Communicating in Good Faith?: Dynamics of the Christian Right Agenda

It is an article of faith that organized interests represent members to elected officials making use of synchronized communication channels. Rarely, if at all, have researchers had access to multiple, internal, and external channels to test this notion. We mine a trove of nearly 2,500 emails the Fam...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:  
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs: Wilson, Angelia R. (Auteur) ; Djupe, Paul A. 1971- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
En cours de chargement...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Publié: Cambridge Univ. Press [2020]
Dans: Politics and religion
Année: 2020, Volume: 13, Numéro: 2, Pages: 385-414
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Family Research Council / Relations publiques / Lobbyisme / Histoire 2007-2018
RelBib Classification:CB Spiritualité chrétienne
CG Christianisme et politique
CH Christianisme et société
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Résumé:It is an article of faith that organized interests represent members to elected officials making use of synchronized communication channels. Rarely, if at all, have researchers had access to multiple, internal, and external channels to test this notion. We mine a trove of nearly 2,500 emails the Family Research Council (FRC) sent to list subscribers from 2007 to 2018. Text tools allow us to depict message flexibility of the FRC. We then consider how internal and external messages may be linked by examining the issue content of emails in relation to press releases. Finally, we note the bills lobbied by FRC and the frequency these are mentioned in the internal email messages. Our findings are twofold. First, they support the conditional independence of communication channels in ways that appear to conform to the requisites of the different audiences: elected officials are likely mobilized by different signals than members are. Second, our evidence shows that the flexibility organized interests have in composing their communications can mean that different audiences are presented with considerably different political agendas. While FRC has significant sophisticated message flexibility, our data set indicates that such flexibility can raise serious concerns about good faith representation.
ISSN:1755-0491
Contient:Enthalten in: Politics and religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S1755048319000543