Communication in Political Campaigns
Functional Analysis of Election Messages
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- Chapter One The Nature of Political Campaigns
- Chapter Two The Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse
- Chapter Three The Role of Medium in Campaign Discourse
- Chapter Four The Role of Source in Campaign Discourse
- Chapter Five The Role of Context in Political Campaign Discourse
- Chapter Six Non-Presidential, Non-U.S. Campaign Discourse
- Chapter Seven News Coverage of Political Campaigns
- Chapter Eight Voters: Campaign Messages and Election Outcome
- Chapter Nine Conclusions
- Appendix 1
- References
- Series Index
Preface
This book investigates the nature and function of political campaign communication. I begin by justifying the importance of this topic (why are political campaigns worth discussing?) and presenting a model for understanding the flow of information in political campaigns. This book takes an explicitly communicative approach to understanding political campaigns: Elections are inherently and essentially communicative in nature. Some would probably argue that money is what is essential to political campaigns. It is certainly true that today it is impractical to run for higher elective office (president, U.S. Senate and House, governor, and others) without money. However, the money raised and spent by political candidates is devoted largely to conveying the candidates’ messages to prospective voters as well as potential donors; campaign donations are wasted if the candidate does not send messages to voters. Donald Trump rewrote the “rules” for presidential primary campaigns in 2016. Two key elements of his success were (1) his use of Twitter and Facebook and (2) his repeated highly controversial statements (many made in tweets) and the intense media attention he attracted. So, communication served as the basis for his success. Political campaigns use messages to persuade voters to support a given candidate.
This book adopts the perspective offered by the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Communication, so Chapter Two will explain that theory. Then it will turn to an investigation of three communication factors that influence the ←vii | viii→production (invention, creation) of political campaign discourse: medium, source, and context. I have argued (1994, 2000a) that these factors influence the nature of messages, along with the persuader’s purpose, which is represented here as the desire to win elective office and manifested in the three functions of political campaign discourse. The fact that the messages analyzed here, political campaign messages, have the same purpose means they should have some similarities. However, these messages also have noteworthy differences which means that they are not completely identical. First, messages that are created for one medium will differ in some respects from messages created for another medium. For example, campaign statements made in debates will have some differences from statements made in television spots or on television talk shows. Second, messages created by certain sources will differ in certain ways from messages created by other sources. Messages produced by the candidates have systematic differences from messages supporting that candidate which are produced by surrogates such as other politicians, PACs (Political Action Committees), and others. Third, persuasive messages created in one kind of situation will be somewhat different from messages produced in other situations. For example, messages in the primary phase of the campaign have clear differences from messages from the general election campaign. Therefore, this book will focus on medium or message form (Chapter Three), source (Chapter Four), and the context or situation of presidential campaign discourse (Chapter Five). Although important differences are revealed in each of these areas, it will become obvious that campaign messages produced in diverse media, by different sources, and in varied contexts also share important similarities.
The remaining chapters address other important topics. Chapter Six will reach beyond presidential campaigns to examine other kinds of political campaign discourse: non-presidential and non-U.S. campaign messages. Most election research to date has focused on presidential campaigns, particularly those in the U.S. These races appear more important: The actions taken by Presidents affect citizens across the entire country, as well as our relations with the rest of the world, so presidential campaign messages naturally receive more publicity than messages from candidates for lesser offices. Nevertheless, campaigns for other offices besides the president deserve consideration, and some research has examined political campaign discourse created for other races. Furthermore, some research is available on political campaign messages in other countries. In additional to messages from the candidates, voters also learn about the candidates and their positions on the issues from the news. Recall that Donald Trump relied heavily on the media coverage about him. Chapter Seven will discuss news coverage of political campaigns because information about the candidates reaches voters through the news media as well as from the candidates directly. Chapter Eight will examine voters, the ←viii | ix→ultimate audience for campaign messages. asking how they use the information from candidate messages, the news, and other sources of election information to make vote choices? Chapter Nine will offer concluding observations.
This book is designed around theory. It is a good thing when theory can be tested by data; the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse is well-supported by data. These data come from a multitude of election campaigns, spanning decades, encompassing many elective offices and multiple countries, a large variety of media or message forms, and literally hundreds of candidates. This widespread support is important because a few kinds of messages, a few candidates, or an unusual year can be misleading. Using the amount and kind of data available for testing Functional Theory provides a better understanding of election campaign messages than looking at any one kind of message, one candidate or group of candidates, or even one election cycle. It is also important to realize that a good theory does something data cannot: explain why things happen, why the data look like this.
It may appear that some tables report conflicting data. For example, some tables combine primary and general data whereas other tables report these groups separately. Furthermore, because defenses are uncommon (even in debates), Functional Theory does not investigate the topics of defenses. This means acclaims+attacks+defenses do not equal policy+character.
This edition has been revised and updated in several ways. Social media have been added to the media discussed in the first edition. New data have been added from campaigns held after the first edition and from media not examined in the first edition. New topics, such as a discussion of the balkanization (fragmenting) of media and audiences and an analysis of how voters process information in messages, have been added. New illustrative examples from recent campaigns have replaced many of the older examples. The number of tables have been reduced and most statistical analyses are reported at the end of chapters after the table they concern.
I would like to thank my wife Pam Benoit and my daughter Jen Benoit-Bryan for their support (as it turns out, I have published articles related to political campaigns with both!). Second, my coauthors on various political communication research projects – David Airne, Julie Berman, Andy Billings, Joe Blaney, Brian Bough, LeAnn Brazeal, Sumana Chattopadhyay, Sooyoung Cho, Yun Son Choi, Jordan Compton, Venita Cooper, Steve Croucher, Ulises Cruz, Heather Currie, Corey Davis, Jeff Delbert, Jessica Furgerson, Mark Glantz, Jayne Henson Goode, Glenn Hansen, Allison Harthcock, Julio Herrero, Lance Holbert, Andrew Klyukovski, Cho Lee, Glen Leshner, Sheila Maltos, John McGuire, John McHale, Mitchell McKinney, Laura Paatelainen, John Petrocik, Anji Phillips, Bryan Phillips, ←ix | x→Penni Pier, Steve Price, Bryan Reber, Leslie Rill, Sarah Sargardia, Tamir Sheafer, Ivy Shen, Jennifer Seifert, Yonghoi Song, Kevin Stein, Mike Stephenson, Leigh Anne Sudbrock, Rebecca Verser, Courtney Vogt, David Webber, Bill Wells, John Wen, Sheri Whalen, Jessica Wilson-Kratzer, and Jack Yu – have helped me work on these ideas. The students who have taken my classes helped by asking questions and giving feedback about what I found in my research. I have also benefited from the advice of editors and reviewers of my work over the years. The University of Missouri, through its Research Council, granted me a Research Leave for 2003–2004, which allowed me to focus on this project. My Department Chairs during this time period, Pam Benoit and Michael Kramer, have also supported my work. The University of Alabama at Birmingham has given me an opportunity to spend a good deal of my time on research and writing.
Chapter One
The Nature of Political Campaigns
America is a country of elections. Political candidates seek a wide variety of elective offices including president, governor, mayor, city council, congress (state and federal), senate (state and federal), and in some jurisdictions, judgeships and dog catchers. The federal government has 537 offices (president, vice president, senators, representatives). Voters elect candidates to 18,749 positions in state government. Local (city, county) governments hold elections for another 500,396 elected officials. The U.S. enjoys – or endures – campaigns for almost 520,000 elective offices (Lawless, 2012). Campaigns have imperfections (e.g., candidates can be deceptive, campaign donations and special interests can corrode the process of democracy, and too many voters are apathetic), but nevertheless elections are an integral part of contemporary society and our democracy and better than other forms of government.
Presidential candidates lavish large amounts of money on their political campaigns. Over $2.6 billion was spent on the 2012 presidential election (Center for Responsive Politics, 2012). In 2016 candidates, political parties, and outside groups spent $6.5 billion on presidential and congressional campaigns (both primary and general elections are included; Ingraham, 2017). Democrat Hillary Clinton spent heavily on TV spots. Her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, aired considerable fewer ads in both the Republican primary and the general election (as discussed in Chapter Three, Trump relied heavily on Twitter and ←1 | 2→Facebook in his campaign). Still, literally billions of dollars are spent on presidential campaigns in the U.S. and millions are spent on races for other offices here and in other countries.
This incredible amount of money purchases a huge amount of broadcast time. The Wesleyan Media Project (2012) reported that “over 915,000 presidential ads have been aired on broadcast and national cable television since June 1. This is a 44.5 percent increase from the 637,000 ads aired through October 21 in 2008.” So, the number of presidential TV spots rose greatly over time. In 2016, the nominations for both political parties were contested (in some years only one party had meaningful primaries: for example, in 2004 no one challenged President George W. Bush, in 2012 President Barack Obama’s nomination was uncontested, and no one challenged President Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination). During the 2016 presidential primaries, Democratic presidential candidates bought over 230,000 ads (“Number of ads aired,” 2016); Republicans aired almost 230,000 spots (“Number of ads aired,” 2016). PACs (Political Action Committees) ran almost 130,000 political commercials in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries (“Number of ads aired for outside groups,” 2016). Political advertising is an important medium in contemporary political campaigns.
Today, it is simply not possible to campaign for national election without spending millions of dollars. However, money is not everything. Lau and Pomper (2004) note that “It is not just money but how candidates choose to spend their campaign funds that influences the outcome of an election” (p. 46, emphasis original). In the Democratic primary of 2004, Howard Dean raised the most money by a wide margin in 2003: $40.9 million. The eventual Democratic nominee, John Kerry, accumulated only $22 million (Drinkard, 2004, p. 5A). However, Dean had won no primaries or caucuses by the time he dropped out; Kerry, with barely half of Dean’s funds, won all but two races. Wesley Clark, who had raised barely one-third of Dean’s money, won the Oklahoma primary. In the 2016 general presidential election Hillary Clinton spent $768 million whereas Donald Trump expended far less: $398 million (Ingraham, 2017); nevertheless, Trump won the electoral college and the Oval Office (although Clinton received more of the popular vote). Even though the Democratic candidate received more votes, she spent almost twice as much as the GOP candidate but did not win anywhere near twice the votes as the GOP candidate (Ingraham, 2017; Allison, Rojanasakul, Harris, & Sam, 2016). Money, unless used to disseminate effective messages, is no guarantee of electoral success.
The “rulebook” for political campaigns was completely shredded by Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Trump was well-known to most voters as a business magnate and television personality before he announced ←2 | 3→his candidacy on June 16, 2015. Many of his statements during the campaign were perceived as outrageous by many. Such comments guaranteed perpetual media coverage for Trump; combined with his heavy reliance on Twitter, he had no need to spend as much money as other candidates on his primary campaign. Donald Trump expended $18.5 million on television advertising in the 2016 Republican primary campaign. Four other Republican candidates spent more (and lost): Marco Rubio: $72.7 million: Jeb Bush: $66.9 million; Ted Cruz: $37.6; and John Kasich: $18.9 (Estimated Cost of Ads, 2016). In the general election campaign, Clinton devoted $332.1 million to advertising while Trump spent only $18.7 million (Associated Press, 2016; keep in mind that the Democrat and Republican National Committees also spent money on ads, as did outside groups). For comparison, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each spent over $400 million on spots in 2012 (“Mad Money,” 2012). Despite four years of inflation, Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 by spending less than 4% of what Romney spent in his loss in 2012. Television advertising will continue to be an important component of political election campaigns – just as older media such as radio ads and direct mail advertising are still used by candidates today – but TV spots may not be as important in future campaigns as they were in the past. Trump’s campaign benefited greatly from his use of social media (discussed in Chapter Three), a medium growing rapidly in importance. However, the situationed when President Trump started campaigning for re-election: Between January 1, 2019 and February 23, 2020 the Trump campaign spent over $17 million despite running unopposed for the Republican nomination (Wesleyan Media Project, 2020). It seems likely that his ad spending in 2020 will far outstrip his 2016 effort.
Obviously candidates also employ other kinds of messages besides television spots. For example, 21 primary debates, three presidential debates, and one vice presidential debate were held in 2016 (as in several earlier campaigns). Presidential candidates employed other messages including speeches (e.g., candidacy announcement speeches, nomination acceptance addresses, speeches at campaign rallies), campaign webpages, and direct mail brochures. They appeared on television talk shows. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, have emerged as very important avenues for candidates to reach voters (see Benoit & Glantz, 2020). Political candidates rely on a variety of messages to reach voters and the donors who fund their campaigns.
The 2016 presidential campaign reached millions of voters. The first Republican primary debate of the 2016 presidential campaign was watched by 24 million people, “making it the highest-rated primary debate in television history” (Stelter, 2015). The three general election debates between Clinton and Trump attracted over 222 million viewers; the Kaine-Pence vice presidential debate was watched by ←3 | 4→37 million people (Nielson, 2017). Debate have the potential for important effects because of the sheer size of the viewing audience.
Campaigns Matter
This chapter will begin by addressing the basic question of whether political campaigns influence voters. It will argue that many campaigns are necessarily conducted mainly in the mass media. Then I will discuss obvious and subtle influences on vote choice.
Mass Media in Election Campaigns
In 2016, 226 million Americans were eligible to vote (Pew Research Center, 2016; this figure excludes those who are ineligible to vote: non-citizens; people in prison, on probation, or on parole). More people were eligible to vote in 2020 (239 million; Voter turnout, 2022). Because the populace is so huge, the number of voters who could decide how to vote based on their personal knowledge of candidates is negligible. Voters must rely on information obtained from the mass media or on discussions with other voters, who had themselves learned about the candidates from the mass media. Ralph Nader, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2000 as the Green Party nominee, explained that “You cannot reach in direct personal communication even one percent of the eligible voters. In essence you don’t run for president directly; you ask the media to run you for president or, if you have the money, you can pay the media for exposure” (p. 155).
Even in races for offices with fewer constituents than the president, the mass media is vital for reaching voters. The Census Bureau (2011) reports that the average congressional district contains about 711,000 constituents (Wyoming, the state with the smallest population, has 544,000 residents and one member of congress). The size of the average congressional district increased after the 2020 census (to over 761,000). Similarly, many mayoral elections are also conducted mainly via mass media: Over 30 American cities have populations over half a million (World Population Review, 2020) and TV spots are important in smaller cities as well. Table 1.1 shows how many voters say they learn about political campaigns from various media. Campaigns matter because they educate our citizens and offer them the opportunity to make informed voting decisions.
Table 1.1. Most useful sources for news about the 2016 presidential election campaign.
|
Media |
Percent |
|---|---|
|
Cable TV news |
24 |
|
Social media |
14 |
|
Local TV |
14 |
|
News website/app |
13 |
|
Radio |
11 |
|
Network nightly news |
3 |
|
Local paper in print |
3 |
|
National paper in print |
2 |
|
Issue-based group webpage/app/email |
2 |
|
Candidate or campaign group webpage/app/email |
1 |
Gottfried, Barthel, Shearer, & Mitchell (2016).
Chapter Three discusses the fact that the advent of the Internet and social media have fragmented the mass media into many “audiences” who learn from different content sources (e.g., some voters get news from CNN and others from ←4 | 5→FOX; these sources convey quite different visions of the world and the people and events in it, which means they are likely to have sharply contrasting attitudes; Benoit & Billings, 2020).
Campaigns Have Both Obvious and Subtle Effects
It is important at this point to keep in mind that campaigns have both obvious and subtle effects. Obvious effects include (1) the conversion of vote choice from one candidate to another and (2) the decision to vote for a candidate by a previously undecided voters. Less obvious is the fact that election messages can solidify a voter’s existing candidate preference. This solidification effect would not be apparent in public opinion polls – which ask which candidate you lean toward, not how certain you are in this preference. However, strengthening a voter’s preference for a candidate increases the likelihood that this voter will (1) donate to a candidate, (2) try to persuade friends, family, and co-workers to prefer this candidate, (3) resist the persuasive efforts of, and on behalf of, opposing candidates, and (4) be more likely to actually go to the polls and cast a vote for that candidate. Chapter Eight will discuss the resurgence of party-driven voting; it is important to realize that campaign messages can have other important effects in addition to conversion.
Next, I will discuss the Limited Effects Model of mass media and other influences on voters (political party affiliation, current events). Then it will argue directly for the effects of campaigns on voters and discuss the two main sources of campaign information, candidate messages and news media.←5 | 6→
Limited Effects Model
The People’s Choice is a classic study of the effects of presidential campaigns on voters. Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet (1948; see also Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954) conducted a panel study of voters in Erie County Ohio during the 1940 presidential election. They concluded that two main effects of campaigns on voters were “activation,” or “bringing their latent political attitudes to the surface,” and “reinforcement,” or “telling them what they wanted to see and hear” (p. 94). The voters who experienced a third effect, “conversion,” or change in preference from one candidate to another, were “few indeed” (p. 94, italics omitted). Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet also found that voters reported more political discussion among family, friends, and co-workers than exposure to radio or print messages. Keep in mind that this study was conducted in 1940 and CBS did not begin television broadcasting until 1941 (WSIU, 2002). Their investigation led them to propose the “two-step flow of communication,” in which “ideas often flow from radio and print to the opinion leaders and from them to the less active sections of the population” (p. 151; emphasis original). Although they acknowledged that campaigns can influence citizens’ vote choice, Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet concluded that such effects are minimal.
In another classic work, Voting, Campbell, Gurin, and Miller (1954), studied the 1948 and 1952 presidential elections. They argued for three primary influences on voting behavior: political parties, issues, and candidate evaluations. They argued that it is likely that “the respective weights each of these three factors has would vary from election to election” (p. 183). They were particularly interested in situations in which these three factors would conflict, where there were cross-pressures (e.g., liking one candidate but preferring another candidate’s policy positions). These three factors are still important today and I will return to them in Chapter Eight. The relative importance of these three factors not only varies from campaign to campaign but also varies from one voter to another voter. These books are generally considered sociological approaches because demographic variables were thought to be very important in vote choice.
The American Voter (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960) conceptualized party identification as a relatively long-term attitude, stressing the electorate’s “pervasive sense of attachment to one or the other of the two major parties” (p. 541). They emphasized the voters’ perceptions, writing that
Details
- Pages
- X, 326
- Year
- 2022
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433184031
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781433184048
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781433187964
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781433188077
- DOI
- 10.3726/b18545
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- English
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- 2022 (April)
- Keywords
- Präsidentenwahl Wahlkampf Political campaign TV spot Debate USA Politische Kommunikation
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- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2022. X, 324 pp., 1 b/w ill., 2 color ill., 51 tables.
