Advances in Research Using the C-SPAN Archives Robert X
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Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Purdue University Press Books Purdue University Press Fall 11-15-2016 Advances in Research Using the C-SPAN Archives Robert X. Browning Purdue University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks Part of the Archival Science Commons Recommended Citation Browning, Robert X., Advances in Research Using the C-SPAN Archives. (2016). Purdue University Press. (Knowledge Unlatched Open Access Edition.) This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. ADVANCES IN RESEARCH USING THE C-SPAN ARCHIVES OTHER BOOKS IN THE C-SPAN ARCHIVES SERIES The C-SPAN Archives: An Interdisciplinary Resource for Discovery, Learning, and Engagement Exploring the C-SPAN Archives: Advancing the Research Agenda ADVANCES IN RESEARCH USING THE C-SPAN ARCHIVES edited by Robert X. Browning Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana Copyright 2017 by Robert X. Browning. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress. Paper ISBN: 978-1-55753-762-1 ePDF ISBN: 978-1-61249-476-0 ePUB ISBN: 978-1-61249-477-7 Knowledge Unlatched ISBN: 978-1-55753-787-4 To Barbara Hinckley and Ira Sharkansky Extraordinary professors and mentors both. CONTENTS FOREWORD ix PREFACE xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv CHAPTER 1 Congressional Process and Public Opinion Toward Congress: An Experimental Analysis Using the C-SPAN Video Library 1 Jonathan S. Morris and Michael W. Joy CHAPTER 2 Discursively Constructing the Great Lakes Freshwater 33 Theresa R. Castor CHAPTER 3 Considering Construction of Conservative/Liberal Meaning: What an Extraterrestrial Might Discover About Branding Strategy in the C-SPAN Video Library 59 Robert L. Kerr CHAPTER 4 What Can the Public Learn by Watching Congress? 79 Tim Groeling CHAPTER 5 Gendered Linguistics: A Large-Scale Text Analysis of U.S. Senate Candidate Debates 83 Martha E. Kropf and Emily Grassett CHAPTER 6 Microanalysis of the Emotional Appropriateness of Facial Displays During Presidential Debates: C-SPAN Coverage of the First and Third 2012 Debates 103 Patrick A. Stewart and Spencer C. Hall CHAPTER 7 President William J. Clinton as a Practical Ethnomethodologist: A Single-Case Analysis of Successful Question-Answering Techniques in the 1998 Grand Jury Testimony 131 Angela Cora Garcia CHAPTER 8 C-SPAN Unscripted: The Archives as Repository for Uncertainty in Political Life 165 Joshua M. Scacco CHAPTER 9 Protecting (Which?) Women: A Content Analysis of the House Floor Debate on the 2012 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act 173 Nadia E. Brown and Sarah Allen Gershon CHAPTER 10 “Working the Crowd”: How Political Figures Use Introduction Structures 203 Kurtis D. Miller CHAPTER 11 Representing Others, Presenting Self 235 Zoe M. Oxley CONCLUSION 241 CONTRIBUTORS 245 INDEX 251 FOREWORD was one of those geeky teenagers who watched C-SPAN. There are probably more of us out there than who will admit to it. Although I enjoyed watching I a good congressional debate, what I really enjoyed was C-SPAN’s coverage of the campaign trail. I was exhilarated when C-SPAN would clip a microphone to a presidential candidate and let me “ride along” as he (and occasionally she) shook hands with voters in a donut shop in New Hampshire or in a pizza place in Wisconsin. Growing up in Iowa, I especially recall watching residents of my home state gather at middle schools to participate in caucus meetings, and I recall watching the luminaries in the Democratic Party gather in a farm field for Senator Tom Harkin’s Steak Fry. My interest in campaigns turned into an academic career, and I now publish extensively in the area of political communication, focusing on how campaigns target their appeals to various types of voters, often times through their political advertising. ix x FOREWORD When Robert Browning created the C-SPAN Video Library almost 30 years ago, he certainly made the lives of teens who geek out on politics a lot brighter, but he did so much more. First, he provided a vast data resource for those who study American politics. Second, he provided an amazing tool for educators to use. There was one point in my teaching career when I would reach for a VHS tape with a yellowed label (recorded in 2000) in order to show my students what really happened at a presidential nominating cau- cus; today, of course, I can call up that same video online from Purdue. But most fundamentally, when Browning started the C-SPAN Video Library, he created a video history of American democracy. We can’t thank him enough for his foresight. The chapters in this edited collection are stellar examples of the types of research that can come out of the C-SPAN archive. The research questions posed—and answered—are varied, ranging from whether liberal and conser- vatives use those ideological labels differently in their speech (most definitely!) to whether men and women use different words in campaigns debates (no!) and how President Bill Clinton avoided blame during the Lewinsky scandal (through the smart use of rhetorical strategies). And the methods employed run the gamut, from content analysis to statistical modeling to rhetorical analysis. As I scholar, I was excited by all of the new insights I gained about American politics. As an educator, I was excited by the potential of assign- ing this volume to students in a research methods course, as it demonstrates how smart researchers can successfully take multiple approaches even when using the same data. As we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the C-SPAN Video Library in 2017, it is important to celebrate the successes of the archive, to take stock of its current uses, and to plan for the future. There is no better way to do so than through the publication of this collection of essays. I trust that you, the reader, will enjoy it as much as I did. And now I must get back to the task of searching for some of those videos that so intrigued me in my younger days. Travis N. Ridout Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy PREFACE he chapters in this third edition of the series on research using the C-SPAN T Video Library are a diverse set. All these papers were initially presented at a conference at Purdue University in October, 2015. Scholars from commu- nication and political science came together there to present their research and explore ways that the C-SPAN Video Library can be used to advance our understanding of interactions in communication and political science. This diversity reflects the maturity of research in this third year of the conferences. Scholarship has advanced in that different researchers demon- strate a range of approaches from their disciplines as they grapple with sim- ilar underlying questions. Because the conferences are interdisciplinary, we should not be surprised to see such divergent approaches. In these chapters, we find researchers using experimental research, con- tent analysis, conversational analysis, detailed studies of facial movements, xi xii PREFACE and language in debates. Readers looking to understand what methods can be used to explore the political phenomena will find them in this book. The unity comes from the common interests of the diverse approaches. While the approaches may be diverse, the basic questions being asked have much in common. From public attitudes toward Congress, to congres- sional enactment of legislation, to characteristics of debate language, to how politicians react when in informal settings, these questions all deal with is- sues of our democratic process. Jonathan Morris and Michael Joy open the volume seeking to understand more about the public perceptions of Congress. This experimental work teases out the underlying causes for these perceptions. Since Congress is televised, they use this opportunity to understand how conflict and partisanship affect public opinion toward Congress. Since our primary democratic institution remains so unpopular, we need to understand more about the basic causes. Morris and Joy provide that in their chapter. The second chapter, by Theresa Castor, takes a very different approach. The question here is about congressional influence on Great Lakes water pol- icy. Congressional influence on policy is a common theme in other chapters, but each author addresses the question differently. In Theresa Castor’s chap- ter, her approach is based on a social construction perspective. It is a rich ap- proach that looks at the framing of the issue by the participants. Robert Kerr uses the C-SPAN Video Library to examine the rhetoric of liberals and conservatives. In a thought-provoking piece he searches the Video Library to find ways that liberal and conservative rhetoric surfaces in political debates. He finds that conservatives dominate the rhetoric and the branding, not only for conservatism, but for liberalism also. In the chapter by Kropf and Grassett, we find an analysis of gender in U.S. Senate candidate debates. They analyze 942 debate statements from senatorial campaign debates in 2012 and 2014. They find no difference between word choice in debates between male and female candidates. Stewart and Hall build on the previous work published in Volume 2 of this series by Bucy and Gong. They look at nonverbal and emotional expres- sions in presidential debates. Their work advances our understanding of ap- propriate and inappropriate facial displays during debates and gives us an understanding of the analysis of emotion. PREFACE xiii Garcia’s chapter is the first of two conversational analyses in this volume. The second is by Kurtis Miller. In her chapter, Garcia looks at President Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony. She uses a number of techniques to iden- tify ways that the president evaded or redirected the question.