Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

American Politics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social Influence and Political Communication

Series

Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication

Articles 1 - 30 of 100

Full-Text Articles in American Politics

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter Apr 2024

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …


How Can Social Media Improve Youth Voter Engagement?, Anton M. Kopti Apr 2023

How Can Social Media Improve Youth Voter Engagement?, Anton M. Kopti

Honors Projects

This study examines the impact of social media on political engagement and its potential to strengthen democratic participation, focusing on the nonpartisan Valley Votes Project. By implementing literature-based social media tactics, the project aims to measure the success of each tactic based on digital interaction and viewership. The findings suggest that social media can be an effective tool to promote youth civic engagement in the political process. The study concludes that further research is needed to explore the effectiveness of these methods in different contexts and settings. Ultimately, promoting youth civic engagement is essential for a healthy democracy, and social …


Nebraska Politics And The Environment: Framing Political Communication In The State Of Nebraska In Comparison To National Level Discourse, Samuel Taylor Mar 2023

Nebraska Politics And The Environment: Framing Political Communication In The State Of Nebraska In Comparison To National Level Discourse, Samuel Taylor

Honors Theses

Environmental public policy has seen little change on the national level in recent decades due to Congressional gridlock. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have entrenched their opposing viewpoints, and their communication on the topic utilizes issue frames to help sway the public to see their side. On the Republican side, these issue frames take the form of the “scientific uncertainty” and “economic consequences” frames. This study, based on issue framing, surveys the communication of Nebraska’s Republican State Senators to determine if they utilize the same issue frames or if they diverge from their national counterparts. By analyzing recent …


Framing Of Latinx Vote Choice And Voter Registration, Laurel E. Bennett Oct 2022

Framing Of Latinx Vote Choice And Voter Registration, Laurel E. Bennett

Student Publications

This work investigates media framing done by CNN between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Although Latinx voters remain underrepresented and under researched, they have the ability to highly influence elections. Specifically, CNN uses the sleeping giant frame, the need for Latinx voter registration as a frame, and the importance of Latinx voter mobilization as a frame in the 2020 presidential election more prominently than in the 2016 presidential election upon consideration of Latinx vote choice and voter turnout.


The Invisible Propaganda: A Case Study Of The Trump Administration’S And The Media’S Messaging On Sanctuary Cities, Valeriia Popova Jun 2022

The Invisible Propaganda: A Case Study Of The Trump Administration’S And The Media’S Messaging On Sanctuary Cities, Valeriia Popova

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How does systemic propaganda work in contemporary American democracy? The literature suggests that propaganda in its negative meaning is limited to authoritarian regimes. In democracies, it is the corporate and partisan newsrooms that acts as propaganda mouthpieces. This dissertation challenges this status quo and shifts the focus to the interaction between contemporary democratic governments and the media. This dissertation develops a model of democratic propaganda that accounts for the two- step propaganda process in contemporary democracies: the government (responsible for the original message) and the media (responsible for the final message). The project proposes an innovative eight-fold spectrum of media …


A Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis Of Tweets Pertaining To The 2020 Us Presidential Election, Rao Hamza Ali, Gabriela Pinto, Evelyn Lawrie, Erik J. Linstead Jun 2022

A Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis Of Tweets Pertaining To The 2020 Us Presidential Election, Rao Hamza Ali, Gabriela Pinto, Evelyn Lawrie, Erik J. Linstead

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

We capture the public sentiment towards candidates in the 2020 US Presidential Elections, by analyzing 7.6 million tweets sent out between October 31st and November 9th, 2020. We apply a novel approach to first identify tweets and user accounts in our database that were later deleted or suspended from Twitter. This approach allows us to observe the sentiment held for each presidential candidate across various groups of users and tweets: accessible tweets and accounts, deleted tweets and accounts, and suspended or inaccessible tweets and accounts. We compare the sentiment scores calculated for these groups and provide key insights into the …


If A Tree Falls In The Forest: Presidential Press Conferences And Early Media Narratives About The Covid-19 Crisis, Masha Krupenkin, Kai Zhu, Dylan Walker, David Rothschild May 2022

If A Tree Falls In The Forest: Presidential Press Conferences And Early Media Narratives About The Covid-19 Crisis, Masha Krupenkin, Kai Zhu, Dylan Walker, David Rothschild

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, as we confronted questions about social distancing, masking wearing, and vaccines, public safety experts warned that the consequences of a misinformed population would be particularly dire due to the serious nature of the threat and necessity of severe collective action to keep the population safe. Thus, the media and the political elites (e.g., President of the United States) who possess the power to set the information agenda around COVID-19 bear a huge responsibility for the general welfare. Through automated text analysis of complete transcripts of national cable, network, and local news, we explore their narratives surrounding …


How Conservative Media Influences Views On Illegal Immigration, Juhi Doshi May 2022

How Conservative Media Influences Views On Illegal Immigration, Juhi Doshi

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Conservative media sources tend to amplify antiimmigrant rhetoric on their news platforms. Relying on the 2021 Chapman Survey of American Fears, I examine how conservative media sources like FOX News may influence how likely one is to fear illegal immigration in comparison to someone who watches CNN. Data is sourced from questions that ask subjects how afraid they are of illegal immigration, where they get their news from, what their racial attitudes are, and their political affiliation. The topic of illegal immigration has been studied for years, however there is not much literature published on how media consumption can directly …


Media Influences On Fear Of Immigrants, Mira Eissa Dec 2021

Media Influences On Fear Of Immigrants, Mira Eissa

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The 2016 election and President Donald Trump’s administration, tapped into U.S. citizens’ polarization regarding the topic of immigration. There was and is a clear negative depiction of immigrants in many different local and national outlets including social media. Using the data collected from Chapman's survey of American fears in 2021, I analyze how fear of immigrants is related to media consumption. Social media and news outlets' coverage of immigrants directly influences the public’s attitudes. Agenda setting, priming, and framing help us understand that news and media construct a perception for people that might not be accurate. Citizens have formed their …


Us Media’S Coverage Of China’S Handling Of Covid-19: Playing The Role Of The Fourth Branch Of Government Or The Fourth Estate?, Wenshan Jia, Fangzhu Lu Mar 2021

Us Media’S Coverage Of China’S Handling Of Covid-19: Playing The Role Of The Fourth Branch Of Government Or The Fourth Estate?, Wenshan Jia, Fangzhu Lu

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

The present study is an analysis of a sample of reports on China’s handling of COVID-19 by several major US media with a focus on a controversial op-ed by the Wall Street Journal. It is found that instead of covering it objectively as a public health crisis, these media reports tend to adopt the strategy of naming, shaming, blaming, and taming against China. In other words, they seize the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan as an opportunity to serve Trump’s “America First” doctrine by a coordinated attempt to destroy the Chinese dream and arresting China’s ascendency. First, the naming/shaming …


Free To Hate: Hate Crimes' Intertwinement With The Evolution Of Free Speech In The United States, Lee F. Paulson Mar 2021

Free To Hate: Hate Crimes' Intertwinement With The Evolution Of Free Speech In The United States, Lee F. Paulson

Honors Theses

In response to the growing tension between civil liberties and civil rights, this research investigates the relationship between the relative expansiveness of free speech and a the nationwide propensity for hate crimes. I argue that government’s legal limitations of speech influence the development of linguistic and hierarchical norms in a national culture. Given structural inequality’s association to violence and crimes of intimidation, I hypothesize that as the government expands the legal bounds of free speech, the national propensity for hate crimes decreases. Text analyses of 50 influential freedom of expression rulings in the United States (U.S.) Supreme Court from 1919-2019 …


Religious Nationalism And The Coronavirus Pandemic: Soul-Sucking Evangelicals And Branch Covidians Make America Sick Again, Peter Mclaren May 2020

Religious Nationalism And The Coronavirus Pandemic: Soul-Sucking Evangelicals And Branch Covidians Make America Sick Again, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This article investigates the response to the coronavirus crisis by Evangelical Christian nationalists in the USA. The article outlines the curious mediaverse of religious nationalism—its post-truth and fake news aspects in particular—links religious nationalism to American exceptionalism, and analyzes conflicts between secular and religious authorities. Drawing upon some lessons from the past, the article addresses the wider implications of Christian nationalism on American politics, and capitalist ideology, as it has been played out virally in the corporate media. The article shows that the ideological underpinnings of evangelical Christianity prevent its proponents from understanding the virus in an historical and materialist …


Conclusion: Law As Scapegoat, Cary Coglianese Jan 2020

Conclusion: Law As Scapegoat, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Populist nationalist movements have been on the rise around the world in recent years. These movements have tapped into, and fueled, a deep anger among many members of the public. Especially in the face of stagnant or declining economic prospects—as well as expanding inequality—much anger has been directed at minorities and migrants. Politicians with authoritarian tendencies have sought to leverage such public anger by reinforcing tendencies to scapegoat others for their society’s problems. In this paper, I show that laws and regulations—like migrants—can be framed as “the other” too and made into scapegoats. With reference to developments in Brazil, the …


Googly Eyes And Yard Signs: Deconstructing One Professor’S Successful Rebuffing Of A Right-Wing Attack On An Academic Institution, Theresa Catalano, Ari Kohen Jan 2020

Googly Eyes And Yard Signs: Deconstructing One Professor’S Successful Rebuffing Of A Right-Wing Attack On An Academic Institution, Theresa Catalano, Ari Kohen

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Right-wing populism is on the rise worldwide, and political attacks against universities have increased in the United States since the election of Donald Trump. In 2017, an incident occurred at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln which resulted in accusations of hostility toward conservative students. Just over a year later, political forces again attempted to denigrate the university’s reputation, but this time they did not succeed. This (multimodal) positive discourse analysis/ generative critique combines collaborative auto-ethnography to describe the way these events were represented in the media, deconstructing a professor’s methods of countering a right-wing attack on an academic institution. Findings demonstrate …


Media Discourses That Normalize Colonial Relations: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of (Im)Migrants And Refugees, Meng Zhao, Jorge Rodriguez, Lilia D. Monzó Jun 2019

Media Discourses That Normalize Colonial Relations: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of (Im)Migrants And Refugees, Meng Zhao, Jorge Rodriguez, Lilia D. Monzó

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The im(migration) and refugee crisis that are being exacerbated under the Trump administration, is a manifestation of empire-building and the long history of colonization of the Global South. A Marxist-humanist perspective recognizes these as consistent aspects of a clearly racist global capitalism that functions in the interest of multibillion dollar U.S.–based corporations and increasingly transnational corporations. Trade agreements, international economic policy, political intervention, invasion or the threat of these, often secure corporate interests in specific countries and regions. The authors use critical discourse analysis to examine the discourses around Mexican, Central American, and Syrian im(migrants) and refugees as examples of …


When Youth Run For Office, P. Francis Wilson May 2019

When Youth Run For Office, P. Francis Wilson

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The purpose of this work is threefold: to define the term ‘youth candidate’, to create a public data archive of youth candidates around the U.S., and to reveal what role age plays on the campaign trail for younger candidates. The first study shows the increase in young people running for office in the U.S.. The second study tells of age discrimination towards younger candidates on the campaign trail. Also within this document is an archive and photo album of youth candidates and their campaigns. The results of this research tell a data and experience-driven story of the quickly changing and …


Spa 2201hs Spanish For Heritage Speakers (Syllabus_Fall 2019), David Sánchez-Jiménez Apr 2019

Spa 2201hs Spanish For Heritage Speakers (Syllabus_Fall 2019), David Sánchez-Jiménez

Open Educational Resources

SPA 2201HS Spanish for Heritage Speakers is an intermediate course intended for students who were immersed in or exposed to the language while growing up, but who have received little or no formal instruction in Spanish. Strengthens students’ competence in the oral and written standard varieties of Spanish by building on their previous knowledge to expand their vocabulary, strengthen their command of grammar, and achieve more confidence and fluency in speaking and writing while learning about the diversity of the Hispanic cultures. The skills acquired in this course will help reinforce students’ bilingual abilities and cultural competence.


A Roundtable For Victoria M. Grieve, Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood In The 1950s, Thomas Field Jr., Julia L. Mickenberg, Lori Clune, Mary Brennan, Donna Alvah, Victoria M. Grieve Apr 2019

A Roundtable For Victoria M. Grieve, Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood In The 1950s, Thomas Field Jr., Julia L. Mickenberg, Lori Clune, Mary Brennan, Donna Alvah, Victoria M. Grieve

Publications

Dr. Thomas Field introduces a roundtable discussion of Victoria M. Grieve's Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood in the 1950s, providing a synopsis of reviewer critiques before the reviewers expand on their views and the author responds.


Bordering Work In Contemporary Political Discourse: The Case Of The Us/Mexico Border Wall Proposal, Angela Garcia Jan 2019

Bordering Work In Contemporary Political Discourse: The Case Of The Us/Mexico Border Wall Proposal, Angela Garcia

Natural & Applied Sciences Faculty Publications

In this article, I use a critical discourse analytic approach to investigate how President Trump’s campaign goal to build a wall along the US/Mexico border has been discussed in United States political discourse. The data analyzed are 30 videotaped speeches and other public events which occurred between October 2016 and March 2018. These data are publicly available from the cable news channel C-SPAN’s online video archive. The analysis focuses on the communicative techniques and strategies used to persuade others and justify one’s position in the interactions and events studied. In this article, I show how the border wall proposal is …


Partisan Targets Of Media Fact-Checking: Examining President Obama And The 113th Congress, Stephen J. Farnsworth, S Robert Lichter Jan 2019

Partisan Targets Of Media Fact-Checking: Examining President Obama And The 113th Congress, Stephen J. Farnsworth, S Robert Lichter

Political Science and International Affairs

An analysis of statements by President Obama and by Democratic and Republican members of Congress selected for analysis by PolitiFact.com and Washington Post Fact Checker reveals that PolitiFact was more likely to find greater deceit in Republican rhetoric and that the Fact Checker was more negative overall in its assessments. Legislators who had more than one statement analyzed during the study period were disproportionally likely to be influential members of the House or Senate leadership or likely 2016 presidential candidates. The lawmakers selected for greater scrutiny were also more likely to be more ideologically extreme than the median members of …


Citizens United As Bad Corporate Law, Leo E. Strine Jr., Jonathan Macey Jan 2019

Citizens United As Bad Corporate Law, Leo E. Strine Jr., Jonathan Macey

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article we show that Citizens United v. FEC, arguably the most important First Amendment case of the new millennium, is predicated on a fundamental misconception about the nature of the corporation. Specifically, Citizens United v. FEC, which prohibited the government from restricting independent expenditures for corporate communications, and held that corporations enjoy the same free speech rights to engage in political spending as human citizens, is grounded on the erroneous theory that corporations are “associations of citizens” rather than what they actually are: independent legal entities distinct from those who own their stock. Our contribution to the literature …


Snapchat And Civic Engagement Among College Students, Laurie Rice, Kenneth Moffett Jan 2019

Snapchat And Civic Engagement Among College Students, Laurie Rice, Kenneth Moffett

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

During the 2016 presidential election cycle, Clinton and Trump used Snapchat as one part of their overall voter outreach and engagement efforts. This portion of their campaign strategy was disproportionately targeted toward younger voters, since those between 18 and 25 comprise a vast portion of Snapchat’s user base. Did their efforts, those of political parties, or those of interest groups on Snapchat produce higher levels of civic engagement among college students? We utilize a survey that we conducted from a college campus in the Midwest in October 2016 to answer this question. Using a series of matching analyses, we discover …


Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Media Centralization Imperils Marketplace Of Ideas 04-05-2018, David A. Logan Apr 2018

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Media Centralization Imperils Marketplace Of Ideas 04-05-2018, David A. Logan

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.


Beyond Big Bird, Binders, And Bayonets: Humor And Visibility Among Connected Viewers Of The 2012 Us Presidential Debates, Kevin Driscoll, Alex Leavitt, Kristen L. Guth, François Bar, Aalok Mehta Jan 2018

Beyond Big Bird, Binders, And Bayonets: Humor And Visibility Among Connected Viewers Of The 2012 Us Presidential Debates, Kevin Driscoll, Alex Leavitt, Kristen L. Guth, François Bar, Aalok Mehta

Communication Faculty Publications

During the 2012 US presidential debates, more than five million connected viewers turned to social media to respond to the broadcast and talk politics with one another. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study examines the prevalence of humor and its relationship to visibility among connected viewers live-tweeting the debates. Based on a content analysis of tweets and accounts, we estimate that approximately one-fifth of the messages sent during the debates consisted of strictly humorous content. Using retweet frequency as a proxy for visibility, we found a positive relationship between the use of humor and the visibility of individual tweets. Not …


Presidential Campaign Talk: Question-Answering In ‘Neutral Informational Interviews’, Angela Cora Garcia Jan 2018

Presidential Campaign Talk: Question-Answering In ‘Neutral Informational Interviews’, Angela Cora Garcia

Natural & Applied Sciences Faculty Publications

This article is a dual-case analysis of presidential campaign interviews conducted with former President George HW Bush when he was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, and former President William J. Clinton when he was campaigning for the presidency in 1991. Both interviews were conducted at high schools in New Hampshire and are publicly available on the C-SPAN website. The purpose of this analysis is to investigate how the success or failure of political campaigns may be tied to candidates’ interactional competence and pragmatic skills. This will be done through an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of …


The Rise Of The Alt-Right Movement, Ryan T. Summers Jul 2017

The Rise Of The Alt-Right Movement, Ryan T. Summers

Media and Communication Studies Summer Fellows

The alt-right was once seen an obscure subculture festering on sites like Reddit and 4chan. They were written off as a bunch of trolls and racists too scared to organize, and media outlets saw them as a fringe movement with little hope of growing. However, the 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump is one of many important events the alt-right rallied behind. They are even leaving their computer screens and beginning to hold ‘free-speech’ rallies across the country. This project asks very important questions about how this has become possible. What are the nuances of this movement? How were they …


Promise That You Will Sing About Me: Kendrick Lamar In Posterity, Brandon Apol Apr 2017

Promise That You Will Sing About Me: Kendrick Lamar In Posterity, Brandon Apol

Music and Worship Student Presentations

Sometimes it would seem that the quietest moments turn out to have the loudest repercussions. This would seem to be a consistent case for twenty eight-year old Kendrick Lamar, whose career has been defined by surprise and unannounced publications of music that shortly afterward are spun into respected works of art. With an album that no one anticipated going to the 2013 Grammy awards, another album that leaked a week ahead of schedule (and brought Kendrick 5 Grammys), and an album that was released with almost no warning whatsoever, Kendrick Lamar Duckworth makes headlines with his art; of this there …


Metaphors That Communicate Weight-Based Stigma In Political News: A Case Study Of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, J. Anderson, Y. Zhu, J. Zhuang, J.C. Nelson, M.J. Bresnahan, X. Yan Feb 2017

Metaphors That Communicate Weight-Based Stigma In Political News: A Case Study Of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, J. Anderson, Y. Zhu, J. Zhuang, J.C. Nelson, M.J. Bresnahan, X. Yan

Communication Studies Publications

News media use metaphors to describe politics (Landau & Keefer, 2014) and obesity (Barry,Brescoll, Brownell, & Schlesinger, 2009). Weight-based stigma is prevalent in U.S. news media (Heuer,McClure, & Puhl, 2011). Media coverage of politicians’ body size may contain metaphors that stigmatizeweight. Metaphors reflect and shape how people think about important issues like politics or obesity(Landau, Sullivan, & Greenberg, 2009; Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010; Landau & Keefer, 2014).
Objective – This study uses stigma communication theory (Smith, 2007) to examine stigmatizing metaphors used in media coverage of a United States politician, and candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, New …


Trumpnation: What To Expect, Kathleen Bogle Phd, Michael J. Boyle Phd, Thomas Gallagher Phd, Emma Leonard Boyle Phd Jan 2017

Trumpnation: What To Expect, Kathleen Bogle Phd, Michael J. Boyle Phd, Thomas Gallagher Phd, Emma Leonard Boyle Phd

Interdisciplinary Events

No abstract provided.


Deborah Olsen Public Service Scholarship Essay, Maura Hand Jan 2017

Deborah Olsen Public Service Scholarship Essay, Maura Hand

Examples of Student Work

In this essay, Maura Hand reflects on the ten weeks she spent interning with the State Department's Office of Foreign Missions (OFM) in San Francisco, California.