Morreale traces the development of the documentary films produced for presidential candidates from Calvin Coolidge in 1923 to George Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992. The work provides insight into today's visually oriented presidential campaign by analyzing the production of candidates' images as the films evolve from classical to modern forms. Campaign films are usually overlooked by campaign scholars, yet they provide the fullest available visual portrait of a candidate during a campaign, they encapsulate persuasive appeals and strategies, and they illustrate Republican and Democratic...

Denton and Woodward provide a newly updated revision of their classic in political communication. This pioneering text provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the role and function of communication in American politics.

A synthesis of some of the best writing in political communication from the fields of communication, political science, journalism, and history, this edition features completely new chapters on the topics of campaign management, congressional campaigns, politics and popular culture, and unofficial Washington. This edition also reflects updated...

The movies that document American history during the interwar years still hold relevance today. While we may be put off by the corny sentimentality popular at the time, we feel attracted, despite our 1990s veneer of sophistication, to healthy portions of unadulterated American spirit. Americans resist encumbering themselves with political labels, Kelley asserts, content to remain simultaneously fragmented between elitism and populism, isolationism and interventionism even today, yet remain somehow united by a fundamental essence they can't quite define but readily recognize as the American...

Political campaigns are highly complex and sophisticated communication events: communication of issues, images, social reality, and persons. They are essential exercises in the creation, re-creation, and transmission of significant symbols through human communication. As voters and others involved with the campaigns attempt to make sense of the political environment, political bits of communication inform voting choices, world views, and legislative desires.

The essays in this book examine the key elements in that process throughout the 1996 presidential campaign. Each focuses on a...

David Perlmutter examines concerns over the interplay of pictures in the press, elite decision-making and public opinion on foreign policy. His focus is on certain celebrated, indelible images that, it is said, sum up famous events, provoke moral outrage, mobilize public opinion, and spur government action: the icons of outrage. Discourse elites thrust greatness upon such images as well as frame their meaning and interpretation. The public only plays a marginal role in making icons; ordinary readers and viewers are, however, often resistant or indifferent to elite interpretation and...

Public opinion polls point to a continuing decline in confidence in the Presidency, court system, Congress, the news media, state government, public education, and other key institutions. Moy and Pfau analyze the reasons for this crisis of confidence, with particular attention to the role of the media.

Moy and Pfau examine the impact of sociodemographic factors, political expertise, and use of communication media on people's perceptions of confidence in democratic institutions. Their conclusions are based on two years of data collection. In three waves between 1995 and 1997,...

This essay collection examines ethical concerns related to the traditional areas of political communication, including campaigns, media, discourse, and advertising, as well as new technologies, including the Internet. In total, the collection provides one of the few volumes to examine political ethics from an academic perspective rather than from a moralistic or rule orientation.

Bruce Gronbeck provides an assessment of presidential campaigns, arguing that ethical judgments of citizens are based on candidates' actions and motives, character, and competence. Ronald Lee explores...

What led up to the great debacle of the American 2000 presidential election? Denton and his colleagues analyze the presidential campaign with a special focus on key topics and elements of political communication. Their analyses go beyond the quantitative facts, electoral counts, and poll results, inspecting the nuts and bolts of what became one of the most controversial elections in American history.

Each chapter focuses on a specific area of political campaign communication, including: DEGREESL DEGREESL DEGREESDBLThe early campaign period DEGREESL DEGREESDBLThe nomination...

Though many studies of contemporary campaigns focus on brief political advertisements and the growing impact of technology on contemporary campaigns, the definitive statements of most candidates are still made in public addresses. Friedenberg examines the first public address made by an American presidential candidate on his own behalf. The circumstances giving rise to William Henry Harrison's 1840 address, and the themes that he developed in that address are strikingly contemporary, serving as an appropriate prelude to the examinations of contemporary political speaking that follow. Those...

Kuypers charts the potential effects the printed presses and broadcast media have upon the messages of political and social leaders when they discuss controversial issues. Examining over 800 press reports on race and homosexuality from 116 different newspapers, Kuypers meticulously documents a liberal political bias in mainstream news. This book asserts that such a bias hurts the democratic process by ignoring non-mainstream left positions and vilifying many moderate and most right-leaning positions, leaving only a narrow brand of liberal thought supported by the mainstream press.

This...