Checking the Fact-Checkers in 2008: Predicting Political Ad Scrutiny and Assessing Consistency

Which types of political ads are most likely to draw criticism from fact-checkers? Are fact-checkers consistent in their evaluations of political ads? Examining general election television ads from the 2008 U.S. presidential race, and based upon the evaluations of FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker, this study demonstrates it was the attack ads from candidates that were most likely to draw scrutiny from the fact-checkers. Most importantly, a high level of agreement between the fact-checkers indicates their success at selecting political claims that can be consistently evaluated. While political advertisers are increasingly using evidence to support their claims, what may be more critical in drawing evaluations from fact-checkers is the verifiability of a claim. The implications of consistent fact-checking on the public, political actors, journalism and democracy are discussed. With the revelation that fact-checking can be consistently practiced, localized efforts at fact-checking need encouragement, particularly as political TV ads increasingly drown out other potential sources of information for the public and increasingly are used in downballot races, local initiatives, referendums and judicial races.     

State environmental regulators: perspectives about trust with their regulatory counterparts

Although numerous studies explore the regulatory enforcement styles of regulators and the regulated community's compliance motivations, existing research does not provide adequate insight into regulatory interactions themselves. We use data from a nationwide survey of more than 1200 state environmental regulators to empirically assess the role of trust in regulatory interactions. We find statistical support of trust in these regulatory interactions and find that trust appears to be a function of cooperative behavior, information sharing, respect, perceptions of motivations, and proactive assistance seeking. These findings could support the increasing calls for a fundamental restructuring of environmental regulation in favor of a next‐generation approach to environmental policy that calls for more collaborative working relationships between regulators and their regulatory counterparts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating political party positioning over time: a proposed methodology

In this article, we propose a methodology in order to measure political positioning and constituent perception. Political leaders should be able to effectively define the distinctive characteristics of their political brand and to subsequently utilize the most appropriate mechanisms of communication to promote an accurate perception of political image in the market. The specific aim of this research is to explore interrelations between a political party's positioning in two different periods in order to discover possible discrepancies and changes over time. The official blog of a political party, containing both official communication and the people's feedback, represents a perfect place in which to observe the concepts and the values on which both the political brand identity and image are founded. Leximancer, a content analysis tool, was utilized to analyze communications between a political party leader and his or her constituents. Illustrating the methodology, the blog of Beppe Grillo, founder of the Movimento 5 Stelle is analyzed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.