Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the rhetoric and reality of the impact of political blogs in the specific context of American politics, where online, mainstream media and academic accounts suggest blogs have had significant impacts on political communication. Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper examines three high profile events in which blogging has been implicated as part...

Which types of political rhetoric are most persuasive? Politicians make arguments that share common rhetorical elements, including metaphor, ad hominem attacks, appeals to expertise, moral appeals, and many others. However, also highly multidimensional, making it difficult assess the relative persuasive power these elements. We report on a novel experimental design which assesses persuasiveness...