Words That Matter
Words That Matter

Author: Leticia Bode

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2020-05-26

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0815731922

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How the 2016 news media environment allowed Trump to win the presidency The 2016 presidential election campaign might have seemed to be all about one man. He certainly did everything possible to reinforce that impression. But to an unprecedented degree the campaign also was about the news media and its relationships with the man who won and the woman he defeated. Words that Matter assesses how the news media covered the extraordinary 2016 election and, more important, what information—true, false, or somewhere in between—actually helped voters make up their minds. Using journalists' real-time tweets and published news coverage of campaign events, along with Gallup polling data measuring how voters perceived that reporting, the book traces the flow of information from candidates and their campaigns to journalists and to the public. The evidence uncovered shows how Donald Trump's victory, and Hillary Clinton's loss, resulted in large part from how the news media responded to these two unique candidates. Both candidates were unusual in their own ways, and thus presented a long list of possible issues for the media to focus on. Which of these many topics got communicated to voters made a big difference outcome. What people heard about these two candidates during the campaign was quite different. Coverage of Trump was scattered among many different issues, and while many of those issues were negative, no single negative narrative came to dominate the coverage of the man who would be elected the 45th president of the United States. Clinton, by contrast, faced an almost unrelenting news media focus on one negative issue—her alleged misuse of e-mails—that captured public attention in a way that the more numerous questions about Trump did not. Some news media coverage of the campaign was insightful and helpful to voters who really wanted serious information to help them make the most important decision a democracy offers. But this book also demonstrates how the modern media environment can exacerbate the kind of pack journalism that leads some issues to dominate the news while others of equal or greater importance get almost no attention, making it hard for voters to make informed choices.

Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 U.S. Election
Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 U.S. Election

Author: Christine B. Williams

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-08

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1351105507

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Facebook, Twitter and Instagram create new ways to market political campaigns and new channels for candidates and voters to interact. This volume investigates the role and impact of social media in the 2016 U.S. election, focusing specifically on the presidential nominating contest. Through case studies, survey research and content analysis, the researchers employ both human and machine coding to analyse social media text and video content. Together, these illustrate the wide variety of methodological approaches and statistical techniques that can be used to probe the rich, vast stores of social media data now available. Individual chapters examine what different candidates posted about and which posts generated more of a response. The analyses shed light on what social media can reveal about campaign messaging strategies and explore the linkages between social media content and their audiences’ perceptions, opinions and political participation. The findings highlight similarities and differences among candidates and consider how continuity and change are manifest in the 2016 election. Finally, taking a look forward, the contributors consider the implications of their work for political marketing research and practice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Political Marketing.

Identity Crisis
Identity Crisis

Author: John Sides

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-08-13

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0691201765

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A gripping in-depth look at the presidential election that stunned the world Donald Trump's election victory resulted in one of the most unexpected presidencies in history. Identity Crisis provides the definitive account of the campaign that seemed to break all the political rules—but in fact didn't. Featuring a new afterword by the authors that discusses the 2018 midterms and today's emerging political trends, this compelling book describes how Trump's victory was foreshadowed by changes in the Democratic and Republican coalitions that were driven by people's racial and ethnic identities, and how the Trump campaign exacerbated these divisions by hammering away on race, immigration, and religion. The result was an epic battle not just for the White House but about what America should be.

What Happened
What Happened

Author: Hillary Rodham Clinton

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-09-12

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 1501175572

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“An engaging, beautifully synthesized page-turner” (Slate). The #1 New York Times bestseller and Time #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most personal memoir yet, about the 2016 presidential election. In this “candid and blackly funny” (The New York Times) memoir, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. She takes us inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules. “At her most emotionally raw” (People), Hillary describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterward. She tells readers what it took to get back on her feet—the rituals, relationships, and reading that got her through, and what the experience has taught her about life. In this “feminist manifesto” (The New York Times), she speaks to the challenges of being a strong woman in the public eye, the criticism over her voice, age, and appearance, and the double standard confronting women in politics. Offering a “bracing... guide to our political arena” (The Washington Post), What Happened lays out how the 2016 election was marked by an unprecedented assault on our democracy by a foreign adversary. By analyzing the evidence and connecting the dots, Hillary shows just how dangerous the forces are that shaped the outcome, and why Americans need to understand them to protect our values and our democracy in the future. The election of 2016 was unprecedented and historic. What Happened is the story of that campaign, now with a new epilogue showing how Hillary grappled with many of her worst fears coming true in the Trump Era, while finding new hope in a surge of civic activism, women running for office, and young people marching in the streets.

Political Marketing in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Political Marketing in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

Author: Jamie Gillies

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-08-04

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 3319593455

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This edited collection is one of the first books to focus on the distinctive political marketing and branding strategies utilized by the candidates and their parties in one of the most gripping elections in U.S. history. It considers why this election was so unusual from a political marketing perspective, calling for new explanations and discussions about its implications for mainstream political marketing theory and practice. At a time of political upheaval, candidates from both parties – Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in particular – have appeared to overturn the conventional wisdom that has hitherto dominated U.S. politics: that candidates should appear ‘presidential’, be politically experienced and qualified to run for office, and avoid controversial and politically incorrect positions. This book presents scholarly perspectives and research with practitioner-relatable content on practices and discourses that look specifically at the Trump, Clinton and Sanders campaigns and how they took current understandings of political marketing and branding in new directions.

Network Propaganda
Network Propaganda

Author: Yochai Benkler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-17

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 0190923644

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.

Securing the Vote
Securing the Vote

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2018-09-30

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 030947647X

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During the 2016 presidential election, America's election infrastructure was targeted by actors sponsored by the Russian government. Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy examines the challenges arising out of the 2016 federal election, assesses current technology and standards for voting, and recommends steps that the federal government, state and local governments, election administrators, and vendors of voting technology should take to improve the security of election infrastructure. In doing so, the report provides a vision of voting that is more secure, accessible, reliable, and verifiable.

The Party Decides
The Party Decides

Author: Marty Cohen

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-05-15

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0226112381

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Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that—such unusually competitive cases notwithstanding—people, rather than parties, should and do control presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, The Party Decides shows, unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box. Tracing the evolution of presidential nominations since the 1790s, this volume demonstrates how party insiders have sought since America’s founding to control nominations as a means of getting what they want from government. Contrary to the common view that the party reforms of the 1970s gave voters more power, the authors contend that the most consequential contests remain the candidates’ fights for prominent endorsements and the support of various interest groups and state party leaders. These invisible primaries produce frontrunners long before most voters start paying attention, profoundly influencing final election outcomes and investing parties with far more nominating power than is generally recognized.

The 2016 American Presidential Campaign and the News
The 2016 American Presidential Campaign and the News

Author: Jim A. Kuypers

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2018-03-14

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1498565123

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This book examines perhaps the most contentious election in modern US history—the 2016 United States presidential election. It is unique in its discussion of a wide range of issues affecting the news media coverage of the election, coming from an equally diverse range of intellectual perspectives including the rhetorical, social-scientific, communication studies, and media studies. With eleven chapters grounded in hard evidence and communication theory, The 2016 American Presidential Campaign and the News: Implications for American Democracy and the Republic examines significant topics such as fake news, media construction of Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s campaign personalities, media bias, visual meme depictions of the candidates, identity politics in the news, Trump’s Twitter use, entertainment news, and social media as news. These chapters individually and collectively provide a direct commentary on the implications of the 2016 campaign news coverage for the future of the American Republic and political communication in the media.

The Timeline of Presidential Elections
The Timeline of Presidential Elections

Author: Robert S. Erikson

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-08-24

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0226922162

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In presidential elections, do voters cast their ballots for the candidates whose platform and positions best match their own? Or is the race for president of the United States come down largely to who runs the most effective campaign? It’s a question those who study elections have been considering for years with no clear resolution. In The Timeline of Presidential Elections, Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien reveal for the first time how both factors come into play. Erikson and Wlezien have amassed data from close to two thousand national polls covering every presidential election from 1952 to 2008, allowing them to see how outcomes take shape over the course of an election year. Polls from the beginning of the year, they show, have virtually no predictive power. By mid-April, when the candidates have been identified and matched in pollsters’ trial heats, preferences have come into focus—and predicted the winner in eleven of the fifteen elections. But a similar process of forming favorites takes place in the last six months, during which voters’ intentions change only gradually, with particular events—including presidential debates—rarely resulting in dramatic change. Ultimately, Erikson and Wlezien show that it is through campaigns that voters are made aware of—or not made aware of—fundamental factors like candidates’ policy positions that determine which ticket will get their votes. In other words, fundamentals matter, but only because of campaigns. Timely and compelling, this book will force us to rethink our assumptions about presidential elections.