Crosstalk

Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates, and the Media in a Presidential Campaign by Marion R. Just, Ann N. Crigler, Dean E. Alger, Timothy E. Cook, Montague [Page 147]Kern, and Darrell M. West was published in 1996. The book reports the results of an extensive research project on the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. In the book, the authors contend that to understand a presidential campaign, one must understand the interaction among all of the major actors in the process, the candidates, the media, and the public.

The authors describe the various aspects of the campaign, with particular emphasis on the candidate's messages via their campaign commercials and the news media's presentation of the candidates' issues and personal qualities. Content analysis of a wide variety of media messages, newspapers, and television form a major part of the underlying data of the book. The authors took advantage of their own diverse locations to provide a broad geographic distribution of media market coverage (Massachusetts, North Carolina, California, and Minnesota). Although some variation in news availability was apparent, the authors confirmed the dominance of journalistic styles and patterns such as a focus on horserace coverage. With these parts of the process, the authors then address how the public uses these information sources and the differences among them to construct their own view of the candidates and campaign issues.

Analysis of candidate messages also focused on the television ads sponsored by both campaigns. Noting the negative nature of the advertisements, the authors point to the differences in candidate handling of foreign policy and economic concerns.

The citizen or public view was considered by the authors through the conduct of interviews and focus groups. The analysis of the citizen viewpoints and the evolution of citizen views across the campaign suggests that the interaction of information throughout the campaign can affect how citizens come to view the candidates and the issues in the campaign. Citizens are not immune to media representations of issues and candidate character and personality.

Overall, the book offers some strong evidence for the premise that campaigns do matter to citizen perceptions. In 2003, the book won the American Political Science Association's Political Communication Division Doris Graber Award for best book.