Gina M. Garramone

Uses of political computer bulletin boards

Research was conducted to investigate electorate motivations for using political computer bulletin board systems (BBSs) and the satisfactions obtained from use. Results from a telephone survey of 117 political BBS users indicated that surveillance and curiosity were the most commonly mentioned motivations for political BBS use. Overall political BBS use was motivated equally by surveillance, personal identity, and diversion motives. The BBS was evaluated most highly for satisfying surveillance needs.

Effects of negative political advertising on the political process

An experiment was conducted to explore the effects of negative political advertising on several variables important to the political process. Results indicated that negative commercials may lead to greater candidate image discrimination and greater attitude polarization than their positive counterparts. Negative and positive commercials did not differ, however, in their effects on involvement in the election, communication behavior regarding the election, and likelihood of turning out to vote in the election.

Effects of negative political advertising: The roles of sponsor and rebuttal

This experiment explored the roles of sponsor and rebuttal in negative political advertising. Both sponsor and rebuttal factors determined the impact of negative advertising on perceptions of the candidates and vote intentions. Independent sponsorship was more effective than candidate sponsorship, resulting in greater intended effects against the targeted candidate and in reduced backlash effects against the opponent. Rebuttal by the targeted candidate increased backlash against the opponent, but failed to influence perceptions of the target.

Appeals and strategies of negative political advertising

An experiment was conducted to determine the relative effectiveness of different types of negative political advertising appeals and of various strategies for responding to the appeals. Results supported the prediction that, when attack commercials are followed by a response from the target, issue‐attack commercials are more effective than image‐attack commercials. Findings for response strategies were mixed. Although viewers evaluated a negative‐response commercial less favorably than a positive‐response commercial, the negative response was more effective in discouraging voting for the attacking candidate.

Mass Communication and Political Socialization: Specifying the Effects

STUDIES examining the role of mass communication in young peoples learning about politics indicate that the media contribute to political socialization, but the research does little to unravel the complexities of the process. By treating the media exposure patterns, the criterion variables, and the audience as unidimensional concepts, these studies fail to tease out the more specific effects that might exist for certain media, certain variables, or certain audience categories. The present study attempts to address these shortcomings by comparing the socialization effects of exposure to four media sources of political information-television news, radio news, newspaper news, and newsmagazines-on several specific types of political knowledge and behavior. The study also explores differences in effects for certain subgroups of young people.

ISSUE VERSUS IMAGE ORIENTATION AND EFFECTS OF POLITICAL ADVERTISING

Melding uses and gratifications and information-processing perspectives, an experiment was constructed to investigate how media channel and audience motivation for attending to a political advertisement govern the processing and effect of the ad. A 2×2 factorial design (N=153) was used. Subjects were instructed to attend to a political ad “to learn where the candidate stands on issues” (issue motivational set) or “to form an impression of the candidates personality” (image motivational set). In addition, subjects either viewed a two-channel political television ad (audio-video condition) or listened only to the audio portion (audio-only condition). Subjects attending to learn issue information were most likely to become informed and were more confident in their learning than were subjects attending to form a personality impression. Those attending to form a personality impression paid greater attention to the video portion of the ad and had greater confidence in their recall of video information. They were also more likely than were issue attenders to base their inferences of the candidates traits on information contained in the ad rather than on assumptions about how traits are interrelated. No differences by channel condition were found.

A Study of Newsmagazine Photographs of the 1984 Presidential Campaign

fi During a presidential campaign the public is provided with a multitude of words and visual images from which to distill their perceptions of and preferences for the candidates. This content analysis examines the visual images of candidates specifically the photographs recording the events of the 1984 presidential campaign as reproduced in three national newsmagazines. Two reasons are offered for undertaking such a study: first, candidates vary in the kinds of visual images shown by the media, and second, these visual images can influence reactions to the candidate. The conceptual basis for the content analysis categories is derived from the person perception literature. Visual Images of Candidates. The visual images of candidates shown in the media are determined both by how the candidates present themselves and by how they are re-presented by the media. As Nimmo and Savage point out, a political candidate is “an actor playing a political role.”’ In playing that role, the candidate may deliberately attempt to control the visual cues s/he displays. Kaid and Davidson found differences in the visual cues exhibited by candidates in a comparison of incumbent and challenger television adveroften by incumbents than by challengers. And incumbents tended to engage in direct eye contact while challengers tended not to use direct eye contact. Because television advertising is under the control of the candidate, differences between candidate visual images can be attributed to candidates’ self-presentation. But with news coverage, the effects of candidate presentation and media representation become confounded. For example, the differences between candidate facial expressions shown on television news3 during the 1984 presidential campaign may be attributed to actual differences in candidate behavior or to the media’s editing. The ability of editing to subtly distort the roles portrayed by men and women was demonstrated in Blackwood’s study of nonpolitical news photos.4 Visual information may also be manipulated through composition. Different angles and focusing techniques can structure a scene to create radically different impressions.5

Predictors of motivation to use computer‐mediated political communication systems

The study assessed several predictors of citizen motivation to use a computer‐mediated political communication system (CMPCS): needs, traditional political participation, satisfactions obtained from that participation, and satisfactions anticipated from CMPCS use. Telephone interviews were conducted with a random sample of 405 mid‐Michigan residents of voting age. Needs and the satisfactions anticipated from CMPCS use were found to be the most substantial predictors of CMPCS motivation for both computer owner and nonowner sub‐samples. Traditional political participation also predicted CMPCS motivation for computer owners.

Computers in constituent communications

Despite advanced communication techniques, many voters go to the polls uninformed about candidates and legislation, while others, either confused or indifferent, rarely bother to vote at all. The authors of this article investigate the new opportunities computers make available to those who practice public relations in politics. Computers can provide two-way information flow between government and its constitutents, allowing citizens to talk to their representatives as well as enabling their representatives to talk to them using a new medium. Not surprisingly, elected officials with strong personal-communication styles were more likely to favor computer-mediated communication systems than representatives who favored more formal methods. The authors are at Michigan State University, East Lansing.

Motivational Models; Replication across Media for Political Campaign Conduct.

b A basic assumption of the uses and gratifications approach to mass communication is that audience members are motivated in their selection of media channels and content by various social and psychological needs. The gratifications derived from media consumption are predicted to mediate both exposure patterns and effects.I Early scholars of the area concentrated on the antecedents of motivations, and on the development of gratification typologies. More recent research has gone beyond the description of antecedents and typologies, and even beyond the enumeration of effects to determine the processes by which audience motivations influence choice of medium and content. In the endeavor to discover the processes involved, researchers have tended to focus their attention on one particular medium at a time. While such an approach, like the experimental method, is useful for identifying specific processes, also like the experi-