Suchergebnisse

The nature of political campaigns -- The functional theory of political campaign discourse -- The role of medium in campaign discourse -- The role of source in campaign discourse -- The role of context in campaign discourse -- Non-presidential, non-U.S. campaign discourse -- News coverage of campaign messages -- Voters: campaign messages and election outcome -- Conclusion.

A Functional Analysis of Political Television Advertisements is a unique investigation into the extremely important medium of campaign advertising. The book analyzes presidential primary and general ads through 2012, ads from third party candidates, ads for governor and congress, and ads from foreign countries. It examines trends in political advertising content over time, contrasts different kinds of spots-primary versus general, incumbents versus challengers-and discusses the development of political ads over time.

This study analyzes American presidential campaign posters from 1828 to 2012 using the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse. It advances the theory by investigating a hitherto unexplored medium, posters; more importantly, visual elements (e.g., the bald eagle) were analyzed along with words. Acclaims were more frequent than attacks; no difference occurred in the functions of early and recent posters. Visual symbols used acclaims even more than verbal symbols. Character was a more frequent topic than policy; the relative proportion of these two topics did not change over time. Visual symbols discussed character even more than verbal symbols.

Few studies examine the content of political direct mail advertising (pamphlets, brochures) despite the fact that this campaign medium remains a popular means of reaching voters. This study reports a functional analysis of 68 direct mail advertisements employed in Ohio in 2016. These messages acclaimed more than they attacked; no defenses occurred in this sample. The topics of the statements in these texts were about evenly split between policy (48%) and character (52%). As predicted, both general goals and ideals were employed more frequently to acclaim than to attack. This study adds to our knowledge of direct mail advertising and nonpresidential ads (only 6% of the brochures in this sample were from the presidential race).

Functional Theory has been applied to a variety of election campaign messages, including candidacy announcement speeches; TV spots; debates; direct mail brochures; candidate webpages; nomination acceptance addresses; vice presidential debates; senate, gubernatorial, and mayoral debates; senate, gubernatorial, and house TV spots; and debates and TV spots from other countries. This approach argues that election messages address one of three functions (acclaims, attacks, defenses) and one of two topics (policy, character). This study reports a meta-analysis of several Functional Theory predictions: acclaims are more common than attacks (defenses are consistently the least common function and were not tested here); policy is discussed more than character; when discussing past deeds incumbents acclaim more and attack less than challengers; attacks, and policy statements, are more common in general than primary campaigns; when addressing general goals and ideals, attacks outnumber acclaims. General goals were the basis of more acclaims and fewer attacks than future plans. Candidates use fewer acclaims and more attacks than other sources. Two hypotheses were not confirmed: incumbents did not attack more and acclaim less than challengers generally or when discussing future plans. The essay concludes with suggestions for future research in this area.

In 2013, two lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge – the busiest in the nation – in Fort Lee, NJ, were closed. In January of 2014, it emerged that Christie's Deputy Chief of Staff Kelley instigated this problem. Governor Christie was accused of retaliating against Fort Lee's Mayor Mark Sokolich, who had not endorsed Christie's re-election bid. Christie fired Kelley, held a press conference, and apologized to Sokolich and the people of Fort Lee. Christie's primary strategies were mortification and corrective action, but he also used denial, differentiation, minimization, and defeasibility to deal with this situation. Minimization was interesting as Christie attempted to lower expectations for his performance, reducing the offensiveness of his action.

This study investigates the presidential candidates' nomination acceptance ad-dresses in 2008 and 2012. This study applied Benoit's (2007) Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to the four Acceptances (one from McCain, two from Obama, and one from Romney). Traditionally the conventions kick off the general election campaign and the nominees' acceptance addresses are high-lights of these events. This work extends previous research on acceptance ad-dresses speeches from 1952-2004. The speeches in 2008 and 2012 used acclaims (73%) more than attacks (27%) or defenses (0.5%). Incumbents acclaimed more, and attacked less, than challengers, particularly when they discussed their records in office (past deeds). They discussed policy at about the same rate as character (52% to 48%). General goals and ideals were used more often as the basis of acclaims than attacks in these speeches.