Presidential elections are one of the most anticipated and high-profiled events of a democratic society (Paatelainen et al., 2016, p. 70). Every four years, the American people gather together and express their opinion on who should be the leader of their nation for the next several years. Presidential candidates do their best to distinguish themselves from their rivals and to persuade people of their preferability. In making an important decision, "voters are influenced by different forms of campaign messages that aim not only to provide information, but also to influence their final decisions. Perhaps the most significant of these message forms is presidential debates"(Benoit, 2011, p. 45). To describe debate performances, modern media …show more content…
Kennedy (Birdsell & Jamieson, 1988, p. 5). According to Windt (1986, p. 107), this was the first administration to have a fully developed approach to presidential rhetoric, to the use of media to enhance presidential speeches, to the recognition of television as the central "check" on presidential rhetorical power. The discipline of presidential rhetoric is concerned with the study of presidential public persuasion as it affects the ability of a president to exercise the powers of the office and gain the public support (Windt, 1986, p. …show more content…
Thompson (2016, para. 6) claimed that the fascinating and transparent political rhetoric of presidents, like Nixon, is dead. When presidential candidates began actively campaigning in the 20th century, they tended to stay away from harsh personal attacks (Jackson, 2016). However, the 2016 election cycle was different. Direct and even personal verbal and social criticism had become the new norm (Diaz, 2015). In this regard, Baker (2016, para. 2) illustrated that this was "one of the most memorable debates in history. It featured two candidates in modern history taking lumps out of each other with accusations of sexual assault and defending rape and repeated allegations of deceit and mendacity". For instance, in the first presidential debate, Clinton took the chance to remind voters of words Trump had used to describe women, specifically as "pigs, dogs and slobs" or the worst things he had said about a woman in a beauty contest. He "called this woman Miss Piggy, then he called her Miss Housekeeping" because she is
The aim of this paper is to look at the relationship between the mass media, specifically television, and presidential elections. This paper will focus on the function of television in presidential elections through three main areas: exit polls, presidential debates, and spots. The focus is on television for three reasons. First, television reaches more voters than any other medium. Second, television attracts the greatest part of presidential campaign budgets. Third, television provides the candidates a good opportunity to contact the people directly. A second main theme of this paper is the role of television in presidential elections in terms of representative democracy in the United States.
On July 27, 2004, Barack Obama made arguably his most important speech, “The Audacity of Hope”, at the Democratic National Convention Keynote Address. These conventions are for political parties to announce a winner for nomination. All the way through his piece, Obama focuses on connecting Americans and himself to the audience. In fact, at the time, Barack Obama was a US Senate candidate for the United States president, and in making this speech, was offered a window for raising his popularity. Throughout “The Audacity of Hope” speech, Barack Obama implements three main devices to raise his political popularity: repetition, abstract language, and structure.
Television has affected every aspect of life in society, radically changing the way individuals live and interact with the world. However, change is not always for the better, especially the influence of television on political campaigns towards presidency. Since the 1960s, presidential elections in the United States were greatly impacted by television, yet the impact has not been positive. Television allowed the public to have more access to information and gained reassurance to which candidate they chose to vote for. However, the media failed to recognize the importance of elections. Candidates became image based rather than issue based using a “celebrity system” to concern the public with subjects regarding debates (Hart and Trice). Due to “hyperfamiliarity” television turned numerous people away from being interested in debates between candidates (Hart and Trice). Although television had the ability to reach a greater number of people than it did before the Nixon/Kennedy debate, it shortened the attention span of the public, which made the overall process of elections unfair, due to the emphasis on image rather than issue.
When people keep on saying accusations and foul statements, they become more hated. Recently on Twitter, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren had posted various tweets describing her feelings for Donald Trump. She stated how Trump is a “loser” for his decisions in business and his campaign. Now in the tweets, there are no words that discriminate on Trump’s gender or race. It does say topics related to his background, but are not specific.
The choices voters make are deeply personal ones. The choices between candidates, when to vote, where to vote, and even whether or not vote are ones that feasibly have a number of influencing factors. In a mediated environment, there is little reason to believe that the messages and information potential voters receive from various media sources could be a part of the decision making process. Recently, there has been an increase in what are called “fact-checks” in which some purported media expert investigates the factual accuracy of statements that a candidate has made. Considering the vast amount of information that potential voters must sift through in order to make an informed decision, it would seem plausible that these fact checks could
In everyday life, television is everywhere. It can be in your house, in a shop, or somewhere you’ve never been to. However, have you ever wonder if television affects presidential elections? Have you wonder if televisions had a positive or negative feedback on presidential elections? Well, anyway, television has both, positive and negative effects on presidential elections, but there is more downside to it than positive.
Business man, Donald Trump, is regarded as our generation’s political hero for honest and direct speech. He is identified as master and creator of political rhetoric whereby he has created a language encompassing all ambiguity and obscurity as that of complex and multifaceted words without the sophistication. Trump in the winter of 2015, then presidential nominee, gave a speech at Hilton Head, South Carolina. In this speech he addressed or rather mentioned a range of topics and opinions that were eagerly welcomed by an audience that writer, Maria Bustillos would describe as “the most willfully blind and/or deranged Republicans.” [Bustillos].
Clawson and Oxley state that politicians sometimes follow and sometimes lead public opinion, they simply state that “it depends”. That being said, politicians often follow the public and listen to what they have to say about different issues. They call this democratic responsiveness which, “refers to leaders enacting policy that the public wants” (Clawson & Oxley, 2017, p. 360). Therefore, when politicians listen to the public and enact laws that respond to their issues, it means they are following public opinion.
The article, Super PACs’ Spend Freely as Control of New York Senate Hangs in Balance, is about the power of Super PACs on New York Senate campaign. Money plays an important role on opening the gate for candidates to successfully win during their campaigns. The Super PACs become very active and spent a lot of money to support the candidates during the elections. The groups spend a great amount of money in the media to support their candidates. There is no limit of how much a “Super PAC” can spend to support his or her candidacy.
Chua’s definition of “popular culture” seems to be convenient. While one could assume that it is much easier to just list what is popular culture and what is not, such manner of defining would have been less sustainable and less applicable across cultures and across the time span. All of the discussed books and articles cover presidential elections held in the United States only. Since the present paper’s research question looks at to what extent the use of pop-culture have an impact on election results in general terms and not country specific, in the present research study more case studies for countries other than the United States will be conducted.
Later, the book shifts its focus to the role that late night talk shows play in presidential elections. Beginning with Bill Clinton’s appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, late night talk shows have become a regular standard for politicians on their road to the White House. These appearances offer presidential candidates an opportunity to showcase their more positive traits in a relaxed way that reaches a wider range of voters. This section of the book covered late night appearances during elections from 1996 to
From years 2008 to 2016, the presidential debates have tremendously changed from formal, disciplined and professional discussions to off-topic, bad mouthing arguments. Where once we had skillful and practiced participants, we now have amateur and incompetent rivals as candidates for president. Debates once began as a way to foresee what our future president can do for our country, to allow the candidates to propose to the people ways that will fix issues, and to help us envision them as our leader. In our modern world now debates are being used in the wrong way. The opponents are insulting, disrespecting, and interrupting each other.
The current role of mass media in politics has definitely played a significant role in how view and react to certain events and issues of the nation. Newspapers, magazines, television and radio are some of the ways information is passed onto many of the citizens. The World Wide Web is also an information superhighway, but not all of the sources on the Internet are credible. Therefore, I will only focus on the main three types of media: written, viewed, and audible, and how they affect whether or not democracy is being upheld in the land of the free. The media includes several different outlets through which people can receive information on politics, such as radio, television, advertising and mailings. When campaigning, politicians spend large quantities of money on media to reach voters, concentrating on voters who are undecided. Politicians may use television commercials, advertisements or mailings to point out potentially negative qualities in their opponents while extolling their own virtues. The media can also influence politics by deciding what news the public needs to hear. Often, there are more potential news stories available to the media than time or space to devote to them, so the media chooses the stories that are the most important and the most sensational for the public to hear. This choice can often be shaped,
This information allows nominee seekers to determine how much money and founds are necessary, to run efficiently their campaign. A solid concern is represented by issues-opinion. Oftentimes, public opinion’s view on specific matters is what makes candidates win or lose the nomination. Due to this reason, candidates run polls in different constituencies and states and adjust their discourses and speeches according to what the public think of them. Again, in the states with the larger amount of independents, candidates tend to mitigate their statements about issues, in order to get as much favorability as possible among the less partisan population spectrums; on the other side when it comes to partisan states (California for the democrats, for instance) speeches are partisan-driven and strong.
In our democratic society, mass media is the driving force of public opinion. Media sources such as Internet, newspaper, news-broadcasts, etc, play significant roles in shaping a person’s understanding and perception about the events occurred in our daily lives. As long as the newspapers, internet, network television, etc, continued to be easily accessible to the public, the media will continue to have an influence in shaping its opinions. Factors such as agenda-setting, framing and priming help shape the public opinions. Agenda-setting is when the media focuses their attention on selected issues on which the public will form opinion on, whereas framing allows the media to select certain aspects about the problem and then make them appear more salient. Similarly, priming works by repeatedly exposing certain issues to public. As the issues get more exposure, the individual will be more likely to recall or retain the information in their minds. This paper will discuss these three factors played out systemically by media and how our opinions are constantly being influence and shape by them.