Political Communication in American Elections Capstone

During the course of the semester, we learned all about the realm of political communications: everything that it involves, entails, and touches. Two strategies of political communication we learned about are framing and biases. I believe these to be two of the most important concepts I learned this semester, both as a student in political science and as a consumer of the media and politics. Being a political science student and not having been previously involved in media in any way, I knew confirmation biases and framing existed (though perhaps not in those words), but learning how and why they exist allow me to recognize their presence and be a more responsible consumer of media. Another thing I learned this semester is how to conduct qualitative field research. In the field of political communication, I have only seen the political side prior to this semester. To not only learn about the media in politics, but to have a chance to be involved as a member of the media and conduct research the way the media does was significant to my understanding of the theories and concepts we learned in class. While all concepts we learned were insightful to both politics and media, these are the three I find to be most applicable to my life and understanding beyond the classroom setting.

The first research project we worked on this semester as a practical application of the concepts learned in class was a content analysis of two candidate’s websites. My group wanted to avoid evaluating the most looked at candidates like Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders, so we chose to conduct our analysis on Martin O’Malley and Chris Christie. After much deliberation with the group on our aspiration for this project and what we hoped to discover, we developed two specific research questions that our paper would seek to answer:

Research Question 1: How do Governors Christie and O’Malley use positive and negative messaging on their websites and in their discussions of national security and criminal justice reform?

Research Question 2: How do Governors Christie and O’Malley’s discussions of national security and criminal justice reform compare?

We wanted to address manifest and latent content for three different areas of the candidate’s websites: the front page, the National Security platform page, and Criminal Justice Reform platform page. We chose to focus specifically on how the candidates employ positive and negative messaging in these areas. I developed the coding scheme for our paper, which employed a series of 20 questions with four answer choices, the first being the most negative and coded as a “1” moving up numerically to the fourth and most positive answer being coded as a “4.” This method of analysis allowed us to develop a score for each candidate in each area, as well as a total cumulative score indicating that the more positive their content is, the higher their score would be. This proved to be a highly effective way of translating qualitative into quantitative data for the least biased analysis possible.  After I developed the plan for coding, I constructed the 20 questions used for analysis to be responded to like a survey. The other group members answered the questions first, then I provided inter-coder reliability checks before totaling the scores and constructing graphs to display our findings, one of which is seen below:

TOTAL SCORE
Chris Christie	59/80
Martin O'Malley	64/80
FRONT PAGE
Chris Christie	26/32
Martin O'Malley	30/32
JUSTICE REFORM
Chris Christie	18/32
Martin O'Malley	17/32
NATIONAL SECURITY
Chris Christie	15/32
Martin O'Malley	17/32

In addition to constructing the coding scheme, questionnaire, and providing inter-coder reliability, I wrote the methodology section of the paper and contributed to the efforts of the group in writing the remainder of the paper.  Our findings were enlightening, and it was exciting to see my coding scheme in action to transform a normally biased and qualitative data set into a quantitative and easily understood end score. Martin O’Malley used highly engaging and positive imagery, colors, and graphics, which translated into a high end score. The only section that was primarily negative in latent content was his Justice Reform platform page, which is the only section he scores lower than Chris Christie. Alternatively, although Chris Christie’s website lacked engaging use of text and color and contained mostly negative videos and imagery, he was able to maintain a high score because of his overwhelmingly positive tone when discussing his platform and campaign goals.

After this content analysis, we were put into another group to write our first and second news stories of the semester. These stories were to cover two political campaign events, and fortunately for us, there were several exciting events at this time. The first story covered the Bernie Sanders rally at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Though I was unable to attend, I did extensive research prior to the event to understand Bernie Sanders’ platform and help construct interview questions for Emily. After the event, I worked with Emily to write and edit the final article. We chose to write the second news story on Governor John Kasich’s Town Hall at Kennesaw State University. I attended the event and spoke to students and supporters, and gathered contact information for follow up. I was able to interview the president of the KSU Young Republicans, as well as a professor and two additional students. Emily and I again worked together to write the article.

Observing and attending as media on these two events was a great learning experience, especially to understand and report firsthand the difference between these two types of events: a rally and a Townhall. To those who perhaps do not understand the difference between the types of events, it seemed that people were more excited and involved at the Bernie Sanders event while the Kasich event was more subdued, and the difference in size was profound. However, these are two very different events with different goals. A rally is intended to deliver a message and inspire a large audience, and with guest speakers in attendance like Killer Mike and other celebrities, it certainly accomplished the goal of exciting and mobilizing the audience.

Bernie Sanders kicking off his HBCU tour by delivering a speech 

on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016 at Morehouse college.

Alternatively, a town hall like the one John Kasich held at Kennesaw State University is a smaller and more intimate atmosphere, with an active audience asking questions and the candidate addressing issues. This was certainly true of the Kasich event, however, a very large audience gathered outside the event and the Governor took a moment to address these supporters before heading inside for the meeting. 

John Kasich addressing the crowd gathered outside the Town Hall 

on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016 at Kennesaw State University.

After writing these two new stories, we did our field research analysis. Emily and I chose to write this on Bernie Sanders as well, focusing on his performance with young voters. We sought to answer the research question “How does Bernie Sanders appeal to young adult voters, and is it working?” In order to answer our research question, we utilized qualitative semi-structured interviews, and rhetorical and document analysis. Emily and I conducted extensive research, and through interviews with students, rhetorical analysis, and analysis of the primaries and polls up to this point: through this, we found that though Senator Sanders is winning the large majority of the votes of his targeted young adult demographic, the demographic doesn’t appear to be large enough in numbers to make the impact for Sanders that is necessary to win. This was a very interesting analysis that showed the discrepancy between appearance and actuality: while Sanders was speaking to massive crowds at his rallies, it was not translating to winning states in the primaries. It appears that, though students and young adults are making it out to the rallies to support Sanders, they weren’t making it out on voting day. My specific contribution to this paper was research and writing the methodology and research findings sections of the final product.

For the second content analysis, we analyzed fifty articles collected from MSNBC and Politico to assign them into categories for coding based on the frames utilized. I contributed to the final product by conducting all coding, making all pie charts and graphs to display my findings, and writing the methodology section of the paper. Additionally, I edited and added extensively to the findings section of the paper and created the resources page.

The most interesting information uncovered was the fact that, not only was the issues frame employed the least across the four frames and two media outlets, but only one article on MSNBC discussed issues and only four from Politico.  Below are the pie charts I constructed displaying the number of article from each site and from the entire sample that fell into each frame category.

Table 1. The three graphs show the distribution of frames 

among the two new outlets, MSNBC & Politico.

Regarding achieving the learning objectives for the class, I believe that I was able demonstrate the ability to produce high quality research projects and accurately describe and provide critical perspectives on the intersection between political communication and American elections through the research projects and articles we wrote during the semester. The only one I could argue that I fell short in would be producing high quality political journalism on the theme of American elections. Because of the structure of the groups and assignments, while I did write and produce several new stories, I was reliant on the assistance of a communications and journalism major to ensure that my articles were written in true journalism voice and structure. Additionally, while I learned about many strategies employed by media in elections, I would not feel confident in producing political media pieces on own in the future. I do however feel that everything learned regarding media enables me to be a more responsible citizen and consumer of media and achieve the last objective of respectfully observing American political communication processes in practice.