Communities @ APPC

Oscar Gandy

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:19:00 GMT

First I want to say that I think I understand, but nevertheless I am still struck by the overwhelming focus of attention being paid to the role of political communication in the sphere of electoral politics. It’s almost as though some mad scientist, or perhaps a wizard behind a screen had developed a mass illusion, or a strategic misdirection, that led you all to believe that all the really important action was taking place during those months in the fall before the polls opened.

If Danna will forgive me, I want to try on my Jackie Mom’s Mabley persona [Mabley was a Richard Pryor contemporary that most of you young, and apparently white folks might not be familiar with]. In any event she would come on, and like Bill Cosby have a special message for the parents in the room. She’s say “You know, y’all always telling the kids, that when they’re going downtown to the movies, to make sure that they watch the lights before they cross the streets. Well damn the lights, it’s the cars that’s killing these chillen…

So, while you’re expending so much time, energy and intelligence paying attention to the mobilization of voters, at least some of you ought to be paying attention to what’s going on in our legislatures, in our agencies, and in our courts, because that’s where the threats to our sustainable futures are being put into place.

To the extent that the production of influence over the institutions of governance is not determined entirely by the exchange of money, favors, and promises of more, but may actually be influenced by the provision of information, argument, and evidence, then we really ought to be paying more attention to the accessible paths through which this information gets to its targets.

I ask you all to consider the powerful arguments made by Amitai Etzioni back in 1988 in The Moral Dimension, where he introduced his version of socioeconomics. He suggested that corporations, because they were managed by rational actors, [again, perhaps only because they had not been fully elevated to the status of artificial persons by our Supreme Court], would invest heavily in efforts to produce influence over the legislative process because it was a more efficient and effective way to establish and maintain market power and profits than by investing in research and development.

Etzioni was referring to all laws, rules and regulations that would provide these firms with short-, and occasionally long-term competitive advantage by reducing the costs they would face if they had to pay taxes, or were subject to a host of liabilities for products and services that might cause harm to clients and consumers, or might damage the environment through pollution of the air and water around their ancient factories.

Among the most important examples he set forth were the benefits that might be derived by those firms if they could bar, or at least retard the competitive entry of other firms that might have an unfair advantage because they had developed, or acquired some new technology that would allow them the reduce costs of production or distribution in a more socially productive way.

Of course, not even Etzioni fully understood how the fundamental nature of the US economy was already being transformed. There were plenty of signs that the manufacturing of material goods was being replaced by the production of informational goods and services. But still, we really had no way of imagining that the rise of the finance, insurance and real estate sectors of the economy would be so dramatic, and so important in terms of the kinds of systemic risk that their expansion would invite, and we would experience at a particularly historic moment in the history of the United States.

I want to suggest that it is really important for us to begin to gather the kinds of data that would allow us to map and assess the nature of the influence, and the means by which it was produced that helped to shape the environment within which the current state of affairs was seeded, cultivated, nurtured, and then allowed to blossom into the kind of multidimensional catastrophe that continues to unfold and spread around the globe.

What I am talking about here is a long term institutional process analysis that would allow us to go back, perhaps as far as the 1960’s to identify the legislative, regulatory and judicial decisions that established the conditions for the rise of the FIRE sector at the core of our economy.

Although I think we should include them all, I am particularly interested in the rise of the insurance industry and its truly amazing capture and transformation of the meaning of the traditional moral and ethical core of our understanding of “fairness” within our discourse about the management of risk. This notion of “actuarial fairness,” is one that is based on theoretically argued and statistically based projections of what the long term costs of insuring an individual would be, on the basis of the assignment of that individual to a algorithmically determined category or group.

I am also interested in the dramatic rise in legislative and judicial protections for what we refer to as “intellectual property.” I ask you to just consider how the rise in the cost of health care delivery has come to be associated with the treatment of genetic information as the property of investors in the development of diagnostic and treatment protocols derived from human, animal, or plant biology.

Such a project might mean an expansion and redesign of part of the really quite important work done by Frank Baumgartner and his colleagues in order to take advantage of some of the arguments and insights provided by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, in their discussion of their notion of “winner take all politics.” What they refer to, and I quote, are the “politics as organized combat” that emphasize the role of organized interests in shaping large-scale public policies that mediate distributional outcomes.” Their primary focus is on economic inequality, but the framework they have developed can surely apply to other outcomes of the policy process.

The challenge is one of bringing back to the table a focus on the coordination function of communication: that is, the use of communication to shape, support, oppose, and direct behavior at a system wide level. The coordination of a conservative, neoliberal political movement to reshape, and reposition the role of markets, relative to the role of the state, or the reassessment of the importance of regulatory oversight, and government initiative in the guiding the movement of local, national, and international frameworks for understanding the role of government in society are all part of this research agenda. It is the role of what I once referred to as information subsidies in the shaping of the normal, the standard, that which becomes a “taken for granted” aspect of modern political culture.

Of course, there is my continuing concern about the use of segmentation and targeting, now even more meaningful in the context of new media, to deliver specialized PR in support of, or, more realistically, in opposition to policies that would constrain the further rise of finance [rather than industrial] capital.

I am inviting the field of political communication to pursue the production of influence in all the institutional arenas in which public policies are developed and brought to bear on the social systems that influence the quality of life.

While it’s not all there, I believe there is more than enough in the public record to allow us to piece together an accurate and meaningful impression of how we managed to drift into our current state of disarray.

James Hamilton - Presentation on the research question panel

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:16:00 GMT

Ideas for further study in political communication research include:

Study political decisions at the individual level by bringing in more information on how people make consumer and social decisions. Firms such as Knowledge Networks now collect information on decisions a person makes across many different domains. Studying how a person deals with time, risk, information gathering, looking to others, and revisiting decisions in his/her market decisions could help you analyze how he/she approaches political decisions too (see de Marchi and Hamilton 2009).
Field experiments with framing on the web could allow you to understand how to help nonprofit media raise funds. Donating in politics often involves identity consumption and expression of partisan beliefs. What types of frames might help nonprofit media raise individual contributions for reporting that helps hold government accountable?
Computational social science is starting to pioneer the use of very large datasets (e.g., millions of tweets, hundreds of thousands of comments in a rulemaking). Analysis of large amounts of text on the web could help you see through the use of tools derived from Natural Language Processing the differences in content created by different supply incentives (e.g., differences in information created by subscription, advertiser support, partisan vote getting, nonprofits, and expression). Note that the tools for analysis of text and audio/visual materials developed in political science research could also be modified to be used by reporters. This is related to the new field of computational jouranlism, the use of data and algorithms to lower the cost of discovering stories. The Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences recently held workshops on computational journalism and computational social science.
What are the particular information needs of low-income individuals? If you are less likely to be a marginal voter, viewer, or consumer, what does your information environment look like?

Patricia Moy - Summary of Unanswered Questions Panel

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:10:00 GMT

Patricia Moy
(Moy on behalf of Feldman, Holbert, Iyengar, Scheufele, Stroud, and Vavreck):
This unanswered-questions panel was structured around the five overarching (missing) theories identified at lunch. (Each has implications for methods, but we focused primarily on theoretical concerns.)

Message learning theory; How can we better understand the decay or persistence of message effects? Relative to the discrete texts that typically constitute our units of interest, how can we better understand the effects of nonverbal and emotional cues that are not so easily analyzed?

How can we identify new channels in the evolving media landscape, understand how they contribute to the political environment, and identify their potential effects?

How do we define message quality? What are the effects of message attributes and appeals and specific arguments?

Accessibility theory; There is no consensus on the definitions of agenda-setting, priming, and framing and how they operate vis-à-vis each other. Is one attainable?

How can a better understanding of the psychology of accessibility theory and related constructs (e.g., memory, reaction time) shed light on media processes and effects? To what extent do reciprocal influences exist between agenda-setting and market concerns? Similarly, what is the role of real-world cues? How broadly should aggregate MIP responses? To what extent is there integrity between what respondents actually identify as their most salient concern and how the researcher has defined the concern?

Active audience theory; What drives audience members to particular messages, information, or channels? We need a more contemporary typology of needs.
Can we extend the menu of contingent conditions that would either mitigate or magnify A/S effects? How do framing and persuasion differ in terms of process and intent? How can we measure and study these phenomena outside the laboratory? To what extent can we study “externally valid” frames?

Regarding misinformation, when do audience members accept this information and when do they reject this and start to correct that misinformation? Can we generate an updated typology of interactivity, one that incorporates audience participation in the diffusion of information (e.g., the retransmission of rumors)? Similarly, how and under what circumstances do audience members generate their own content? How has our notion of issue publics changed?

Social context theory; How does group identity, in all its incarnations, influence media content preferences? With the new media environment, how do published polls and perceptions of public opinion shape our opinions and behaviors? What are social contextual influences on media content? For example, how are neighborhood media or non-English media influencing audience members? How are media effects moderated by our media consumption context – e.g., whether we watch alone or with others?

Spatial theory; How can we better understand spatial vs. affective polarization? To what extent are citizens polarized by issues or by dislike of the other side, or both? With the return of the partisan press, we need to better understand the dynamics and endogeneity issues related to media consumption and polarization.

**************************
In reviewing the parameters of the handbook, we thought it would be useful to rename “Theories about Media Content and Effects” to “Media Content” and to simplify “Psychological Theories and Media Effects” to merely “Media Effects,” and move chapters 17, 18, 21, and 47 into the latter.

Our discussion also identified a few conceptual areas that would warrant commissioning of chapters:

Media as agents of political socialization
News in a digital age
The evolution of journalism (e.g., decline of investigative journalism, changes in models of journalism)

To build on our lunchtime panel, we envision the structure of each section to include:

a prologue, a meta-theoretical piece that would help situate the individual chapters in that section;
the individual chapters; and
an epilogue that would address these larger questions that go beyond the purview of any given one chapter and would incorporate some of these unanswered questions.

Group 1 - Candidate Discourse & Media Systems

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:09:00 GMT

David Birdsell, Baruch College (CUNY) (moderator 1- Day 1); [respondent for Sean Aday]
William Benoit, Ohio University (moderator 2- Day 1); [respondent for David Birdsell]
Sunshine Hillygus, Duke University (moderator 3- Day 1); [respondent for William Benoit]
Kevin Coe, University of Arizona; [respondent for Sunshine Hillygus]
Michael Schudson, Columbia University; [respondent for Kevin Coe]
Doris Graber, University of Illinois at Chicago; [respondent for Michael Schudson]
Carol Winkler, Georgia State University; [respondent for Doris Graber]
Sean Aday, George Washington University; [respondent for Carol Winkler]
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, University of Pennsylvania (gadfly)
Laura Silver, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Tim Fallis, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Elizabeth Roodhouse, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

David Birdsell (Moderator 1, Day 1, Group 1, Candidate Discourse & Media Systems)
The papers are in the packets, so I will not summarize the papers here. Instead, I’ll summarize the responses.

Response to Birdsell: Are debates a moderating or mediating variable for the consumption of other media? In addition to looking at non-presidential (“down-ticket”) debates, we should look too at primary debates, which feature greater format innovation. Should look at rules for inclusion: is it necessary to limit to two? Can the number of participants be unbounded (probably not if learning isn’t to suffer)? Inclusion of regulatory constraints on debates would be useful.

Response to Benoit: Nature of communication is easier to study than nature of effects.
Things to think about:

Fragmented media environment: to what extent are findings conditional on that environment, e.g., if you’re narrowly communicating a message might be willing to be more negative.
Improve differentiation of policy areas. Two more that matter: valence (I’m for education) vs. position (I oppose NCLB). Do you talk about problems or policy positions?
Thinking about policy vs. character: such a blurry line policy and character. (e.g., leadership qualities).
Remember in making functional assessments, that minor party candidates might not want to win a majority; they might want to affect agenda instead.

Response to Hillygus: Media fragmentation is strong here but it’s an overall theme that pervades all papers in this group.

Two additional ‘bad’ things:

We should raise ethical concern about audience surveillance given the tracking characteristics of new media.
Public dialogue emerges in campaigns without sharing cultural experiences.
Advertising and marketing literatures should be useful in determining uses of niche media.
How are underlying principles of messaging consistent rather than different in new tech contexts?
In thinking about how to study this: what will become the central texts of analysis?
Specific skeins of text really matter.
Fragmentation is interesting but let’s not over-sell it. The non-fragmented audience may have been a brief phenomenon in the television era.

Response to Coe: The paper does well with delivery and reception but pays little attention to production. How are presidential messages produced? Databanks have improved textual study. There are four things that presidential language might be trying to affect: solidarity, reinforcement, persuasion, and conversion. An expanded literature review involving the role of narrative in reception would be useful. See Lewis, QJS ’85.

Response to Schudson: The “people” has always been problematic. The “people” is not the source of what democracies should do. Burkean concepts of the people re representative government become important here. We are often told that government involves; so does democracy involve, broad understanding among the people. It’s not clear that this is true. We pay too little attention to local news. Local government t is most important thing for most citizens, and that’s what they know most about. But the field hasn’t paid enough attention to what people need from local news. Feed the grassroots for grassroots purposes. Rod Hart’s Political Keywords and Michael McGee’s work with “the people” as ideograph should be useful.

Response to Graber: Consider bolstering to show non-reliance on concept of nation-state, because there are, for example, regional actors. Corporate actors with free speech, in the wake of Citizens United, needs to be better understood as well.

Response to Winkler:

It’s important to think about definition of crisis, and who defines it.
Temporal change over lifespan of crisis
Cognitive mechanisms for effects on audiences during crisis (predispositions)
US media policy and audience dynamic on global media. Is the globalized media environment changing things.
Historical perspectives: really don’t know that war coverage is different now.
Important to think about definition of crisis, and who defines it.
Temporal change over lifespan of crisis
Cognitive mechanisms for effects on audiences during crisis (predispositions)
US media policy and audience dynamic on global media. Is the globalized media environment changing things.
Historical perspectives: really don’t know that war coverage is different now.

Comments for Aday:

It is important to think about definition of crisis, and who defines it.
Consider and incorporate temporal changes over lifespan of crisis
Cognitive mechanisms for effects on audiences during crisis (predispositions)
US media policy and audience dynamic on global media. Is the globalized media environment changing things.
Historical perspectives: really don’t know that war coverage is different now.

Summary of Table 1 Friday lunch conversation following Michael Schudson’s normative desiderata:
In addition to Michael’s list, media should endeavor:

Not to deceive;
Not to lie;
To disclose intent (i.e., partisan coverage may be fine if predispositions are disclosed);
To make plain how evidence used in the news account has been gathered and interpreted;

All of this said, there are problems:

In figuring out what is misleading (e.g., is a mistake borne of deadline pressure “misleading” or just an error)?
In determining what level of “certainty” is required for responsible journalism (publication).

William Benoit (Moderator 2, Day 1, Group 1, Candidate Discourse & Media Systems)
Summary on theory: to include local news talk radio and other soft news. Another was to include issue ownership and functional federalism. 3 rhetorical theory including Aristotle and Burke.

Sunshine Hillygus (Moderator 3, Day 1, Group 1, Candidate Discourse & Media Systems)
Our group represents two different sections in the book:

candidate discourse and
news in political systems.

Each author had a number of specific unanswered questions about their specific area, and often these could be classified as questions either about the nature/content of communications or questions about their effects. The following seemed to be the core questions of relevance to many of our topics.

How has the fragmented media environment changed the nature of the relationship between the press, state, citizens...as well as parties, interest groups, and corporations.
How can we get ahead of new and emerging technologies? We should consider how the characteristics of communication platforms (e.g., whether one to one, one to many, carry along, etc) might constrain the patterns of communication that we expect.
The methodologies that we use shape the questions that we ask and the answers that we get, so it seems important to include a discussion of evidence and inference in pol comm research.
Big picture: Is a partisan or professional press best for democracy? What are the standards for evaluating "best"? Do we want an informed citizenry? a participatory citizenry? an affiliated citizenry? a represented citizenry?

Carol Winkler (Group 1, Candidate Discourse & Media Systems)
The most important takeaway from today's discussion in Group 1 was the following: In the changing media climate, it is critical to examine platform elements related to new media, rather than the content, to discover durable findings that will continue to be of value to future scholars. These would include elements such as framing, degree of difficulty relating to entering the message, changed nature of the interactions with the platform, ability of the participants to customize the project, whether the media is mobile, etc.

Table 1

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:07:00 GMT

Ken Goldstein, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Table 1 moderator- Day 2)
Erika Falk, John Hopkins University (Table 1 moderator- Day 2 closing session)
David Birdsell, Baruch College (CUNY)
Dannagal Young, University of Delaware
Bruce Hardy, University of Pennsylvania
Miriam J. Metzger, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jon Krosnick, Stanford University (gadfly)
Rowan Howard-Williams, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Jin Kim, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Group 2 - Media Content & Effects

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:02:00 GMT

Pamela Shoemaker, Syracuse University (moderator 1- Day 1); [respondent for Erika Falk]
James Hamilton, Duke University (moderator 2- Day 1); [respondent for Pamela Shoemaker]
S. Robert Lichter, George Mason University (moderator 3- Day 1); [respondent for James Hamilton]
David H. Weaver, Indiana University; [respondent for S. Robert Lichter]
Oscar Gandy, University of Pennsylvania; [respondent for David H. Weaver]
Kim Fridkin, Arizona State University; [respondent for Oscar Gandy]
Erika Falk, John Hopkins University; [respondent for Kim Fridkin]
Larry Bartels, Princeton University (gadfly)
Felicity Duncan, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Jeff Gottfried, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student

Pamela Shoemaker (Moderator 1, Day 1, Group 2, Media Content & Effects)
I fear that we — who are primarily older — cannot anticipate the usefulness of the material in this book to the younger students who will buy it in 2012. We put too much emphasis on the theories and research that we learned as grad students. We are not eager to retire approaches that apply little to this new media world?

In addition, we attach negative affect to concepts such as media fragmentation or the polarization of the electorate. Are these negative from the context of younger people who will be old enough to hold office by the time we retire and then die? Maybe, but my point is that we have not asked the question. Is this book to represent the old world or the new one?

James Hamilton (Moderator 2, Day 1, Group 2, Media Content & Effects)
Insights from today: Continued low levels of knowledge we have about tracing the connections out among media content, voter knowledge, voter decisions, policy formulation, and policy outcomes.

New to me: With more editing and selection and filtering of stories done by algorithm, the code offers you an interesting new source of information about "gatekeeping." We believe that for group 2 it will be better for each of us to handle methods questions within our own essays. Many would favor an intro essay at the start of the book that matches methods with particular types of research questions.

In terms of missing chapters, Larry Bartels identified an important gap. It would be helpful to have an essay about the ways that content are collected and analyzed (e.g., human coding, machine coding). This might include a discussion of methods from other disciplines (e.g., NLP approaches) that are starting to be used in political science.

Bob Lichter (Moderator 3, Day 1, Group 2, Media Content & Effects)
Important unanswered research questions:

Policy framework affecting pol. comm.;
Political socialization in the digital age;
Motivations of content producers;
Influence of money on content and effects of campaign communication;
Relationship between public opinion and political behavior;

Today's important insight:
We don’t know anything about what people know about politics, but it doesn't matter, because we don’t know whether what they know affects how they behave.

David Weaver (Group 2, Media Content & Effects)
After the Friday morning plenary with Michael Schudson, Group 2 was assigned the task of responding to his normative requirements for journalism in a democracy in terms of political debates. We decided that political debates at various levels should try to provide information, analyze and interpret, provide a public forum, mobilize advocates, be non-deceiving and transparent, and use facts that have been checked. We doubted that debates could fulfill the other desirable functions of journalism described by Michael such as investigate centers of power, engage in empathetic reporting, and work to enable the will of the people.

Table 2

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:59:00 GMT

Kevin Coe, University of Arizona (Table 2 moderator- Day 2)
Natalie Jomini Stroud, University of Texas at Austin (Table 2 moderator- Day 2 closing session)
William Benoit, Ohio University
Diana Owen, Georgetown University
Pamela Shoemaker, Syracuse University
Lynn Sanders, University of Virginia
Diana Mutz, University of Pennsylvania (gadfly)
Laura Silver, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Felicity Duncan, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Kevin Coe (Table 2 moderator)
We began by focusing on the issue of public scholarship more broadly, noting that academics are trained in the conventions of academe, and that these conventions don’t necessarily prepare us very well for communicating our scholarship to the broader public.

To improve this situation, three things might be needed:

Training: It would be useful to have more courses in graduate school that focus on teaching students how to translate their research findings into a language a broader audience can understand. Requiring a graduate student in political communication to write an op-ed might be one thing such courses could do.
Resources: Universities can facilitate the dissemination of our scholarship via their news bureaus, but the resources in this respect vary greatly. It would be useful if universities committed more resources to this, and faculty can help by working more closely with the news bureaus to ensure the information that’s produced is accurate and useful.
Incentives: The reality is that there is less incentive for faculty to attempt to make their scholarship available and accessible to the public if doing so is not valued by their universities or peers. Acknowledging public scholarship in promotion and tenure would be one place to start.

To the question of what insights the field has contributed to public understandings, two examples stood out:

The understanding that subtle cues in political messages can mobilize racial attitudes is something that was not widely understood when the famous “Willie Horton” ads aired in 1988. In subsequent campaigns, however, media commentators pointed out how similar ads might be doing this, in part perhaps because of scholarship on the topic that had emerged in the years following the Horton ads.
The reporting of public opinion polls in news coverage, which has long been problematic, has improved some in recent years, in part perhaps because of advice from scholars of political communication.

To the question of what insights from the field might surprise the public, two examples stood out:

People seem to have the sense that “new media” are dominant in elections. In fact, the public might be surprised that “old media” such as television are still far and away the most used.
Media producers might be interested to know that soft news formats and comedic formats can have the effect of teaching the public about political information and encouraging political engagement.

What should our normative expectations of political communication be? Borrowing from Bill Benoit, whose perspective I agree with: Political communication should not be intentionally deceptive, nor should it be coercive.

Group 3 - Psychological Theories and Media Effects

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:55:00 GMT

Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin (moderator 1- Day 1); [respondent for Natalie Jomini Stroud]
Shanto Iyengar, Stanford University (moderator 2- Day 1); [respondent for Dietram Scheufele]
Patricia Moy, University of Washington (moderator 3- Day 1); [respondent for Shanto Iyengar]
Lynn Vavreck, University of California, Los Angeles; [respondent for Patricia Moy]
R. Lance Holbert, Ohio State University; [respondent for Lynn Vavreck]
Lauren Feldman, American University; [respondent for R. Lance Holbert]
Natalie Jomini Stroud, University of Texas at Austin; [respondent for Lauren Feldman]
Jon Krosnick, Stanford University (gadfly)
Rowan Howard-Williams, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Joshua Darr, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Dietram Schuefele (Moderator 1, Day 1, Group 3, Psychological Theories and Media Effects)
ADVERTISING:
The discussion started with the suggestion that a good framework for thinking about what is normatively desirable in advertising could be a scale anchored in “egalitarian” and “elitist” attributes. The idea of sloganeering in political advertising, for instance, could be considered one of the most egalitarian outcomes of political advertising.

At the same time, tailoring ads toward specific and often narrow segments moves political advertising toward more elitist form of political communication. Group 3 agreed that it was less useful to look at self-selection by audiences (based on ideology) or targeting of ads toward particular audiences by candidates (based on segments), and instead to look at four normative functions of ads, and two open questions related to normative aspects of political advertising.

At least four normative functions:

The press often doesn't do a good enough job monitoring false inaccuracies in campaign discourse. Political ads by other candidates can fill that void, and often do play that monitoring role.
Attack ads can play an important democratic function during election campaigns and in fact mobilize voters.
Ads may help build up the salience and perceived importance of elections during a campaign cycle.
Ads provide a means for candidates to reach audiences without going through the filter that traditional mass media impose on political communication (professional journalistic norms, biases, etc.).

Normative questions:

Source transparency: Who is behind the ad? Can source attribution moderate the tone of the ads?
Market vs. public service models: To which degree is advertising a democratic tool?

Should we have free air time (similar to what we have in Germany or other countries) in order to make it more of a democratic rather than elite tool?

Patricia Moy (Moderator 3, Day 1, Group 3, Psychological Theories and Media Effects)
The implicit and explicit references to the temporality and permanency of our research questions were striking. Collectively they re-emphasized the need to identify processes and theoretical mechanisms, which have greater purchase than focusing on merely contexts of study. Eveland spoke to this when his group differentiated between unanswered questions and important questions.

Table 3

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:53:00 GMT

Kim Fridkin, Arizona State University (Table 3 moderator- Day 2)
Sean Aday, George Washington University (Table 3 moderator- Day 2 closing session)
S. Robert Lichter, George Mason University
Patricia Moy, University of Washington
John Gastil, University of Washington
Joseph Cappella, University of Pennsylvania
Fay Lomax Cook, Northwestern University
John Zaller, UCLA (gadfly)
Lori Young, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Kim Fridkin (Table 3 moderator, Day 2)
I was the moderator for the Saturday morning session and here is what I presented to the group at large:

How does our research about how news matters inform policymakers' decisions about whether government should subsidize news. Some of the research is comparative, showing countries with subsidized news has much higher levels of political information among citizens.

Research on ballot proposals shows us that deliberation can be effective and the information created by this deliberation can inform the electorate. Research on deliberation shows that people should expose themselves to non information.

Research is beginning to show us how groups can produce wise information, what factors are important. For example, is it the information, the discussion, the leader, etc. Research suggests there are lots of problems with presenting polling information to the public via the email because of framing effects, etc.

Group 4 - Group & Interpersonal Communication

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:53:00 GMT

Fay Lomax Cook, Northwestern University (moderator1 - Day 1); [respondent for Robert Huckfeldt]
Lynn Sanders, University of Virginia (moderator 2- Day 1); [respondent for Fay Lomax Cook]
John Gastil, University of Washington (moderator 3- Day 1); [respondent for Lynn Sanders]
Andrew Hayes, Ohio State University; [respondent for John Gastil]
Brian Southwell, University of Minnesota; [respondent for Andrew Hayes]
Robert Huckfeldt, University of California, Davis; [respondent for Brian Southwell]
Diana Mutz, University of Pennsylvania (gadfly)
Jin Kim, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

John Gastil (Moderator 3, Day 1, Group 4, Group & Interpersonal)
Theory notes
Typology of theories:

Meta-theories – abstract configurations of concepts and empirical content (e.g., structuration theory);
Empirical theories – predict, explain, and describe (e.g., attribution theory);
Interpretive theories – hermeneutic; interpret to provide meaning (e.g., social constructivism);
Normative theories – moral/philosophical models, ideals, and judgments (e.g., deliberative theory);

Unanswered questions;

Civility vs. respect – normatively different concepts;
what empirical differences do they yield?;
Publicness (dimensions include size of “audience,” diversity, and identifiability) – when is it desirable, and what effects does it have on pol comm behavior?;
What are the properties of full pol comm networks, beyond the two degrees of linkage typically studied?
How does information flow through such networks?;

Don’t know responses:

When is a “don’t know” during a social-political interaction a hiding of one’s actual attitude?;
When is saying “don’t know” to a pol knowledge question actually a sign of integrity and humility (as compared to reckless guessing or systematically distorted empirical beliefs)?;
What motivates people to initiate or seek out political talk?;

Stories/narratives – how are they used, and to what effect?;

Do they tend to drown out more generalizable information in news, networks, and deliberative spaces?

Normative framework — Dahl’s theory of democracy provides a good general framework for thinking about political behavior in polyarchies. When broadly construed and articulated differently at different levels of analysis, deliberative democratic theory provides a more useful framework for political communication because it focuses on the discursive dimension of democracy. The overwhelming majority of political communication theories and research can be understood as pertaining to one or more facets of deliberation (and, commonly, the absence or antithesis thereof).

Table 4

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:51:00 GMT

Lynn Vavreck, University of California, Los Angeles (Table 4 moderator- Day 2)
Brian Southwell, University of Minnesota (Table 4 moderator- Day 2 closing session)
David H. Weaver, Indiana University
Ken Winneg, University of Pennsylvania
Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, University of Pennsylvania (gadfly)
Elizabeth Roodhouse, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Jonathan Pearson, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Brian Southwell (Table 4)
Regarding our interpersonal and small group section organization ideas:

We agreed that discussion of methods, if it arises at all in our section, is best left as an occasional theme (framed as useful to theory or as hampering progress) in some of our chapters.
We want to advocate for inclusion of some form of what's presently chapter 8 (the Yale work on field experiments) in our section as well as (or possibly in the form of) a chapter on the nitty gritty of door knocking as a campaign marketing strategy.

Beyond that, Huckfeldt suggested (and I agreed, along with the group) that a great structure for our section would be for my two-step flow piece to remain first, followed by his "taking networks seriously" piece. The two work well together and he will flesh his out with my full draft in mind.

Then we could have a piece from Lilach. We think it would be great if she changed her focus, though, from a general look at "flow" within "networks" to a more narrow look at the consequences of (viewpoint/ideological) heterogeneity in groups (or something like that). That will avoid duplication and also add something else substantive to the section.

Regarding useful insights from today: I was struck by our group's discussion of the distinction of civility versus respect and the potential for repression through imposition of civility standards and also by the notion that behavioral "publicness" or overtness might matter as a critical moderating factor.

David Weaver (Table 4)
The most important insight I gained from Friday's meetings was increased understanding of the work of many people in my group and how my own work connects with theirs. A very long, but intellectually rewarding day.

Group 5 - Political Information-processing & Processing Models

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:38:00 GMT

Nicholas Valentino, University of Michigan (moderator 1- Day 1); [respondent for Milton Lodge]
Ann N. Crigler, University of Southern California (moderator 2- Day 1); [respondent for William P. Eveland]
William P. Eveland, Ohio State University (moderator 3- Day 1); [respondent for Nicholas Valentino]
Bruce Hardy, University of Pennsylvania; [respondent for Ann N. Crigler]
Milton Lodge, SUNY at Stony Brook; [respondent for Bruce Hardy]
John Zaller, UCLA (gadfly)
Alison Perelman, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Lori Young, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Nicholas Valentino (Moderator 1, Day 1, Group 5, Political Information-processing & Processing Models)
Subject: what's missing in the section — Preference for placement of measurement/method review is in the first chapter of the section, written by Milt. So this would only require a slight re-ordering of the chapters, where Milt goes first, then Ann, then Nick/Bruce/and Chip could come in any order.

Is there anything else to be commissioned, NO.

Do we want any additional chapters, NO.

Here are the theories we discussed yesterday for Group 5 on information processing. Ann Crigler asked me to send these along:

Dual cognitive process models, in particular implicit/explicit but also online versus memory based processing.
Also perhaps ELM and other “slow” versus “fast” distinctions.
Appraisal theories of emotion/ esp. distinguish between primary versus secondary appraisals or automatic versus deliberative processes.
Dual coding theory - processing of same info in multiple modes, way of structuring of information affects.
Motivated reasoning.
Affective intelligence.

Bruce Hardy on behalf of Ann Crigler (Moderator 2, Day 1, Group 5, Political Information-processing & Processing Models)
Chip Eveland (The Ohio State University) and I will spearhead the semantic analysis of the chapter texts that will produce a visual representation of the connections among the chapters in the handbook by key concepts. In this analysis each chapter will be represented by a node and the strengths of tie will be represented by the thickness of the line between them. This work will be completed before the editing in order to aide this process.

William Eveland (Moderator 3, Day 1, Group 5, Political Information-processing & Processing Models)
We considered how to weight “important” vs. “unanswered” since both concepts were modifiers of the “research questions” we were asked to develop. Importance and the degree to which a question has been answered fall on a continuum, and they are probably correlated such that maybe the most important questions are also those about which we know the most already, even if they are not yet fully answered.

It is also useful to note that some questions in our list tend to be heavily politically-oriented (i.e., deal with primarily political concerns for which communication may serve as one possible explanation), whereas others are questions about communication effects (which are applied to a political context but may also be applied to other contexts):

Why do some people know so much about politics and others so little?
Why are some people so interested in politics and other people not so much?
How do citizens behave competently with relatively low average levels of concrete information?
What causes the development of political habits of mind?
Does variation in communication forms alter the nature of emotional response and forms of information processing?
What causes individuals to vote against their self-interest?
How easy is it to for media to bias political decision-making?
How do we discriminate rationalizations and real attitudes?

We defined theory as a construct that enables one to predict, explain, and describe.

In the realm of political communication, we hope to describe the creation of content and the effects of media content. Theories we discussed can help predict content alone, effects alone, or both content and effects. Theories marked with * are those that chapter authors believe they will use in writing their handbook chapters.

Theories that explain both content and effects:

*Agenda setting
*Critical theory of unconscious ideology
*Framing
*Economics of information markets -- industrial organization Economics of information markets -- strategic communication and game theory Uses and gratification World system theory
*Social construction of reality Structural functionalism Diffusion theory
*Cognitive psychology and neuroscience theories of decision making;

Primarily content:

*Gatekeeping;

Primarily effects:

Priming;
*Persuasion.

Our group believed that there should be a chapter at the start of the volume which presents a rich tapestry of theories of political communication, and gives the reader a sense of what theories help predict or explain particular phenomena. We believe this should be a stand alone chapter rather than simply a roadmap to the conference volume.

Table 5

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:35:00 GMT

R. Lance Holbert, Ohio State University (Table 5 moderator- Day 2)
Lauren Feldman, American University (Table 5 moderator- Day 2 closing session)
Oscar Gandy, University of Pennsylvania
Doris Graber, University of Illinois at Chicago
Milton Lodge, SUNY at Stony Brook, and co-author Dan Cassino, SUNY at Stony Brook
Nicholas Valentino, University of Michigan
Kate Kenski, University of Arizona (gadfly)
Tim Fallis, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Lance Holbert (Table 5)
How does what we know contribute to politics in the here and now? Specific cases were offered where our research has been used in public policy debates (e.g., negative advertising in campaign finance), how citizens can craft messages to achieve their goals, and the providing of details of whom citizens need to speak with in order to maximize their agency. Points were raised that our theories provide a means by which to organize the day to day practice of political communication engaged by journalists, professional political communicators, and citizens.

We feel all of these groups would be interested to see the larger organizational structure offered in our theories - see the forest through the trees, the bigger picture. However, there is public relations problem - a communication disconnect from these groups concerning the better part of our work. This is where the issue of public scholarship raised by other groups comes into play.

What insights from the field would make sense to the average citizens? We approached this question from the standpoint of which areas of our understanding laypersons would find make sense based on their personal experiences- empirical validation of their own observations of day to day political communication activities.

A few points were raised:

The agency and influence of social networks (especially among younger citizens and their understanding of social media).
The inequality of press coverage of male versus female candidates.

We also mentioned that journalists themselves would not be surprised by these details - may be surprised by the degree, but not the fact that the inequalities exist. Would any insights come as a surprise? The majority of points put forward by the group were in response to this query.

The points raised were as follows:

The role of social context/market level on what political information is made available to any one individual. The information made available to any one individual is determined in part by the demographic make-up of the market within which that individual resides;
role of instantaneous reactions to stimuli - role of implicit associations/implicit attitudes - the primacy of affect - this general line of insights would be surprising to the layperson;
the fact that rather large shifts in attitudes/attributions can derive from rather small shifts in message design;
the fact that so many people can walk away from the same message with different understandings/interpretations of that message;
getting past the third person perception - to come to a realization that citizens themselves are influenced by political communication (many of us mentioned that this is a major perception we seek to have our undergrad students overcome - that the effects described in our classes pertain to them, not just others). Citizens would be surprised in a similar fashion to find that they are affected by debates, ads, news, etc.

Oscar Gandy (Table 5)
The third question was less clear, something to do with the identification of normative questions. It was not clear whether this was supposed to be in response to some earlier survey.

I would suggest, however that for me, an important normative question relates to the extent to which strategic communication efforts, especially those designed to misinform political decision makers, should in some way be the basis for punishing their source.

Group 6 - Citizen Media Consumption

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:31:00 GMT

Miriam J. Metzger, University of California, Santa Barbara (moderator1 - Day 1); [respondent for Dannagal Young]
Diana Owen, Georgetown University (moderator 2- Day 1); [respondent for Miriam J. Metzger]
Joseph Cappella, University of Pennsylvania (moderator 3- Day 1); [respondent for Diana Owen]
Ken Winneg, University of Pennsylvania; [respondent for Joseph Cappella]
Jennifer Stromer-Galley, SUNY, Albany; [respondent for Ken Winneg]
Michael X. Delli Carpini, University of Pennsylvania; [respondent for Jennifer Stromer-Galley]
Dannagal Young, University of Delaware; [respondent for Michael X. Delli Carpini]
Kate Kenski, University of Arizona (gadfly)
Jonathan Pearson, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Miriam Metzger (Moderator 1, Day 1, Group 6, Citizen Media Consumption)
From this morning's discussion about normative expectations, this is the summary from our table (Table 6: Citizen Media Consumption): We expect citizens to have at least some understanding of (very) basic political institutions, processes, and structures. We expect responsible media consumption, including exposing themselves to some public affairs information and exposing themselves to a diversity of viewpoints if possible. We expect citizens to have skills needed to find relevant political information (information seeking) and evaluate its credibility (information literacy). We expect that people have a "citizen identity" (i.e., what it means to be a citizen) that is activated at least some time(s). Of course, we should probably change the word "expect" in each of the above to the word "hope." I was struck by how little agreement there was in defining political communication across individuals and tables, yet at the same time there was a good deal of agreement on the important theories of political communication. All of the gadflies had really important insights.

Diana Owen (Moderator 2, Day 1, Group 6)
The discussion began with the observation that the state of theory related to new media is not in good shape. The group identified three categories of theory: normative theory, empirical/explanatory theory, and "modely theory". While theories that generate testable ideas and provide meaningful explanations are preferable, there are models that are less well developed that are prominent in the field that merit inclusion in certain chapters. Theories that will be given prominent treatment in the section include theories of the public sphere and deliberation (Habermas), social capital theory (Putnam and others), theories of influence flows in society (two step flow model), uses and gratifications, diffusion theory, explanations of selective exposure, and explanations of narrowcasting. Rather than having a separate chapter or introduction to the section, the group prefers to highlight particular theories within the individual chapters and cross- reference them where relevant.

Joseph Cappella (Moderator 3, Day 1, Group 6)
All are topics of special relevance to the new media environment and remain unaddressed or are addressed in scattered locations throughout the volume: Creation and advancement of social movements and political action through new media; Young people and political involvement: the role of new media in engaging the youth audience; Information seeking including especially; Dispositions toward consuming political information versus not; For consumers: Forms of political information consumed by medium and genre; “Opportunity spaces” How do media institutions structure information to enhance and reduce exposure; Selective exposure/avoidance by partisanship, attitude, value, and ideology; Do new media enhance or reduce the possibility of “inadvertent exposure” to uncongenial information; Political games and gaming: Using virtual political environments to teach and to experiment about politics, and social affairs

Table 6

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:18:00 GMT

Andrew Hayes, Ohio State University (Table 6 moderator- Day 2)
Jennifer Stromer-Galley, SUNY, Albany (Table 6 moderator- Day 2 closing session)
Carol Winkler, Georgia State University
William P. Eveland, Ohio State University
Robert Huckfeldt, University of California, Davis
Larry Bartels, Princeton University (gadfly)
Joshua Darr, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)
Jeff Gottfried, (Annenberg School for Communication graduate student)

Andrew Hayes (Table 6)
Our discussion began with an observation of the challenge that results from the likelihood that a nontrivial fraction of the public perceives research on politics and political topics as inherently biased, i.e., that the investigators have a political agenda that influences their research and what they report publicly.

However, it was also acknowledged that such perceived bias may not be unique to political communication research. In other words, people often discount any research that is inconsistent with their own intuition, attitudes, or personal experiences. We then discussed what role political communication researchers can contribute to politics in the here and now. One important role researchers can play is to function as "empathic advisors" to the public. We can acknowledge that the task the public has--to make informed political decisions—is nearly impossible given the 'booming, buzzing confusion' that characterizes the information environment. We can give the public permission to feel confused.

But without telling the public what to think, we can steer them toward an understanding of what informational cues should matter more and what cues should matter less when it comes to making informed decisions. We also noted that our influence on the public is often indirect rather than direct, through our involvement in political campaigns as advisors — message design, mobilization efforts, and so forth — which influence voter turnout and so have impact on political
outcomes such as election results, policies, and so forth.

This may not always be a good thing, however, if the knowledge of communication scholars is used to malevolently manipulate rather than benevolently inform and persuade. Ideally, the advice we as political communication scholars offer should be consistent with normative theories of democracy.

We also should not shy away from government consulting. Many government agencies can benefit from the knowledge of political communication scholars, and when they ring the bell, we should be willing to answer the door.

Many people believe that social science findings are obvious and merely describe what we already know. Whether generally true or false, there are some things that the public probably does not know about the political process but that political communication research has shown. One example is the role of advertising in educating the public. Although many quickly grow tired of political advertising during the typical campaign, and even come to detest the negative advertising, there is evidence that people do learn facts from advertising, even negative ads, and in some cases may actually learn more than they do from the news, candidate speeches, and so forth.

Jennifer Stromer-Galley (Table 6)
The most important insight: we seem to generally agree on a core set of theories, which suggests that there likely is a canon of scholarship/theories to which we refer.

Group Definitions

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:42:00 GMT

Lynn Sanders (Table 2) — We ended up saying [political communication] is about power and information. We started with the idea that communication comes to the fore in democracies: political communication is a democratic prerogative. We observed that communication occurs between leaders or state actors and citizens or subjects in non-democracies, and so questioned our initial democratic emphasis. We struck themes we heard reported from other tables: first, political communication might be defined by subject matter - if the communication is about a political topic or concern like terrorism, then it is political communication; second, all communication probably has some political elements (some speakers prevail, some are strategic) and to some degree communication is always political, but this observation begs the question before us. We sought common themes across the six speakers and noted some anxieties about the degree to which received categories seem inadequate to the demands of the current media environment. Networks extend further than our usual methods let us track. Audiences have unanticipated and not easily predictable power to determine a story's fate. Younger persons know more than political communications scholars about the media environments candidates and campaigns might exploit. Some unknown but presumably very large amount of communication takes place outside of our awareness or ability to recognize its importance. We considered whether political communication must always be about power: about supplying information to share power, about restricting or managing information to share power less.

Sean Aday (Table 3) — The production and exchange of information that may influence the exercise of power and control in society.

Lance Holbert (Table 5) — We first discussed the issue of scarce resources and that scarce resources force people/institutions to engage in communicative acts to obtain a certain share of these resources. These discursive acts could be defined as political communication, but we then discussed the specific boundaries which need to be established for the defining of a field of "political communication." The key concept we returned to in relation to proper boundaries was "governance." We then raised the issue of whether all political communication is inherently competitive - an argument was offered that many political communication acts function as complements to other political communication acts (e.g. meaning of one political message only has force/substance relative to other political communication messages). So, there is the issue of the degree to which competition (competition for power, scarce resources) drives all political communication and whether all meaning of political communication is defined by competition. There was no conclusion reached on this matter. The other issue raised concerned political communication as being a combination of political science and communication which are both variables fields, so inherent to any discussion of political communication is the levels of analysis issue.

Brian Southwell (Table 4) — Political communication is the presentation and interpretation of information, messages, or signals with consequence for the exercise of shared power. We concluded that political communication is a multifaceted entity that can be described in various dimensions. It is unique in some dimensions and shares characteristics with other disciplines in others. We might consider various levels of analysis, including both individual-level and relatively macro-level analysis. From a macro-level perspective, most constructs of interest for political communication scholars, such as public opinion, by definition involve communication.
Public opinion is product of a communication process. At the individual-level, though, communication behavior can be viewed as political at times and as belonging to other domains at other times. Three of the dimensions considered by our table were types of processes, content, and modality. We collectively agreed that consideration of *content* was the best example of a dimension in which political communication might be considered somewhat unique. Political communication shares processes with other areas and modality questions, e.g., verbal versus non-verbal, signal interesting directions for new scholarship but nothing unique to political communication. Several at our table also argued that communication processes are not inherently political but rather *become* political when they are consequential for societal organization. While there was not universal agreement on that last point, it might have been the closest we got to a definitional boundary.

Oscar Gandy (Table 5) — As I understand the question, Kathleen wants to know if I perceive that there is a central core that ties together this thing called Political Communication. From the discussion at my table, made up of three presenters for this evening, the conclusion is not positive. Participants "admitted" they [and others they identified] were pursuing the questions that interested them, and merely applied them to political concerns: they were about content, they were about psychological processes [and their measurement], they were about communicative forms. There was general resistance to the identification of the core with political processes that would be effected by these messages, such as voting, donating, demonstrating, or other political acts. This discussion has much in common with historical discussions about whether "communications" was yet a "field" with a unifying theory [or even a unifying question]. I think the answer is clearly no; there are interests that can readily be associated with an interest in politics, and political action [including deliberation], but there is little that limits the insights derived from much of the basic research to that thing we recognize as politics, or political behavior, or political processes. Indeed, they have ready application in a variety of other fields/disciplines/areas of interest. That doesn't mean that an intelligent and useful volume cannot be produced that will be of use to people concerned about communications and the political realm.

Jennifer Stromer-Galley (Table 6) — defined political communication as the creation, dissemination, and processing information for the exercise of power. On the first night, our group (6) discussed somewhat jokingly that political communication is the study at the intersection of political science and communication (imagine a Venn diagram); or peanut butter meeting chocolate. We then moved to the idea that political communication means something along the lines of the transmission of information of a political nature. We then considered what political nature might mean and sketched out a concern with the interactions and influences between three institutions: elites, citizens, and media. We didn’t define these further. We also noted that the research also seems to focus on cognition and on behavior and also on channel. There was some talk about the study of persuasion as being important and central to the area of political communication.

Participant Definitions

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:31:00 GMT

Sunshine Hillygus — Political Communication is transmission of information (broadly defined to include verbal, nonverbal, behaviors, etc.) in pursuit of power.

Erika Falk — Political communication research includes any study that has as its topic communication in a political context or to put it another way any study that has as its topic the intersection of information exchange and power.

Bruce Hardy — The transfer of any information pertaining to the contest over resources.

Ken Goldstein — On definition, I think that Krosnick's definition was reasonable— exchange of information about exercise of power.

David Birdsell — The study of messages about politics, policy and policy actors; the media that convey and multiply such messages; and the individual, cultural, technological and behavioral factors that influence reception, learning and action.

Talia Stroud — The interactions between elites, media, and citizens on topics relating to politics. The component that seems particularly difficult to define is what is meant by politics. Definitions proposed by others at the conference, such as topics related to governance and power relationships, seem useful. I wonder if this incorporates interactions between citizens about an episode of a partisan program or how entertainment programming can influence one’s attitudes about crime.

Lynn Sanders — Revising definition of political communication: Direct or mediated exchange of ideas and messages, verbal or visual, in an identifiably public space, whose intention or consequence is to alter the structure or products of government or to prevent that alteration.

Diana Owen — Communication related to the authoritative allocation of values for a society.

Bob Lichter — The production, transmission, and effects of information about politics, political opinion and public policy.

Miriam Metzger — Personally, I would define it in terms of "producing, processing, and
disseminating information about public affairs" but I am not sure many would agree with this definition.

John Gastil — The exchange of information, messages, and signals concerning public issues and/or the exercise of collective power.

Kim Fridkin — Political Communication is the study of the determinants and consequences of political messages on both citizens and political institutions.

Oscar Gandy — Political communication is the term applied to the identification or characterization of messages, statements or information thought to be relevant to the formation of responses to social problems, including the election of candidates to public office.

Kevin Coe — The production, content, diffusion, and impact of political messages, where political messages are those that pertain to the exercise and control of power in society.

Brian Southwell — Regarding a definition of political communication: the presentation and interpretation of information, messages, or signals with consequence for the organization of society and for the exercise of shared power.

Pamela Shoemaker — 1. Communication about politics. 2. Politics is about power relationships, which exist anytime two or more people are in the same space, be it virtual or geographic. 3. But the book cannot encompass every relationship between two or more people...too broad. 4. Therefore we can limit "politics" to the more formal relations among people in a social system, whether defined as a neighborhood, a congressional district, a state, region, nation state, or groups of nation states. 5. By formal, we can include relations between individuals and many layers of groups that represent or hold power, relations between groups and these layers, relations between groups, and relations between the layers of power. 6 By formal, we include the ways in which power moves from one entity to another and the structures established that either facilitate or constrain power. 7. By communication we mean transmission of information that relates in any way to any part of these formal political relationships. 8. As a group, we are old. We need some 15 year old kids to describe how and why they communicate. Do they ever think about politics? When and why? 9. When old people talk about the changing communication environment we talk about the fragmentation of the media, anxiety, challenges. Our normative beliefs about 21st century communication are based in old assumptions. 10. Teens don't care about these things because their world is the world that has always been. 11. An important question is whether a book about political communication can address anything other than the anxious world of old people. Since we'll die off in 10 to 20 years -- by which time today's 15 year old will be old enough to run for national office--the book could be quaint and irrelevant to young adults, whether as voters or scholars, by the time it is published. 12. Is there any way that our book can shed light on the present and future without looking at it only through weak-eyed lenses? Can we dredge up our assumptions and set them aside long enough to see today's world as if it has always been this way? Going on and about how the world is so different (to us old people) carries the implicit assumption that it used to be better. Weak-eyed rose-tinted glasses. 13. The world is the world that is. Change can be thought of as an opportunity or a problem.

William Benoit — “Political Communication” is the intersection of politics and communication. Politics informs the purpose of this discourse: to accumulate and apply power to allocate resources (election campaigns are one way to accumulate power). Messages connect political actors (candidates, elected officials, interest groups, news media, and others) to audiences. Political communication should always focus on messages: The focus can be on message productions (e.g., are messages from incumbents different from messages from challengers; do differences in here in messages from, say, presidents, governors, mayors and members of deliberative bodies) and/or on message reception (what affects do messages have on variables such as knowledge, interest, attitudes, and behavior)? This book has a limited scope, including a focus on governments and governance (some of the principles of political communication.

Dietram Schuefele — All communication is inherently political. The conversations we have with family and neighbors about local school board elections are a form of political communication. So is a NYT Op-Ed about health care, and the act of forwarding it to our best friend from college halfway across the country. And the thoughts that go through our mind when we cast our ballot for various candidates on November 2 are also a form of political communication. In short, the academic field of political communication is really a very broadly defined set of interdisciplinary efforts at the intersection of communication research, political science, psychology, sociology, neuroscience and a host of other disciplines. And in recent years, this list of disciplines has gotten longer and longer. Ultimately, political communication is very similar to a field like nanotechnology, i.e., a research area that is (a) an outcome of increasing specialization in disciplines, such as political science and communication, and (b) the area where those disciplines overlap and share research questions. Most recent trends in political communication research have been dictated by the tectonic shifts in how politics is communicated and the issues that we as a society are facing. What used to be the “mass” in mass communication, for instance, has morphed into different publics that generate, exchange, and use content in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago. And with global warming, synthetic biology or stem cell research, we have seen issues move to the forefront of political discourse that have the potential to bring long-term and far-reaching changes for almost all aspects of people’s daily lives. Many of big questions that we face as a society – energy independence, global warming, or an increasingly polarized electorate – require answers that transcend the boundaries of a single field or discipline. This is particularly challenging for a young field, such as political communication, that continues to struggle with its identity and its desire to compete on an even playing field with much larger disciplines, such as psychology and political science. And if we are not careful, we may follow these disciplines down some dead ends. A good example is the debate surrounding Republican Senator Tom Coburn’s proposal in October 2009 to prohibit the National Science Foundation from “wasting any federal research funding on political science projects.” Coburn, of course, used the label “political science” but targeted social science much more broadly. And his comments rekindled an old debate among political scientists about incremental disciplinary research versus big questions. Cornell’s Peter Katzenstein summarized this intra-disciplinary dilemma best: “Graduate students discussing their field ... often speak in terms of ‘an interesting puzzle,’ a small intellectual conundrum... that tests the ingenuity of the solver, rather than the large, sloppy and unmanageable problems that occur in real life.” Interestingly, President Obama has prioritized the search for answers to many of these supposedly sloppy, unmanageable problems, ranging from mandates for a green economy, to climate change, stem cell research and global warming. All of these issues relate to the increasingly blurring lines between science, politics, and society – and of course, political communication. These are the same areas where most societal debates of the next 50 years will take place. And unless we as political communication researchers and educators find a way to make both scholarly and public contributions to these conversations, we will increasingly be marginalized as a discipline.

Fay Lomax Cook — Political communication consists of the multiple ways in which information -- both correct and incorrect, both attitudinal and empirical -- is conveyed in societies about what local, state, or national government does or should do. The multiple ways in which it is conveyed range from one on one conversations to small groups to formal forums to the statements of political elites to the mass media.

John Gastil — Are we trying to define the boundaries of pol comm, or really some kind of core emphasis within those boundaries? If the former, then the field is simply all comm that relates to topics related to politics, public affairs, and/or the polis? That can *not* include the notion that “all things are political,” or the field has no boundary whatsoever. (We might also stipulate that the field exclude private thought or expression that has no social connection whatsoever, i.e., isolated thinking/muttering.) If we instead seek to define a core within the wider boundary, then the core relates to political influence, persuasion, expression, and decision making of political beliefs/attitudes/behaviors--an emphasis on core dependent variables. Another narrowing move might be the requirement that theory ultimately connect back up to a collective of some kind or another, the body/public that must make decisions together—be they governmental or cultural choices about political matters.

Lynn Vavreck — Any signal or signifier the purpose of which is to comment on politics.

Group Recommendations

glgehman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:13:00 GMT

Erika Falk— I do think that there is a cannon. I think the seminal works in agenda setting, framing, and gate keeping should be among them.

Ken Goldstein— I think three touchstone works on political communication in the last 20 years have been Zaller's "Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion," Iyengar's work on advertising and turnout, and Iyengar and Kinder "News that Matters."

Patricia Moy — I include in my list of canons three monographs (Voting; Personal Influence; The Reasoning Voter) and two book chapters: Chaffee, S. H., & Hochheimer, J. L. (1985). The beginnings of political communication research in the United States: Origins of the “limited effects” model. In E. M. Rogers & F. Balle (Eds.). The media revolution in America and Western Europe (pp. 267-296). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Gurevitch, M., & Blumler, J. G. (1990). Political communication systems and democratic values. In J. Lichtenberg (Ed.), Democracy and the mass media (pp. 269-289). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Similarly, a review chapter such as that offered by Everett Rogers in Kaid’s Handbook of Political Communication Research (on the field’s theoretical diversity) is extremely useful.

David Birdsell — I’m not sure how far back to go in thinking about antecedents, nor which contemporary manifestations of thinking about political communication to trace back. One route would be to go with ancient sources and choose Thucydides, Aristotle and Cicero. Respectively, the historical account of tactics of persuasion in the Peloponnesian peninsula, the theoretical account of political persuasion a generation later, and the nexus of reputation and governance (and felicities of language) in the transition from republic to imperium. Another would be to look at ways that the ancient rhetorical traditions were adapted to emerging forms of representative government, so Burke, Whately, and perhaps Hume would figure here. Were we to pull canonicity closer to the present period, we’d want to select people who made the shift from an emphasis on the production of effective political language to the effects of political speech (and visuals, and multiply mediated messages, etc.) on voters and other political actors. At the risk of flattering our host, we could do worse than Eloquence in an Electronic Age. At one level it’s too new to count among the prolegomena, but at another, it deftly combines productive rhetorical theory to a theory of reception and expectation that takes rich account of culture and technology. I don’t think that it has yet had a successor.

Lynn Vavreck— Canon: Lippman, Iyengar & Kinder, McGuire, Converse, Zaller

Carol Winkler— My nominees for the canon related to political communication (and I realize that this is likely to differ based on background which differs from many of the scholars that are here) would be: Campbell and Jamieson, Deeds Done in Words Zarefsky, President Johnson's War on Poverty: Rhetoric and History Hart, The Sound of Leadership.

Talia Stroud— Proposed canons: Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B., Gaudet, H. (1948). The people’s choice: How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential election. New York: Columbia University Press; Berelson, B., Lazarsfeld, P. F., & McPhee, W. N. (1954). Voting: A study of opinion formation in a presidential campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Katz, E., & Lazarsfeld, P. F. (1955/2006). Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communications. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Lynn Sanders— Gamson's Talking Politics, Habermas via Craig Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere.

Diana Owen— Founding Literature/Canon, Berelson, Lazarsfeld, et al., The People's Choice, Voting.

Bob Lichter— The book that begins any list of a canon is Lippman's Public Opinion. Beyond that I'll confine my list to the books that were most important to me: Schudson, Deciding What's News; Patterson, Out of Order; Jamieson, Dirty Politics; Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters; Robinson and Sheehan, Over the Wire and On TV; Rod Hart, Campaign Talk; Tim Cook, Governing with the News; Marion Just et al, Crosstalk.

Miriam Metzger— This is a tough one for me...some thoughts include things like Habermas at
the larger level and Katz & Lazarsfeld, McCombs & Shaw, Lippmann at other levels. There are many, many more that should be mentioned too, I'm sure.

Kim Fridkin— Three pioneers in my own area of research would be Doris Graber, Don Kinder, and Shanto Iyengar.

Oscar Gandy— Identification of two or three "canonical" people that are providing the "foundational literature" in political communication. I am not sure that I can really do that, however, I will respond by identifying Amitai Etzioni, and his 1988 book, The Moral Dimension, as a critically important influence on my thinking about public policy and the influence of public relations. The other would be Ralf Dahrendorf's 1979 book on Life Chances. Obviously these are particular to my own interests in political communication. A more general book is Baumgartner and Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics.

Kevin Coe— Lippmann, Public Opinion; Campbell and Jamieson, Deeds Done in Words; Bennett, News: The politics of illusion.

David Weaver— My nominations of "canons" of political communication includes the original agenda-setting article by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, "The Agenda Setting Function of Mass Media" published in Public Opinion Quarterly in the summer of 1972 and also the book entitled Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion written by Maxwell McCombs and published by Blackwell Polity Press, in 2004.

Brian Southwell— Regarding 2 or 3 books for a canon, I would select: Converse's The American Voter for its suggestion of the instability of individual opinion, Katz and Lazarsfeld's Personal Influence for its emphasis on the social network moderation of the impact of mass media on individuals, and Zaller's The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion for its emphasis on context and contingency.

James Hamilton— Books I'd view in the canon: Anthony Downs, Economic Theory of Democracy.

William Eveland— Erie County Voting Study, Lippmann's Public Opinion, Lang & Lang's MacAurthur Day Parade study

Sunshine Hillygus— Lazarsfeld et al.

Supplemental Material

glgehman — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:32:00 GMT

Chapter One – The Economy and the Unpopular Incumbent

Chapter Two – McSame versus the Tax-and-Spend Liberal

Chapter Three – McCain: Out of Touch/Too Old

Chapter Four – Obama: Not Ready to Lead

Chapter Five – Period One: McCain Gains Energy (June 7-August 22)

Chapter Six – Period Two: Impact of the Vice Presidential Selections and Conventions (August 23-September 9)

Chapter Seven – The Impact of Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden

Chapter Eight – Period Three: The Campaigns Confront the Economic Collapse (September 10-October 14)

Chapter Nine – Period Four: The McCain Surge (October 15-28)

Chapter Ten – Period Five: Be Very Very Afraid/Be Reassured (October 29-November 4)

Chapter Eleven – Absentee and Early Voting in the 2008 Campaign

Chapter Twelve – Spending Differences and the Role of Microtargeting

Chapter Thirteen – The Effect of Messages

Research Discussion Meeting #2

kesposito — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Date: November 18, 2008

Topic: Post-doctoral students will be discussing the research projects on which they are currently working.

“Journal Club” Meeting - S. Dunlop

kesposito — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Date: November 11, 2008

Meeting Leader: Sally Dunlop, Post-doctoral fellow

Peer Review Workshop

kesposito — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Date: October 28, 2008

Workshop Leader: Dafna Lemish, Professor, Department of Communication, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Goal: This workshop will explore two of the most important endeavors engaged in by academics: Submitting and reviewing manuscripts for academic journals. While the skills necessary for these two challenging activities are in many ways complementary, they are also often completely unrelated; that is, being an excellent reviewers does not necessarily prepare you for submitting good manuscripts, and visa versa. Accordingly, we will discusses the following questions: How to decide which journal to submit your manuscript? How to handle revisions? Whether to argue with the editor? And what about reviewing, what does an editors and an author really look for in a review? When should you refuse and when you shouldn't dare to do so? How does one write a good review? And why is it important? Creating and charing knowledge is a collective effort, and in this workshop, we will discusses your participation in this community and how to excel in doing so.

Research Discussion Meeting #1

kesposito — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Date: October 21, 2008

Topic: Post-doctoral fellows will be discussing the research projects on which they are currently working.

Atlas.ti Software Preview

kesposito — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Date: October 14, 2008

Workshop Leaders: Amy Jordan, Senior Researcher, The Annenberg Public Policy Center; Priya Nalkur-Pai, Post-doctoral Fellow

Goal: To explain the uses of Atlas.ti in qualitative analysis in communication research. Experiences with the software will be discussed and its functions will be shown. An all-day training on the software will follow later in the semester.

“Journal Club” Meeting - P. Nalkur-Pai

kesposito — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Date: October 7, 2008

Meeting Leader: Priya Nalkur-Pai, Post-doctoral Fellow

Topic: Media and Body Image