This dissertation is a study of political realignment from a rhetorical perspective. Specifically, I use the lens of doxa to rhetorically explore how basic assumptions regarding the role of government shift over time, and how crisis narratives are used to usher in these doxastic transformations. I explore the elections of Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama as markers of such shifts. In chapter one, I provide a statement of purpose and justification for my study, along with a description of the historical contexts of the 1932, 1980, and 2008 presidential elections. Chapter two includes a literature review, in which I discuss scholarship related to political realignment, the rhetorical situation, doxa, and crisis rhetoric. I also provide a description of my method of rhetorical criticism, and an explanation of how the analysis chapters are structured. Chapter three is my first analysis chapter. Using 55 news and opinion articles, I construct a doxa of the Roosevelt era, a doxa of the Reagan era, and a doxa of the Obama era. Creating these doxai provides a context for understanding how each respective candidate challenged the doxa of his time, and sought to usher in a transformation of the role of government. In chapter four, I explore five speeches delivered by each respective candidate to examine how these doxastic transformations are rhetorically manifest. I also investigate how crisis narratives are employed in the service of ushering in a doxastic transformation. In chapter five, I explore the implications of my analysis, and reflect upon limitations of this study and possibilities for future research. In sum, this study provides insight into the ways in which basic assumptions regarding the role of government change over time, and the implications of these shifts.

In this study, I examine how congressional candidates present gendered identities on their campaign websites. In my theory of candidate gendered identity, drawn from literature on presentation of the self and gender performativity, I argue that candidates construct their personal identities in relation to universally understood archetypes, which stand for ideal representations of real-world characters or roles. Through an in-depth content analysis of the biographical pages of 2010 U.S. House of Representatives candidate campaign websites, I examine how candidates construct and perform a range of gender-based archetypal roles in various electoral contexts. Specifically, I look at how such factors as electoral context, candidate partisan identification, and incumbency status (or challenger status) determine the range of archetypal roles a candidate might choose to perform. What I find is that candidate gender matters, but only for some candidates in some contexts. For many candidates, these factors have an interacting effect on the manner in which a candidate presents his or her gender-based identity. This study contributes to our current understanding of how political candidates behave and present themselves in their political campaigns. In their efforts to connect with and gain the trust of potential voters, candidates present their personal identities through the performances of familiar archetypes with which those voters can easily identify.

Criminal violence is one of the top policy concerns among citizens throughout many Latin American countries. Existing research would predict that political parties will exploit the issue in their campaigns to win electoral support. And yet, there are elections in which the issue of criminal violence is downplayed, even in countries with high levels of violence. Why are parties avoiding the issue of crime in contexts with high crime levels? Are parties leaving votes on the table by avoiding the issue or are they working within constraints that have not yet been fully theorized? In this dissertation, I provide some answers to these questions. The overarching argument is that when criminal violence is seen as intractable, the issue becomes a liability for political parties in their campaigns. The persistence of criminal violence gives citizens opportunities to learn about the ability of parties to manage crime and about the effectiveness of anti-crime policies at reducing crime. Empirically, I focus on the case of Mexico. If parties are indeed constrained in their campaign messaging by a loss of credibility over the issue, then we should observe parties downplaying crime related ads in their campaigns, especially in areas with chronic crime. In the first paper, I use an original data-set that I built by using web-scraping tools to download all the radio and TV ads from the archive of Mexico's National Electoral Institute and by applying natural language processing techniques to classify the campaign ads by topic, particularly by whether they emphasize crime related issues or not. The data set includes the texts of over 30,000 campaign ads played by parties in elections during the period under study. I find that from 2012 to 2018, political parties play crime related ads fewer times in states where homicides have remained high or have been increasing. The second paper uses the data on campaign ads as its main independent variable to identify the effects of crime related campaign ads on the vote shares of party coalitions. In this paper, I argue that in contexts of persistent crime, campaigning on crime will be a liability for parties that have been in office and have not been able to deliver improvements in public safety. Incumbent parties that have staked their reputations on fighting crime will be especially vulnerable to these effects. Over time, if criminal violence remains unresolved, voters will discount electoral promises to address the issue, potentially moving on to other issues. I test this argument using a research design that exploits differential radio and TV coverage at the electoral precinct level. I find that as chronic crime increases, increases in crime related campaign ads decrease the vote share of the PAN in 2012 but increase that of the PRI and AMLO. In 2018, however, these effects are weakened. Finally, the third paper uses a survey experiment that tests to what extent anti-crime policies help politicians cultivate a favorable image by transmitting desirable characteristics like effectiveness. In the experiment, repressive anti-crime policies increase perceptions of a politician’s effectiveness but only insofar as respondents think that military interventions reduce violence and that criminal groups are to blame for it. Against the conventional wisdom in the literature, I find that preventative policies also increase perceptions of politician effectiveness and the effect remains even among those who blame the government and where local homicide rates are increasing. Together, the three papers highlight the importance of considering the histories of criminal violence when studying the effects of crime on politics.

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A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master’s of Technology: Fine Arts, Durban University of Technology, 2013. / This study seeks to examine the exponential growth of social media technology as a key component in recent American political campaigning, as well as its use and impact on the larger disciplines of marketing and branding. Adopting the approach of a case study with the focus firmly on the current American president, Barack Obama, the study identifies the key media and technologies used in the build-up to the 2008 American presidential elections in order to unpack and understand how such media channels, technological platforms and patterns were successfully utilised. References are also made to the concepts of ‘branding’ and ‘super branding’ in the discussion, and to the myriad ways in which social media has helped create and roll-out what has since become commonly known as ‘brand Obama’. To provide a framework for the discussion and in order to further understand the rapid growth and proliferation of social media on the political campaigning landscape, a comparison is made with the 2004 American presidential election campaign. This, it is posited, will assist us understand the drivers of new media technologies especially as they are used to create and impact positively on the growth of political super brands.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Nuwe media het ’n duidelike impak op die manier waarop moderne politieke partye en partyleiers hulle verkiesingsveldtogte bestuur. Hierdie studie fokus daarom op die vraag: Hoe is nuwe media tydens die 2014 Suid- Afrikaanse nasionale verkiesing gebruik? Dit word gedoen deur konteks te gee aan wat nuwe media behels, hoe dit in die moderne politiek gebruik word, en wat die impak is wat nuwe media op verkiesings en verkiesingsveldtogte het. Drie gevallestudies, die Obama-veldtog, asook die 2014 verkiesings in Indië en Brasilië, word gebruik om spesifieke elemente oor die impak wat nuwe media op verkiesings het, uit te wys. Die ontleding word dan gebruik om ’n kriteria-raamwerk te skep waarteen spesifieke Suid-Afrikaanse politieke partye se gebruik van sosiale media in die 2014 verkiesing gemeet word, om hulle sukses al dan nie daarmee te bepaal. Die sukseskriteria maak dit moontlik om politieke partye in ’n rangorde te plaas en punte aan hulle toe te ken. Die punte-telling, uit ’n totaal van 50, word dan gebruik om te bepaal waarom die partye sukses behaal het, of nie. Nog 50 punte word toegeken op die basis van ’n subjektiewe oordeel oor taalgebruiken aanslag asook geteikende kieserskommunikasie op nuwe media platforms, meer spesifiek Twitter. Dit word gedoen deur insigte uit ’n studie van relevante literatuur oor die verkiesingveldtog, Suid-Afrika se demografiese en geografiese verskille asook om te oordeel of die partye wat in die studie bestudeer word kommunikasie strategieë benut het om die verskillende groeperings van kiesers te teiken. Die studie bevind dat die spesifieke partye, gemeet teen die raamwerk vir kriteria vir sukses, sowel as die subjektiewe opinie oor taalgebruik en aanslag in kommunikasie, hulle sleg van hul taak gekwyt het in die 2014 nasionale verkiesing in Suid-Afrika. Hulle het in meeste gevalle, met die DA as ’n uitsondering, nie geslaag om die nodige digitale-platforms te vestig en om suksesvol deur die nuwe media platforms te kommunikeer nie. Hulle het ook nie geslaag om die apatie van die Suid-Afrikaanse jeug aan te spreek nie en daar was ’n gebrek aan geteikende en relevante kommunikasie met spesifieke sosiale groepe. Die partye het ook nie daarin geslaag om die kiesers wat partyloos is, of van party wil verander, ’n beter opsie te bied nie. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: New media is seen as having a big impact on the way modern political parties run their campaigns during election periods. This paper focuses on answering the question: How was new media used in the 2014 South African national election? It does this by creating a context regarding the understanding of what new media is, how it is used in politics, and what impact it has on electioneering and political campaign strategies. Three case studies, the Obama campaign and the 2014 Indian and Brazilian elections, are used to highlight how new media has impacted on elections. This analysis is then framed into a set of criteria for success that is used to measure the chosen South African political parties against, to determine whether or not they used new media well in the 2014 South African national election. A set of criteria for success thus makes it possible to rank and assign points to each party and from those points determine whether that party used new media well or poorly. Each party is given a score out of 50. The other 50 points were awarded based on a subjective view regarding the actual use of language and focused voter communication on new media platforms, specifically Twitter. This was done by looking at the insights garnered from the literature regarding electoral campaigning, South Africa’s demographic and geographic differences and seeing if the parties analysed in this study employed communication strategies to target these voter differences. This study found that the parties identified, when measured against the set of criteria for success that was created and the subjective views of the way in which the parties communicated, did not use new media well in the 2014 South African national election. They failed in most cases, with the DA being the exception, to build the necessary online platforms or to communicate effectively through new media platforms. There was also too little focus on addressing voter apathy in the youth and there was a lack of targeted communication to specific social groups. Parties also failed to present themselves as a viable alternative to voters who did not already identify with a party or those who were looking for an alternative party.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:11:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carolina Gonzalez Colombo Arnoldi Martini.pdf: 9719021 bytes, checksum: 2f0c46ca848a62773140741bc7b6067f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-12-13 / Since 2008 the social media are asserting themselves as a source of information and participation in presidential races, notably at Barack Obama s campaign. This new phenomenon was also used in Brazilian s 2010 election campaigns. There are numerous speculations about the use of these media during campaigns. There are some people saying that Brazilian s public that uses social network is selected, therefore directed only to a portion of the population and not so powerful as campaign s vehicle. On the other hand there are other people arguing that these media extend the accessibility of the population, making it the best ally of a candidate. Within this context the purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is scope for candidates act in the media during the electoral campaign to examine, whether voters are willing to receive the candidates in these networks to analyze, whether there was interest expertise and success in the use of these candidates media (Through the comparative analysis between the candidates). Therefore, I try to understand if there is an opportunity for candidates to take advantage of social networking tools for the campaigns and analysis if the on-line electoral voters have the same pattern of general electoral voters. Through authors like Christakis and Fowler for whom the Internet has made us hyper; Aggio Camilo, who campaigns broke with traditional barriers and jump in online spaces where most of the voters who used the Internet builds profiles, interact, and produces consumes information involvement, sharing and cooperation; Castells (2006) who proposes that the policy in contemporary society depends directly on the media, and Niklas Luhmann with his autopoise black boxes; intend to set guidelines that can tell us if there is one type of audience with its own characteristics in how they relate, but also to use the political-electoral information in favor of the candidate. The paper was based fundamental in the analysis of communication s strategies inside the social medias Facebook, Orkut and Twitter, by the main candidates to the presidency, Dilma Rousseff, José Serra and Marina Silva. The results were obtained in three steps. Analysis of electorate characteristics. Analysis of elector s voting intentions. Analysis of the interaction of the candidates within social networks, Facebook, Orkut and Twitter. Our findings indicate that there was interest by the population on issues related to political campaigns; there was a large audience for the candidates within social networks; there was differentiation between the candidates within the networks studied, and Jose Serra was the candidate who obtained the best performance overall / Desde 2008, as mídias sociais online vêm se fixando como uma fonte de informação e participação nas disputas presidenciais, marcadamente com início na campanha de Barack Obama. Em 2010, esse fenômeno até então inédito no Brasil, também foi utilizado nas campanhas eleitorais. Alguns afirmam que o público brasileiro das redes sociais é selecionado, portanto, direcionado apenas a uma parcela da população, não sendo um bom veículo de campanha. Por outro lado, outros defendem que essas mídias ampliam a acessibilidade da população, tornando-se o melhor aliado de um candidato. Dentro desse contexto, a proposta deste trabalho é analisar se existe campo para os candidatos atuarem nas mídias eleitorais durante a campanha, analisar se os eleitores estão dispostos a receber os candidatos nessas redes, analisar se houve interesse, atuação e sucesso pelos candidatos no uso dessas mídias (será realizada analise comparativa entre os candidatos). Desta forma, procuro compreender se existe oportunidade para os candidatos usufruírem das redes sociais como ferramentas de campanha e verificar se existe o mesmo padrão dos eleitores em geral com os eleitores on-line. Através de autores como Christakis e Fowler para quem a internet nos tornou hiperconectados; Camilo Aggio, para quem as campanhas romperam com as barreiras tradicionais, e se lançam nos espaços online onde grande parte dos eleitores que utiliza a internet constrói perfis, interage, produz e consome informações de envolvimento, compartilhamento e cooperação; Castells (2006) que nos propõe que na sociedade contemporânea a política depende diretamente da mídia; e Niklas Luhman com sua autopoise das caixas pretas; pretendo traçar diretrizes que possam nos indicar se existe um tipo de audiência com características próprias na maneira de se relacionar, como também de utilizar as informações político-eleitorais em favor do candidato. O estudo se baseou fundamentalmente na análise das estratégias de comunicação dentro das mídias sociais Facebook, Orkut e Twitter, pelos principais candidatos à Presidência da República, Dilma Rousseff, José Serra e Marina Silva. Os resultados foram obtidos através de três etapas. Análise das características do eleitorado. Análise das intenções de voto dos eleitores. Análise da interação dos candidatos dentro das redes sociais, Facebook, Orkut e Twitter. Os achados deste estudo indicaram que a existe interesse por parte da população em assuntos relacionados às campanhas políticas; existe uma ampla audiência para os candidatos dentro das redes sociais; houve diferenciação entre os candidatos dentro das redes estudadas, tendo José Serra como o candidato que obteve o melhor desempenho no geral

<p>What role do state party organizations play in twenty-first century American politics? What is the nature of the relationship between the state and national party organizations in contemporary elections? These questions frame the three studies presented in this dissertation. More specifically, I examine the organizational development of the state party organizations and the strategic interactions and connections between the state and national party organizations in contemporary elections. </p><p>In the first empirical chapter, I argue that the Internet Age represents a significant transitional period for state party organizations. Using data collected from surveys of state party leaders, this chapter reevaluates and updates existing theories of party organizational strength and demonstrates the importance of new indicators of party technological capacity to our understanding of party organizational development in the early twenty-first century. In the second chapter, I ask whether the national parties utilize different strategies in deciding how to allocate resources to state parties through fund transfers and through the 50-state-strategy party-building programs that both the Democratic and Republican National Committees advertised during the 2010 elections. Analyzing data collected from my 2011 state party survey and party-fund-transfer data collected from the Federal Election Commission, I find that the national parties considered a combination of state and national electoral concerns in directing assistance to the state parties through their 50-state strategies, as opposed to the strict battleground-state strategy that explains party fund transfers. In my last chapter, I examine the relationships between platforms issued by Democratic and Republican state and national parties and the strategic considerations that explain why state platforms vary in their degree of similarity to the national platform. I analyze an extensive platform dataset, using cluster analysis and document similarity measures to compare platform content across the 1952 to 2014 period. The analysis shows that, as a group, Democratic and Republican state platforms exhibit greater intra-party homogeneity and inter-party heterogeneity starting in the early 1990s, and state-national platform similarity is higher in states that are key players in presidential elections, among other factors. Together, these three studies demonstrate the significance of the state party organizations and the state-national party partnership in contemporary politics.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis is a study of the campaign tactics of the Arkansas gubernatorial elections as revealed by the 1948, 1950 and 1952 campaigns.

Twitter, a microblogging platform, has been increasingly used as a tool for political election campaigns. In an attempt to persuade people to vote for them, candidates and political parties worldwide have begun to incorporate Twitter in their campaigns to disseminate campaign information, promote themselves, and mobilize voters. In the 2016 U.S presidential election, Donald Trump had actively utilized Twitter to promote his campaign and convince voters to support him, which helped him earn a strong presence and huge popularity on Twitter. Eventually Trump even successfully got elected as the 45th US president. Although the rise of Twitter in political campaigns has been studied by researches from different disciplines, there have been very few studies focusing on Donald Trump or his communication performance on social media in the 2016 US presidential campaign. Besides, it is found that there is a lack of studying candidates’ social media use from the perspective of persuasive communication. In order to reveal how Donald Trump was making use of Twitter to influence audiences’ attitudes, this paper will present a content analysis of Donald Trump’s Twitter use from the perspective of persuasive communication. Specifically, the study will investigate the characteristics of messages demonstrated from Donald Trump’s tweets, and examine whether his messages placed an emphasis on certain aspects. The aim of this study is to offer insights into Donald Trump’s Twitter use, particularly about his persuasive communication on Twitter during the political election campaign.