Annenberg pioneers new election coverage

In the closest election of the century, as the role of the media in elections continues to grow, Penn's own Annenberg School is at the forefront of the campaign scene. The Annenberg Public Policy Center, based out of the Anenberg School, has been tracking the 2000 election through a variety of innovative and cutting-edge research projects. APPC is conducting three major projects -- a survey of the American electorate, a look at the Internet's role in the election and research on how public opinion is formed -- to examine how these issues impact the election. And as the 2000 election comes to a close, the depth and impact of the APPC's research is becoming apparent. "I think what's exciting about the Annenberg School is that you have all these things happening side by side," said Communications Professor Vincent Price, one of the project directors. At the helm of the projects is Annenberg Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson, renowned for her political commentary and quoted daily in major newspapers and television programs. Using her experience, combined with the knowledge of her staff, Jamieson and the APPC are recording the issues surrounding tomorrow's election as it happens. * As part of the research, APPC is conducting the largest continuous survey of the American electorate ever carried out by a university. Jamieson is directing the project in collaboration with Richard Johnston, political science professor at the University of British Columbia, and Michael Hagen of the APPC to assess the effects of campaign events in real time. "We're trying to find out what do they learn, how did they learn it, why do they vote, why don't they vote and what does it all mean for their sense of governance," Jamieson said in an Annenberg publication. The survey questions administered to a random sampling of voters address issue and candidate positions, voting history and behavior, perceptions of candidates and other communication issues surrounding the election. The planning for the survey goes back to 1997, if not earlier, and the actual telephone interviews themselves began early last November. The extensive survey has generated nearly 100,000 interviews. "There has never been a sample survey in this country as explicitly designed to capture the dynamics of campaigns as this one," Johnston said. * While his colleagues gauge opinions by phone, Professor W. Russell Neuman and his coworkers are spending their time on the wWb. APPC's second project, Energizing the Electronic Electorate -- known as E3 -- attempts to capture and analyze the political Web so that researchers can assess the impact the Internet has on tomorrow's election. Neuman serves as the director of the project and is assisted by two post-docs, Steven Schneider and Kirsten Foot, as well as a number of graduate and undergraduate students. E3 employs a multi-method research approach, which involves spidering and mapping political Web space, including candidate sites, civic and advocacy group pages, political party sites, press sites and others. The techniques allow researchers to track the number of hits the different sites receive daily. And, as of almost two weeks ago, the program had managed to store and track roughly 600,000 Web pages and 750,000 binary files. Researchers have been reporting data throughout the course of the project and publishing their field notes on the project Web site, www.netelection.org. The data collection will end shortly after tomorrow's election, and then those involved in the project will continue analyzing and writing through the end of the summer. The researchers will also be hosting a conference in April, the third of its type, at which the E3 findings will be presented to regional leaders, scholars, practitioners, journalists and others. One of the primary conclusions that have been drawn from this extensive project is that while the Internet will indeed have a significant impact on the 2000 election, the full impact of the Web will not be seen until the 2004 election. Schneider predicted that in the 2004 election, "a candidate without a Web site will be about as common as a candidate without a telephone." * Electronic Dialogue and Democratic Participation, the third project, is examining the way people assess public opinion in order to gain an understanding of how it forms and is shaped. Price and Communications Professor Joseph Cappella are heading up this project, with assistance from both graduate and undergraduate students. There are four undergraduates doing coding work, 25 graduate and undergraduate moderators and seven graduate students who make up a core research team. Since last February, groups of citizens have engaged in online political discourse concerning the presidential campaign, while Annenberg moderators observe. The online dialogue will continue until around the time of the new president's first State of the Union address. According to Price, allowing groups to deliberate on issues will hopefully produce better, more informed public opinion. Price identified some of the more short-term effects of the project, one of which is to help sort out how to take advantage of intriguing new technology. Another involves the effective use of the Internet in improving the quality of news coverage. APPC officials hope all three projects will not only lay the tracks for future research, but will also serve to maintain Annenberg's position as one of the leading authorities in the field. "Researchers in other universities will have to come to the Annenberg data center in order to get a grip on the dynamics of the campaign," Johnston said. "And every time they do, the word 'Annenberg' is going to be repeated."