We study the topic dynamics of interactions in political debates using the 2012 Republican presidential primary debates as data. We show that the tendency of candidates to shift topics changes over the course of the election campaign, and that it is correlated with their relative power. We also show that our topic shift features help predict candidates’ relative rankings.

Amid signs of renewed scholarly interest in the effects of mass communication in presidential campaigns, the 1995 NES Pilot undertook three mini-studies to improve the measurement of exposure to the mass media. The first involves exposure to TV news, which is believed by some scholars to be the most important influence in presidential campaigns. The second involves exposure to paid advertising,...

The current research used the contexts of U.S. presidential debates and negotiations to examine whether matching the linguistic style of an opponent in a two-party exchange affects the reactions of third-party observers. Building off communication accommodation theory (CAT), interaction alignment theory (IAT), and processing fluency, we propose that language style matching (LSM) will improve su...

This year, every political pundit is focused on the U.S. Presidential campaign, namely the incumbent Republican team vs. the Democratic ticket (yet to be named), and the recently announced Independent candidate. The incumbent, as well as each prospective candidate, is on the stump, raising campaign funds, spouting rhetoric from podiums in universities, town squares, and televised debates, and a...