Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Information Diffusion in Complex Electoral Environments: Voting Behavior in Two Brazilian Cities

这篇博士论文解决了选民如何在复杂的选举环境（中东欧）的选举中了解政治的问题。 一个CEE包括以下内容：选民对政党的认同感较弱，有几个政党，一个以上的席位在地区有争议，许多候选人竞选同一个职位。 一个至少具有几个这样的特征的环境并不符合Sniderman、布雷迪和Tetlock（1991）对美国政治制度的描述（一个非常好的研究案例），在美国，选民能够在竞选活动中获得有效的线索，因为“政治世界是如此有组织”（第29页）。然而，有些制度的选举过程要复杂得多。例如，在几个拉丁美洲国家，政党比美国弱（Stokes 1999，Mainwaring和Scully 1996），每个地区选举一名以上的代表（Nicolau 1999）。这项研究扩展了竞选活动中的信息传播的研究，以政治制度与中东欧国家，如拉丁美洲。使用多种研究技术分析了几个不同的信息传播来源的影响-包括调查数据，媒体内容分析数据，以及对政治和社会活动家的深入采访。2002年众议院选举期间的两个巴西城市是研究的中心。这些城市提供了足够的选举复杂性的变化，以测试在不同水平的选举竞争和政党线索的强度环境中选民的学习过程的假设。

This Doctoral Dissertation addresses the issue of how voters learn about politics during elections in a complex electoral environment (CEE). A CEE is includes the following: voters weakly identify with parties, there are several parties, more than one seat is in dispute by district, and many candidates run for the same office. An environment with at least a few such characteristics does not correspond to Sniderman, Brady, and Tetlock's (1991) description of the political system in the United States (an extremely well-studied case) where voters are able to pick up effective cues during electoral campaigns because the "world of politics is so organized" (p. 29). There are, however, systems where the complexity of the electoral process is much greater. In several Latin American countries, for example, political parties are weaker than in the US (Stokes 1999, Mainwaring and Scully 1996) and more than one representative is elected per district (Nicolau 1999). This research extends the studies of information diffusion during electoral campaigns to political systems with CEEs, such as those of Latin America. The impact of several distinct sources of information diffusion is analyzed using a multiplicity of research techniques -including survey data, media content analysis data, and in-depth interviews with political and social activists. Two Brazilian cities during the 2002 Chamber of Deputies election are the locus of the study. These cities provide enough variation in electoral complexity to test hypotheses about voters' learning process in milieus with distinct levels of electoral competition and strength of party cues.