to the researcher to label the classes according to his or her interpretation of typical or anti-typical words or excerpts. By computing the χ2 test, the software estimated the strength of associations between classes of discourse and modalities of the following variables, extracted from the [sources].”
4. Conclusions
Further Developments
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Word | #Cites |
---|---|
social | 163 |
right | 145 |
economic | 129 |
national | 126 |
politics | 125 |
worker | 115 |
to owe | 114 |
public | 113 |
form | 111 |
company | 103 |
medium | 102 |
job | 99 |
Portuguese | 97 |
freedom | 97 |
life | 85 |
service | 84 |
development | 80 |
system | 79 |
parents | 72 |
creation | 72 |
interest | 70 |
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Mourao, P. Health by Words—A Content Analysis of Political Manifestos in the Portuguese Elections of 1975. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 7119. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137119
Mourao P. Health by Words—A Content Analysis of Political Manifestos in the Portuguese Elections of 1975. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021; 18(13):7119. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137119
Chicago/Turabian StyleMourao, Paulo. 2021. "Health by Words—A Content Analysis of Political Manifestos in the Portuguese Elections of 1975" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 13: 7119. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137119
APA StyleMourao, P. (2021). Health by Words—A Content Analysis of Political Manifestos in the Portuguese Elections of 1975. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(13), 7119. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137119