Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Process Revealed: News Media, Legislators and Constituents Connections, Interactions and Communications

政治学的美国政治分支对政治代表过程中涉及到的立法者、新闻媒体和选区互动和沟通的复杂性知之甚少。政治学家对这个谜题有很多头绪，但没有一个接近统一的模型。这篇博士论文的关键研究支持的调查是对政治代表过程的理解，即新闻媒体作为立法者和选民之间信息的促进者和提供者的作用。虽然这篇论文不会回答关于这一过程的所有问题，但它开始弥合国会，政治沟通，投票以及在某种程度上政治心理学的相关领域和文献之间的差距。在这个项目中提出的基本问题是，新闻媒体作为一个战略行动者的引入是如何影响政治代表过程的？这位博士生认为，这是政治代表制在美国政治体系中如何表现出来的最关键的因素，但政治学学科未能充分模拟其影响。本项目试图通过三种整合的方式来填补立法者、新闻媒体和选民在政治代表过程中的互动研究空白。首先，学生开发正式的模型来分析研究新闻媒体作为战略角色的引入是如何影响立法者的风格和竞选活动的。其次，他通过对报纸对美国众议院议员报道的内容分析，对分析结果进行了实证检验，以了解报道的实际情况。分析是在地方和国家报纸上进行的，并作为对正式模型产生的结果的直接经验检验。第三，利用内容分析数据，他实证地调查了公民是否以及在多大程度上对有关其众议院议员的各种新闻报道作出反应。本研究考察新闻媒体对连任概率的影响。通过加强对公民与媒体关系以及公民与立法者互动的理解，该项目有可能产生更广泛的社会影响。

The American politics subfield of political science knows very little about the intricacies involved in legislator, news media and constituency interactions and communications in the political representation process. Political scientists have many pieces to the puzzle but nothing approaching a unified model. Critical in this doctoral dissertation research support's investigation is an understanding of the political representation process is the role of the news media as facilitator and provider of information between legislators and voters. While this dissertation will not answer all of the questions about this process, it begins to bridge the gaps between the relevant fields and literature of Congress, political communication, voting and, to some extent, political psychology. The fundamental question asked in this project is how does the introduction of the news media as a strategic actor affect the political representation process? The Ph.D. student argues that this is the single most crucial element in how political representation manifests itself in the U.S. political system, and yet the political science discipline has failed to adequately model its effect. This project attempts to fill the research gap for legislator, news media and constituency interactions in the political representation process in three integrative ways. First, the student develops formal models to investigate analytically how the introduction of the news media as a strategic actor can influence legislators - homestyles and campaigns. Second, he empirically tests the analytical results through content analyses of newspapers' coverage of U.S. House members to see what coverage actually looks like. Analyses are done on both local and national newspapers and serve as a direct empirical test of the results generated out of the formal models. Third, using the content analysis data, he empirically investigates whether and to what extent citizens respond to various types of news coverage about their House representatives. This investigation examines the news media's impact on reelection probabilities. The project has the potential for broader social impact by enhancing understanding of citizen-media relations and for citizen-legislator interactions.