American Politics Today: Third Essentials Edition

Published in USA The Great Divide: Campaign Media in the American Mind Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics in the Annenberg Public Policy Center. His publications include Population-based Survey Experiments (2011), Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy (2006), Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes (1998), as well as many journal articles on the impact of media on American politics. As a scholar of media and politics, I am frequently asked to participate in media commentary during election years. Although I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of academic outreach to the larger world, I suspect that this is my least favorite part of my job. Media and politics about which I am writing are both wide and deep. They converge around my relative naiveté in understanding the sheer power of the monster. When I take part in a radio call-in program or appear on an election-night television broadcast, then I, too, become part of the monster, wielding its incredible power while simultaneously denying its very existence. While both the public and academics agree that media have influence in elections, the scales on which these two entities believe media matter suggest an enormous chasm. Public perceptions of the power of media in elections, and the academic evidence of its influence, could not be further apart.

William T. Bianco is professor of political science at Indiana University, Bloomington. His research focuses on congressional institutions, representation, and international cooperation in crewed spaceflight. He received his undergraduate degree from SUNY Stony Brook and his MA and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. He is the author of Trust: Representatives and Constituents and numerous journal articles. His research and graduate students have received funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Council for Eurasian and Eastern European Research. He has served as a consultant to various candidates, political parties, and government agencies. He was also a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Moscow, Russia, during 2011–12.

David T. Canon is professor and department chair of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His teaching and research interests focus on American political institutions, especially Congress, and racial representation. He is the author of Actors, Athletes, and Astronauts: Political Amateurs in the United States Congress; Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts (winner of the Richard F. Fenno Prize); The Dysfunctional Congress? (with Kenneth Mayer); and various articles and book chapters. He served a term as the Congress editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly. He is an AP consultant and has taught in the University of Wisconsin AP Summer Institute for U.S. Government and Politics since 1997. Professor Canon is the recipient of a University of Wisconsin Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award.