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.