The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication

Since its development shaped by the turmoil of the World Wars and suspicion of new technologies such as film and radio, political communication has become a hybrid field largely devoted to connecting the dots among political rhetoric, politicians and leaders, voters' opinions, and media exposure to better understand how any one aspect can affect the others.

In The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication, Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson bring together leading scholars, including founders of the field of political communication Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, Doris Graber, Max McCombs, and Thomas Paterson. The contributors review the major findings about subjects ranging from the effects of political advertising and debates and understandings and misunderstandings of agenda setting, framing, and cultivation to the changing contours of social media use in politics and the functions of the press in a democratic system. The essays in this volume reveal that political communication is a hybrid field with complex ancestry, permeable boundaries, and interests that overlap with those of related fields such as political sociology, public opinion, rhetoric, neuroscience, and media psychology.

This comprehensive review of the political communication literature is an indispensible reference for scholars and students interested in the study of how, why, when, and with what effect humans make sense of symbolic exchanges about sharing and shared power. The sixty-two chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication contain an overview of past scholarship while providing critical reflection of its relevance in a changing media landscape and offering agendas for future research and innovation.

Kate Kenski is Associate Professor of Communication and Government & Public Policy at the University of Arizona. The book she co-authored with Bruce Hardy and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election, has won several awards, including the 2011 ICA Outstanding Book Award the 2012 NCA Diamond Anniversary Book Award, and the Association of American Publishers' PROSE Award in Government and Politics.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania and Director of its Annenberg Public Policy Center. Jamieson is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on the Science of Science Communication (with Dietram Scheufele and Dan Kahan 2017). Among her award winning Oxford University Press books are Packaging the Presidency, Eloquence in an Electronic Age, Spiral of Cynicism (with Joseph Cappella), The Obama Victory (with Kenski and Hardy), and Cyberwar, winner of the R.R. Hawkins Award and the PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences and Government, Policy and Politics.