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Spring 2012

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April 23, 2012 (7:00 p.m.)
Presenters: Byron Shafer and Jason Engle
In Search of Populism: Alternative Ideologies in American Politics

Discussants: Brad Jones and Ben Toff
Location: Byron Shafer's House

ABSTRACT: A newly created dataset makes it possible to go looking for 'the populist impulse' in postwar American politics. In the process, it is necessary to create five ideological groups: Liberals, Conservatives, Populists, Libertarians, and Moderates. These prove to have distinct voting behaviors, not just in the vote for President but also in the propensity and manner by which they split their tickets. They have distinct perceptions of the main organizational referents in politics, both political parties and organized interests, while the distinction between objectively measured versus self-identified ideologies proves to be consequential as well. Finally, these ideological groups do not just evolve differently across the postwar years, they alter the major-party coalitions at both the rank-and-file and the activist level while doing so.

February 13, 2012 (7:00 p.m.)
Presenters: Dimitri Kelly
Bias and Credibility: Explaining Partisan News Choice

Discussants: Lilach Nir and Dave Lassen
Location: Dhavan Shah's House

ABSTRACT: Evidence points to partisan segmentation in the contemporary news market, but the mechanism causing consumers to sort along party lines is unclear. This study presents results of a nationally representative survey experiment exploring cognitive responses to biased news content and examines in a new way the interaction between message content and consumer attitudes. There are three primary research questions. First, how do perceptions of source credibility relate to the bias of the message? Second, how accurate are perceptions about the bias of news content? Third, does biased information subsidize political learning?

December 1, 2011 (7:00 p.m.)
Presenters: Leticia Bode (and co-authors)
Social and Broadcast Media in 2010 Midterms: The Expanding Repertoire of Senate Candidates' Campaign Strategies

Discussants: Regina Wagner and Jake Neiheisel
Location: Barry Burden's House

November 10, 2011 (7:00 p.m.)
Presenters: Ruoxi Li and Brad Jones
Country of Origin Matters: Explaining Immigrants' Political Participation through a Socialization Perspective

Discussants: Leticia Bode and Ben Marquez
Location: Charles Franklin's House

ABSTRACT: This paper systematically analyzes how individual-level, country-level, and region-level variables affect immigrants’ political behavior. We propose an “original imprint” theory, arguing that immigrants’ country of origin influences their political participation through the political socialization process. More specifically, we expect to see differences between immigrants who come to the United States at an older age and those who come at a younger age. We argue that an immigrant’s country of origin has a substantially stronger impact on older immigrants because they are socialized in their home country; country of origin affects the younger immigrants less because younger immigrants are socialized in the United States. To test our theory, we use the Current Population Survey 2008 civic engagement supplement data, which contains interviews with over six thousand immigrants from over a hundred countries. Using a Bayesian hierarchical model, we find strong support for our original imprint theory. Our theory and findings have implications for the literatures on immigration politics, political participation, and socialization.

October 18, 2011 (7:00 p.m.)
Presenter: Rick Matland and Gregg Murray
Mobilization Effects Using Mail: Social Pressure, Invoking Injunctive Norms and Timing

Discussants:James Sieja and Alex Tahk
Location: Ken Mayer's House

ABSTRACT: We use field experiments in Texas and Wisconsin to evaluate the effectiveness of non-partisan GOTV messages delivered via mail during the 2010 gubernatorial campaigns. We systematically manipulate the GOTV message varying the presentation of vote history (social pressure), varying the message so that injunctive and descriptive norms are either consistent or inconsistent, and varying the timing of message reception. Overall, we find GOTV mobilization efforts increase turnout, but mobilization effectiveness varies across states, across citizens (based on their propensity to vote), and across messages. We find social pressure is substantially less effective than in previously published tests. We present an initial field based confirmation of the hypothesis that norm consistent messages are more effective than norm inconsistent messages in increasing turnout. Finally, there are significant differences in timing effects, depending upon state election rules.


 


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