Sourcebook for Political Communication Research Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques Routledge Communication Series

The Sourcebook for Political Communication Research will offer scholars, students, researchers, and other interested readers a comprehensive source for state-of-the-art/field research methods, measures, and analytical techniques in the field of political communication.

The need for this Sourcebook stems from recent innovations in political communication involving the use of advanced statistical techniques, innovative conceptual frameworks, the rise of digital media as both a means by which to disseminate and study political communication, and methods recently adapted from other disciplines, particularly psychology, sociology, and neuroscience. Chapters will have a social-scientific orientation and will explain new methodologies and measures applicable to questions regarding media, politics, and civic life. The Sourcebook covers the major analytical techniques used in political communication research, including surveys (both original data collections and secondary analyses), experiments, content analysis, discourse analysis (focus groups and textual analysis), network and deliberation analysis, comparative study designs, statistical analysis, and measurement issues.

Introduction

1. Advancing Methods and Measurement: Supporting Theory and Keeping Pace with the Modern Political Environment

Survey Methodology

2. Challenges and Opportunities of Panel Designs
3. The Rolling Cross-Section: Design and Utility for Political Research
4. Political Communication Survey Research: Challenges, Trends, Opportunities

Secondary Analysis and Meta Analysis

5. Secondary Analysis In Political Communication Viewed as Creative Act
6. Comparing the ANES and NAES for Political Communication Research
7. The Implications and Consequences of Using Meta-Analysis for Political Communication

Experimental Methods

8. Experimental Designs for Political Communication Research: Using New Technology and Online Participant Pools to Overcome the Problem of Generalizability
9. Expressing versus Revealing Preferences in Experimental Research
10. The Face as a Focus of Political Communication: Evolutionary Perspectives, Experimental Methods, and the Ethological Approach
11. Multi-Stage Experimental Designs in Political Communication Research

Content Analysis

12. Image Bite Analysis of Political Visuals
13. Identifying Frames in Political News
14. Content Analysis in Political Communication

Discourse Analysis

15. The Uses of Focus Groups in Political Communication Research
16. Genealogy of Myth in Presidential Rhetoric

Network and Deliberation Analysis

17. Methods for Analyzing and Measuring Group Deliberation
18. Porous Networks and Overlapping Contexts: Methodological Challenges in the Study of Social Communication and Political Behavior

Comparative Political Communication

19. Mediatization of Politics: Toward a Conceptual Framework for Comparative Research
20. International Applications of the Agenda-Setting Acapulco Typology
21. Political Communication Across the World: Methodological Issues Involved in International Comparisons

Statistical Techniques

22. Expanding the Use of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in Political Communication
23. Mediation and the Estimation of Indirect Effects in Political Communication Research
24. Time-Series Analysis and the Study of Political Communication

Measurement

25. Concept Explication in the Internet Age: The Case of Interactivity
26. Beyond Self-Report: Using Latency Measures to Model the Question Answering Process on Web-Based Public Opinion Surveys
27. What the Body Can Tell Us About Politics: The Use of Psychophysiological Measures in Political Communication Research

Conclusion

28. Looking Back and Looking Forward: Observations on a Rapidly Evolving Field

Erik P. Bucy (PhD, University of Maryland, College Park, 1998) is an Associate Professor of Telecommunications and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington. Bucy is the editor of Politics and the Life Sciences, and author, with Maria Grabe, of Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (Oxford, 2009). Bucy serves on the editorial boards of Human Communication Research, The Information Society, and Mass Communication and Society. He has held visiting and research appointments at the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College.

R. Lance Holbert (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2000) is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. He is the author of several articles on the use of structural equation modeling in the communication sciences. His most recent research has appeared in Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Communication Monographs, and Media Psychology. He serves on many editorial boards, including Journal of Communication, Communication Monographs, and the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.