E lectoral campaigns are a defining feature of democratic polities. Yet scholarship on electoral campaigns, particularly on the content of campaign communications, remains disjointed. The field has not changed very much since Riker's (1996, 4) description over a decade ago: "we have very little knowledge about the rhetorical content of campaigns, which is, however, their principal feature . . . the fact remains that we know very little about what to say in campaigns-but this is what both political scientists and candidates want to know." Shortcomings are particularly acute in the United States for nonpresidential campaigns. "From reading our literature," notes Perloff (2002, 621), "you would assume that the only campaigns in America are for the presidency."In what follows, we advance research on campaigns, focusing on communication in U.S. congressional campaigns. We begin by offering a framework for studying campaign communication that integrates and extends prior work. The analysis focuses on the extent to which candidates take risks or play it safe in their campaign strategies. We test expectations from the framework James N. Druckman is Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208 (druckman@ northwestern.edu).Martin J. Kifer is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Survey Research Center, High Point University, 833 Montlieu Avenue, High Point, NC 27262 (mkifer@highpoint.edu).Michael Parkin is Assistant Professor of Politics, Oberlin College, 10 N. Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074 (Michael. Parkin@oberlin.edu).We thank Nora Paul and Brian Southwell for critical guidance in constructing our original coding framework, Gary Jacobson for providing candidate background data, and the dozens of individuals who assisted in data collection. We also thank Lonna Atkeson, Amber Wichowsky, and many others for providing advice. We owe a special debt of gratitude to the APSR's reviewers and editors for insightful guidance that fundamentally shaped all aspects of the paper. Support for this research was provided by the University of Minnesota McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, Northwestern University's AT&T Research Scholar Fund, and, for the survey of website designers, the National Science Foundation (SES-0822819 and SES-0822819). Authors' names are listed in alphabetical order.with new data based on candidate Web sites over time, which offer an unmediated, holistic, and representative portrait of campaigns. The view from these data significantly differs from that of previous studies that rely on advertising and newspaper stories to study candidate behavior. Our efforts provide researchers with a foundation for moving toward a more complete understanding of congressional campaigns. CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN RHETORICAL STRATEGYIn many ways, the literature on congressional campaigns is progressive and wide-ranging. Scholars devote considerable attention to distinct topics, such as go...

Abstract:In a few short years, the World Wide Web has become a standard part of candidates' campaign tool kits. Virtually all candidates have their own sites; and voters, journalists, and activists visit the sites with increasing frequency. In this paper, we study what candidates do on these sites-in terms of the information they present-by exploring one of the most enduring and widely debated campaign strategies: "going negative." Comparing data from over 700 congressional candidate websites, over three election cycles (2002, 2004, and 2006), with television advertising data, we show that candidates go negative with similar likelihoods across these media. We also find that while similar dynamics drive negativity on the Web and in television advertising, there are some notable differences. These differences likely stem, in part, from the truncated sample available with television data (i.e., many candidates do not produce ads). Our results have implications for understanding negative campaigning, and for the ways in which scholars can study campaign dynamics.

The Internet offers political candidates a new way to campaign. Part of the Internet's novelty comes from technological options not available in most other media. Candidates, however, must weigh various benefits and costs in using a given technological innovation. For example, technology that allows for increased user interactivity may lead to a more stimulating website but it also might distract users from the campaign's central message. In this paper, we use data from 444 congressional campaign websites, over two elections, to examine how candidates approach Web technology. We also investigate the factors that lead candidates to either utilize or avoid particular technological features. We show that technological adoption is determined by both practical and strategic political considerations. Of particular interest is that the competitiveness of a candidate's race leads the candidate to use more sophisticated presentation technologies but less advanced interactive innovations, since these latter options interfere with the candidate's message. 2The Internet has become a vital resource in American political campaigns. It provides candidates with unmediated and inexpensive access to voters while also offering new technological options for communication and information presentation. Candidates now have the opportunity to create websites with features such as multiple media, personalized information, and even two-way communication. While these innovations seem promising, the decision to use them is far from automatic. Candidates must carefully weigh practical and political considerations before incorporating new technologies into their websites because each innovation has advantages and drawbacks.In this paper, we investigate how and why political candidates use a host of emerging Web technologies. Prior research focuses on a single campaign and either offers a rich description of the technologies used on a small group of sites (e.g., King 1999;Cornfield 2004;Bimber and Davis 2003) or focuses on a specific feature found across a wider sample of online campaigns (e.g., Dulio, Goff, and Thurber 1999;Schneider and Foot 2002). 1 We take a more comprehensive approach by exploring Schneider (2006), Herrnson, Stoke-Brown, andHindman (2007). 2 The concept of an "electronic brochure" has been used in other studies including Kamarck (1999), Foot, Schneider, Xenos, and, and Herrnson, Stokes-Brown, and Hindman (2007). 3candidates approach technology and balance the various costs and benefits associated with each innovation.We then examine the conditions that motivate candidates to use emerging technologies by supplementing our Web data with detailed information on candidates, races, and constituencies. We investigate how the decision to use certain features is affected by things like available resources (e.g., campaign funds), increased ease of using technologies (e.g., developments over time), demand effects (e.g., voter constituency), and strategic dynamics (e.g., race competitiveness). Considering both practi...

When candidates engage in robust policy debate, it gives citizens clear choices on issues that matter. Previous studies of issue engagement have primarily used indicators of campaign strategy that are mediated by reporters (e.g., newspaper articles) or indicators that may exclude candidates in less competitive races (e.g., television advertisements). We study issue engagement with data from a unique source, congressional candidate Web sites, that are unmediated and representative of both House and Senate campaigns. We find that the saliency of issues in public opinion is a primary determinant of candidate engagement. And, despite the unique capacity of the Internet to allow candidates to explain their positions on a large number of issues, candidates continue to behave strategically, selecting a few issues on which to engage their adversaries.