Political Communication Scholars Research Articles

Hitting first: preventive force in U.S. security strategy

The U.S. war in Iraq was not only an intelligence failure - it was a failure in democratic discourse. Hitting First offers a critical analysis of the political dialogue leading up to the American embrace of preventive war as national policy and as the rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Taking as its point of departure the important distinction between preemptive and preventive war, the contributors examine how the rhetoric of policy makers conflated these two very different concepts until the public could no longer effectively distinguish between a war of necessity and a war of choice. Although the book focuses on recent events, Hitting First takes into consideration the broader historical, ethical, and legal context of current American policies. Precedents are examined for preventive military action based on conventional as well as nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons threats. The authors also consider recent examples of the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention, which have tended to undermine traditional notions of national sovereignty, making purportedly morally justifiable actions easier to entertain. Intelligence gathering and its use, manipulation, and distortion to suit policy agendas are also analyzed, as are the realities of the application of military force, military requirements to sustain a policy of preventive war, and post-conflict reconstruction. Hitting First presents a timely and essential view of the lessons learned from the failures of the Iraqi conflict and offers a framework for avoiding future policy breakdowns through a process of deliberative public and governmental debate within a free market of ideas. The critiques and prescriptions offered here provide a unique and valuable perspective on the challenges of formulating and conducting national security policy while sustaining the principles and institutions of American democracy. This collection will appeal to students and scholars of American foreign policy, international relations, political communication, and ethics.

Priming Effects of Late-Night Comedy

Having become fully integrated into the contemporary political landscape, infotainmentoriented media extend Americans’ traditional news (e.g. newspaper, radio, and television) to include a greater number of sources for political information, and in some cases, political mobilization. Given the increasing prominence of infotainment-oriented media in contemporary politics, this study addresses the effects of one particular type of infotainment—late-night comedy—during the 2000 presidential campaign. Specifically, we are interested in whether watching late-night comedy shows influences viewers’ evaluations of the candidates who have appeared on these shows; in particular, we investigate priming as the mechanism by which such influences occur. Findings from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey (N = 11,482) indicate that evaluations of candidates are based in part on respondents’ sociodemographics, perceptions of candidates to handle certain issues, and their character traits. There was a main effect of watching latenight comedy on evaluations of candidates; more importantly, viewers were more likely than nonviewers to base their evaluations of George W. Bush on character traits after he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman. A large corpus of political communication scholarship grounded in the election

A Typology for the Study of Entertainment Television and Politics

General questions concerning the role of entertainment media in politics permeated the 2004 election cycle. Political communication scholars are beginning to systematically analyze potential sociopolitical ramifications stemming from entertainment television viewing, but one difficulty with this emerging area of research is an inability to forge connections between seemingly disparate research agendas. Several distinct lines of research are summarized in this article and forged into a coherent whole through the lens of Zillmann's disposition theory and the broader study of media enjoyment. Extantworks devoted to the study of entertainment television and politics are summarized, and a ninepart typology is introduced. This article closes with a discussion of howthe typology can serve to advance the study of entertainment television and politics.

Detecting Campaign Effects in Imbalanced Campaigns

For many years, political communication scholars believed that political campaigns have only minimal effects on the public and subsequently on election results. The main justification for this minimal effects hypothesis was the fact that scholars found it impossible to measure and identify substantial persuasion effects that are the outcome of a campaign. But for more than a decade now, scholars who study political campaigns hypothesize that political campaigns have a strong persuasive effect on the voters. They argue that such persuasive effects could hardly be measured because most major political campaigns are relatively balanced, and therefore have a canceling-out effect. They hypothesize that it would be possible to measure the effects of persuasion in an extremely asymmetric campaign, but they hardly find any such major campaigns in modern times. The campaign over Sharon’s disengagement plan in Israel was extremely imbalanced and is therefore an interesting and important example from a theoretical point of view. The analysis provides evidence for persuasion effects of the campaign.

Social Structure and Citizenship: Examining the Impacts of Social Setting, Network Heterogeneity, and Informational Variables on Political Participation

In this study, we develop a model of the interplay between sociostructural determinants of an individual's discussion behavior, such as the setting of primary discussion networks (work, church, and volunteer groups) and the nature of discussion (i.e., level of exposure to non-like-minded ideas), and individual-level outcomes, such as hard news media use, political knowledge, and participation in political processes. In doing so, we synthesize many of the different and sometimes competing models that political communication scholars have used to examine the link between more macroscopic sociological variables and the individual-level behaviors that political scientists often focus on. Data to test our theoretical model come from a national telephone survey conducted in October and November 2002. Our analysis showed that the social setting in which citizens discuss politics is an important antecedent of political participation. Discussion networks as part of volunteer groups, for example, indeed serve as important networks of recruitment. In other words, discussing politics frequently in this setting is positively and directly linked to political activity. The impact of conversational networks in church and work settings on participation, however, is only indirect. In fact, our data show that the impact of church and work networks on political participation is to a significant degree mediated by the different viewpoints that individuals are exposed to when they discuss politics in these settings.

Modernism, state sovereignty and dissent: media and the new post-cold war movements

Post-cold war theories of the press and foreign policy have noted a new, less consistent relationship between political and media elites. Political communication scholars have developed three general models in response, but these do not seem to map well to press coverage of the anti-globalization movement that has emerged in recent years. This paper argues for a new theory of the press and oppositional politics in an environment that has altered the equilibrium between media, political elites, and interest groups. The new political environment results from three principal causes: the erosion of state sovereignty over the political economy, the elimination of the Soviet system as a rhetorical resource for movement critics, and new information technologies that alter movement structure and thus increase its resilience. Analysis of two streams of media content, news and editorial, on the protests at the 1999 meetings of the World Trade Organization reveals an anomalous reversal for received theories of media and elite power in the way the mainstream press covers movement politics.

Do the Candidates Matter?

Scholars of political communication seem to agree that western democracies share some common long-term trends of election coverage. The authors raise the question whether this assumption really is supported by empirical data and illustrate this by using the USA and Germany as examples. They present results from a content analysis of the campaign coverage of four German quality papers in all previous national elections in Germany between 1949 and 1998. The focus was on investigating the amount, personalization, tone and interpreting character of campaign coverage in general and the portrayal of the candidates for the chancellorship in particular. The study found that: (1) there was no overall trend towards more or less campaign coverage; (2) there was no overall trend towards more personalization; (3) there was no overall trend towards negativism; (4) there was a trend towards more interpreting coverage. The article concludes with a discussion of possible reasons for these findings and the apparent differences between Germany and the USA.

Colloquy: Political Communication Scholarship in France

Colloquy: Political Communication Scholarship in France

Sex, lies, and videotape: An analysis of gender in campaign advertisements

With the increasing advent of women into the political arena, political communication scholars have the unique opportunity to explore the impact of gender upon the political process. This study examined 124 political spots from mixed‐gendered senate and gubernatorial campaigns during the 1996 political season. The investigation found significant differences in emphasized issues, negativity, types of appeals, and highlighted candidate characteristics in mixed‐gendered campaigns.

MEDIA PRIMING EFFECTS: ACCESSIBILITY, ASSOCIATION, AND ACTIVATION

In studying 'priming effects'—the process by which activated mental constructs can influence how individuals evaluate other concepts and ideas—political communication scholars have focused primarily on the frequency and recency of construct use in the accessibility of specific cognitions; less attention has been given to the spread of activation among related cognitions. Drawing from both of these research interests, we argue that media framing of issues in moral or ethical terms can prime voters to (1) make attributions about candidate integrity, and/or (2) evaluate other political issues in ethical terms. To examine these relationships, this research used the same experimental design with two sub-populations—evangelical Christians and university undergraduate students—expected to differ in the inter-connectedness of core values with political attitudes. A single issue, which varied in the types of values in conflict, was systematically altered across four otherwise constant political environments to examine priming effects. Findings suggest that future research should conceptualize priming more broadly to include considerations of both the accessibility of cognitions in short-term memory and the pathways among information in long-term memory. Two related though differing research streams growing out of cognitive psychology offer insight into 'priming effects,' the process by which activated mental constructs can influence how individuals evaluate other concepts and ideas. Some scholars have studied how cognitions frequently or recently activated in response to a stimulus become more readily accessible—that is, available in short-term memory—for application to other attitude objects (see Iyengar and Kinder 1987, Wyer and Srull 1989). Other scholars have focused on the spread Correspondence should be addressed to David Domke, University of Minnesota, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, m Murphy Hall, 206 Church Street S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. Fax: (612) 626-8251. © World Association for Public Opinion Research igg8 52 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH of activation among cognitions, stressing the manner in which constructs are arranged and linked in long-term memory (see Anderson 1983, Fazio 1986). In examining the means by which activated cognitions influence individuals' processing and evaluation of information, these research perspectives account for similar findings, but also provide unique insights. Drawing from both of these research domains, we argue that media coverage of political issues has the potential to activate particular cognitions, which then may be used in evaluating other elements of the political environment. Specifically, media framing of issue information—by highlighting some dimensions of issues while excluding other aspects—seems likely to foster priming effects. In this article, we posit that framing issues in a manner that focuses on their moral or ethical dimensions can prime voters to (1) make attributions about candidate character, particularly integrity, and/or (2) evaluate other political issues in ethical terms. However, these relationships should be mediated by the specific features of any issue, the particular values emphasized in media coverage, and individuals' cognitive networks, thus fostering different priming effects from different issues for different people. To examine these ideas, this research systematically altered a single issue—which varied in the types of values in conflict—across four otherwise constant political environments to examine how voters process, interpret, and use issue information while 'voting' in a simulated election. Two sub-populations expected to differ in their core values and the interconnection of those values with political attitudes were selected for study: evangelical Christians and university undergraduate students. These groups were chosen for three reasons: (1) evangelical Christians have demonstrated increasing prominence and power in recent U.S. elections; (2) there has been little systematic study of evangelical Christians' political cognitions, although many have speculated about their values and behavior in electoral contexts; (3) most important, evangelical Christians, as a group, seem much more likely than undergraduate students to have well-integrated mental frameworks in which ethical or moral values—a key component of the theory advanced in this article—are closely linked with political attitudes. Thus, utilizing the same experimental design with these two populations provides a more thorough examination of our theory and allows consideration of differences in priming.

Political communication scholarship in Britain

Political communication scholarship in Britain

Exploring the role of gender in the development of negative political advertisements

Since the 1970s, women have begun to make progress in attaining statewide and national elective office. Many political communication scholars and pundits suggest that gender is a factor in the way women campaign for political office. Using a sample of 99 advertisements from statewide and federal elections, a content analysis was employed to examine the way women use the negative political commercial. Specifically, this study explores whether gender is a significant variable in female campaigns' negative commercials. Contrary to the belief that gender affects campaign communication styles, little evidence for that belief was found.