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This paper asks how researchers can better measure and operationalize social norms as variables in theories of the policy process. As standards of appropriate behavior for a given identity, norms are a distinctive and powerful type of idea relevant to many public policy contexts, but have received relatively little attention among policy theorists. This omission may be partly due to methodological difficulties. Measuring the presence of norms in a given political setting through surveys or interviews can be challenging given the "taken for granted" nature of many norm-based beliefs (Elster 2007). Documenting the causal relationship between a norm and a particular policy choice can be even more challenging (Campbell 2004; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Yee 1996). This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of different methods for studying the political influence of norms, including interviews, surveys, experiments, content analysis, and QCA. The paper pays close attention to the challenge of distinguishing norm-driven behavior from behavior driven by self-interest, as well as the relationship between normative ideas and normative rhetoric (Finlayson 2004; Raymond and Olive 2009). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a quantitative content analysis of media coverage of ethanol appearing in the New York Times from 1998 to 2008, paying particular attention to changes overtime in the quantity, tone, and framing of coverage. The analysis also takes into account key political and economic events such as elections, economic downturns, and energy crises, and the role of various political actors. Lastly, the paper includes a discussion of the public opinion and policy implications of the trends in media coverage. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods for dealing with rare events rely on first fitting a model to a smaller, artificially balanced sample constructed by selection on dependent variable categories, and then generating category predictions on a larger sample after correction for the difference between sample and population category proportions. These methods, as reviewed in e.g. King and Zeng (2001), assume that true proportions, or a consistent estimate of true proportions are available for the correction. This paper extends rare events methods to problems without a sense of proportion, that is, to problems where neither known nor estimated population proportions are available. Previous work in political science for this type of problem embeds the 'confusion matrix' approach to estimating category proportions in a specific computationally intensive non-parametric modeling framework (King and Lu 2008; Hopkins and King, 2007). In contrast, this paper introduces an Expectation-Maximization based method of jointly estimating population proportions and correcting existing model predictions that is applicable to any model that produces probabilistic predictions of category membership. The new methods are demonstrated in a political content analysis application. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: The extraordinary growth and spread of genomics research and DNA technology will soon, although it does not now, have some sort of partisan association and ideological valence. We plan to research that development, beginning in this paper by examining two issues: the tension between individualized and race-based medical research, diagnosis, and treatment; and the tension between racial boundary blurring and racial boundary strengthening in the social use of DNA for genealogical discovery. We examine those two issues by using new software to cluster and then to content-analyze a database of all relevant newspapers articles about "DNA and medicine" or "DNA and race" in Lexis-Nexis since 1988, when they began to appear. We find a slight preponderance of articles focusing on individualized rather than race-based medicine. Among articles focusing on non-blacks' genealogical search, we find a much larger share focusing on racial boundary-blurring rather than reification. But among articles focusing on blacks' genealogical search, the pattern is somewhat different. We find little change over time, but that may be a methodological artifact rather than a genuine result.The paper concludes with suggestions about the meaning of these findings, indications of further work to be done, and observations about the importance and uniqueness of the genomics revolution for political science and politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential uses of computational linguistics techniques for analyzing Supreme Court briefs and opinions. To do so, we focused on advocacy documents associated with the two recent University of Michigan affirmative action cases (Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger). The cases attracted more than one hundred amicus briefs, which provide a rich textual database for such an exploratory study. The goal of our preliminary work is to model the linguistic contents of the arguments presented by the petitioners and respondents, as captured in the original litigants' briefs and the amici briefs submitted in these two cases. In particular, we are interested in the types of words and phrases used by both sides in order to forward their arguments. These linguistic cues may provide us with insight into the policy and ideological inclinations of the parties involved. We utilize and compare two analytical methods, an adaptation of the Wordscoring technique first developed by Laver, Benoit, and Garry (2003) and a Naïve Bayes' classifier to identify commonalities in documents and group them accordingly. We find the methods to be quite competent at detecting amici brief positions, clustering petitioner and respondent briefs into well-spaced separate normal distributions. Additionally, we find it quite useful as an aid to qualitative content analysis. We identify distinctive rhetorical styles utilized by the respondents and petitioners and suggest how this type of analysis can improve our understanding of how and why different groups, ideologies, actors, interests, and the like, conceptualize issues.

This paper examines the civic potential of community-based energy. Through content analyses and participant surveys, we examine citizens' motivations for joining and participating in such organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Blogging," the act of writing and maintaining an on-line journal, is an increasingly popular form of political expression among elites and non-elites alike. Indeed, recent studies of blogging suggest that there may be as many as 1 million political "blogs" on the internet. Despite this increasing popularity, however, political blogs have received very little attention in the political science literature. This paper attempts to address this oversight by doing three things. First, I discuss the growth and evolution of the political blogging phenomenon and attempt to offer an efficient and reliable operational definition of political blogs. Second, with this operational definition of political blogging in mind, I identify four questions that are likely to be of interest to political scientists: (1) how political blogging effects political bloggers? (2) which factors influence an individual's decision to engage in political blogging? (3) what impact the political blogosphere has on social level variables? (4) what independent variables explain the content of political blogs? Finally, I attempt to shed some light on these questions by selecting a random sample of political blogs on the internet and engaging in a systematic content analysis of their texts. In the end, I conclude that a combination of content analysis of political blogs and surveys of political bloggers is the best method for understanding the who's, what's and why's of political blogging.

This paper examines internal inconsistencies of US foreign aid policy through three policy process frameworks: social construction and problem definition, policy domains and policies without publics. Previous work has contrasted diffuse component-driven (child, urban policy) and domain-driven policy (health, Veterans policy), with the latter known for its clear constituencies and Congressional committees, narrow issue focus and specialized knowledge base. Content analysis of Congressional hearing testimony and State of the Union addresses from 1981-2004 reveals remarkable stability of a multi-component definition of foreign aid policy, comprised of economic growth, poverty reduction, national security, democracy promotion and multilateral aid. Characterized less by competing problem definitions advanced by opposing advocacy coalitions, foreign aid policy is more a technical debate among experts about how best to achieve diverse, often conflicting objectives. These results offer a unique case in policy domain coherence, featuring disparate targeting of policies among the advantaged, dependents and deviants, a wide, but shared issue focus, and narrow interest involvement that does not include an active and visible public. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do justices display differing degrees of cognitive sophistication across situations? While ideology and votes are well studied, little is known about other aspects of their personalities and cognitive thought process. Also, much of the literature on judicial decision making neglects the rich content in opinions and the justices’ public speeches and spoken words. This paper addresses the disconnects using the content analysis program Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to analyze the U.S. Supreme Court justices written opinions from the 2003-2007 terms, recent personal speeches and statements, and oral argument comments. LIWC measures emotional, cognitive, and structural components of verbal and written speech. I use this data to examine circumstances where judges face different audiences, asking whether justices display the same level of cognition: (1) in majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions; (2) in public speeches versus speech at oral argument versus written opinions; (3) in salient versus non-salient cases; and (4) across issue areas? After summarizing the evidence for whether cognition shows promise as an individual difference variable, I focus on how cognition affects decision making. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American studies have pointed to a dramatic increase in negativity on campaign websites. Thus far, however, it is unclear, whether this growth of virtual mudslinging reflects either a national trend due to the competitive and highly personalized voting system, or rather an international process in the ongoing professionalization of political communication. In order to explore this question, this paper compares the use of attacks on German party websites in two state elections, one national election, and one European parliamentary election with recent American evidence. The results show that online negativity has affected German e-campaigns on all levels of the political system, with patterns similar to those found in the United States. This includes the amount and frequency of the attacks as well as their differential usage by incumbents and challengers, their respective sources, and the subject dimensions of the assaults. Only with regard to the thematic context and the targets of the attacks did German and American e-campaigns vary in their style of online negativism. These findings support the notion of a global standardization effect in web campaign practices brought about by the professionalization process in politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses content analysis to compare the accessibility, confidentiality and other features of health websites maintained by the 50 state government websites to those deriving from websites in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the result of a two-part study consisting of a content analysis of the Terri Schiavo case that identified the main media frames and an experiment testing the effectiveness of certain frames in determining opinon on similar issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use content analysis of televised political interviews to demonstrate that some soft news programs provide to citizens more useful information about issues than hard news, which tend to focus on horserace and strategies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the media frame the first lady? What are the effects of this framing on public approval of first ladies? First ladies receive much attention from the press and public. However, no political science research has attempted to comprehensively and systematically categorize and quantify all of the ways in which the media frame first ladies. Nor has any research mapped the frequency of these frames onto public approval ratings of first ladies. Studies of media framing of first ladies ignore effects on public opinion, while studies of public opinion about first ladies lack attention to the influence of media framing effects. Part I of this project is a content analysis of New York Times and Washington Post articles about Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Laura Bush. In this section, I code and categorize all of ways the media frames these first ladies. In addition, I quantify the frequency of these frames for each individual first lady. I find that the media frame the First Lady dichotomously, according to her adherence to or deviation from the roles of “First Political Partner” and “First Housewife.” When the media discuss her involvement or lack thereof in administration politics (the “First Political Partner” frame), they portray her in these more specific sub-frames: “Co-President” vs. “He’s in Charge”; “Non-Traditional Political Activist” vs. “Traditional Political Activist”; “Expresses Personal Viewpoints” vs. “Doesn’t Express Personal Viewpoints” (including whether her views are the same as the president’s and whether she will try to influence the president); “Decorative Emissary” vs. “Substantive Emissary.” And when the press comment on the extent to which she resemble a traditional wife and mother (the “First Housewife” frame), they portray her in these more specific sub-frames: “Career: Kept It Up” vs. “Career: Gave It Up”; “The State of Their Union?”; “Mistress of Ceremonies” vs. “Ceremonial Activist”; “Public Housekeeper”; “First Volunteer”; “First Mother”; “Nurturer in Chief”; and “First Fashion Plate.” Part II tests the following hypotheses: The higher the frequency of media framing of the first lady as “First Political Partner,” the more negative her public evaluations will be. The more she is framed as adhering to the roles of “First Housewife,” the more favorable her public evaluations will be. This section maps her public opinion ratings onto the frequencies of the media frames throughout the entire span of the three presidential administrations. These data ultimately demonstrate support for the hypotheses. This project has implications for the fields of media and political communication and women and politics. First, it contributes to the debate over “media effects.” This project demonstrates strong, clear evidence that the media have power to shape public opinion about the first lady based upon how they frame her. Second, numerous scholars have deemed the first lady the symbol of American womanhood. Since the framing analysis shows that she is judged by the extent to which she adheres to or departs from “traditional” or “activist” duties, and since the public opinion examination shows Americans still prefer a traditional first lady, this reveals that a large strand of American society is still not comfortable with women assuming political roles and that there is still a tendency to largely evaluate women according to their involvement in the domestic sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing the role of aggressive propensities, ideologies and grievances in setting the preliminary conditions for political radicalization, I propose that the focus on why radicalization falls short in paying sufficient attention to how and when these preliminary conditions are translated into actual radical action frames and transgressive forms of contention. The study employs the case of relatively nonviolent eighteen-month-long Jewish settlers' contentious campaign against the Gaza pullout and four West Bank settlements (August 2005) and, six months later, the blatantly violent campaign against the dismantling of the Amona illegal settlement. I argue that the striking differences in the two contentious campaigns are found in the existence of infrastructure of coordination among the parties involved in the case of the former and the lack of such in the case of the latter. It was this established and maintained infrastructure of coordination that impeded radicalization in the case of the former, and the disintegration of that same infrastructure that triggered radicalization in the case of the latter.I provide data from in-depth interviews, content analysis, and contentious events data catalogue to support my arguement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative campaigning is extensively analysed in American political science, but the concept has not been studied in a comparative perspective. Negativity, however, is not exclusively an American phenomenon; hence, the present study serves a dual purpose: First it aims to further develop and adapt the existing theories on the dynamics of negativity - or when do parties go negative? Second it supplements the existing literature by exploring the dynamics of negativity in a multiparty system. By studying six different channels of party communication in four Danish national election campaigns it is shown that alternative government parties - in accordance with the existing theories - are more negative than incumbent parties, and that ideology is (indirectly) correlated with the campaign tone. As opposed to the existing literature, losing parties are not more negative than winning ones in this study. Next, the study proposes that a party's proportion of party identified voters and its rhetorical tone is negatively correlated and that parties go negative on issues that they enjoy issue ownership of. In sum the study underscores that negative campaigning needs to be studied comparatively if the concept is to be comprehensively understood. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-depth analysis tracing the influence of blogs in particular policy areas remains largely unexamined. Consequently, this study investigates the role of blogging in the health sector. .x000d..x000d.To compile a sample of health-related blogs we relied upon web links and search engines. Criteria for inclusion included the following: the blog was updated after 1/1/07, discussed a health-related topic, and authored in the U.S. More than 1,000 blogs were identified..x000d..x000d.Content analysis involved determining whether a blog contained a variety of features. It also involved characterizing both the general topic of the blog and the perspective of the blogger. Basic demographic data was collected as well..x000d..x000d.Preliminary findings suggest that blogs are important vehicles in the policy process. Indeed, bloggers are engaged in filtering information, providing expertise, forming networks, gaining attention, framing arguments, and taking advantages of windows of opportunity to place items on the policy agenda. Blogs also provide an opportunity for new players to enter the policy process. That policy is no longer the sole province of policy entrepreneurs and other experts suggests that blogging has been a democratizing force in health care. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Downs predicts that presidential candidates will positions their platforms at the median. Whatdoes this mean for party platforms? Are we to expect them to be placed at the median as well, orfarther toward the poles, in order to pander to party loyalists? We investigate these questionstheoretically, formally, and empirically, and argue that parties view interest groups as a means tomobilize voters, while interest groups view parties and their platforms as a means to articulateinterests. A formal theoretical model derives the conditions under which parties would choose todiverge from the median and articulate an interest group's position in its platform, and anempirical analysis further shows that parties give platform concessions to ideologues positionedaway from the median, to groups that offer a credible threat of exit to the opposition party, and togroups that can credibly claim to mobilize voters. Both models account for a group's ability tomobilize voters, including size, party loyalty, and ideology. Data are derived from contentanalysis of Democratic Party platforms and platform hearing testimony from interest groups in1996, 2000, and 2004. Results show that interest groups can capture parties and their platformsand mold the platform to reflect their views. Parties are compliant because they rely on groupsto help turn out voters. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do political television advertisements influence electoral outcomes? Recent evidence discounting the effectiveness of advertisement content on electoral outcomes reinforces the minimal effects interpretation of campaign activity; however, we contend political television advertisements affect electoral outcomes significantly if scholars attain better measurement and alter assumptions about voter response to television advertisements. Using advertisement data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG) for the 2000, 2002, 2004 congressional elections, we find the percent of total advertising in favor of a candidate (i.e. saturation) will increase that candidate’s share of the two-party vote. After finding advertisement effects on electoral results, pertaining to the frequency of advertisement and not its content, we then test to determine saturation effectiveness during different hours of the day and days from the election, which can describe more accurately saturation’s influence on electoral results. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of its dual nature, power needs to be tamed. Taming power is a central problem for all social sciences; many intrapersonal and structural mechanisms that have been proposed are not always successful and can be "hijacked" by power itself. To explore psychological dynamics of how power might be tamed, 25 pairs of speeches by political leaders were collected and compared. The pairs were matched for speakers' country, issue, and approximate historical era. In seven cases, both speeches were from the same leader. One speech of each pair expressed "untamed" or destructive power (calls for escalation of conflict, rejecting agreements, or punishment); the other speech expressed "tamed" power (calls for de-escalation of conflict, conciliation, cooperation). Speeches were scored for several content categories developed both from theory and also from an empirical comparison of a subsample of five pairs. Nine cross-validated categories constitute a measure of "generative historical consciousness," or GHC. As predicted, the tamed power speeches scored significantly higher in GHC than the untamed speeches. The GHC measure is proposed as important and useful in future political psychology research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We trace American political discourse around multiracialism, race-mixing, and mixed-race people from the end of the Civil War through the civil rights era. We use two new sources of data: counts of keywords such as "mulatto" and "multiracial" in two black and four white newspapers over 150 years, and a content analysis of themes and assumptions in almost 2,100 articles from the same newspapers, also using keywords that indicate racial mixture.These datasets provide evidence on two analytic and two substantive points: First, the press's treatment of mixture permits us to analyze "racial meaning," defined as the varied ways in which Americans construe, practice, and judge group-based identities and identifications. Second, the datasets enable us to trace the timing of changes in ideas about racial meaning, and to map these changes onto a new periodization of distinct institutional treatments of racial mixture. Substantively, the dataset show vividly how much Americans argued over what counted as a race, how people were to be allocated to and across races, and what implications racial groupings should have. The contemporary racial order, which looks inevitable and orderly in hindsight, was not at all clear while it was being created. Most importantly, the language of the newspaper articles shows vividly that Americans' debates over racial mixture and racially mixed people were (and continue to be) a critical site for contestation over racial hierarchy, advance, and equality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the watchdog and agenda setting function of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times in their coverage of Operation Silver Shovel--an undercover FBI probe of public corruption and illegal dumping. The motivation behind this work is the lack of citizen response and or action against public corruption in Chicago. Why do citizens not do more? My premise is that citizens are not more active and involved in getting rid of corrupt public officials because they do not know what their options are or where to begin. Which leads to the question, does the Sun Times and Tribune offer Chicago citizens any suggestions, instructions, or remedies for tackling public corruption in Chicago government? This study utilizes content analysis on 300 articles from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times for the years 1996-2007. The results reveal that coverage generally presents corruption as a personalistic and institutional, not systemic, problem. The findings show that the political system is not blame and neither is a culture of corruption. Further, the coverage does not tend to ask for or discuss accountability, nor does it tend to offer remedies that citizens can utilize to combat public corruption. Framing the issue in this manner is problematic because it places the onus for change on the system, which is the problem. The coverage tends to officialdom and law and order, which places the onus for solutions to the problem into the hands of the political, legal, and criminal justice system and away from the public. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how national parties position themselves in European Parliament (EP) speeches. We apply a new computer-based content analysis technique, Wordfish, to estimate party positions in the European Parliament using the word counts in speeches. We test three hypotheses of position-taking in the European Parliament: a left-right ideology hypothesis, a pro/anti-Europe hypothesis, and a national politics hypothesis. Surprisingly, and in contrast to studies of roll call votes, we do not find evidence that national party positions from MEP speeches reflect the parties' overall left-right ideology. Instead, these positions reflect the parties' stance with regard to EU integration and national redistributive characteristics. We test the robustness of our results in a threefold manner. First, we take advantage of the multilingual environment of the European Parliament and show that the estimated positions are robust to the choice of translation (English, French, and German). Second, we use independent measures of national party positions from analyses of roll call votes and two expert surveys. Finally, we apply a range of statistical models to account for measurement error of the independent variables and the hierarchical structure of the data. Our robust findings suggest that the entire corpus of EP speeches reflects partisan divisions over EU integration rather than left-right politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long time series of estimated party policy positions generated bythe Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) is the only such time seriesavailable to the profession and has been extensively used in a widevariety of applications. Recent work (e.g. Benoit, Laver, andMikhaylov 2007; Klingemann et. al. 2006, chs. 4--5) focuses onnon-systematic sources of error in these estimates that arise from thetext generation process. Our concern here, by contrast, is with errorthat arises during the text coding process, since nearly allmanifestos are coded only once by a single coder. First, we discussreliability and misclassification in the context of hand-coded contentanalysis methods. Second, we report results of a coding experimentthat used trained human coders to code sample manifestos provided bythe CMP, allowing us to estimate the reliability of both coders andcoding categories. Third, we compare our test codings to thepublished CMP "gold standard" codings of the test documents to assessaccuracy, and produce empirical estimates of a misclassificationmatrix for each coding category. Finally, we demonstrate the effectof coding misclassification on the CMP's most widely used index, itsleft-right scale, and draw conclusions for future use and design ofthe CMP data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does media coverage of global crises vary cross-nationally? Using content analysis and interviews of journalists, we explore the impact of heightened violence, diffusion of news stories, and shifting government standpoints on media reporting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Have Supreme Court nomination hearings become less civil? Our study analyzes each confirmation hearing from 1955 to the present. We employ a modified version of Jamieson’s (1999) content analysis of civility in the House of Representatives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Abu Ghraib as a case study, this paper examines news media coverage of the Bush administration human rights policy. Presidents perceive themselves, and wish to be perceived, as champions of human rights, especially in the area of foreign policy. However, actions like the abuses at Abu Ghraib show the contrary. Based on a content-analysis of the New York Times and Washington Post’s coverage of Abu Ghraib, this paper will explain why the news media, despite declarations to the contrary, does not deem everything “fit to print” when it comes to the president’s human rights record. This paper argues that a fundamental disconnect exists between the representation and reality of news media coverage of presidents’ human rights policies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche's political thought is complicated by his own assumptions. This paper is a case study of Heidegger's only short essay on Nietzsche to explore these contradictions. This paper uses a close deconstructive reading of Heidegger's essay to explore the major themes of his oingoing discussion with Nietzsche. Most important is Heidegger's confused interpretation of the will-to-power. This leads to a misinterpretation of the eternal recurrance. The methodology of this paper is simple, Heidegger's references and quotations are set against their context in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The conclusion is that Heidegger is not actually engaged in a conversation with Nietzsche but rather uses him as a straw man to subvert Nietzsche's claim as as the first to break free of metaphysical thinking. Although this conclusion has been demonstrated in previous work, the close textual analysis lends extra credence to the argument and thus advances the literature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enemy images were mostly an object of study during the Cold War and especially in the context of American-Soviet relations. With the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet threat, it was assumed that enemy images have lost their bases. But enemy images have not disappeared, and their foundations remain active. While factors of identity, perception, socialization and group processes play a continuing role, the focus of enemy images has shifted. After a pause of some years, academic literature is beginning to catch up with the new developments of enemy images. This paper takes stock of what the current academic literature tells us about enemy images and their dynamics. Trends are extracted and gaps pointed to. The paper also includes results of an empirical study on enemy images in current American foreign policy. In the study, qualitative content analysis and interviews were combined with a social constructivist lens. Proposals are made on how to constructively deal with images of enmity. The paper closes with recommendations on how to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of enemy images in today’s context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and how do the mass news media cover dissenting Supreme Court opinions? Scholarship has shown that the Court may very well be aware of its public image (Davis 1994). Meanwhile the court has historically understood the value of collegiality and consensus (Epstein, Segal, & Spaeth 2001). While research involving coverage of the Court's decisions have generally focused on the media's ability to convey the rulings of the court to the public (Franklin & Kosaki 1995; Slotnick & Segal 1998), very little attention has been paid to the reporting of dissent. If we are to understand the efficacy of Supreme Court consensus, we must first know to what degree the public is informed of Court's unity, or lack thereof, in its decisions. In this paper, I propose to conduct a content analysis of news coverage of the Court to determine the extent, frequency, and level of detail of stories involving dissent among the justices. By examining variables such as issue area, number of dissenters, and the justices writing opinions, I seek to discover whether or not any patterns exist in the media's coverage of dissent. My hope is that this initial investigation will open the door to further research on the public role of dissenting opinions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze whether or not there has been a biased and unfair coverage of the recent Russian-Georgian conflict in the U.S. media and whether or not American public opinion has been influenced negatively against the Russians as a result. We provide a content analysis of the coverage in two nationally influential papers and conduct a national public opinion survey to gauge the nature of the coverage and its implications for U.S.-Russia relations. We also discuss various explanations as to why the media may have favored one side over the other. As possible explanations, we discuss the media strategies of both Russian and Georgian governments; the strategic priorities of the U.S. government; foreign policy posturing of presidential candidates; as well as the strategic concerns of the media actors and the limitations in media capabilities. This study has implications for understanding the role of media in international conflicts and in the way foreign policy decisions are made.A blatant media bias in favor of Georgians can have the affect of aggravating already-tense relations between the U.S. and Russia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way media outlets portray actors and issues affects how message recipients process news reports. It is impossible to present all information relevant to a particular topic or actor, so mass media act as gatekeepers, both in terms of what information gets conveyed and, at least as importantly, how that information is presented to the audience. This is the essence of the media effect known as framing. Media frames color how recipients view policies, events, and actors. There exist well-documented common frames that span issues, actors, and types of media (Iyengar 1991) as well as frames specific to particular issues or actors. This paper examines the common portrayal of interest groups by newspaper reporters as “special interests” in addition to other, more general, frames. Content analysis of news reportage of the Social Security reform issue from 2001-2006 shows a heavy reliance on the “special interest” frame in both opinion writing and news coverage and no evidence of any other interest group-specific frame. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between public preferences and elite behaviour is a central concern in democratic theory. A large literature demonstrates the existence of some form of policy-opinion congruence. Still, most extant research focuses on policy responsiveness to the mean or median voter, while there are reasons abound to believe policy to be more sensitive to the preferences of some groups over others. This paper proposes to disaggregate the public along socio-economic lines, most notably income and education, to test which strata exert the most influence on policy in the United Kingdom. Both policy and the public are captured on the left-right dimension for the period 1976-2006. To operationalize the former, I conduct a content analysis of Budget Statements. For the latter, I rely on data from the Eurobarometer Survey. In the end, time-series methods will be employed to measure whether political representation in the United Kingdom is biased towards certain subgroups of the population. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the factors behind the persistence of monarchical authoritarianism in Morocco. It argues that the monarchy’s religious authority and its use of rituals of power limit the ability of opposition groups to contest the monarchy’s legitimacy. This study goes beyond most institutionalist accounts of authoritarian persistence by exploring the micro-dynamics of symbolic power and the extent to which the regime uses rituals of power to create a political culture conducive to the monarchy’s supremacy in the socio-political realm, thus promoting regime stability in Morocco. These rituals have been institutionalized in the political system and have become part of the political discourse in Morocco. Through the use of multiple methodological toolsâ€"content analysis, historical and archival analysis, 60 elite interviews and 300 field surveysâ€"my research examines the effects of the ritualization of the political process on oppositional forces. Rituals of power impede the ability of opposition groups to mobilize and to penetrate Moroccan society. The prevalence of this cultural and social hegemony contributes to the stability and resilience of the monarchical authoritarian regime in Morocco. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2001-02, Pakistan and India were embroiled in the only nuclear crisis in history where both sides intentionally cut-off all direct communication, instead signaling provocatively through indirect means. This paper conducts a content analysis of the bilateral signaling during the stand-off and argues that cutting off direct communication was a conscious decision by both sides, one that will be repeated in future crises. Moreover, contrary to the prevalent theses, we show that India and Pakistan remained indifferent to each other’s verbal signals and that signaling was largely directed at the U.S. â€" both sides wanted Washington to intervene diplomatically on their behalf â€" , a dynamic that both understood clearly. Finally, while on-ground military posturing did see a tit-for-tat response, there was no correlation between tactical maneuvers and verbal signals throughout the crisis. Our findings suggest that absence of direct communication or provocative indirect signaling is irrelevant to crisis instability. Crisis stability then depends largely on ensuring that India and Pakistan abstain from the kind of tactical posturing that raises the security dilemma for the other. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do televised images of violent battlefield events affect public support for war? News coverage is often assumed to be a powerful factor in influencing public opinion about war, but empirical works have almost entirely neglected the tone, intensity and imagery of news coverage itself. Using an original content analysis of the Vanderbilt Television News Archives (evening news programs from Fox News and CNN during the Iraq war), I empirically evaluate changes in television news coverage of war, both over time and across networks. Over time, I find support for the hypothesis that violent imagery in television news coverage decreases public support for war when the violence is framed as unjustified. I also find significant differences in presentations of similar violent acts across networks, especially in regard to the tone and frame of the story. Fox News systematically has a more positive tone in relation to the stated position of the President than does CNN. Throughout the paper I emphasize the interplay between political predispositions and the valence of network news coverage, highlighting the conditional effect of media messages. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses quantitative content analytic methods to analyze 17 years of parliamentary debate in 3 new market economies. The goal is to explore the relationship between party competition the political influence of business. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wordscores (Laver et al., 2003; Benoit and Laver, 2003) has several features that are important for political text analysis: It is computationally straightforward; it requires no functional or distributional assumptions to work; and it generates document score estimates relative to a policy dimension specified by the researcher. But Wordscores also has some more troubling features: Estimated document scores are seldom directly interpretable on the chosen policy dimension without rescaling, and it is often unclear how best to choose a suitable rescaling method; Wordscores is expressed directly as a procedure rather than being derived from an underlying model, so it is unclear how to determine its optimal operating conditions, extend it to reflect information other than word counts, or integrate it into existing statistical machinery e.g. other methods of political text analysis, and non-text-based methods of infering party or legislator ideal points. In the absence of an underlying statistical model it is not clear how well the Wordscores procedure 'fits' sampled word and score data, or how document score estimates reflect the appropriate policy dimension. This paper is part of an effort to answer the following questions about Wordscores: Why are estimated document score not directly comparable to previously scored documents? What underlying statistical model would motivate Wordscores? Laver, Benoit and Garry explicitly distinguish a priori and inductive text analysis methods according to whether substantive political information is built into, or inferred from a method's output. In what sense is Wordscores an a priori rather than an inductive method? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the phenomenon and psychological causes of relative deprivation held byurban Chinese people during the era of high-speed economic development. Using two rival cities,Beijing and Tianjin as cases, I applied relative deprivation theory to explain the rivalry of thepeople between the disadvantaged and the advantaged cities. In this case, people's consciousnessof deprivation is more fraternalist, affective, and procedural, than egoistic, cognitive, andoutcome oriented. I also established a hypothesis, "memory effect-and-situational attributionhypothesis," in order to account for the fact that people in disadvantaged cities tend to take thebest time of their home-city as the "reference point" of expectation, and therefore have thefeelings of loss if they are relatively backward in development. In turn, they may attribute theirbackwardness to external factors such as policy bias from the central government as well assuppression from rival cities, rather than to their own deficiencies. Moreover, this causalattribution may be related with the characteristic relationship between policy distribution andChina's political administrative system. This project uses content analysis and web-based surveyto collect people's opinion from Internet forums. I hope to emphasize that Internet discussion, asa newly-rising communications medium, is an important approach to study mass people'sopinion toward socio-economic and political development in China. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1960's, the importance of issues in American elections has risen dramatically (Pomper 1972; Repass 1971). Senate candidates are no longer elected primarily on the basis of their political party; rather their previous experience, financial resources, and campaign promises play an integral role in electoral politics today (Jacobson 2004; Dalager 1996; Westlye 1991; Iyengar and Kinder 1987). Yet, few studies examine the extent to which Senate candidates attempt to fulfill their campaign promises. Previous research at the presidential level finds that once in office, candidates attempt to fulfill the majority of their promises. Fishel (1985, 38), in one of the few studies on presidential campaign promises, finds that presidents (from Kennedy to Reagan) submitted legislation or signed executive orders broadly consistent with about two-thirds of their campaign pledges. Considering the importance of issues in Senate elections, a similar study needs to be undertaken at the congressional level. This paper examines the promises made by eleven successful Senate candidates across three elections (1998, 2000, and 2002). Campaign promises were compiled through content analysis of each candidate's press releases. The unit of analysis in this study is the individual campaign promise. The dependent variables are the number of promises made as well as a dichotomous measure of whether or not the senator acted upon his or her campaign promises (measured through the senator's bill sponsorship). To further understand why senators pursue some campaign promises and not others, a number of independent variables will be examined, including each representative's partisanship, seniority, constituency size and "progressive ambition." The average level of electoral competition in the state will also be compared to the number of campaign promises each senator made (and attempted to fulfill) in an effort to further examine the link between competition and representation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a textual analysis of Rawls's Political Liberalism and Rousseau's On the Social Contract. It suggests that there are strong parallels between their two political projects. They share complementary ends and similar assumptions, expectations, and procedures. I conclude that Rousseau's political theory can be reasonable viewed as anticipating and influencing Rawls's political liberalism. Consequently, their theories can be understood as different sides of the same coin. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of incumbency status on political campaign messages. Data from content analysis of American presidential (nominating convention acceptance addresses, general campaign television spots, general election debates, and general campaign direct mail advertising), American non-presidential (U.S. House and Senate TV spots; U.S. Senate and gubernatorial debates), and non-U.S. political leaders' (debates in Canada, France, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine) campaigns are used to contrast the nature of messages from incumbent party and challenger party candidates. Incumbents use more acclaims (positive statements) and fewer attacks (negative statements) than challengers. When discussing the past, incumbents use past deeds (successes) to acclaim their own records far more than challengers; conversely, challengers primarily use such utterances to attack the incumbents' records (failures). Presidential and gubernatorial incumbents tend to discuss policy more, and character less, than challengers, but no difference in topic emphasis occurred between congressional incumbents and challengers or in leaders' debates in non-U.S. countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the quantitative analysis of changes to presidential speech drafts to provide insights into the institutional conflicts within the modern White House. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a content analysis examining the portrayal of racial minorities in television news as well as a series of interviews with reporters and producers designed to explore why the news coverage looks as it does. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents survey data, content analysis, and focus group evidence on perceptions and effects of local news. We find the more individuals watch local news the less tolerant they are of standard political debate. We endeavor to explain why. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses systematic content analysis of editorials from major American newspapers from 1960-1980 to show that elite discourse about abortion changed in response to abortion's changing legal status over the period. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I import the concept of issue framing to research on the U.S. Supreme Court to outline how issues are depicted by particular words and how this framework enhances our understanding of how the determinants of judicial decision making shape policy outputs. This framework for studying the Court, however, first needs a method for identifying frames that are used in elite discourse. I use Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) to illustrate my multi-method approach for identifying issue frames on the Court. The key to the method adopts a recent approach in the Courts literature that treats words as data. Moreover, I go beyond merely looking at simple word frequencies and instead use a new content analysis program to identify words that are more “central” to a text. By treating words as data, I use exploratory factor analysis to identify the key factors, or frames from a set of case texts. I find three factors, or frames, that emerge from the Bowers data: one revolving around sodomy rights, one of personal choices, and one on privacy interests and states’ rights. This approach has two primary benefits- it identifies issue frames found in a given body of text and it enables a number of important variables to be identified for use in future, more traditional Court voting studies. Finally, I briefly discuss the implications of issue framing for the Court’s role in the larger political and social system. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a methodological exercise, this paper conceptualizes and typologizes nonprofit organizations as actors in American urban politics by bringing together the literature on typological theorizing, interview data, and newspaper content analysis. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the content analysis program Diction 5.0, this paper analyzes presidential and MC speech content across time, looking at the impact of changes in communications technology. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the work of Robert Entman (2004), we conducted a content analysis of NYT articles from 9/12/02 until 3/19/03. We investigate differences within and between pro and anti war arguments, based upon Entman?s coding categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]