Genocide represents one of the deadliest scourges of the human experience. Communication practices provide the key missing ingredient toward preventing and ending this intensely symbolic activity. The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text reveals how strategic communication silences make this tragedy probable, and how a greater social ethic for communication openness repels and ends this great evil. Careful analysis of practical historical figures, such as the great debater James Farmer Jr., along with empirical policy successes in places such as Liberia provide a communication-based template...

There is considerable disagreement about whether the U.S. president has a direct and measurable influence over the economy. The analysis presented in Economic Actors, Economic Behaviors, and Presidential Leadership: The Constrained Effects of Rhetoric suggests that while presidents have increased their rhetoric regarding the economy, they have not had much success in shaping it. Considering this research, Arthur argues that the president's decision to address the economy so often must stem from a symbolic placation or institutional necessity that is intended to comfort constituencies or...

Drawing on a decade of their own research from the 2000 to 2012 U.S. presidential elections, Renita Coleman and Denis Wu explore the image presentation of political candidates and its influence at both aggregate and individual levels. When facing complex political decisions, voters often rely on gut feelings and first impressions but then endeavor to come up with a "rational" reason to justify their actions. Image and Emotion in Voter Decisions: The Affect Agenda examines how and why voters make the decisions they do by examining the influence of the media's coverage of politicians' images....

This book rhetorically and historically examines the contextual and experiential dimensions of a wide range of public places from memorials to stadiums that are rife with political implications. Fourteen public places ranging from the national to local, from 9/11 memorials to a baseball park are analyzed. The authors investigate the histories of these public spaces, examine their designs, and discuss their political implications in order to outline their role within the public sphere. This book begins with a loose theoretical framework for understanding public places as rhetorically drawn...

More than two billion dollars. That's how much money was spent in the 2012 presidential campaign--the most expensive campaign in history. Each party raised and spent more than one billion dollars as the traditional boundaries of campaign financing were ignored. Both parties could do so because they were playing in a game with new rules--rules that largely developed after the 2010 Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United. That case removed many restrictions on donation limits, particularly for corporations and unions. The result was the development of a new set of political players called...

Through the careful analysis of historical figures and empirical policy successes, The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text reveals how strategic communication silences make the tragedy of genocide probable and how a greater social ethic for communication openness repels and ends this great evil.

Web 2.0 and the Political Mobilization of College Students investigates how college students' online activities, when politically oriented, can affect their political participatory patterns offline. Kenneth W. Moffett and Laurie L. Rice find that online forms of political participation--like friending or following candidates and groups as well as blogging or tweeting about politics--draw in a broader swathe of young adults than might ordinarily participate. Political scientists have traditionally determined that participatory patterns among the general public hold less sway in shaping civic...

This book examines the rhetoric of the Founding Fathers, activists, presidents, and contemporary actors who play a large role in helping to define American civil religion. It demonstrates how America's civil religion is forged through contestations of its beliefs, rituals, places, events, and myths by different groups and individuals.

Free Speech on America's K-12 and College Campuses: Legal Cases from Barnette to Blaine covers the history of legal cases involving free speech issues on K-12 and college campuses, mostly during the fifty-year period from 1965 through 2015. While this book deals mostly with high school and college newspapers, it also covers religious issues (school prayer, distribution of religious materials, and use of school facilities for voluntary Bible study), speech codes, free speech zones, self-censorship due to political correctness, hate speech, threats of disruption and violence, and off-campus...

Drawing on a decade of their own research from the 2000 to 2012 U.S. presidential elections, Renita Coleman and Denis Wu explore the image presentation of political candidates and its influence at both aggregate and individual levels. When facing complex political decisions, voters often rely on gut feelings and first impressions but then endeavor to come up with a rational reason to justify their actions. Image and Emotion in Voter Decisions: The Affect Agenda examines how and why voters make the decisions they do by examining the influence of the media s coverage of politicians images....