Papers for
political communication strategists
Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.
Congress uses same election words to tell very different stories
Frankly Speaking: The Company Election Integrity Keeps in Congressional Communication
Abstract: Election integrity is a shared commitment in American politics, but Democrats and Republicans in Congress increasingly mean different things by it. Analyzing 10,420 congressional e-newsletters sent from 2010 to 2025, we examine how the two parties invoke election terms such as ``integrity,'' ``security,'' and ``fraud.'' Using diachronic word embeddings, which track semantic change through how words are used in context, we measure how differently each party uses each term, how much each party shifts, and whether they share nearest semantic neighbors. We show that members of Congress do not need different words to tell different stories about elections. They need only place those same words in different company. Across nearly every term and year, the two parties surround election-integrity vocabulary with entirely different words. That divergence is easy to miss, because most election vocabulary is no more divergent than other words used at roughly the same frequency, and neither party's usage shifted more than the other's. Only a subset of terms grew more divergent, most notably ``certification,'' while ``rigged'' and ``stolen'' entered election discourse after 2020 and polarized there. By 2024, Democrats surround ``voter,'' ``election,'' and ``integrity'' with the language of access and administration. Republicans surround the same terms with ``citizenship verification,'' ``noncitizen voting,'' and ``border security.'' For one party, integrity means protecting eligible voters' ability to cast a ballot. For the other, it means protecting the electoral process from illegitimate ballots. Election officials, who must administer a single system under both definitions, inherit this tension.
Emotions in congressional speeches relate to legislative success
Politics of Feelings: Emotional Expression and Legislative Effectiveness in the U.S. Congress
Abstract: Emotions are a pervasive feature of political communication, yet existing research has focused primarily on describing patterns of emotional expression rather than examining whether they are associated with consequential legislative outcomes. We address this gap by investigating the expression and correlates of discrete emotions in more than 1.7 million speeches delivered in the U.S. Congress between 1973 and 2024. Using a transformer-based emotion classifier, we measure eight discrete emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, enthusiasm, pride, and hope. We examine how these emotions vary over time, across policy topics, legislator characteristics, and their relationship with legislative effectiveness. We find that congressional speeches are becoming emotionally expressive over time. Emotional expression also varies systematically across policy domains and ideological positioning of legislators. Notably, the relationship between emotional expression and legislative effectiveness depends on the specific emotions expressed: enthusiasm and pride are positively associated with effectiveness, whereas anger exhibits a negative association. Emotional valence and emotional diversity are positively associated with legislative effectiveness, while emotional intensity is negatively associated with legislative effectiveness. These findings demonstrate that computationally derived measures of discrete emotions can provide insight into affective dimensions of legislative speeches and facilitate our understanding of how legislators communicate, interact, and perform within democratic institutions.