This thesis seeks to understand the relationship between county level economic voting and county level economic voting by demographic group on county level vote shares for U.S. presidential elections. Using an entity and time fixed effects regression model, I study the effects that county level growth in real per capita personal income and unemployment rate change have on county level two-party vote share for the Democratic Party. Additionally, I observe the responsiveness of a county’s voting behavior due to the demographic makeup of that specific county. I then compare my initial results to those of Eisenberg and Ketcham (2004) for the 1992-2000 presidential elections. I utilize the same models for the 2004-2012 elections to compare these results to those from the 1992-2000 elections. Additionally, I rerun my model for the 1992-2000 presidential elections, after restricting my economic data to non-outliers, to study the effects that outliers in economic conditions have on my original results.

Through a content analysis, the proposed thesis examines instances of social and verbal aggression within the 2016 US presidential primary and general election debates. Previous studies regarding social aggression have shown that its primary use has been to "œget ahead" in competitive and hostile environments. While acts of social and verbal aggression have been analyzed in interpersonal behavior and mediated entertainment scholarship, it has yet to be examined in the political spectrum, where candidates engage in clash to suppress their opponents. The current study argues that analyzing social and verbal aggression in televised political debates will help broaden the concept of political clash and provide foundational material to the study of this behavioral and rhetorical trend in American political communication. Additionally, examining social aggression at the political stage will encourage further research examining voters' attitudes towards similar political discourse and the cognitive effects that social aggression has on audiences.Sampling two debates from each primary debate segment (Republican and Democratic) and general election debates, the study was able to compare results across debate segments, as well as longitudinally within debate segments. The analysis found that aggression increased longitudinally. Although the Republican primary debates featured more aggression than the Democratic debates, forms of social and verbal aggression were very similar between the two. As was expected, the general election debates included more aggression than the two primary debate segments combined. Donald Trump was the greatest perpetrator of aggression among all primary and general election candidates.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:14:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Adriana Mompean.pdf: 2058401 bytes, checksum: cffa616e830024addd5c796fb1361bb5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-16 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research investigates how The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Folha de S. Paulo built in their contracts of communication some media themes during the election campaign for the US President in 2008, which culminated with the victory of the first American black president. We focused our attention on understanding how such newspapers approached the political position of Barack Obama against his Republican opponent, John McCain. The reports of both US newspapers plus those of the Brazilian one have been discursively analyzed in a time frame that goes from June to November of that year. The aim was to investigate the themes present in the reports and editorials and how their discourses have been built around Barack Obama personality. It was also analyzed the dissemination of narratives structured by the American media in the Brazilian newspaper. The discursive analysis chosen had the support of theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, whose bases on discourse and hegemony were essential to understand the discursive formations adopted by the print media and the political campaigns of both candidates, the Democratic and the Republican. From this approach we found the nodal points around which have been constituted the discourses of confrontation of both candidates according to the newspapers. As a result, we made explicit the discursive strategies employed in communicative contracts listed in our corpus as an effort to understand the construction of the so-called political myth "Obama" in the print media. It is expected that this research could contribute to deepen the discussion about the press coverage once the presidential election in the United States causes great interest in the worldwide media, also influencing the global news production / Esta pesquisa investiga como os jornais The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times e Folha de S.Paulo construíram em seus contratos de comunicação os temas midiáticos durante a campanha eleitoral para a presidência dos Estados Unidos em 2008, que culminou com a vitória do primeiro presidente negro norte-americano. Centramos a atenção em compreender como os jornais abordaram a postura política de Barack Obama frente ao seu adversário republicano, John McCain. Foram analisadas discursivamente as reportagens dos dois jornais norte-americanos e do brasileiro, em um recorte temporal que compreende os meses de junho a novembro daquele ano. O objetivo foi investigar as temáticas presentes nas reportagens e editoriais e como os discursos foram construídos em relação a Barack Obama. Também foi analisada a ocorrência da disseminação destas narrativas estruturadas pela mídia norte-americana no jornal brasileiro. A análise discursiva escolhida ampara-se nas teorias de Ernesto Laclau e Chantal Mouffe, cujos fundamentos sobre discurso e hegemonia foram essenciais para a compreensão das formações discursivas adotadas pela mídia impressa e pelas campanhas políticas dos candidatos democrata e republicano. A partir desse enfoque encontramos os pontos nodais ao redor dos quais se constituíram os discursos de enfrentamento dos candidatos nos jornais. Como resultado, explicitamos as estratégias discursivas empregadas nos contratos comunicativos enunciados em nosso corpus, em um esforço de entendimento de como ocorreu a construção do mito político Obama na mídia impressa em questão. A expectativa é que esta pesquisa contribua para aprofundar o debate sobre a cobertura jornalística realizada pela mídia impressa, visto que o pleito presidencial nos Estados Unidos desperta grande interesse nos meios de comunicação de todo mundo e influencia toda a produção jornalística mundial

We study the impact of US presidential election TV debates on intraday exchange rates of 96 currencies from 1996 to 2016. Expectations about protectionist measures are the main transmission channel of debate outcomes. Currencies of countries with high levels of bilateral foreign trade with the US depreciate if the election probability of the protectionist candidate increases during the debate. We rationalize our results in a model where a debate victory of a protectionist candidate raises expectations about future tariffs and reduces future net exports to the US, resulting in relative depreciation of currencies with high bilateral trade integration.