This research systemizes PRC¡¦s Taiwan policy in the perspective of psychology of political communication. First of all, this research is found that there are four features in psychological warfare conducted by PRC after reviewing the Western, ancient Chinese, and Chinese military classics: justice warfare, army controlled by the politics, the people warfare, and influx on strategies. The basic levels in mutual fight can be analyzed as following: conducting and controlling relationship, civil-martial relationship, state-society relationship, and foreign relationship. The rival may ¡§disturb¡¨ the relationships by three psychological principles of political communication: the attachment principle, the inducement principle, and the coercion principle. After deciding the principle, there are four kinds of ¡§tools¡¨ available; including Taiwan affairs, mass communication, information based psychological warfare, and military threat. Most important, PRC use the tools in a flexible way. The psychology of political communication in PRC¡¦s Tawian policy is successful by adopting two stable principles: Emancipation/ Unity/ Anti-independency Principle; One China/ One Country Two Systems Principle. The bottom line of principle can be shifting, but never quit. From the perspective of psychology of political communication, this Taiwan policy can be focused on the source and the content of information, and the effect of receivers. This model can be concluded as ¡§organism¡¨, there are holism, correlation, multilevel, openness, and dynamics in this model.

Scholarship shows that the social construction of crime is responsible for the public’s demand for tougher criminal justice policies. Yet, there remains disagreement over several key issues regarding the relationship between strategic communication and the punitiveness of the mass public. Little is known about the magnitude and direction of changes in punitive sentiment over the last 50 years. Moreover, there is disagreement over when the public began to demand punitive solutions to crime over alternative policies. Many scholars point the racial turmoil of the 1960s, but none have shown conclusive evidence of any fundamental change in punitive sentiment. Finally, there is disagreement over what type of strategic appeal is most effective at shaping public opinion. The argument of this research is that the democratic nature of American pol- itics creates an environment where the competition of ideas flourish. Political ac- tors can use several types of strategic communication (agenda-setting, persuasion, priming, framing) to shape political outcomes. The effectiveness of an appeal does not remain constant over time, but should evolve around systematic social changes— environmental conditions and social norms. Thus, there is a time varying relationship between various appeals and public opinion. A content analysis of crime news in the New York Times provides measures of four types of strategic messages. Instrumental factors such as the economy and public policy are also shown to influence the public’s desire for punitive criminal justice policies. A Bayesian changepoint model provides a means to test when, if any,fundamental change occurred in the public’s punitive sentiment. Contrary to most accounts, the changepoint model identifies 1972 as having the highest probability of a breakpoint suggesting a public backlash against the Supreme Court’s Furman vs. Georgia decision to abolish the death penalty. Estimates from a state-space model show that different types of messages in the media shape punitive sentiment and that the effectiveness of racial primes and presidential attention to crime changes over time. Moreover, these changes are shown to be a function of changes in social context and norms suggesting ways to improve political communication.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-205).

New media technology has brought heated debate about its power to transform existing structures and relations in national and international communications. It is expected to either democratize or reproduce current political communication processes. At the same time, new media technology raises concerns that it may promote a global convergence of communication cultures to the American model. Political blogging, online personal publishing of observations and comments about news and politics with frequent links to other Web sources, provides a useful ground to test these competing theses since political blogging emerged as a citizen-based, alternative media in the U.S. and has subsequently been diffused internationally. This dissertation compares political blogs in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany to investigate how national political systems and communication cultures shape the structures and practices of political blogging across the three countries. Based on the media’s relative power in the public sphere and communication processes, political communication culture is distinguished as a mediatized culture in the U.S., a politicized culture in Germany, and a culture-in-between in the U.K. Different systems and cultures are predicted not only to foster political blogging to varying degrees but also to shape different fabrics of relations among political bloggers and other participants in political communication in each country. Using the rankings of political blogs in the three countries, the 106 top political blogospheres and linking patterns of individual political blogs to various websites in the countries. Findings from this dissertation reveal both cross-national commonalities rooted in general human tendencies and national particularities emerging from different structural factors internal to the three countries. Across the three countries, bloggers make more communicative ties to politically like-minded blogs and websites than to those with opposing perspectives. Blogging networks of the three countries represent very unequal spaces, with a few blogs having a disproportional number of incoming links. Also, blogs are highly insulated geographically with bloggers making links mostly to other bloggers and sites within their own countries. There are also notable cross-national differences in network structures and linking patterns. The U.S. blogging network has more dense interconnections among its members compared with British and German networks. Also, America’s mediatized culture increases the probability that political blogs choose to link more to news media sites compared to British and German bloggers. On the other hand, British and German blogs in politicized cultures make links to government websites more frequently than do American blogs. Additionally, the U.S. political blogosphere shows greater segregation between blogs of competing political perspectives, compared with U.K. and German blogospheres. Findings are discussed in light of two key questions about the nature of political blogging (1) as a new technology-enabled medium facilitating cross-national convergence in communication practice, and (2) as a revolutionary venue revitalizing the public sphere and democracy. / text

Many studies have noted that the conflict between gender and party stereotypes may disadvantage Republican female candidates among some voters. On the other hand, gender and party attachment may also prove advantageous for Republican women in competitive races where moderate and independent voters play an important role. In this paper, the author examines how partisanship and race competitiveness impact how, and if, female candidates choose to emphasize their gendered identity, highlight women’s interests, and pursue a feminine trait strategy on their campaign websites. The author gives special attention to Republican female candidates running in competitive races, and argues that these candidates may have an extra incentive and ability to connect with voters by emphasizing gender. This study uses data collected through a content analysis of the campaign websites of 162 female candidates in the 2014 Congressional midterm election.

This investigation of the 2014 midterm election brings together research in communication, journalism, political science, and sociology. Incorporating concepts of interdependence through the application of social network analysis, I analyzed how journalists construct and utilize networks of news sources in election coverage. Survey results indicate that journalists use sources in a complementary fashion in order to fulfill their resource needs. Such perceptions are also dependent on aspects of the journalist, news norms, organizational pressures, and extra-media influences. Overall, source networks are strategically used to fulfill traditional journalistic norms of objectivity and credibility as well as economic and entertainment needs. Content analysis results suggest that, along with more traditional variables such as ownership and source type, networks characteristics also influence new outcomes, with higher network density resulting in increases in issue coverage. In other words, greater connections among sources may result in more substantive information being passed on to voters. For the field of communication, this study enhances our understanding of agenda building and framing by revealing (1) how journalists perceive their networks (networks to journalists), (2) how they translate real life networks into symbolic networks within news coverage (networks from journalists), (3) how source networks vary across time and election contexts (networks across time), and (4) how such networks influence coverage outcomes. It furthers our understanding of the role interdependence plays in news construction and suggests the incorporation of network concepts and measures will increase our understanding of the news production process.

New information and communication technologies are often viewed as a panacea to thecurrent crisis of representative democracy. The growing number of publications on thedemocratization effects of the use of new information and communication technologies (ICT)in governance focuses on social media and emerging online public spheres. This thesisexamines the democratic potential of ICT from the supply side represented by the concepts ofe-governance and e-government. In the context of destabilization of political communicationsystem, e-governance as a top-down initiative has a better chance to serve as a congregativeforce formalizing institutional procedures between the multi-public spheres and the decisionmakers and, thus, democratizing political communication. The first part of the thesis pullstogether the key concepts of electronic transformation – e-governance, e-government and edemocracy–andanalyzesthemwithinabroadercontextofnewgovernance.Thedemocratictest,based on evaluation against Robert Dahl’s five democratic criteria and democraticdeficits of new governance, indicates numerous negative consequences of e-governance forrepresentative democracy. Moreover, implemented in different institutional settings ofdemocratic and non-democratic regimes, e-governance varies in the level of development andimpact on political communication and political systems in general. To verify theoreticalconclusions empirically, a global study was conducted for two points in time – 2003 and2008; it examined the relationship between e-governance and democracy controlling for theimpact of telecommunication infrastructure development. Hypothesis testing revealed that thelevel of e-governance development and its correlation with democracy strongly varied inrelation to the type of political system. The findings suggest that it is premature to ascribedemocratization effects to e-governance disregarding existing institutional settings.

The purpose of this research was to examine how non-Aboriginal Canadians might respond if the label genocide is used to describe the historical mistreatment of the Aboriginal Peoples’ of Canada. In two studies, I manipulated the perception of Residential Schools as genocide by informing (or not informing) undergraduate student participants that some people believe what happened should be labeled genocide. I also assessed the potential moderating role of knowledge by either measuring participants’ pre-existing knowledge of Residential Schools or manipulating how much participants learned about Residential Schools through a passage. Overall, participants’ reactions to the label depended on what they knew about Residential Schools such that participants with a superficial level of knowledge responded defensively to a description of Residential Schools as genocide, while participants with no knowledge or high levels of knowledge responded positively. Findings provide theoretical insight into how knowledge affects perpetrator group members’ reactions to historical harms.

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The purpose of this research was to examine how non-Aboriginal Canadians might respond if the label genocide is used to describe the historical mistreatment of the Aboriginal Peoples’ of Canada. In two studies, I manipulated the perception of Residential Schools as genocide by informing (or not informing) undergraduate student participants that some people believe what happened should be labeled genocide. I also assessed the potential moderating role of knowledge by either measuring participants’ pre-existing knowledge of Residential Schools or manipulating how much participants learned about Residential Schools through a passage. Overall, participants’ reactions to the label depended on what they knew about Residential Schools such that participants with a superficial level of knowledge responded defensively to a description of Residential Schools as genocide, while participants with no knowledge or high levels of knowledge responded positively. Findings provide theoretical insight into how knowledge affects perpetrator group members’ reactions to historical harms.