Introduces and defines a new field of research on the way political attitudes are influenced and changed

This timely set traces the evolution of social marketing from its deep roots in psychology, religion, and politics to its current role as an influencer of societal and behavioral change. Few realize that the methods behind the social marketing discipline are not new but are based on traditional sales techniques reengineered to advocate social responsibility. Since emerging, the movement has prompted a rapid change in how we communicate and what we say. Funding from government agencies, foundations, and organizations like the National Cancer Institute and the American Heart Association have prompted campaigns that promote healthy behaviors and deter unhealthy actions. In this three-volume set, a panel of experts take an unprecedented look at this marketing phenomena as a means of influencing behaviors that benefit individuals and society overall. This comprehensive collection examines the role of persuasion in a marketing context. The book's central theme is woven throughout each of the three volumes: volume one focuses on the conceptual and philosophical foundations of the trend; the second part addresses its theoretical and strategic dimensions; and the final section discusses applications to specific societal issues like personal, public, and environmental caretaking; disease prevention; good nutrition; and safe sex. Chapters address campaign planning, regulatory and compliance issues, and the measurement of outcomes.

Elections are the means by which democratic nations determine their leaders, and communication in the context of elections has the potential to shape people's beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Thus, electoral persuasion is one of the most important political processes in any nation that regularly holds elections. Moreover, electoral persuasion encompasses not only what happens in an election but also what happens before and after, involving candidates, parties, interest groups, the media, and the voters themselves. This volume surveys the vast political science literature on this subject, emphasizing contemporary research and topics and encouraging cross-fertilization among research strands. A global roster of authors provides a broad examination of electoral persuasion, with international perspectives complementing deep coverage of U.S. politics. Major areas of coverage include: general models of political persuasion; persuasion by parties, candidates, and outside groups; media influence; interpersonal influence; electoral persuasion across contexts; and empirical methodologies for understanding electoral persuasion.

This volume brings together the major thrusts of research and theory in political communication. For scholars/researchers/students in political communication, mass communication, and political science; and for readers in public opinion, political psychol

Analyzes the communication processes in direct democratic campaigns and their effect on the opinion formation of the voters. Based on a detailed analysis of the politicians' strategies, media coverage and the opinion formation of the public in three campaigns, this book argues that the campaigns are more enlightening than manipulating.

This volume brings together some of the research on citizen decision making.

Political advertising is as important as ever—ad spending records are broken each election cycle, and the volume of ads aired continues to increase. Political Advertising in the United States is a comprehensive survey of the political advertising landscape today. The authors analyze the major trends in advertising in both presidential and congressional elections and the effect political ads have on voters—from the impact of today's regulatory environment on the sponsorship and content of political advertising, to how data analysis has allowed for more sophisticated targeting and how the rise of the Internet and social media has changed the distribution of ads. The authors, co-directors of the Wesleyan Media Project, draw from the most up-to-date data on political advertising to illustrate and support their arguments. Written in an accessible and easy to understand manner, this is a book that will appeal to students, scholars and political practitioners.

Political Science has traditionally employed empirical research and analytical resources to understand, explain and predict political phenomena. One of the long-standing criticisms against empirical modeling targets the static perspective provided by the model-invariant paradigm. In political science research, this issue has a particular relevance since political phenomena prove sophisticated degrees of context-dependency whose complexity could be hardly captured by traditional approaches. To cope with the complexity challenge, a new modeling paradigm was needed. This book is concerned with this challenge. Moreover, the book aims to reveal the power of computational modeling of political attitudes to reinforce the political methodology in facing two fundamental challenges: political culture modeling and polity modeling. The book argues that an artificial polity model as a powerful research instrument could hardly be effective without the political attitude and, by extension, the political culture computational and simulation modeling theory, experiments and practice. This book: Summarizes the state of the art in computational modeling of political attitudes, with illustrations and examples featured throughout. Explores the different approaches to computational modeling and how the complexity requirements of political science should determine the direction of research and evaluation methods. Addresses the newly emerging discipline of computational political science. Discusses modeling paradigms, agent-based modeling and simulation, and complexity-based modeling. Discusses model classes in the fundamental areas of voting behavior and decision-making, collective action, ideology and partisanship, emergence of social uprisings and civil conflict, international relations, allocation of public resources, polity and institutional function, operation, development and reform, political attitude formation and change in democratic societies. This book is ideal for students who need a conceptual and operational description of the political attitude computational modeling phases, goals and outcomes in order to understand how political attitudes could be computationally modeled and simulated. Researchers, Governmental and international policy experts will also benefit from this book.

Using a comparative approach, this book examines how political communication and the mass media have played an important role in the consolidation of democratic institutions.

Political Advocacy and American Politics provides a detailed explanation as to why citizens engage in interpersonal advocacy in the United States. Sean Richey and J. Benjamin Taylor eloquently show how the campaigns, social media, and personality and partisanship affect one's propensity for candidates, which often leads to arguments about politics. Using original qualitative, survey, and experimental studies, Richey and Taylor demonstrate the causes of political advocacy over time in the political environment and at the individual level. While some worry about the incivility in American politics, Richey and Taylor argue political talk, where conflict is common, is caused by high-activity democratic processes and normatively beneficial individual attributes. Furthermore, Richey and Taylor argue that advocacy—when conceptualized as a democratic "release valve"—is exactly the kind of conflict we might expect in a vibrant democracy. Political Advocacy and American Politics: Why People Fight So Often About Politics is ideal for university students and researchers, yet it is also accessible to any reader looking to learn more about the role campaigns and personal attributes play in the decision to advocate.