While conventional wisdom suggests political ads are often misleading, this is the first known study to quantify the prevalence of inaccuracies in political advertising. This study also examines how and explains why the U.S. news media provide coverage of political advertising in the manner that they do. A multi-method research design includes a content analysis of the television ads from the 2008 presidential election, secondary data analysis of the National Annenberg Election Survey 2008, semantic network analysis of press coverage of political television ads from the 2008 election, as well as in-depth interviews with scholars, practitioners, journalists and lawyers having expertise in the issues surrounding political advertising. Of all the English-language paid political ads that aired on television during the 2008 general election, just under 30% contained at least one inaccuracy based upon the ratings of FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com. This figure, however, is likely a gross under representation of the prevalence of inaccuracies in political ads from 2008 because most of the ads (70%) were never evaluated by these purportedly elite fact-checkers. Among ads assessed, however, more than three out of four of the evaluated claims had some degree of inaccuracy. Furthermore, ads containing at least one inaccuracy aired twice as often on television as the ads that were never evaluated. To the degree inaccurate ads air on television more frequently, then, there is cause for concern particularly given the broadcasters' mandate to serve the public interest. Moreover, while political interest supporters were one of the groups most likely to have inaccuracies in their ads, nearly half of their spending was in the last weeks of the election contributing to most of their ads going without evaluation. Thus, in a post-Citizens United world, attempts by fact-checkers to review the onslaught of PAC ads during the final weeks of the 2012 election (and the final weeks of future elections) will be crucial in combating inaccuracies. This study also extends the work of Geer (2006) who offered an organized review of negativity in political advertising. Rather than finding support for the hypothesis that negative attack ads are more accurate than advocacy ads, the evidence challenges Geer's defense of negativity. Among the ads evaluated by the fact-checkers, inaccuracies were significantly more likely to be present in attack rather than either advocacy or contrast ads. While Geer may have demonstrated that negative ads offer more substantive evidence, simply because evidence is presented does not mean the evidence is accurate. In the more provocative ads of 2008 designed to gain attention, inaccuracies were rife. Moreover, rather than the mainstream news media fixation on political ad negativity, the evidence in the forthcoming pages suggests attention is more warranted concerning the accuracy of the claims within the ads regardless of the ad's tone. A first step toward a theory of strategic misinformation is also offered by demonstrating that it is possible to predict which political ads were more likely to draw an inaccurate rating from the fact-checkers. Holding all other variables constant, it was attack ads that had the highest odds of being evaluated as inaccurate with contrast ads also having a high likelihood. These predictions also confirmed that as the campaign progressed, the odds of an ad being rated inaccurate declined which was a function of ads not being evaluated. Furthermore, it was revealed that a loss of momentum or a decline in public perceptions of candidate characteristics increased the odds of candidates drawing inaccurate ratings in their attack ads. In extending understanding of how news media cover candidate campaigns when political advertising is referenced, a plurality of media outlets from the over two dozen in the study were characterized foremost by their focus on campaign strategy rather than fact-checking. One cluster, however, emerged as AdWatchers - those committed to using political ads to scrutinize the accuracy of what candidates and their surrogates were claiming. Nonetheless, the economic realities of adwatching are that there is a so called "chilling effect" because it is expensive, time-consuming, and divisive. Furthermore, the dearth of watchdog ad reporting enables broadcast stations to continue airing ads that may be false while preserving their ability to claim ignorance about the content when faced with regulatory compliance issues. Thus, the political ads most likely to air are the ones with inaccuracies. Chances are the ads will go unscrutinized by the mainstream news media while television stations profit from their proliferation. / Mass Media and Communication

In political campaigning substantial resources are spent on voter mobilization, that is, on identifying and influencing as many people as possible to vote. Campaigns use statistical tools for deciding whom to target ("microtargeting"). In this paper we describe a nonpartisan campaign that aims at increasing overall turnout using the example of the 2004 US presidential election. Based on a real data set of 19,634 eligible voters from Ohio, we introduce a modern statistical framework well suited for carrying out the main tasks of voter targeting in a single sweep: predicting an individual's turnout (or support) likelihood for a particular cause, party or candidate as well as data-driven voter segmentation. Our framework, which we refer to as LORET (for LOgistic REgression Trees), contains standard methods such as logistic regression and classification trees as special cases and allows for a synthesis of both techniques. For our case study, we explore various LORET models with different regressors in the logistic model components and different partitioning variables in the tree components; we analyze them in terms of their predictive accuracy and compare the effect of using the full set of available variables against using only a limited amount of information. We find that augmenting a standard set of variables (such as age and voting history) with additional predictor variables (such as the household composition in terms of party affiliation) clearly improves predictive accuracy. We also find that LORET models based on tree induction beat the unpartitioned models. Furthermore, we illustrate how voter segmentation arises from our framework and discuss the resulting profiles from a targeting point of view. (authors' abstract)

<p>The Swedish election year of 2010 has just begun and the political actors are mobilizing their communication efforts to win the votes of the public. The political campaigns of 2010 have the potential to be the first where a new channel for political communication has the potential to make a difference – the social media. This paper aims to describe in what ways a Member of Parliament, Nina Larsson (FP), together with the PR-agency Hello Clarice are using social media to conduct political campaigning on the web. It also aims to study if the professional consultants of Hello Clarice have any influence over Nina Larsson’s political communication.</p><p>The theoretical framework which is the base for this study are theories of an extended public sphere in the age of mediation. The information age has created new forms of interaction between humans over geographical distance which also is a key starting-point in Manuel Castells theories of the network society. This theory is therefore a theoretical foundation of this paper. The paper also uses theories of political communication and the idea of the professionalization of political communication. The research was conducted with a netnographic approach with observational studies of Nina Larsson’s two blogs and her activities on the social network Twitter. As a compliment to the observational studies research has also been conducted trough qualitative interviews with both Nina Larsson and representatives from the PR-agency Hello Clarice.</p><p>The results show that Nina Larsson’s political communication has to a degree been affected by the professional consultants of Hello Clarice. The paper has also shown an indication of the potential of social media in use of strategic political communication, in which different channels serve with different purposes. Our research has also shown that in this specific case social media can decrease the communicative distance between politician and citizen.</p> / <p>Valåret 2010 har precis tagit sin början och de politiska aktörerna mobiliserar sina kommunikationsinsatser för att på bästa sätt kunna vinna väljarnas förtroende och i slutändan röster. Årets valrörelse kan också bli den första där en ny kanal för politisk kommunikation är av betydelse – de sociala medierna. Denna uppsats syftar till att beskriva på vilka sätt en riksdagsledamot, Nina Larsson (FP), tillsammans med en kommunikationsbyrå, Hello Clarice, arbetar för att bedriva politiskt kampanjarbete i de sociala medierna. Uppsatsens mål är också att undersöka om kommunikationsbyrån påverkar de politiska budskap som Nina Larsson kommunicerar i de sociala medierna. </p><p>För att skapa förståelse för det som studeras baserar sig studien på ett övergripande plan i olika teoretiska synsätt om utvidgningen av det offentliga rummet som skett i samband med medieutvecklingen. Informationssamhällets utbredning har skapat nya förutsättningar för interaktion mellan människor i ett geografiskt avstånd. Manuel Castells teorier om nätverkssamhällets framväxt, i vilket dessa interaktiva aktiviteter sker, är därför också en övergripande teoretisk utgångspunkt för studien. För att skapa förståelse för de aktiviteter som studeras grundar sig studien också i teorier om politisk kommunikation och tankesätt om professionaliseringen av den politiska kommunikationen. En netnografisk ansats har använts för att bedriva observationsstudier av Nina Larssons två bloggar och av hennes konto på mikrobloggen Twitter. Studien har också kompletterats genom kvalitativa intervjuer med Nina Larsson och med representanter från kommunikationsbyrån Hello Clarice. </p><p>Studiens resultat visar att Nina Larssons politiska budskap delvis har påverkats av kommunikationsbyrån Hello Clarice. Studien visar också de sociala mediernas potential för att bedriva strategisk politisk kommunikation där de olika kanalerna som Nina Larsson kontrollerar tjänar olika syften. Syften som sammantaget ska stärka de politiska mål som Nina Larsson har. Våra observationer av Nina Larssons kanaler visar också att de sociala medierna kan fungera som ett verktyg för att minska det kommunikativa avståndet mellan medborgare och folkvald, vilket i detta specifika fall visat sig genom att Nina Larsson visat en vilja till dubbelriktad kommunikation.</p>

As China’s economic and military power develops and expands, it has been focusing recent efforts on upgrading its soft power in order to quell concerns and apprehensions about its rise. As the two most powerful nations in the world, China and the United States have both attached great importance to Sino-U.S. relations, recognizing that the structure of the future global community will be largely dependent upon these two countries effectively collaborating in shaping the global structure and improving global issues. Facing an American public that views China as a threat and competitor, as well as Western media that consistently paints China in a negative light, the Chinese Communist Party has realized the need to reach out to the American populace and facilitate people-to-people ties, increasing its soft power in the country and thus facilitating a stronger bilateral relationship. This thesis reviews three areas of China’s soft power push in the United States: cultural diplomacy, which includes creating more educational opportunities, building Confucius Institutes, organizing cultural events, and increasing diplomatic outreach; media campaigning and propaganda through news, television, radio, and the internet; and congressional lobbying.

The Swedish election year of 2010 has just begun and the political actors are mobilizing their communication efforts to win the votes of the public. The political campaigns of 2010 have the potential to be the first where a new channel for political communication has the potential to make a difference – the social media. This paper aims to describe in what ways a Member of Parliament, Nina Larsson (FP), together with the PR-agency Hello Clarice are using social media to conduct political campaigning on the web. It also aims to study if the professional consultants of Hello Clarice have any influence over Nina Larsson’s political communication. The theoretical framework which is the base for this study are theories of an extended public sphere in the age of mediation. The information age has created new forms of interaction between humans over geographical distance which also is a key starting-point in Manuel Castells theories of the network society. This theory is therefore a theoretical foundation of this paper. The paper also uses theories of political communication and the idea of the professionalization of political communication. The research was conducted with a netnographic approach with observational studies of Nina Larsson’s two blogs and her activities on the social network Twitter. As a compliment to the observational studies research has also been conducted trough qualitative interviews with both Nina Larsson and representatives from the PR-agency Hello Clarice. The results show that Nina Larsson’s political communication has to a degree been affected by the professional consultants of Hello Clarice. The paper has also shown an indication of the potential of social media in use of strategic political communication, in which different channels serve with different purposes. Our research has also shown that in this specific case social media can decrease the communicative distance between politician and citizen. / Valåret 2010 har precis tagit sin början och de politiska aktörerna mobiliserar sina kommunikationsinsatser för att på bästa sätt kunna vinna väljarnas förtroende och i slutändan röster. Årets valrörelse kan också bli den första där en ny kanal för politisk kommunikation är av betydelse – de sociala medierna. Denna uppsats syftar till att beskriva på vilka sätt en riksdagsledamot, Nina Larsson (FP), tillsammans med en kommunikationsbyrå, Hello Clarice, arbetar för att bedriva politiskt kampanjarbete i de sociala medierna. Uppsatsens mål är också att undersöka om kommunikationsbyrån påverkar de politiska budskap som Nina Larsson kommunicerar i de sociala medierna.  För att skapa förståelse för det som studeras baserar sig studien på ett övergripande plan i olika teoretiska synsätt om utvidgningen av det offentliga rummet som skett i samband med medieutvecklingen. Informationssamhällets utbredning har skapat nya förutsättningar för interaktion mellan människor i ett geografiskt avstånd. Manuel Castells teorier om nätverkssamhällets framväxt, i vilket dessa interaktiva aktiviteter sker, är därför också en övergripande teoretisk utgångspunkt för studien. För att skapa förståelse för de aktiviteter som studeras grundar sig studien också i teorier om politisk kommunikation och tankesätt om professionaliseringen av den politiska kommunikationen. En netnografisk ansats har använts för att bedriva observationsstudier av Nina Larssons två bloggar och av hennes konto på mikrobloggen Twitter. Studien har också kompletterats genom kvalitativa intervjuer med Nina Larsson och med representanter från kommunikationsbyrån Hello Clarice.  Studiens resultat visar att Nina Larssons politiska budskap delvis har påverkats av kommunikationsbyrån Hello Clarice. Studien visar också de sociala mediernas potential för att bedriva strategisk politisk kommunikation där de olika kanalerna som Nina Larsson kontrollerar tjänar olika syften. Syften som sammantaget ska stärka de politiska mål som Nina Larsson har. Våra observationer av Nina Larssons kanaler visar också att de sociala medierna kan fungera som ett verktyg för att minska det kommunikativa avståndet mellan medborgare och folkvald, vilket i detta specifika fall visat sig genom att Nina Larsson visat en vilja till dubbelriktad kommunikation.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:20:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LuizGFB_DISSERT.pdf: 1669915 bytes, checksum: a65713acff606584b209652dbd9b093d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-22 / Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte / Given the importance that political science and social sciences give studies of voting behavior, this study sought to fill this academic discussion another important element that makes up this complex set. From the campaign trail to City Christmas in 2012 work has been undertaken analysis of rejection in the first and second rounds of this election. For this analysis we used two sources of data: quantitative research, conducted by Search Consult the first and second rounds of elections, and the use of focus group technique, performed in the second round of elections. Knowing the various factors that may affect the voting decision, but also the dynamism that pervades a political dispute, seek, with this work, contribute to the deepening of the rejection of studies, aiming to bring subsidies presenting information to better explain the behavior studies election. The results showed that there is a less expressive, the chamda strong rejection. We speak of that rejection based on a political, historical and ideological. The reason for the weak presence of strong rejection seems to be little involvement of voters with politics and, consequently, low knowledge about politics and politicians. We observe, however, evidence of rejection volatile. We refer here to a kind of rejection that develops during the election process depending on the preference of the voter and according to the circumstances of the campaign. The data also lead us to conclude that television is as an instrument for the dissemination of ideas that can contribute in shaping the opinion of viewers. The role of political parties in representing the interests of the people have lost their strength in recent years. The data also show that, to the extent that increases the preference of voters in the electoral process, also increases its rejection / Dada a import?ncia que a ci?ncia pol?tica e as ci?ncias sociais d?o aos estudos do comportamento eleitoral, este trabalho acad?mico buscou inserir nesta discuss?o outro elemento importante que comp?e este conjunto complexo. A partir da campanha eleitoral para Prefeitura de Natal em 2012 foi empreendido um trabalho de an?lise da rejei??o no primeiro e segundo turnos desta elei??o. Para a realiza??o dessa an?lise foram utilizadas duas fontes de dados: as pesquisas quantitativas, realizadas pelo Consult Pesquisa no primeiro e segundo turnos das elei??es; e a utiliza??o da t?cnica de grupo focal, realizada no segundo turno das elei??es. Sabendo dos v?rios fatores que podem interferir na decis?o do voto, como tamb?m do dinamismo que permeia uma disputa pol?tica, buscamos, com este trabalho, contribuir com o aprofundamento dos estudos da rejei??o, objetivando trazer subs?dios que apresentem informa??es para melhor explicar os estudos do comportamento eleitoral. Os resultados apontaram que existe, de forma menos expressiva, a chamda rejei??o forte. Falamos daquela rejei??o fundamentada em um sentido pol?tico, hist?rico e ideol?gico. A raz?o para a fraca presen?a da rejei??o forte parece ser o pouco envolvimento dos eleitores com a pol?tica e, consequentemente, o baixo conhecimento sobre os pol?ticos e a pol?tica. Podemos observar, no entanto, a evid?ncia de uma rejei??o fraca. Referimos aqui, a um um tipo de rejei??o que se desenvolve durante o processo eleitoral em fun??o da prefer?ncia do eleitor e de acordo com as circunst?ncias da campanha. Os dados tamb?m nos levam a concluir que a televis?o constitui-se como instrumento de divulga??o de id?ias que possam contribuir na forma??o da opini?o dos telespectadores. O papel dos partidos pol?ticos na representa??o dos interesses populares perderam sua for?a nos ?ltimos anos. Os dados apresentam tamb?m que, na medida que aumenta a preferencia dos eleitores no processo eleitoral, aumenta tamb?m sua rejei??o

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Political campaigning has become a multi-million dollar business. A substantial proportion of a campaign's budget is spent on voter mobilization, i.e., on identifying and influencing as many people as possible to vote. Based on data, campaigns use statistical tools to provide a basis for deciding who to target. While the data available is usually rich, campaigns have traditionally relied on a rather limited selection of information, often including only previous voting behavior and one or two demographical variables. Statistical procedures that are currently in use include logistic regression or standard classification tree methods like CHAID, but there is a growing interest in employing modern data mining approaches. Along the lines of this development, we propose a modern framework for voter targeting called LORET (for logistic regression trees) that employs trees (with possibly just a single root node) containing logistic regressions (with possibly just an intercept) in every leaf. Thus, they contain logistic regression and classification trees as special cases and allow for a synthesis of both techniques under one umbrella. We explore various flavors of LORET models that (a) compare the effect of using the full set of available variables against using only limited information and (b) investigate their varying effects either as regressors in the logistic model components or as partitioning variables in the tree components. To assess model performance and illustrate targeting, we apply LORET to a data set of 19,634 eligible voters from the 2004 US presidential election. We find that augmenting the standard set of variables (such as age and voting history) together with additional predictor variables (such as the household composition in terms of party affiliation and each individual's rank in the household) clearly improves predictive accuracy. We also find that LORET models based on tree induction outbeat the unpartitioned competitors. Additionally, LORET models using both partitioning variables and regressors in the resulting nodes can improve the efficiency of allocating campaign resources while still providing intelligible models. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

The main objective of the thesis is to analyse the role of selected Czech dailies and online news servers during the assertion of negative political campaigns before Czech parliamentary elections in 2013. The research led to answering the question, how were the newspapers, in comparison to the servers, concerned with the transfer of negative contents performed by Czech political subjects during the period of election campaigning. As the source of analysed data, the thesis used dailies Mlada fronta Dnes and Pravo and online news servers Aktualne.cz and iHNed.cz. The thesis observed a share of negative evaluative remarks in the news content dealing with the topic of Czech political campaign which was concerned with the negative campaigning of Czech political parties, as well as the way in which was this topic commented by the selected media. Crucial part of the thesis is a comparison of the parliamentary elections of 2013 with the preceding elections of 2006 and 2010. The aim was to show how the elections of 2013 fit in a trend of utilisation of negative political communication in Czech setting and how has changed the media coverage of the phenomenon during the observed years. From the thesis emerges the result that the dailies covered negative political assertions much more often than the online...

The Great Recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008 had a devastating impact on workers, leading to high levels of unemployment and underemployment, increased job insecurity and stagnant or declining wages. While the legitimation crisis of neoliberalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally, the immediate response by political parties across the spectrum was one of austerity measures and cuts to welfare. As the largest collective representatives of workers, trade unions are at the forefront of mobilisations attempting to challenge this consensus. Simultaneously, they are engaging in new activities to enhance public awareness and understanding of the crucial role that trade unions play in the labour market. Thus, the 21st century crisis is creating both challenges and opportunities. Each trade union movement’s response depends on the different forms of power they possess and choose to deploy, their strategies and allegiances, and the specific socio-economic and political context in which they are situated. Questions concerning what constitutes union power and the ways in which it is being exercised and revitalized therefore represent fascinating lines of enquiry to explore. To do so, however, requires a new perspective on trade union power that recognises the significance of the media which has been overlooked in industrial relations theory. Drawing on insights from industrial relations, the sociology of media and social movement studies, this thesis proposes the concept of communicative power to trace how trade unions produce and circulate discourse through the media (either union-owned or corporate) to a mass audience. Methodologically, it uses the tripartite approach which focuses our attention onto three key communication processes involved in trade union attempts to exercise communicative power: the production of union discourse, the circulation of union discourse, and the reception of union discourse. This is applied to four cases involving seven union organisations in the UK and Denmark over a five-year period 2010-2015. Data was gathered using 40 semi-structured interviews with union officials and activists, content analysis of newspapers, union media outlets and social media, and secondary survey data. In sum, this thesis argues that the media is, and always has been, central to how trade unions exercise and revitalize power in society. And within the context of accelerating digital capitalism, it looks set to becoming an increasingly important determinant of their future trajectory.