Image and Emotion in Voter Decisions

Renita Coleman is associate professor at the University of Texas-Austin School of Journalism. H. Denis Wu is associate professor of communication at Boston University.

From the perspective that elections should involve the rational evaluation of candidates’ issue positions, campaigns and voters that focus on images and emotions are generally disdained. But Coleman and Wu argue that candidate images and voter emotions are central to the electoral process because they stimulate voters to evaluate candidates. Previous research in political communication has focused largely on the first level of agenda setting (addressing issues), but in this book, the authors analyze the second level of agenda setting (addressing affect). This work is unique in two ways. First, it focuses on the visuals of candidates, rather than their words, and assesses them as positive or negative. Second, it measures the positive and negative emotions candidates engender in voters. In doing so, it measures the impact that mediated affect has on elections. The authors use a multi-modal approach that uses experiments as well as surveys that vary across time and location. The result is an overwhelmingly persuasive argument that the candidate images broadcast by various news media play an important role in the public agenda during elections. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections.

• 1 The Importance of Image and Affect in Politics2 Historical Traces and Relevant Concepts3 The Role of Information Processing4 The Methods Behind the Research: How We Did These Studies5 The Two Levels of Agenda Setting: Issues and Attributes6 Visual Cues in the Formation of Affect 7 The Valence of Affect: Accentuate the Negative or Put Your Best Foot Forward?8 The Makeup of Affect: Emotions and Traits 9 New Media and Demographic Differences in Agenda Setting10 An International Investigation of Affective Agendas11 What We Now Know About Affect and Implications for Democracy