The Dynamics of Political Communication ─ Media and Politics in a Digital Age

What impact do news and political advertising have on us? How do candidates use media to persuade us as voters? Are we informed adequately about political issues? Do 21^st-century political communications measure up to democratic ideals? The Dynamics of Political Communication: Media and Politics in a Digital Age explores these issues and guides us through current political communication theories and beliefs.

Author Richard M. Perloff details the fluid landscape of political communication and offers us an engaging introduction to the field and a thorough tour of the discipline. He examines essential concepts in this arena, such as agenda-setting, agenda-building, framing, political socialization, and issues of bias that are part of campaign news. Designed to provide an understanding and appreciation of the principles involved in political communication along with methods of research and hypothesis-testing, each chapter includes materials that challenge us by encouraging reflection on controversial matters and providing links to online examples of real-life political communication. The text’s companion website provides expanded resources for students as well as materials for instructors to use in the classroom.

The Dynamics of Political Communication immerses readers in contemporary events through its coverage of online campaigning, effects of negative advertising, issues of gender bias in campaign politics, and image-management strategies in the 2012 campaign. It will prepare you to survey the current political landscape with a more critical eye, and encourage a greater understanding of the challenges and occurrences presented in this constantly evolving field.

Richard M. Perloff, Professor of Communication at Cleveland State University, has written a scholarly book on political communication published in 1998, and a persuasion textbook, now in its fifth edition. He is well-known for his scholarship on the third-person effect and the role perceptions of media effects play in public opinion. A Fellow of the Midwest Association of Public Opinion Research, Perloff has been on the faculty at Cleveland State University since 1979 and served as director of the School of Communication from 2004-2011. He is an inveterate follower of political communication, reading the news each day in a coffee shop following a morning swim.