This book offers content analyses of the 2016 presidential candidate campaign messages from the primary and the general election. The chapters examine both new (Twitter, Facebook) and traditional (TV spots, debates, speeches) media employed in this contest. This allows comparison of campaign phases (primary versus general), candidates (Republican primary and Democratic primary candidates; general election candidates), and message forms. The results are compared with data from analyses of p...

Persuasive Attacks on Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Primary investigates the nature of persuasive attacks on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential primary campaign. It begins by extending the Theory of Persuasive Attack to include attacks on character as well as attacks on actions. William L. Benoit & Mark J. Glantz use topical analysis to understand humor (late night television jokes; video from SNL, Colbert, and Oliver; articles in The Onion, and political cartoons) and Repub...

The book Politico calls “Moneyball for politics” shows how cutting-edge social science and analytics are reshaping the modern political campaign—now updated with a new postscript.Renegade thinkers are crashing the gates of a venerable American institution, shoving aside its so-called wise men and replacing them with a radical new data-driven order. We’ve seen it in sports, and now in The Victory Lab, journalist Sasha Issenberg tells the h...

Political advertising has been called the worst cancer in American society. Ads cost millions, and yet the entire campaign season is now filled with nasty and personal attacks. In this landmark six-year study, two of the nation's leading political scientists show exactly how cancerous the ad spot has become. 16 illustrations.

Volume 6 of The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research series focuses on the rapidly changing rhetoric coloring American politics. An increasingly polarized electorate combined with advances in technology have led to a combative and pitched rhetoric through more and more outlets. Each chapter is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on communication studies, political science, history, and other fields.Using the extensive collection of the C-SPAN Video Library, chapters cover the highly v...

As the number of women in the U.S. Senate grows, so does the number of citizens represented by women senators. At the same time, gender remains a key factor in senators’ communications to constituents as well as in news media portrayals of senators. Focusing on 32 male and female senators during the 2006 congressional election year, Kim L. Fridkin and Patrick J. Kenney examine in detail senators’ official websites, several thousand press releases and local news stories, and surveys of 18,0...

Which get-out-the-vote efforts actually succeed in ethnoracial communities—and why? Analyzing the results from hundreds of original experiments, the authors of this book offer a persuasive new theory to explain why some methods work while others don’t.Exploring and comparing a wide variety of efforts targeting ethnoracial voters, Lisa García Bedolla and Melissa R. Michelson present a new theoretical frame—the Social Cognition Model of voting, based on an individual’s sense of civic...

"[A] tour de force. Building upon her argument in Beyond Ideology, she adds an important wrinkle into the current divide between the parties in Congress." — Perspectives on PoliticsAs Democrats and Republicans continue to vie for political advantage, Congress remains paralyzed by partisan conflict. That the last two decades have seen some of the least productive Congresses in recent history is usually explained by the growing ideological gulf betwe...

Political science scholar James M. Curry explores the inner workings of Congress's House of Representatives in this thought-provoking analysis.The 2009 financial stimulus bill ran to more than 1,100 pages, yet it wasn't even given to Congress in its final form until thirteen hours before debate was set to begin, and it was passed twenty-eight hours later. How are representatives expected to digest so much information in such a short time? The answer? They aren't.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016From the presidential race to the battle for the office of New York City mayor, American political candidates’ approach to new media strategy is increasingly what makes or breaks their campaign. Targeted outreach on Facebook and Twitter, placement of a well-timed viral ad, and the ability to roll with the memes, flame wars, and downvotes that might spring from ordinary citizens’ engagement with the issues—these skills are he...

In reaction to the changes imposed on public schools across the country in the name of "education reform," the Chicago Teachers Union redefined its traditional role and waged a multidimensional fight that produced a community-wide school strike and transformed the scope of collective bargaining into arenas that few labor relations experts thought possible. Using interviews, first-person accounts, participant observation, union documents, and media reports, Steven K. Ashby ...

Once elected, members of Congress face difficult decisions about how to allocate their time and effort. On which issues should they focus? What is the right balance between working in one’s district and on Capitol Hill? How much should they engage with the media to cultivate a national reputation? William Bernhard and Tracy Sulkin argue that these decisions and others define a “legislative style” that aligns with a legislator’s ambitions, experiences, and personal inclinations, as well as ...