Televised Presidential Debates: Advocacy in Contemporary America

(Hardback)

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Televised debates between the nominees of the two major parties have become standard fare in contemporary presidential election campaigns. The authors of this volume maintain that television has altered the very nature of presidential debates profoundly, that the demands of television have dictated the structure and formats of contemporary debates, and that the visual content of presidential debates plays an important role in the way that candidates exercise influence in televised debates. This work employs a "television perspective" in examining the sponsorship, formats, nature and impacts of presidential debates, stressing the 1960, 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988 debates. The authors assert that in order to understand contemporary political debates, one must understand how television communicates and exercises influence in this context. Hellweg, Pfau and Brydon integrate contemporary theory and research about the television medium and influence with extant research on presidential debates. Specific topics include how presidential debates have evolved as a function of the participation of the broadcast industry, how debates are structured to fit the demands of the television medium, how candidates' verbal messages must be tailored to the medium, how candidates' visual messages are defined through the medium and the persuasive effects of mediated debates. "Televised Presidential Debates" will be particularly useful to scholars and students of political communication; campaigns and elections and mass media.

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Author Bio

SUSAN A. HELLWEG is Professor of Speech Communication at San Diego State University. She has been actively involved in research on political candidate image and debates for well over a decade, and has published more than forty articles, book chapters, and monographs on the subject. MICHAEL PFAU is Professor and Chair of the Department of Speech Communication at Augustana College in South Dakota. His academic interests involve argument and the broad area of social influence, with particular emphasis on political campaign communication. He has published more than thirty articles and book chapters and co-authored two previous books, including Attack Politics: Strategy and Defense with Henry Kenski (Praeger, 1990). STEVEN R. BRYDON is a Professor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at California State University, Chico. He is actively involved in research on political communication, rhetorical criticism, argumentation, and forensics, and has published widely on those subjects.