Martin Kifer

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

Electoral campaigns are the foundation of democratic governance; yet scholarship on the content of campaign communications remains underdeveloped. In this paper, we advance research on U.S. congressional campaigns by integrating and extending extant theories of campaign communication. We test the resulting predictions with a novel dataset based on candidate Web sites over three election cycles. Unlike television advertisements or newspaper coverage, Web sites provide an unmediated, holistic, and representative portrait of campaigns. We find that incumbents and challengers differ across a broad range of behavior that reflects varying attitudes toward risk, that incumbents’ strategies depend on the competitiveness of the race, and that candidates link negative campaigning to other aspects of their rhetorical strategies. Our efforts provide researchers with a basis for moving toward a more complete understanding of congressional campaigns.

Issue Engagement on Congressional Candidate Web Sites, 2002-2006

When candidates engage in robust policy debate, it gives citizens clear choices on issues that matter. Previous studies of issue engagement have primarily used indicators of campaign strategy that are mediated by reporters (e.g., newspaper articles) or indicators that may exclude candidates in less competitive races (e.g., television advertisements). We study issue engagement with data from a unique source, congressional candidate Web sites, that are unmediated and representative of both House and Senate campaigns. We find that the saliency of issues in public opinion is a primary determinant of candidate engagement. And, despite the unique capacity of the Internet to allow candidates to explain their positions on a large number of issues, candidates continue to behave strategically, selecting a few issues on which to engage their adversaries.

U.S. Congressional Campaign Communications in an Internet Age

Abstract New technologies – with perhaps the most notable being radio and television – often change the face of political campaigns. The Internet, and particularly campaign websites with their concomitant technologies (e.g. interactive and multimedia features), has evolved at a faster rate than any other prior innovation. This raises a critical question: have website technologies altered how congressional candidates campaign? We address this question with a novel dataset from 2008. Not only do we chart technological change on sites over the course of the campaign but we also explore how and when candidates use certain technologies. We discover two critical and, to our knowledge, novel points. First, congressional candidates use these technologies to a much lesser extent than one may suspect. Second, their scant usage is driven by how certain technologies limit control of the candidates message, the candidates status in the race and other key variables such as the employment of campaign consultants. In sum, the Web 2.0 era (which began around 2008) does not appear to have dramatically altered congressional campaigns.

Turning Civic Education into Engagement: Evaluating the Efficacy of the Democracy USA Project

The Democracy USA (DUSA) Project was an interdisciplinary experiential-learning project designed to engage students and faculty in the 2012 elections. It was launched in response to the U.S. Department of Education’s national call to action (A Crucible Moment) on civic engagement and democratic education. The project had five key components: affiliated coursework, a colloquium series, extracurricular activities, The American Dream Project, and collecting public opinion data. This article presents an analysis of pre- and posttest data collected from over 500 students at a midsize southern liberal arts college during the Fall 2012 semester. The findings underscore the importance of varied approaches and interdisciplinary collaborations to engage students in the democratic process. We find that students enrolled in DUSA classes demonstrated little change in their civic engagement. However, those who participated in cocurricular programming, extracurricular activities, or learned about the program during the semester exhibited changes in both their political skills and willingness to participate in politics.

Resisting the Opportunity for Change: How Congressional Campaign Insiders Viewed and Used the Web in 2016

This article explores congressional campaigning on the web in 2016. What impact did the unique nature of the 2016 election have on those involved with the creation and maintenance of congressional campaign websites? Did it cause them to alter their approach to online campaigning? Using data from a survey of campaign insiders, we find that the factors that influence how congressional campaigns view and use their websites were largely impervious to the unique electoral environment. Results show that, consistent with previous election years, campaigns maintained a fairly uniform view of likely visitors and target audiences, and they tended to see their campaign websites as digital hubs, best used for capturing the campaign’s overall message. We also find that, as in other years, nonincumbents continued to use their websites to campaign more aggressively than incumbents. Overall, the results suggest that congressional campaigning on the web is primarily driven by stable factors that transcend technological advancements and shifts in the political environment.

Finding the Truth in Politics: An Empirical Validation of the Epistemic Political Efficacy Concept

ABSTRACT Self-efficacy theory suggests that one’s perceived ability to successfully find facts may motivate political information seeking. A telephone survey of voters in a presidential campaign attempted to further validate the concept of epistemic political efficacy (EPE), or belief one can discover the “truth” in politics, and applied it to modern information-seeking behaviors. This study of North Carolina registered voters (N = 605) demonstrates that EPE adds predictive power beyond commonly used measures such as individual political efficacy for contemporary media use variables like online information seeking and partisan cable viewing. EPE was a stronger positive predictor of online information seeking than individual political efficacy. In addition, viewing partisan cable shows had a stronger relationship with EPE than mainstream TV news viewing, and EPE significantly predicted MSNBC viewing, even after controlling for partisanship. In a word, voters who are high in the belief that political facts or “truths” exist take steps to find and understand them.

An Inside View of Congressional Campaigning on the Web

This paper offers an insider perspective of United States Congressional campaigning by exploring political marketing on the web. We offer theoretical frameworks that predict how campaigns view their websites (e.g., perceptions of likely audiences), how campaigns use their websites (e.g., content posted), and how these views and usages have evolved (or not) over time. We test our predictions with a unique data set from surveys of political marketers involved with the creation and maintenance of congressional campaign websites between 2008 and 2014. Consistent with our expectations, we find uniform views across campaigns about perceived website users (e.g., engaged voters). However, we also find support for our expectation of fundamental differences—between incumbent and non-incumbent campaigns—in what is posted on campaign websites. We also find some, but not many, changes in website usage over time. We conclude that differential marketing motivations result in campaigns that depart from the normative ideal of engaged dialogues that facilitate representation.