The 2012 Presidential Campaign

A Communication Perspective

Contributions by Henry C. Kenski, Kate M. Kenski, Rachel Holloway, Ben Voth, Craig Allen Smith, John C. Tedesco, Scott W. Dunn, Gwen Brown, Jeffrey P. Jones, John Allen Hendricks, Joseph M. Valenzano III, Jason A. Edwards Edited by Robert E. Denton Jr.

Not available to order

Publication date:

29 July 2013

Length of book:

220 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442216730

Presidential campaigns are our national conversations – the widespread and complex communication of issues, images, social reality, and personas. Political communication specialists break down the 2012 presidential campaign and go beyond the quantitative facts, electoral counts, and poll results of the election, to make sense of the “political bits” of communication that comprise our voting choices. The contributors look at the early campaign period, the nomination process and conventions, the social and political contexts, the debates, the role of candidate spouses, candidate strategies, political strategies, and the use of the Internet and other technologies.

Preface
Chapter 1: The Presidential Nominating Conventions and the American Dream: Narrative Unity and Political Division. Rachel Holloway
Chapter 2: Change in the Communication Demands of Spouses in the 2012 Nominating Convention, Gwen Brown
Chapter 3: Presidential Debates 2012, Ben Voth
Chapter 4: “His to Lose”: Strategic Keys to Challenging the Incumbent in 2012, Craig Allen Smith
Chapter 5: Political Advertising in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, John C. Tedesco & Scott W. Dunn
Chapter 6: “Death by Taxes”: A Post-mortem on Romney’s Tax Return Apologia, Joseph M. Valenzano III & Jason A. Edwards
Chapter 7: Presidential Campaigns as Cultural Events: The Convergence of Politics and Popular Culture in Election 2012, Jeffrey P. Jones
Chapter 8: The New Media Campaign of 2012, John Allen Hendricks
Chapter 9: Explaining the Vote in the Election of 2008: Obama’s Re-election, Henry C. Kenski & Kate M. Kenski
Index
About the Contributors

Robert Denton has once again brought together a team of political communication scholars who apply a wide range of theories and methods to analyzing a presidential campaign. From traditional speeches by candidates and their wives to twitter reactions from citizens, every type of campaign communication is explored. Denton's observation in his introduction that the more presidential campaign communication changes, the more it remains the same is evident throughout each chapter's analysis. The need for apologia, the dominance of the American Dream in presidential rhetoric, complaints about debate formats and their limitations–both old and new–or increased reliance on negative advertising are not new themes in analyzing these quadrennial events. However, the authors demonstrate that context matters and that each plays out in some unique way in 2012.