The People’s Voice During the 2016 Presidential Campaign
2017
Hart, Roderick P.
This study examines the 2016 presidential campaign by comparing the voice of the people with that of the press and the political establishment. By systematically collecting some 5,000 texts (political speeches, ads, and debates alongside print and broadcast coverage) during the campaign and comparing them with 1,200 letters to the editor written in 12 small American cities, an overview of the nation’s quadrennial dialogue was made possible. By also comparing this sample with similar texts gathered for the 1948 through 2012 presidential campaigns, the 2016 campaign could be seen in sharper relief. These comparisons were facilitated by DICTION, a lexically based, content analytic program capable of producing rhetorical profiles of the discourse sampled. Overall, I found (a) that each voice produces distinct verbal patterns, thereby revealing its unique role in the polity; (b) that all three voices—politicians, the press, and the people—were more strident and more philosophical in 2016 than in prior years; (c) that Donald Trump and his letter writing supporters were especially dismayed by the status quo; and (d) that many of the stereotypes about letter writers turn out not to be true, with only a small percentage being blind ideologues. The rest were either issue specialists, analytical problem solvers, champions of a particular worldview, or voters interested in dissecting the psychological makeup of the candidates.
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