Browsing by Subject "Presidential campaign"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Barack Obama and the rhetoric of a black president(2013-12) Young-Johnson, Connie; Brummett, Barry, 1951-This dissertation analyzes the discourse of Obama’s speeches to argue my thesis that Obama won election by virtue of his rhetorical speechmaking but more specifically, his ability to manage race in those speeches. I define and refer to Obama’s rhetorical handling of race in his speechmaking throughout the campaign as the rhetoric of race management. By rhetorical race management, I mean the strategic use of race (or obfuscation of race) in one’s discourse to manage or affect the audience’s beliefs or opinions of the listener. From a communication-based standpoint, understanding how race operated in this election requires us to examine the history of racism in the United States as well as critical scholarly work on the subject. Understanding how Obama was able to manage race in his rhetoric is necessary because it forces us to perhaps reexamine and scrutinize the 2008 Presidential election more carefully for several reasons. As rhetorical scholars, if we are in the business of understanding how our icons and politicians can potentially manipulate and use our rhetorical signs and symbols against us—or in spite of us--it is in our best interest to understand why the process occurred and why we allowed it to happen. I suggest that Obama’s deliberate attempt to weave ideological constructs like patriotism and the American Dream into his campaign strategy obfuscated his representation as the marginalized “other” and created a new political identity that has little to do with marginalization. By examining the theories of scholars like Kenneth Burke, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Walter Fisher, and Dana Cloud, I outline how race and racism historically operated in our political elections, from both a sociopolitical, or quantitative perspective, as well as a critical perspective. By using a multimethod analysis, we are better positioned to understand how Barack Obama successfully played the race card in the Presidential Election of 2008. More importantly, I argue in my conclusion why his use of rhetorical race management, was absolutely necessary if he were to become the first African-American president in a historically racist country.Item Blindfolding the public : examining the hydraulic pattern hypothesis of media priming effects(2014-12) Yoo, Sung Woo; Coleman, RenitaIn this dissertation was examined the hydraulic pattern of media-priming effects by looking into Granger causality (a statistical test to determine if one time series is useful in forecasting another) between media coverage and the importance of issues people perceive. The hydraulic pattern hypothesis, an argument that increase in the importance of an issue is accompanied by decrease in a similar amount of importance, is embedded in most media-effect theories but has rarely been tested. To test the causality with media coverage, time series of six issues and six candidate variables were created. This research is distinct from previous studies of priming in that it tests aggregate-level influence of media coverage on popular evaluation of political-campaign candidate in a long-term setting. In the findings, media coverage of issues induced changes in the Granger-caused issue-weight of the issue that it covered, confirming the main effects of priming. The hydraulic pattern was also confirmed. Active media coverage of an issue, induced Granger-caused changes in five other issue-weights. It was found that it takes 7–8 days after the media coverage to establish a causal relationship of priming effects. vii In another finding, the result showed that the time-lag of the hydraulic pattern preceded the main priming effects. As regards the debated relationship of priming effects with political knowledge, this research found that high knowledge groups are more susceptible to the main priming effects. However, the impact of political knowledge on the hydraulic pattern was the opposite. This means that less knowledgeable people may be more vulnerable; that is, they are more likely to lose sight of other issues when the media primes a certain issue. In the test of attribute priming, the causality of the hydraulic pattern was also established to a lesser degree. Especially, personality-related candidate attributes like trustworthiness were robust regarding the hydraulic-pattern effects. In all of these analyses, the measurement of optimal time-lag was utilized instead of the durability concept used in previous studies. With this study design and new measurements, this research contributes to the literature by providing new insight into the theoretical conundrums related to priming theory. One of such insight is that the priming effects that matter at the poll, are relatively slow and deliberative processes, and are differentiated from the temperamental daily effects of news.