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AbstractContemporary digital advertising operates through

Identifying the emerging trends in contemporary politics as life politics, this article revisits the notion of issue publics (an auxiliary concept developed to explain variability in attitudes and behavior within the public) and extends its theoretical concept in the context of life politics (a term relating to the choices people make every day and the politics of personal interests). It argues that publics consist of pluralistic groups of people who consider particular issues personally important based on self-interest, collective identity, and values. This article pays particular attention to how the new media environment, characterized by the development of digital media and the adoption of entertainment-oriented, personalized media in politics, contributes to the facilitation of issue publics in life politics.

Scholars and commentators argue that the United States has become politically polarized in recent years, with news content itself favoring polarized views. If true, this represents a radical shift from Gans's enduring news value of moderatism. By examining 208 advocacy groups' ideology and their representation in 118 newspapers, this study revisits Gans's moderatism argument and investigates polarization in news content. Analysis demonstrates that moderate groups had less prominence within articles, with no differences in tone. Polarization may offer a higher news value by presenting inherent conflict and a means for journalistic balance.

Reexamining the relationship between the on-line and memory-based information processing models, this study presents a theoretical basis for the co-occurrence of on-line and memory-based processes and proposes a hybrid model. The study empirically tests the hybrid model by employing real-time tracking of participants' reactions to two candidates in a US presidential primary election debate. The findings confirm an independent, but complementary relationship between on-line and memory-based information processing in an individual's candidate evaluation and vote choice. The co-occurrence of the two modes applies to an individual's comparison of candidates as well. The implications of the hybrid model for the functioning of democracy are discussed. Adapted from the source document.

The year 2011 was defined by the intersection of politics and economics: the Wisconsin protests, the Occupy Movement, anti-austerity demonstrations, the Buffett Rule, and so on. These events drew attention to the role of politics in the erosion of labor power, the rise of inequality, and the excesses of overconsumption. Moving beyond periodic and dutiful action directed at an increasingly unresponsive government, citizens tested the boundaries of what we consider civic engagement by embracing personalized forms of "lifestyle politics" enacted in everyday life and often directed at the market. These issues are the focus of this volume, which we divide into four sections. The first section attempts both to situate consumption in politics as a contemporary phenomenon and to view it through a wider historical lens. The second section advances the notion of sustainable citizenship at the individual/group level and the societal/institutional level, and understands consumption as socially situated and structured. Extending this thinking, the third section explores various forms of conscious consumption and relates them to emerging modes of activism and engagement. The fourth section questions assumptions about the effectiveness of the citizen-consumer and the underlying value of political consumerism and conscious consumption. We conclude by distilling six core themes from this collection for future work.

This study examines how the campaign information environment influences individuals' ambivalence reduction and polarization. Based on the 2008 presidential television campaign advertising data and individuals' electoral behavior data in 208 designated market areas nationwide, this study utilizes multilevel modeling to better understand the interactions between the effects of individual-level predispositions and that of the contextual-level campaign information environment. The findings of the study indicate that the campaign information environment does matter in ambivalence reduction and polarization. Individuals living in a media market where the volume of campaign advertising is relatively high are less ambivalent and more polarized in candidate evaluations. The patterns appear to be amplified among partisans, suggesting the campaign information environment functions as a "motivator." The partisan bias of the ads in a media market, however, exerts only limited influence. The implications for the functioning of democracy are discussed.

The common assumption that female candidates on the campaign trail should not go on the attack, because such tactics contradict gender stereotypes, has not received consistent support. We argue that in some circumstances gender stereotypes willfavorfemale politicians going negative. To test this proposition, this study examines how gender cues affect voter reactions to negative ads in the context of a political sex scandal, a context that should prime gender stereotypes that favor females. Using an online experiment involving a national sample of U.S. adults ($N=599$), we manipulate the gender and partisan affiliation of a politician who attacks a male opponent caught in a sex scandal involving sexually suggestive texting to a female intern. Results show that in the context of a sex scandal, a female candidate going on the attack is evaluated more positively than a male. Moreover, while female participants viewed the female sponsor more favorably, sponsor gender had no effect on male participants. Partisanship also influenced candidate evaluations: the Democratic female candidate was evaluated more favorably than her Republican female counterpart.