Hearing Campaign Appeals: The Accountability Implications of Presidential Campaign Tone

Citizen understanding of candidate priorities is highly consequential for both elections and postelection accountability and is especially key to the office of the presidency. I examine the impact of campaign advertising tone on citizen understanding of candidate agendas in the context of the 2000 presidential election. Merging data on political ads from the Wisconsin Advertising Project with individual survey data, I test whether citizens are more likely to accurately hear a positive campaign theme. The analysis provides empirical support for this benefit of positivity.     

Field Experimental Designs for the Study of Media Effects

Field experimentation is a promising but seldom used method for studying the effects of media messages on political attitudes and behavior. The practical challenges of conducting media experiments in real-world settings often come down to securing cooperation from research partners, such as political campaigns. To do so, researchers must be prepared to adapt their experimental designs to satisfy the constraints imposed by research partners and the media environment in which they operate. This article provides an overview of some alternative field experimental designs that allow researchers to maintain the advantages of random assignment while addressing practical considerations. Examples are drawn from the growing field experimental literature examining the effects of television, radio, and online communication.     

Issue Frame Ownership: The Partisan Roots of Campaign Rhetoric

Campaigns can shape vote choice decisions by effectively framing issues for voters. I examine how campaigns do this by studying the content of issues appeals in television advertisements from U.S. House and Senate candidates. The use of issue frames is partisan. The two parties develop their own distinct rhetorical strategies on particular issues, showing that each party owns particular issue frames. In addition, campaign messages are sensitive to the partisanship of voters. Campaigns are more likely to use conservative frames in Republican-leaning districts and liberal frames in Democratic-leaning districts. Models of campaign strategy should incorporate not just what issues are discussed, but also the rhetorical choices campaigns make to address these issues.     

On the Communicative Underpinnings of Campaign Effects: Presidential Debates,Citizen Communication,and Polarization in Evaluations of Candidates

Previous research on presidential debates has largely focused on direct effects of debates on viewers. By expanding the context of debate effects to post-debate citizen communication, this study moves beyond the direct and immediate impact of debate viewing and investigates indirect effects of debate viewing mediated by debate-induced citizen communication. Results from two-wave panel data collected before and after the 2004 presidential debates show that, as previous literature has suggested, debate viewing leads to partisan reinforcement and that these debate effects are in part mediated through post-debate political conversation. These findings provide a new layer of complexity to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying debate effects.     

Introduction: Survey and Experimental Research in International Political Economy

Studies in international political economy (IPE) that use survey-response data sets and survey (or field) experiments have grown dramatically in recent years. New developments in survey and experimental methodology have arguably influenced IPE scholars not only to think more deeply about the microfoundations of the preferences, attitudes, and political behavior of key IPE actors but also to use survey or experimental methods to test causal claims and predictions. Yet the reasons for the rapid growth in survey and experimental methods in IPE are more multifaceted. We therefore seek to answer the following three pertinent questions in the introduction. First, what are the main substantive puzzles and issue-areas that IPE scholars analyze via survey and experimental methods in their research? Second, what are the main methodological advantages and drawbacks from using survey and experimental methods in IPE? Third, what are the key substantive theoretical and empirical insights that scholars have learned from recent research in IPE that employs either survey or experimental methods (or both)? In addition to answering these questions here, we also provide a summary of each article included in the special issue. The introduction concludes with a road map for future studies on survey and experimental research in IPE.     

Assessing the Influence of Political Parties on Public Opinion: The Challenge from Pretreatment Effects

Despite generations of research, political scientists have trouble pinpointing the influence of political parties on public opinion. Recently, scholars have made headway in exploring whether parties in fact shape policy preferences by relying on experimental designs. Yet, the evidence from this work is mixed. I argue that the typical experiment faces a design problem that likely minimizes the extent to which parties apparently matter. Because parties have policy reputations, experimental participants may already know from real-world exposure to political debate where the parties stand before they are told in the experiment—they are “pretreated.” This study investigates how real-world political context interferes with party cue stimulus in experiments. In two experiments I show that two types of “pretreatment” from outside the experiment—exposure-based and reputation-based—dramatically moderate the effects of party cues in experiments. Moreover, the politically aware participants—who are most likely to have been pretreated before entering the experiment—are the most sensitive to this interference from real-world context. Paradoxically, experimenters are most likely to find no effect of parties at the very time that their influence is strongest outside the experiment. These findings emphasize the importance of keeping real-world context in mind when designing and analyzing experiments on political communication effects and might help reconcile disparate results of previous party cue experiments.     

Survey Research in International Political Economy: Motivations,Designs, Methods

The use of surveys and survey experiments by international political economy scholars is increasing, adding to the ability to study a broad array of topics. In doing so, many scholars in international political economy draw on—and are contributing to—insights and arguments from American politics and comparative politics (Milner 1998), substantive fields with a history of using surveys and survey experiments. In this article, I review motivations for using surveys and survey experiments, the research designs, and analysis strategies in light of this issue’s contributions. I contrast these motivations and their accompanying designs and discuss the pros and cons of ways to approach the data generated by these research designs. The goal of this commentary is to situate surveys and survey experiments—especially those within the special issue—within a larger discussion about research motivations, design, and analysis techniques.     

Campaign Advertising and the Stimulation and Activation of the Authoritarian Personality

This research examines whether authoritarianism can be stimulated and activated by politicians. The traditional belief is that psychological traits are basically quasipermanent structures that consistently determine behavior, but newer research suggests that these traits can be stimulated. This research tests whether campaigns can stimulate traits with targeted messages. I do so by exposing subjects in an experiment to political television advertising that was designed to stimulate known correlates of authoritarianism, such as fear. The results show that authoritarianism is stimulated in treatment groups that watched advertising designed to invoke threat and the strong-father metaphor and the treatment effect is greater on conservatives. I also show that watching these commercials leads to an activation of authoritarianism that influences its predictive power over support for torture. This suggests that politicians can use emotional appeals to stimulate advantageous personality traits, and that these ads also influence the public's attitudes through activation.     

The Campaign Disconnect: Media Coverage of the 2000 South Carolina Presidential Primary

Campaigns are an interactive process in which candidates, outside groups, the media, and voters communicate with each other to create an information environment that allows the various participants to construct meaning and form an understanding of the candidates and the campaign. Presidential primaries add a layer of complexity to this process as candidates and the press deal with both local and national audiences. In this article, we analyze the campaign communications in the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina—including candidate ads, mailings, and phone calls; local and national newspaper coverage; and network television coverage. We find that there was a disconnect as news media often focused on events and issues that diverged from the messages of the candidates' campaigns. In addition, we find substantial differences between local and national media coverage of the primary resulting from their distinct audiences and the reporters' own understanding of the local context that created significantly different information environments for voters in the state and those out of the state. We consider the implications of these findings for how voters and journalists understand the candidates as well as the challenges presidential candidates face in simultaneously campaigning locally and nationally.     

Escape from the Laboratory: Ethnographic Methods in the Study of Elder and Family Court Mediation

The randomized control trial and pre/post research designs are commonly used in applied research and provide common standards for mediation evaluation research. These approaches have many benefits, particularly for evaluating whether mediation as an experimental intervention works or not. Scholars and practitioners, however, want to know not only whether mediation can work as expected but also how it works in a range of real‐world contexts over time. In these contexts, ideal experimental conditions are less likely to occur. Challenges include such circumstances as the following: the number of cases suitable for statistical comparison is insufficient; researchers lack control over how mediation is implemented; researchers lack clear, objective variables to measure; and the variability of mediation outcomes when studied over time makes it difficult to draw conclusions about them. My research has involved each of these challenges, and I have used ethnographic research as a way to evaluate mediation in these contexts. In this article, I explain ethnographic methods and present two studies as examples of mediation evaluation research that began with a standard program evaluation design, and then incorporated ethnography to allow more complete data collection and analysis. My purpose here is not to argue that experimental methods in mediation evaluation research should be displaced but rather to demonstrate how ethnographic methods can be used when the conditions necessary for standard evaluation cannot be met. The two studies used as examples are from an elder mediation study in Ghana and a family court mediation study in the United States.     

The (In)stability of Voters’ Perceptions of Competence and Associative Issue Ownership: The Role of Media Campaign Coverage

Recent work has suggested that issue ownership has a competence and an associative dimension and that both dimensions are less stable than originally assumed. This study is the first attempt to directly compare the stability and change of voters’ perceptions on both dimensions. Using data from the 2015 Swiss Election Study, linking data from a combined panel/rolling cross-section survey with an extensive media analysis, this study finds that voters are more likely to maintain their issue ownership perceptions if the party they identify as the issue owner before the campaign receives a higher share of media campaign coverage. This stabilizing effect is conditional on the importance of the issue for the voter, and it is stronger for voters’ competence evaluations than for their party-issue associations, which proved to be more stable. Thus, the results confirm the literature’s previously untested assumption that voters’ associative ownership perceptions are more stable than their competence ownership evaluations.     

2011年新加坡大选中工人党的竞选策略探析

在2011年国会大选中,新加坡工人党在保住后港单选区的基础上,在阿裕尼集选区击败外交部长杨荣文率领的人民行动党团队,共取得了6个议席。这是自新加坡1988年集选区制度实行以来,反对党第一次战胜人民行动党拿下集选区,也是1966年以来反对党取得议席最多的一次大选。这届大选被认为是新加坡的政治分水岭。工人党之所以能取得如此战绩,是由于它采取了正确的竞选策略：工人党整合人才资源,物色到了可媲美人民行动党的候选人;抓住转战时机,刘程强适时走出后港;提出了“第一世界国会”“副司机”等全国性课题;不为反对而反对,打造理智的建设性反对党形象;挟上届大选余威,综合考量历史、地理因素;准确把握竞选过程中的细节。     

The Global Reproduction of American Politics

The process of economic transnationalization and liberalization that has accelerated in recent years has a corollary in the political sphere. One of the political areas that has been transformed under neoliberalism is the organization and management of election campaigns. Political consultants from the United States and other leading industrialized states have been hired as campaign managers or experts in elections held in Russia, Israel, Britain, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Canada, and a host of other countries. Part of this newly transnationalized electioneering mode involves the employment of specialists from the commercial sector who are skilled in the use of new communication and information/media technologies and techniques and in modern fund-raising methods. Encouraged and supported by increasing corporate financing, campaign managers have begun to standardize and make greater media spectacles of the process of electing a nation's political representatives, using campaigning styles and procedures that largely originated in the United States. A weakening of political parties and citizen activism in the formal political process and a deemphasis on major governing issues are among the changes observed, along with greater attention given to voter surveillance and profiling, opposition research, focus groups and polling, symbolic manipulation, and media-oriented construction of candidate personalities.     

欧亚经济共同体经济一体化及其效应分析

欧亚经济共同体是以俄罗斯为主导的独联体框架内最重要的经济一体化组织。自2000年诞生以来,该组织在建立关税同盟方面取得了重大实质性进展,建立统一运输空间、统一能源市场和统一社会经济空间的工作稳步推进,金融和货币领域合作有所加强,经济一体化的静态效应、动态效应,以及非传统经济效应和外溢效应开始逐步显现。但由于成员国经济发展水平差距较大,多数成员国的经济规模很小,且共同体内实行的是不同速度的一体化进程,共同体的一体化效应因而又具有一定的局限性。随着欧亚经济共同体内俄白哈关税同盟的正式启动,欧亚经济共同体的一体化效应将明显改观。     

Know Me,Love Me,Fear Me: The Anatomy of Candidate Poster Designs in the 2007 French Legislative Elections

Candidates in many elections spend a significant amount of their budget on posters, yet we know virtually nothing about their communication roles. Based on party strategy and visual communication research, this article argues that poster content is the result of strategic choices by candidates, with major and niche candidates using significantly different poster designs in an effort to influence voters' evaluations. Using an original database of 256 candidate posters from the 2007 French legislative elections and content analysis computer software, I show that niche party candidates consistently emphasize partisan and factual information cues (through size and placement on posters), while major party candidates rely heavily on candidate-oriented visuals and on nonverbal cues (e.g., eye contact) to persuade voters. Preliminary analyses indicate that poster visual design strategies are significantly associated with both major and niche party candidates' electoral performance.     

硒对汞致雏鸡肝功能损伤的拮抗作用

选用健康伊沙褐雏鸡250只,分为对照组、汞中毒组、3个水平的硒保护组,研究汞对血清中门冬氨酸氨基转移酶(AST)、丙氨酸氨基转移酶(ALT)、碱性磷酸酶(ALP)、肝组织中谷胱甘肽过氧化物酶(GSH-Px)活性和丙二醛(MDA)含量的影响以及硒与汞之间的相互作用效应.试验结果表明,汞可使血清中AST、ALT、ALP活性显著升高(P＜0.01),使肝组织中GSH-Px活性降低(P＜0.01),引发肝组织脂质过氧化,致使肝组织中MDA含量显著增高(P＜0.01),且有时间-效应关系;硒可使血清中AST、ALT、ALP活性显著降低(P＜0.01),使肝组织中GSH-Px活性显著升高(P＜0.01),阻止肝组织脂质过氧化,致使肝组织中MDA含量显著降低(P＜0.01),且有时间-效应关系.从而说明汞中毒损伤肝功能;硒对汞致肝功能的损伤具有拮抗作用.     

The Dynamics of the Demobilization of the Protest Campaign in Assam

This study highlights the role that critical events play in the demobilization of protest campaigns. Social movement scholars suggest that protest campaigns demobilize as a consequence of polarization within the campaign or the cooptation of the campaign leaders. I offer critical events as an alternative causal mechanism and argue that protest campaigns in ethnically divided societies are particularly combustible, as they have the potential to trigger unintended or unorchestrated communal violence. When such violence occurs, elite strategies change, mass support declines, and the campaign demobilizes. An empirical investigation of the dynamics of the demobilization phase of the anti-foreigner protest campaign in Assam, India, between 1979 and 1985 confirms this argument. A single group analysis is conducted to compare the dynamics of the campaign before and after the communal violence by using time series event data collected from The Indian Express, a national newspaper. The study has wider implications for the literature on collective action, as it illuminates the dynamic and complex nature of protest campaigns.     

A Spiral of Cynicism for Some: The Contingent Effects of Campaign News Frames on Participation and Confidence in Government

This article explores the impact of strategy-based campaign coverage on turnout and confidence in government. Recent theoretical advances suggest that variables such as sophistication and involvement frequently moderate media exposure effects. We hypothesize that the impact of strategy frames will be moderated by political involvement and sophistication. In an experiment, we precisely isolate and manipulate particular story elements that have been said to foster public cynicism: the strategic interpretation of candidate motives, the presence of polling results, and the use of war or game metaphors to describe the campaign. Relative to the issue-oriented coverage, strategy frames boost the number of strategy-based comments people offer when describing the campaign and depress issue-based commentary. As expected, framing effects on turnout, trust in government, civic duty, and the perceived meaningfulness of elections are moderated by involvement and sophistication. Nonpartisans and those with less than a college degree are significantly demobilized and alienated by strategy-based coverage, while partisans and the highly educated are mostly unaffected.     

Remembering to Forget: A Note on the Duration of Campaign Advertising Effects

Exposure to an Obama campaign ad as part of an Internet survey conducted during the final weeks of the 2012 presidential race produced a substantial 2.8-point increase in intentions to vote for Obama. A post-election follow-up survey found an increase in reported votes for Obama that was only half as large, consistent with the notion that ad effects decay over time. However, a closer look at the pattern of decay indicates that the effect of ad exposure remained virtually constant among people who were undecided or predisposed to support Obama. The reduced aggregate effect was almost entirely attributable to Romney supporters who moved toward Obama in the immediate wake of ad exposure but returned to Romney by Election Day. This divergence is inconsistent with an interpretation of decay as reflecting simple forgetting. Rather, it suggests an active process of motivated reasoning in which short-term persuasive effects are gradually eroded or even reversed by counterarguing among people predisposed to resist them.     

A Turning Point for Globalisation? The Implications for the Global Economy of America's Campaign against Terrorism

Did September 11th herald a turning point for globalisation? Although America's campaign against terrorism could put at risk many of the gains globalisation has brought, the new environment likewise presents opportunities to smooth the rough edges of the globalisation associated with American policies of the past decade. Measures to tighten the security of cross-border flows of goods, people, information and capital may raise entry barriers still higher for poor countries seeking greater integration with the global economy. But September 11th also provided a wake-up call, alerting the wealthier nations and especially Americans to the direct link between their own well-being and ensuring that people around the world have a stake in the international system. Unfortunately, there is little evidence so far these lessons have been taken to heart in policies on trade, financial assistance, and advancing economic reform in the states of the Middle East.