Campaigning in the time of Twitter: 140 character ethical appeals from the 2012 United States presidential election

This paper looked at the use of Twitter during the 2012 United States presidential campaign and the use of ethos appeals as a strategy to build credibility. As a new communication avenue, Twitter plays an unprecedented role in political discourse today. Both the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns have engaged in social media strategies and are actively using Twitter to communicate their talking points, and overall political platform. Larry Beason’s (1991) categories of signaled ethos were applied to examine a collection of tweets from each candidate. Sites like Twitter offer a more personal communication avenue for politicians to use. This paper discusses the strategic messaging on Twitter from politicians, and whether the messages contain ethos. The research questions explored are: to what extent are there ethos appeals on Twitter in the 2012 United States political candidates’ tweets? And, to what extent are particular ethos appeals prevalent? Of the 100 tweets examined from Barack Obama, the findings showed that 32% of his tweets contained ethos appeals, while 58% of the 100 tweets from Mitt Romney contained ethos appeals.

Campaigning in the time of Twitter: 140 character ethical appeals from the 2012 United States presidential election

This paper looked at the use of Twitter during the 2012 United States presidential campaign and the use of ethos appeals as a strategy to build credibility. As a new communication avenue, Twitter plays an unprecedented role in political discourse today. Both the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns have engaged in social media strategies and are actively using Twitter to communicate their talking points, and overall political platform. Larry Beason’s (1991) categories of signaled ethos were applied to examine a collection of tweets from each candidate. Sites like Twitter offer a more personal communication avenue for politicians to use. This paper discusses the strategic messaging on Twitter from politicians, and whether the messages contain ethos. The research questions explored are: to what extent are there ethos appeals on Twitter in the 2012 United States political candidates’ tweets? And, to what extent are particular ethos appeals prevalent? Of the 100 tweets examined from Barack Obama, the findings showed that 32% of his tweets contained ethos appeals, while 58% of the 100 tweets from Mitt Romney contained ethos appeals.

A Review of Mormon Studies in China

Mormon studies in China began in the early 1990s and can be divided into three phases between the years of 2004 and 2017. The first Master’s and Doctoral theses on Mormonism were both published in 2004, and journal articles have also been increasing in frequency since then. The year of 2012 saw a peak, partly because Mormon Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination for the 2012 US presidential election. In 2017, a national-level project, Mormonism and its Bearings on Current Sino-US Relations, funded by the Chinese government, was launched. However, Mormon studies in China is thus far still in its infancy, with few institutions and a small number of scholars. Academic works are limited in number, and high-level achievements are very few. Among the published works, the study of the external factors of Mormonism is far more prevalent than research on its internal factors. Historical, sociological, and political approaches far exceed those of philosophy, theology, and history of thoughts. To Mormon studies, Chinese scholars can and should be making unique contributions, but the potential remains to be tapped.

Young Guns and Billionaires

Chapter 2 examines how the Republican Party’s crackup evolved over the course of Barack Obama’s two terms as president. As divided as the GOP may have been after the 2008 presidential election, its major donors were linked in their opposition to Obama. For the first time since McCain-Feingold, the full force of conservative wealth in America was united against healthcare reform and any spending to revive the perilous economy, rescue the auto industry, or provide relief for mortgage holders. The election of the first African American president made it easy for conservative commentators on talk radio and Fox News to call Obama’s healthcare plan “reparations.” This stoked racial resentment and boosted the plans of wealthy industrialists Charles and David Koch to move Republicans further to the right. Their main organization, Americans for Prosperity, raised hundreds of millions of dollars yearly and quietly provided training, infrastructure, and funding for many of the “spontaneous” Tea Party groups that helped restore Republican control of Congress. Donors may not have been willing to give millions of dollars for compromise, but the slash-and-burn tactics of the Tea Party became a catastrophic example of overreach. The 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, got caught up in a party tilting ever more to the right; he was only given financial support for his campaign against Obama when he renounced his Massachusetts healthcare program—the model for Obamacare—and put Ryan on his ticket.

Are you talking to me? A case of specific reply by means of election campaign advertisements

The article aims at an analytic description of a specific type of exchange occurring during political campaigns. The candidates often engage in a virtual dialogue; that is, an exchange of points made by means of campaign advertisements. The specific type of exchange or reply is, in certain aspects, no different to an ordinary conversation. However, what influences it most is the context of public/mass communication. The main concern of the presentation is to investigate, within the framework of Relevance Theory, ways in which a candidate’s reply to the opponent’s advertisement is actually a message to the viewers and prospective voters rather than to the rival themselves. The analysis is carried out on selected advertisements for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama broadcast during the U.S. presidential election campaign in 2012.

Afterword

This afterword looks at how Mormonism’s early apocalyptic beliefs haunted Latter-day Saints in the beginning of the twenty-first century. As part of increased media and popular culture coverage of Latter-day Saints, termed the “Mormon moment,” there was a great deal of publicity surrounding early Mormon beliefs on the last days. The afterword specifically looks at how Latter-day Saint politicians, such as Mitt Romney, have responded to questions about his beliefs in last days prophecy. In addition, readers will read about coverage of twenty-first-century Latter-day Saint preppers.

Introduction

In 2008, Mormon presidential candidate Mitt Romney apologetically addressed the problem of “theocratic tyranny” in the lead-up to the election, declaring, “I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law.” Comparing himself to John F. Kennedy, who faced similar questions about his faith as a Catholic during the presidential election of 1960, Romney acknowledged the issues surrounding the sovereign authority held by the Mormon prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints....

From Wedge Issue to Partisan Divide: The Development of Immigration Policy Opinion after 2016

President Trump won an Electoral College majority in 2016 bolstered by voters who supported him, but not the previous nominee, Mitt Romney. Evidence suggests that a campaign promising a more restrictive immigration policy was the key to this improved performance among cross-pressured voters. In the months since inauguration day 2017, however, voters did not remain unaware of the administration’s programmatic steps on immigration and the opposition they encountered. I interpret evidence from a panel survey to suggest that voters gained knowledge about immigration policy after 2016, and began to align their policy views with the positions of their favored political parties. Inasmuch as voters’ policy positions become identical with their party preference, the potential for immigration policy to again act as a wedge issue in 2020 is greatly reduced. President Trump’s 2020 campaign may be able to mobilize more base voters given this increase in policy-party congruence but he may not be as successful as in 2016 in attracting crossover voters.

Targeted Issue Messages and Voting Behavior

In today’s data-driven campaigns, presidential targeting strategies rely on detailed perceptions about the political leanings and policy positions of Americans to decide which registered voters to contact and which messages to emphasize in their outreach. However, identifying supporters and opponents of a candidate’s policy positions is far from foolproof. This reality results in some citizens encountering political message(s) on congruent issues, where their issue stance aligns with the messaging candidate, and others encountering incongruent issue message(s), where the candidate and message recipient do not share the same position. Examining official contact records from the 2012 presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney, I find evidence that Romney’s campaign had some success when targeting Democrats with congruent issues. Messaging Democrats with an issue where they and Romney share common ground is associated with decreased support for Obama, increased abstention, and increased support for Romney. Contacting Democrats with an incongruent message and contacting Republicans with either an incongruent or congruent issue message had minimal effects on the voting behavior of the recipient.

Mormon Mobilization in Contemporary U.S. Politics

In 2012, the Republican Party selected a Mormon, Mitt Romney, as their nominee for U.S. president. After decades of persecution and suspicion, many felt like the LDS Church was finally being accepted as a mainstream religion and an equal player on the national political stage. From a different perspective, the “acceptance” of the LDS Church by the U.S. government and the Republican Party has come at a tremendous cost. Unlike those who joined other religious denominations in America, 19th century converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave everything they had to the church. The 19th-century LDS Church controlled not just the political, but the economic, social, and religious aspects of its members’ lives. The LDS Church has traded immense power over a few dedicated members for a weaker political voice in the lives of millions more members. From this perspective, the LDS Church has never been more politically weak than they were in the 2012 presidential election. Previous LDS Church presidents endorsed non-Mormon candidates Cleveland, Taft, and Nixon more enthusiastically than President Monson endorsed Mitt Romney—one of his own. In the 20th century, the power of the LDS Church over the lives of its members has waned considerably, significantly hindering the institutional church’s ability to politically mobilize its congregants. Even in Utah, only the most ardent LDS Church members are swayed by the political dictates of LDS Church leaders.