Sharon E. Jarvis

Political Debate: Forms, Styles, and Media

Although presidential debates have been studied extensively, few truly basic, generic questions have been raised. The following study does so by asking (a) What textual features distinguish debates from other types of campaign messages? (b) How have such factors as time, format, party, and incumbency affected political debates? and (c) How did the 1996 debates relate to such trends? In answering these questions the authors present findings from the Campaign Mapping Project, a research endeavor funded by the Ford and Carnegie Foundations and devoted to examining campaign behavior from 1948 to the present. The study suggests that debates add sobriety to campaigns, ground political discourse, make candidates introspective, and restrain political overstatements. Moreover, the generic regularities of presidential debates provide an equal footing to incumbents and challengers, Democrats and Republicans, as well as former and recent presidential campaigners. In essence, debate encourages all politicians to speak a common language.

The American people in crisis: a content analysis

This study examines how images of the American electorate were deployed after the 11 September 2001 terrorism incident and during the Clinton impeachment. Transcripts of congressional proceedings, news coverage, and presidential campaign addresses were analyzed to determine how the phrase the American people was used during these two crises and in unrelatedpresidential campaign speeches. The analysis considered the roles, actions, qualities, and circumstances ascribed to the people, as well as the time orientation and the forces aligned against the people. The results show that (1) relative to presidential campaign rhetoric, both crises resulted in greater concentration on the electorate; (2) the crises differed from one another as well, with the impeachment texts featuring a contentious electorate and the 11 September texts identifying the peoples psychological strengths and anxieties; and (3) both crises were also affected by exogenous factors-partisanship in the case of impeachment, and the passage of time for the terrorism incident.

Partisan patterns in presidential campaign speeches, 1948–2000

This article investigates partisan language and its role in American political campaigns by addressing two fundamental questions: Can the differences between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates be reliably identified by a careful inspection of their speeches? and Have their speeches changed over time? In answering these questions, over 2,000 speech segments delivered by Democratic and Republican candidates over the past 14 elections (1948–2000) are examined. The data show that (1) Democratic candidates are more likely than Republicans to discuss campaign actors and to use nouns to rhetorically bring their coalitions together, (2) Republican candidates are more likely than Democrats to focus on ideals and employ a more unified, direct approach, and (3) these partisan patterns have decreased somewhat over the years in presidential campaign speeches. While this analysis provides some support for the contention that presidential campaign discourse is becoming increasingly candidate‐centered, it also reveals that major party candidates continue to adhere to some partisan rhetorical patterns in the presidential selection process.

College Students, News Use, and Trust

Young Americans report lower levels of political knowledge, news consumption, public trust, and civic behavior than their forebears. Concerned with what these patterns hold for the future of democratic governance, this study attempts to learn more about the news sources that college students use and the ones that they trust. Results from a survey of 213 18- to 24-year-old college students show that they access news that is convenient (namely, the Web and cable television), make nuanced distinctions between sources (consistently preferring the newspaper over others), and do not necessarily trust the sources they consult most often. This article details these patterns and addresses their relevance to news reform that can increase a younger audience and contribute to democratic life.

Apolitical politics: GOP efforts to foster identification from Latinos, 1984–2000

The growth and youth of the U.S. Latino population at the close of the 20th century makes them a desired constituency for both major political parties. Intriguingly, the party organization which has long resisted the recognition of internal voting blocs—the GOP—allocated unprecedented resources between 1980 and 2000 to inspire identification from Latinos. This study investigates the nature of these invitations. Specifically, it reveals how a party, whose organizational identity opposes acknowledging individuals as ethnic group members, appeals to an ethnic group. By examining (a) English and Spanish language television advertisements and (b) elite interview data with Republican Latino strategists, we argue that these ads depict satisfied Latino citizens, emphasize Latino family connections, and eschew traditional political issues. These identification strategies are notable for they may have considerable effects on the American polity at the dawn of, and well into, the 21st century.

Congress on the internet: Messages on the homepages of the U.S. house of representatives, 1996 and 2001

This article explores the World Wide Web homepages of members of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1996 and 2001, focusing specifically on what the content posted to these sites suggests about their ideal audiences. Despite considerable changes in the content of business, entertainment, and political campaign sites over this five-year time period, we found few notable changes in the Congressional.gov pages over time. Moreover, the pages harbor particular assumptions about audiences that depart from other forms of Congressional communications and lag far behind the interactive innovations found in political campaign sites. These findings lead to suggestions for the creation of sites that are more in line with the potential the medium presents for the online public.

Campaigning alone: Partisan versus personal language in the presidential nominating convention acceptance addresses, 1948-2000

The trend of candidate-centered campaigning has been well-documented in political science, yet communication scholars have largely ignored the sounds of this phenomenon. This study places the rhetoric of the 2000 convention acceptance addresses in perspective by examining the presence and absence of partisan and personal language in convention speeches over the past 50 years (1948 to 2000). Key findings suggest that (a) partisan terms have decreased and personal appeals have increased (somewhat) over time; (b) within these general trends, losing candidates are more likely to employ partisan and personal language than victorious candidates; and (c) although partisan terms were used divisively by Republicans during the 1980s, they have been used to unite in the 2000 campaign. A discussion of these findings submits that the rhetoric of candidate-centered campaigning is not automatic and calls for a more textured model of the rhetoric of candidate-centered campaigns than has been posited previously.

Audiences Implicadas e Ignoradas in the English and Spanish Language 2002 Texas Gubernatorial Debates 1

ABSTRACT In the 2002 Texas Democratic primary for Governor, two Latino candidates faced off in a pair of historic debates: one in English and one in Spanish. In this study the authors examined the questions and answers from these debates to uncover the audiences implied and ignored in the English and Spanish events. They found that the English language questions were longer, linked to the Democratic Party, and required candidate accountability, whereas the Spanish language questions were shorter, more candidate-centered, and focused on racial and border concerns. They also found remarkable symmetry between the questions and answers in both debates: policy, race, and border-related questions were met with policy, race and border-related responses, candidate-centered questions received strategic responses and non-traditional questions begot careful responses—a pattern that made the English language debate more substantive in questions and answers than the Spanish language counterpart. This essay details these themes and advances conclusions from these data.

The Mobilized Voter: Portrayals of Electoral Participation in Print News Coverage of Campaign 2008

This study examines how electoral participation was portrayed in print news coverage of the 2008 American presidential election. Specifically, 2,241 instances of three terms— vote, voter, and voting—were subjected to quantitative and qualitative coding techniques and compared to a larger project that analyzed more than 26,000 instances of these terms in coverage of 15 presidential elections, 1948 to 2004. The findings show that print coverage of electoral participation in 2008 featured the lowest level of game framing, the second-highest level of mobilization efforts, the most positive tone, and the most mentions of electoral challenges of the past 60 years. The article interprets these trends in light of journalistic routines and the potential socialization effects of such coverage.

From an Honored Value to a Harmful Choice: How Presidential Candidates Have Discussed Electoral Participation (1948-2012)

This article analyzes how Barack Obama and Mitt Romney discussed electoral participation in campaign 2012 and compares their statements to those made by presidential nominees over the past 16 elections. Findings show that, overall, presidential candidates have depicted voting as a choice (not a right, duty, or value) and as harmful and divisive (as opposed to helpful or honorable). The data also reveal significant differences over the years, as candidates in the 1950s and 1960s were more likely to talk about voting as a value than transpires today and as candidates prior to the 1980s largely refrained from describing voting as a negative act. The article concludes by addressing how the campaign process has sharpened and politicized discussions of electoral participation over the years and what these shifts might mean for the contemporary campaign context.