American Politics Commons^™

Make The Inaugural Great Again: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Donald J. Trump’S Inaugural Address, Danielle F. Dickerson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I utilized three distinct theories (ideographs, dramatism, and the bully pulpit) to rhetorically analyze and assess President Trump’s 2017 inaugural address. Ultimately, I analyzed whether Trump deviated from Campbell and Jamieson’s (1985) presidential inaugural expectations. While the presidential inaugural address was the only text analyzed, implications were drawn from Trump’s rhetoric leading up to and within the inaugural. This thesis also analyzed Trump’s rhetoric through social media, specifically Twitter, and looked at the context surrounding the inaugural. I suggest, through my research, that Trump does deviate from the traditional framework of the inaugural address, and ultimately modernized …

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

Political Science & International Affairs Articles

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 …

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 …

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 …

Electoral Competitiveness And Social Media Strategies: Who Goes Negative When And Why?, Connor Brown

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Social media is becoming more integrated into every politician’s career. Previous research suggests that throughout an election a challenger is the one who is more likely to use negative campaigning while running for office. I analyze what strategies are being used by challengers and incumbent candidates while running for office. The data I use is provided by Zachary Auter and Jeffrey Fine (2016). Their data looks at both the 2010 election where we began to see politicians use Facebook ads in their campaigns. I find that a challenger is more likely to adopt negative messages while they are running and …

Political Journalists Tweet About The Final 2016 Presidential Debate, Hannah Hopper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Past research shows that journalists are gatekeepers to information the public seeks. Using the gatekeeping and agenda-setting theory, this study used a content analysis of tweets from political journalists during the final 2016 presidential debate to examine social media usage in efforts to convey information to followers and whether social media has allowed for journalists to present a more transparent view of candidates to the public. This study used feminist political theory to further analyze whether the tweets from political journalists portrayed Hillary Clinton, the female candidate, with stereotypical “female” traits, such as more emotional and more trustworthy. Applying these …

Applause, Laughter, Chants, And Cheers: An Analysis Of The Rhetorical Skill Of The “Great Communicator”, Reagan Gresham Dye

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study takes a content analytic approach to analyze the use of rhetorical devices in televised Republican National Convention (RNC) addresses by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. By measuring rhetorical strategies and their relationship with the type, strength, synchrony, and duration of audience responses during the 1976, 1980, 1984, and 1992 RNCs, this study finds that Reagan had the ability to control speech factors to his advantage to promote positive audience response. This study finds that Reagan was adept at utilizing humor, external attacks, and advocating for his policy agenda in a way that elicited positive audience responses such as …

The Predictors Of Juvenile Recidivism: Testimonies Of Adult Students 18 Years And Older Exiting From Alternative Education, La Toshia Palmer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to identify and describe the importance of the predictors of juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent/avoid juvenile recidivism as perceived by previously detained, arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education in Northern California. A second purpose was to explore the types of support provided by alternative schools and the perceived importance of the support to avoid recidivism according to adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education.

Methodology: This qualitative, descriptive research design identified …

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.

Fake News, Political Narrative, & Social Media: A Structuration Approach, Adam M. Housh

Capstone Collection

This research aims to unveil a connection between fake news distribution, readership demand, and social media networks, in this case, Facebook. In this research, fake news is defined as “content that is deliberately false and published on websites that mimic traditional news websites (Johnson and Kelling 2017, p3)”. It is argued that fake news content is not produced at random, but is tailored to particular political demographics and narratives. Exposure to such media not only validates ideological positions, it polarizes political beliefs. Furthermore, Facebook not only acts as an effective distribution medium, but allows individual users to skip structural filters …

It’S Like Déjà Vu All Over Again: Seismic Changes In The American Experiment, David King

Bridge/Work

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” “Is this the end of the country?”

In 2016, it seemed that both of those statements, or something similar, was on the tongues of nearly every American. No matter who you supported, there seemed to be something entirely new about the election cycle that the nation found itself in. There is no doubt that for this generation, the 2016 election is a watershed moment for the United States. For the U.S., however, watershed moments in democracy are not the exception but the rule. To fully understand how our democracy transitions, one must return to …

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 …

In Media Res, Christopher Andrew Sisk

Theses and Dissertations

We are inundated by a constant feed of media that responds and adapts in real time to the impulses of our psyches and the dimensions of our devices. Beneath the surface, this stream of information is directed by hidden, automated controls and steered by political agendas. The transmission of information has evolved into a spiral of entropy, and the boundaries between author, content, platform, and receiver have blurred. This reductive space of responsive media is a catalyst for immense political and cultural change, causing us to question our notions of authority, truth, and reality.

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 …

Residential Solar In Washington State, Sam Pfeifer

All Master's Theses

Electricity generated through residential solar provides a low carbon source of electricity. However, diffusion of residential solar remains low across the United States. Growing this diffusion takes an understanding of localized uptake trends, which can focus policy and business efforts to help increase residential solar market penetration. This is the first research to investigate residential solar uptake in Washington State and to examine environmental education as a potential driver of residential solar uptake. Through a snapshot analysis which considers environmental, economic, education, and cultural variables the present research fills this gap. Triangulated results include mapping of variables, ordinary-least squares multiple …

War Spin: How U.S. Politicians, The President And The Media Frame Foreign Intervention, Samantha White

Masters Theses

In this research, I seek to explain how three different foreign policy actors, the President, key Senators, and the media frame intervention policy when determining if intervention is used for human rights versus U.S. interests. I will be looking at four different areas of turmoil (Bosnia (1992-1995), Rwanda (1994), Syria (2011-present) and Iraq (2003-2011)) to see if the Presidents, Senators, and the media framed their intervention around human rights atrocities being committed, or if they framed it around a national security dilemma.

Real Fake News: The Colbert Report And Affective Polarization, Jeffrey J. Skoroda

Senior Independent Study Theses

This Independent Study examines the relationship between political satire and affective polarization. Affective polarization is a newly growing form of political polarization wherein partisans are polarized based on mutual dislike for opposing partisans rather than ideological disagreements. Political news has been linked to this recent trend in polarization. Over the past two decades, political scientists have taken an interest in investigating the impact of political satire programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report through the same lens as traditional political news. These satirical news programs implement satire, a more complex form of comedy that can require more cognitive …

Expansibility And Army Intelligence, Rose P. Keravuori

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article provides insights valuable to transitioning America’s military intelligence resources from counterinsurgency operations to the force necessary for responding to a near-peer competitor in a major war.

Expansibility And Army Special Operations Forces, Eric P. Shwedo

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article examines how Army Special Operations might prepare to expand in the event of a major war by resolving impediments to growth, improving recall procedures, and developing plans to expand training capacities.

Recasting The Founding Fathers: The Tea Party Movement, Neoliberalism, And American Myth, Calvin Coker

Speaker & Gavel

This article analyzes representative texts from the Tea Party Movement (TPM), a conservative American political movement, to demonstrate the TPM uses the myth of the Founding Fathers as an argumentative strategy to craft and justify a sanitary neoliberal political project. The necessity of such of a project lies in the underlying democratic crisis of neoliberalism, a crisis navigated by the TPM through strategic use of political myth. Neoliberal policies require, in many instances, democratic consent, though those policies often serve to disenfranchise many of the groups supporting them. This essay argues the TPM uses myth for the purpose of creating …

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 …

Analyzing The Effects Of Preprimary Broadcast Media On Presidential Nominations From 1980-2016, Jarred Ralston Cuellar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to discover if broadcast media released during the preprimary period has an effect on the Presidential nomination process, and if so in what way? Several OLS regression models, based on Randall Adkins and Andrew Dowdle’s Presidential nomination forecasting models, were created as an attempt to not only find a statistically significant effect between broadcast media and aggregate vote percentage, but also in an effort to create more effective forecasts. I have drawn my sample from every open nomination race dating back to 1980, and used both cable and network broadcasting sources. I have covered not only the …

Churchill’S Argument Against Democracy: The Average Voter. Information Levels And News Sources Among Americans, Kyle Priest

Political Science Theses and Capstones

A democracy needs an informed public. However, I investigate low levels of political awareness among Americans. I focus on whether people understand issues incorrectly or are simply disengaged and inattentive. There is an important difference between them. Those who are uninformed simply do not know, which would make it easier to turn them into informed citizens. All that would be needed is for them to access the right information. For those who are misinformed, however, it is a tougher task. They believe that their answer is right, and even though they are in fact wrong, they are more willing to …

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 …

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.

The Syrian Refugee Crisis: A Rhetorical Analysis Of President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, And President Donald J. Trump’S Political Discourse About Syrian Refugees, Erin Lionberger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I introduce the reader to sixteen texts of political discourse about Syrian refugees from three rhetors; President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and President Donald J. Trump. As the Syrian refugee crisis continues to grow, political leaders and citizens around the world debate the appropriate way to provide aid to those fleeing Syria. I rhetorically analyze multiple texts from each of these politicians’ and their use of framing, ideographs and metaphors within their political discourse. In my research, I suggest that the framing language used by each rhetor about Syrian refugees has varying impacts on the audience. The …

Hillary Rodham Clinton And Shifts In Gendered Rhetorical Style, Mackenzie Lombardi

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Hillary Rodham Clinton is arguably the most visible and controversial female political figure of our time. As First Lady, the Senator from New York, the Secretary of State, and a two-time Presidential candidate, the rhetorical space around Clinton is saturated with cultural assumptions of gender, power, and politics. In many ways Clinton is emblematic of the infamous “double bind” that all women who seek to challenge normative gendered roles must inevitably face. Much academic and cultural focus has been centered on the ways in which Hillary Rodham Clinton is a subject of gendered rhetoric. This paper, instead, builds on the …

Welcome The Stranger? Recent History Of American Christianity And Refugee Policy, Brenda Edith Cuellar

Masters Theses

Immigration is a controversial and complex issue. The United States has a history of welcoming millions of immigrants and refugees. Recent political rhetoric surrounding immigration has been negative and associated with danger and terrorism. Religious leaders along with their congregations have a history of advocating on behalf of the marginalized as well as combating against a broken immigration system that leaves eleven million people undocumented. This research paper uses a case study to explore the Sanctuary movement, a religious and political campaign that provided shelter for thousands of Central American refugees fleeing war. Interviews with seven religious leaders in Arizona …

Coverage Of The 2008 Presidential Primary Campaign By Males, Females, And Mixed Journalist Groups, Sheri Whalen

Speaker & Gavel

This study examines the trait, issue and tone coverage of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign by male, female and groups of male and female journalists in newspapers, newsmagazines and Sunday morning political television shows. Results indicate that the media focused more on traits than issues during the campaign. However, female and groups of male and female newspaper journalists focused more on issues than traits. All three journalist groups gave Hillary Clinton more negative than positive coverage and Barack Obama more positive than negative coverage. Female and groups of male and female …

Motivated Reasoning And Viewers' Reactions To The First 2012 Presidential Debate, Jeffrey W. Jarman

Speaker & Gavel

General election presidential debates are highly argumentative encounters filled with evidence, argument, and refutation. While the candidates come to the debates armed with evidence and arguments in support of their positions, it is unclear how the audience interprets the information. This paper reports the findings from a study of the first presidential debate in 2012. Participants evaluated the strength of arguments made by Obama and Romney, as well as which candidate won each segment of the debate. The study confirms that viewers do not dispassionately evaluate the debate, but instead are driven by partisan interests that lead them to find …