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The Influence of Communication Context on Political Cognition in Presidential Campaigns: A Geospatial Analysis

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2008, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Communication.
Due to targeting strategies employed by contemporary political campaigns, campaign intensity is not uniform across the whole country. People in different geographical locations would be influenced by campaigns differently depending on where they are. This study argues that political campaigns could shape a person's total communication context in which a person is conditioned, and accordingly both individual and contextual factors within this context should form synergistic influences on this person's cognitive responses to the election. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate how mass media and interpersonal communication factors at the individual level and the campaign level within an individual's communication context that is defined by some geospatial characteristics created by campaigns would influence this individual's political knowledge. The results from a series of multilevel modeling analyses reveal that there is some evidence that political campaign practices, including political ads, candidate appearances, and campaign contacts, do promote some learning about politics. There is also evidence to support the information flow approach to contextual effects. It is found that macro-level political ads, candidate appearances, and campaign contacts influence people's newspaper use in predicting their political knowledge; and that macro-level political ads and candidate appearances influence people's political discussion in predicting their political knowledge. Consistent with literature, people who read newspapers, watch network and cable television news, and engage in political discussion more frequently have more political knowledge. But, people who watch more local TV news have less political knowledge. These findings suggest that communication, including both mass media and interpersonal communication, does play a significant role in informing people in campaigns. However, political learning is conditioned on many factors -- media, people, stimuli, and place, all of which lead to different results. This study not only demonstrates that conditional communication effects also hinge on geospatial, contextual factors but also helps to develop contextual theories in communication science that specifically take into account contextual factors and addresses cross-level inference.
Gerald M. Kosicki, PhD (Advisor)
William P. Eveland, PhD (Committee Member)
Osei Appiah, PhD (Committee Member)
Prabu David, PhD (Committee Member)
226 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Liu, Y.-I. (2008). The Influence of Communication Context on Political Cognition in Presidential Campaigns: A Geospatial Analysis [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1211994930

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Liu, Yung-I. The Influence of Communication Context on Political Cognition in Presidential Campaigns: A Geospatial Analysis. 2008. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1211994930.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Liu, Yung-I. "The Influence of Communication Context on Political Cognition in Presidential Campaigns: A Geospatial Analysis." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1211994930

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)