Political Communication

This chapter offers three sets of definitions of “political communication”: those from early scholarly works, those from the major communication and political science associations, and a set of definitions that emerged at an Annenberg Public Policy Center conference attended by many scholars contributing to this handbook. The authors discuss the institutional and financial forces that cultivated and propelled Political Communication as an interdisciplinary field. Finally, an overview of the Oxford Handbook of Political Communication is provided, including a description of the major thematic sections around which the chapters are collected.