Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Process Revealed: News Media, Legislators and Constituents Connections, Interactions and Communications

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

The American politics subfield of political science knows very little about the intricacies involved in legislator, news media and constituency interactions and communications in the political representation process. Political scientists have many pieces to the puzzle but nothing approaching a unified model. Critical in this doctoral dissertation research support's investigation is an understanding of the political representation process is the role of the news media as facilitator and provider of information between legislators and voters. While this dissertation will not answer all of the questions about this process, it begins to bridge the gaps between the relevant fields and literature of Congress, political communication, voting and, to some extent, political psychology. The fundamental question asked in this project is how does the introduction of the news media as a strategic actor affect the political representation process? The Ph.D. student argues that this is the single most crucial element in how political representation manifests itself in the U.S. political system, and yet the political science discipline has failed to adequately model its effect. This project attempts to fill the research gap for legislator, news media and constituency interactions in the political representation process in three integrative ways. First, the student develops formal models to investigate analytically how the introduction of the news media as a strategic actor can influence legislators - homestyles and campaigns. Second, he empirically tests the analytical results through content analyses of newspapers' coverage of U.S. House members to see what coverage actually looks like. Analyses are done on both local and national newspapers and serve as a direct empirical test of the results generated out of the formal models. Third, using the content analysis data, he empirically investigates whether and to what extent citizens respond to various types of news coverage about their House representatives. This investigation examines the news media's impact on reelection probabilities. The project has the potential for broader social impact by enhancing understanding of citizen-media relations and for citizen-legislator interactions.