Firsts in American Politics: Romney vs Obama 2012 and the Future of Diversity

Submitting proofs for my first published article in communication this week was surreal. A project I had worked on for so long had finally been recognized by the academic community. I was even more thrilled to find out that the article (about the 2008 presidential campaign) is going to be published in early November, just in time for the 2012 election. The timing could not be more perfect, then, to address today's blog post about the 2012 election season and momentous “firsts” in American politics.

Though it is cliched, I believe this discussion of the 2012 campaign could not be contextualized without first mentioning the importance of the 2008 election in achieving a historic first: the first African American president of the United States. Just as voting transitioned from white males to black males (all males) to females, the presidency appears to be transitioning in the same fashion. Hilary Clinton, though quite successful and truly a formidable contender for the 2008 democratic nominee, was unable to break the patriarchal hierarchy that is American politics. Additionally, the 2012 election may bring a new first: the first Mormon president. Though I have discussed the importance of this in a previous post, I would like to mention here briefly how the labeling of Mormonism as a “secretive cult” only further reinforces how standardized the candidates for presidents have truly become. When someone like Romney, wealthy, white, and male can be facing an abandonment of Republican voters because his religion (though he believes in a Christian God and Jesus Christ) is considered too far from mainstream Christianity to be considered a good, moral man. I use this as an example of how far American has yet to go in order to be truly accepting of all types as viable political candidates.

Many countries around the world, developed, developing, undeveloped have elected minority and female leaders, though US politics has continually remained white and male. Our 112th Senate is only 17% female and the House with a similar ratio (17.5%) of females and in total, 86.5% of Congress is Caucasian.  Why is the land of the free and the home of the brave ruled by a representative democracy that could be called anything but representative?

In her new book, Sister Citizen, Marissa V. Harris-Perry outlines the importance of Obama's presidency but also how still underrepresented black Americans (and specifically black women) are in the political system and in the voting process. A stirring read, it outlines the dichotomy of representation that I have alluded to above. Only through increased voter participation and an adjustment of current voting regulations (as I discussed in last week's post), do I feel that politics will truly mirror and represent the people. Our country was founded on this lack of representation and the evils of persecution and exclusion, so where is our revolutionary spirit?

This all reminds me of a tour I took of the capitol, where there is a statue of four female figures with one bust yet uncarved. This statue remains unfinished for the first female president. Its existence as an unfinished process is a beautiful tragedy, for it simultaneously highlights how far inclusion has come, but how we still have a journey ahead of us. We can no more say that we have reached full inclusion for all genders than we have for all races, sexualities, or even religions. The political system has many firsts yet to come and although Obama's election was a momentous day and the first step in that process, I look forward to future elections where the primary debates can be an array of people, instead of carbon copy rich, white males.

The competition between the first Mormon president or the first two-term black president is approaching with the next tidal wave of politics. But the first female president, the first Hispanic president, the first Muslim president, and the first LGBTQ president is on the horizon, far off but visible, perhaps in our lifetimes we can achieve as many “firsts” as possible.

Research Tools for Students and Faculty: Boomerang

I was only recently introduced to Boomerang for Gmail, but it has already proven extremely useful for balancing the necessity of being prompt on emails and the rest of my graduate study. This extension for Gmail allows you to write emails and schedule them to be delivered at a later date and time in the future. The benefits and variety of uses are endless for this simple email tool, which I will list below. In addition, messages that are emailed to you can be "boomeranged" back to the top of your inbox at a later date, so it appears as a higher priority at a time that you are available to address it.

Uses as a student/faculty member:

• work late into the night but schedule messages for the next morning
• remain professional with your time stamps
• have the email be at the top of their inbox in the morning without sending it then
• schedule emails when you know people will be available
• if a professor has office hours, schedule an email to remind them the morning of that you will be stopping by
• if a professor/student only comes to campus on certain days, have an email sent on that day when you know they will be checking their work email
• stay ahead on your to-do list
• there may be a time sensitive email with a deadline (teaching assistant preferences, request for clearance to take classes, coordinating study groups, etc) that you know well in advance but it is not appropriate to be too early, so scheduling it for later (even months in the future) can take it off your plate well ahead of time
• let your email be your to-do list by scheduling emails to yourself to remember to print articles, look something up before class, or ask a question of a professor when you know you'll have some free time in your day
• be proactive and persistent for getting responses
• selecting "boomerang if I don't here back" emails allows you to be reminded of unanswered questions without doing math or remembering yourself if it has been long enough to re-send an email

My list is not by any means inclusive and if you have found any more uses, please feel free to comment! Boomerang has already been a great help to me in my graduate work and I hope that others find it useful as well!

The Power of Online Sentiment Data: Article Review

An article in the April 2012 issue of Human Communication Research entitled, “Emotions, public opinion, and US presidential approval rates” argues that emotions in online discussion forums can be directly linked to approval ratings of the president. Not only does this article find an application for aggregated data from online sources, but it also uses the emotional content of the forums to create conclusions about the state of public opinion. If people, especially youth, are becoming more cynical and skeptical of political activities, they pull away from the system, but still need an outlet to express their emotions. Gonzalez-Bailon, Banchs, Kaltenbrunner (2012) separate out emotionally-charged words from online discussion forms labeled “politics” using the ANEW (Affective Norms for English Language Words) list. These words are rated based on three types of emotional factors: valence, arousal, and dominance. Valence indicates strong feelings, whether positive or negative (e.g., happiness or sadness), arousal indicates physical changes (e.g., excitement, anger), and dominance indicates response or actions (e.g., submission, awe). The conclusions were that the invasion of Iraq used the most words associated with a high arousal and that this use of arousal words helped emotions “crystallize into generalized sentiment” (Gonzalez-Bailon, et al., 2012). Thus, important events and the effects on public opinion can be assessed through online forums where “public officials can use it to respond faster to issues of public concern, and ultimately improve the channels for democratic governance” (Gonzalez-Bailon, et al., 2012).

This article has important implications for researchers that are attempting to create coherent narratives for public opinion from online spaces such as discussion forums and social media sites. The current issues regarding such data is how to code and make sense of the information and how (if possible) to generalize this data to the general public as these populations tend to be extremely narrow and race, gender, and age specific. The Gonzales-Bailon et al. article is an important step in understanding online information by using emotions as the tool to glean political views and opinions and also the validity of using such skewed online populations to make conclusions about the public. Using emotions as a standard is complicated, but the ANEW list creates a formalized standard for the comparison. It would be interesting to see if these emotions corresponded to other important political events besides presidential approval ratings and what other emotion-charged online discussions could be analyzed using this same method.

A current example of this type of data analysis is being performed in the Annenberg Innovation Lab on the Twitter Sentiment Team to determine how tweets regarding republican primary candidates can predict success and overall popularity among the candidates. Take a look at their real time dashboard to learn more: AIL Twitter Sentiment Dashboard.

As people become more withdrawn from traditional methods of participating in politics, perhaps the solution is to assess opinions online instead of hoping for a reversion to traditional practices.