Political representatives’ democratic legitimacy rests on their ability to cover the distance between themselves and citizens. Representatives must avoid being perceived as distant and aloof from the needs and wishes of those they represent. The aim of this thesis is to increase the understanding of how new forms of communication with citizens, through participatory initiatives as well as political blogging, are used by politicians in their roles as representatives. Underlying this aim is the question of whether new forms of communication can contribute to reducing the distance between representatives and citizens. The central argument of this thesis is that such types of communication aid representative democracy only to the extent that they offer representatives efficient channels for performing functions related to political representation. This study presents a theoretical framework that identifies potential functions of communication between representatives and citizens for political representation. Its empirical analyses, presented in five articles, find that representatives widely communicate with citizens through participatory initiatives and political blogging to aid their roles as political representatives. Furthermore, results show that representatives’ communication is significantly determined by strategic, practical, and normative factors. The representatives are found to act strategically as communication practices are adapted to accommodate their particular situations, needs and normative orientations. Keywords:

The aim of this study is to investigate the existing communicative and informative work on reaching out to citizens about the service concept of governmental service offices which includes the swedish agencies; Skatteverket, Försäkringskassan and Pensionsmyndigheten. The study will be based on the perspective of officials operating within the current area. Furthermore, we also aim to examine which motives and which risks that exist with developing this work in conjunction with the transfer of responsibility to a new authority. The motives are examined from a citizen's perspective with a focus on political communication as a democratic tool in the modern society. The study is based on interviews with managers within the organization of governmental service offices and managers at the new authority - with the purpose to gain their perspectives about this communication aspects. A qualitative text analysis as a method has been used to analyze the interviews. The primary findings of the empirical study show that the public's knowledge about the concept of service offices are low as a result of a limited marketing. It also shows that there are motives to increase the extent of communication and information about the service concept, in order to raise awareness about what services are available at the governmental service offices. On the other hand, the research also indicates issues with an increased marketing of the service offices as service concept, instead of marketing the agencies individually, which requires consideration in the matter.

In the last twenty years, the way in which individuals consume news about politics has changed. As the internet becomes increasingly accessible, convenient, and inexpensive, more consumers than ever before choose to get their news online. As this migration continues, an understanding of online news consumption becomes increasingly important to the study of media systems. There are several ways in which the internet can be truly transformative - this thesis investigates some of these claims as they pertain to the comparative study of media systems. The primary dimension of analysis presented here investigates the internet's role in facilitating the homogenisation, or convergence of domestic media systems. Using a historical institutionalist approach, this thesis examines internet news in the United States and the United Kingdom, two cases at the centre of this debate. To adequately reflect the diversity present in online news consumption, this project uses a dataset comprised of news stories about two national election campaigns accessed via search engines, news aggregators, and social media. The analysis presented here demonstrates the complexity of the online news environment, highlighting key areas like source distribution and regional news content where path dependency has persisted despite the transition to online news, and those areas such as regional news sources where distinguishing between the two cases is more difficult. Where this is the case, the thesis explores alternative the explanations of Americanisation and technological determinism. Variance between Google, News360, and NewsWhip data collected for this thesis demonstrates how the way in which consumers get their news influences how converged or path dependent the media system appears.

The nature of the popular allegation that President John F. Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy is addressed in this thesis. An answer is sought to the question, "What qualities of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory account for its relatively widespread popular appeal?" The author seeks to demonstrate that the Kennedy conspiracy theory has attained the status of myth in contemporary culture. First, a theoretical framework based upon previous research in the area of myth and rhetoric is constructed. This framework is designed to aid the researcher in identifying mythic discourse by establishing both formal and functional criteria. Next the framework is applied to the Kennedy conspiracy theory as manifested in various articles of popular culture including the Oliver Stone film, JFK. Finally, the ascendancy of the Kennedy assassination to the status of myth is explained through a demonstration of its consistency with both contemporary and ancient mythic themes.

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.

It did not take too long before the politicians found the social media sites Twitter and Facebook as good ways to connect to the people and spread their politics. However, due to the somewhat personal origin of these sites, how much of their personal lives do they include within their political reasons for being there? How do they balance the combination of presenting their political and professional self and the personal self? That is what this thesis aim to find out. This is not the first research about political communication on social media, but most of the research in this field has focused on the social media communication during an election. This research however, aims to expand this knowledge by gathering material from a non-election period in order to investigate the day-to-day political communication on social media. Due to the length and structure of this thesis I limit my aim and topic to investigating one politicians social media use and thereby making it a case study. Using an interpretive coding with a grounded approach method I investigated Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s communication on Twitter and Facebook during the year 2012. By applying theories about visibility, the presentation of the self, image creation and political communication, the aim is to understand how Stoltenberg use these social media sites. The focus will be on the content of the communication, the mentioned balance between the professional politician and the personal person, and lastly what of these that create the most engagement from the followers in terms of “likes” and retweets. I find and argue that the balance between the Twitter and Facebook content is relatively even, consisting mostly of professional and informational content, while the balance between the professional Stoltenberg and the personal Jens is uneven in favour for the professional. However, due to Stoltenberg’s popular appeal and “folkelig” image, the person Jens Stoltenberg becomes visible on the sites as well.

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.