Research

In multiethnic new democracies, campaigns deploy positive and negative messages to shape voter behavior, but how voters interpret these appeals depends on both tone and social context. I theorize that ethnic ties condition these effects: positive appeals should strengthen coethnic support, while negative attacks should be less costly when delivered by coethnics. To test this, I combine a content analysis of 27,000 Nigerian newspaper articles (2003–2023) with a preregistered conjoint experiment of 1,700 voters in Lagos. Results show that positive messages improve evaluations of the sponsor and modestly increase vote intentions, especially among coethnics. Negative messages, however, consistently backfire. Rather than weakening the target, they reduce support for the sponsor and redirect voters toward a third, uninvolved candidate. Contrary to expectations, coethnicity does not shield sponsors: even coethnics withdraw support when the sponsor attacks, while coethnics of the target remain loyal. These findings reveal the risks of going negative and highlight the limits of identity-based persuasion in multiethnic new democracies.

Negative campaigning is an age-old strategy employed by politicians worldwide, yet its impact on trust in election outcomes remains underexplored, especially in new democracies. I argue that negative campaign messages shape public trust in electoral outcomes by fostering cynicism, undermining confidence in politicians, and heightening the perceived stakes of elections, ultimately weakening democratic performance. Regardless of type, negative campaigning signals that candidates are willing to do whatever it takes to win, raising concerns about potential electoral fraud. This perception erodes institutional trust, as elections are increasingly seen as high-stakes competitions where fairness is secondary to political manoeuvring. However, an autonomous electoral management body (EMB) can mitigate these effects. Findings indicate that when EMB autonomy is low, increases in negative campaigning significantly raise the likelihood of perceiving elections as unfair. In contrast, when EMB autonomy is high, negative campaigning does not increase distrust in electoral integrity—and may even reduce it. High EMB autonomy limits political manipulation, reassures voters of institutional safeguards, and fosters greater confidence in the electoral system. Drawing on data collected across 18 countries over three rounds of the Afrobarometer, a nationally representative survey gauging public trust; expert assessments of media coverage of negative campaign messages from the Negative Campaigning Comparative Expert Survey (NEGex); and expert assessments of EMB autonomy derived from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), this study highlights the interaction between media coverage of negative messaging and the EMB autonomy in shaping trust in election outcomes.

Policymakers are highly involved with political issues, politically polarized, and knowledgeable about politics, all traits that could contribute to biased reasoning about policy evidence. In this paper, we explore whether policymakers are influenced by compelling policy evidence from ideologically disparate viewpoints, or whether they respond to evidence in an ideologically biased fashion. We conduct an experiment in which we randomly assign a sample of local policymakers to policy-relevant evidence that varies in quality as well as in its ideological implications. We find that there is a positive, statistically significant effect of strong evidence on policymakers’ attitudes and a smaller, positive (but not statistically significant) effect of weak evidence. We find no evidence of a moderating effect of ideology on the persuasive effects of either strong or weak evidence. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings as well as avenues for future research.

Peer Reviewed Publications

Amakoh, K. O. (2025). Beyond the headlines: Examining the role of negative campaigning media coverage on electoral trust. The International Journal of Press/Politics.

Bergan, D.E., Amakoh, K.O., Carnahan, D., Hiaeshutter-Rice, D., Teinowitz, L. (2025). Are Policymakers Persuaded in Parallel? Policymakers, Evidence, and Motivated Reasoning”. American Politics Research. 

Ogwezzy-Ndisika, A.O., Faustino, B.A. & Amakoh, K.O. (2019). Curbing Hatred: The Ethnic Diehards' Agitations and 2015 Presidential Election Campaign in Nigeria. Journal of Hate Studies, 15(1), pp.233–253. 

Amakoh, K.O., Faustino, B.A., Oloruntoba, F.A. & Ogwezzy-Ndisika, A.O (2018). Big Data and Accountability in Nigeria. Insights from the BudgIT Organization and the #OpenNASS Campaign.  Partecipazione e Conflitto. 11(2): 472 – 483. 

Oloruntoba, F.A., Ogwezzy-Ndisika, A.O., Faustino, B.A & Amakoh, K.O. (2018) Transnational gendered narratives on migration: the Nigerian media and female migrants enroute to Italy from Libya. Feminist Media Studies, 18(6),1130-1132. 

Editor Reviewed Publications

Amakoh, K. O. (Forthcoming). The role of elections in Gabon’s authoritarian regime. In Faleye, O. A., Onyango, G., Bukari, K. N.  & Moyo, I. (Eds.), Democratic recession, autocratic resurgence, and the future of governance in Africa (pp. xx-xx). Routledge.

Ogwezzy-Ndisika, A. O., Amakoh, K. O., Ajibade, O., Lawal, T. O., & Faustino, B. A. (2023). “Fake News and General Elections in Nigeria.” Nigerian Media Industries in the Era of Globalization, 61.

Ogwezzy-Ndisika, A. O., Amakoh, K. O., Ajibade, O., Lawal, T. O., & Faustino, B. A. (2023). “Nigerian Media Industry Business Imperatives in a Hyper-Connected Ecology.” Nigerian Media Industries in the Era of Globalization, 51.

Ogwezzy-Ndisika, A.O., Amakoh, K.O., Faustino, B.A. (2020), Onwubere, C.H., & Oloruntoba, F.A. (2020). Gender, Politics and News in Nigeria in Cardo, V., Ross, K., Bachmann, I., Moorti, S., & Scarcelli, M. (2020). The International Encyclopaedia of Gender, Media, and Communication.  

Amakoh, K.O. (2020). Maintaining Journalistic Authority: The Role of Nigerian Newsrooms in ‘Post- Truth Era’. in Grimme, C., Preuss, M., (2020). Disinformation in Open Online Media: MISDOOM 2019, LNCS 12021 proceedings, Springer Nature Switzerland AG: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LCNS) series pp. 1–14. 

Book Reviews

Amakoh, K. O. (2025, Forthcoming). [Review of "How to Become a Big Man in Africa: Subalternity, Elites, and Ethnic Politics in Contemporary Nigeria" by Wale Adebanwi]. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 63(2).

Amakoh, K. O. (2022). [Review of “Party Proliferation and Political Contestation in Africa: Senegal in Comparative Perspective” by Catherine Lena Kelly]. Party Politics, 28(5), 989–990

Amakoh, K. O. (2020). [Review of “Media, Geopolitics, and Power: A View from the Global South” by Herman Wasserman]. Nordicom Review, 41 (1)

Amakoh, K. O. (2020). [Review of “Opting Out of Digital Media” by Brennen Bonnie] Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 26 (5-6) 

Amakoh, K. O. (2019). [Review of “Digitizing Democracy” by Schapals, Aljosha Karim, Bruns, Axel & McNair, Brian (eds.)]. Nordicom Review, 40(2)

Carnahan, D., Amakoh, K. O., Ahn, S., & Bergan, D. E. Assessing interviewer effects on estimates of misperceptions in the public.

Messages and Messengers: How Voters Evaluate Campaign Messages in Multiethnic Societies (Job Market Paper) (Manuscript Writing)

Echoes of Division: How Negative Campaigns Shape Democratic Attitudes in Multiethnic Societies (Book Project) (Proposal Stage)

Why and How Political Elites Go Negative (IRB approval received, preparing for data collection phase)

Beyond the Vote: How Political Attacks Shape Nigeria Election (Data Collected)

Defenders of Democracy? Elite Framing of Democratic Norm Violations (with Daniel E. Bergan, Dustin Carnahan, Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice, and Jason Isaacson) (Data collected; preparing for analysis)

Disinformation, Electoral Integrity, and Intervention Efficacy (Manuscript Writing)

Shaping Elite Tweeters: Who is talking to whom on #NigeriaTwitter?  (Data collected; preparing for analysis)

Do Election Campaigns influence Political Polarization? Evidence from Zambia (Manuscript Writing)

Logistical Failure as Latent Partisan Bias: Election Administration and Outcomes in Nigeria.” (with Nichole Grossman and Carl Levan) (Data collected; preparing for analysis)