Doctoral Dissertation Research: Partisanship, Gender, and Policy Frames

博士论文研究：党派之争、性别和政策框架

• 批准号: 1747459
• 负责人: Michael Crespin
• 金额: $ 1.71万
• 依托单位: University of Oklahoma Norman Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-07-15 至 2020-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1747459&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Partisanship; Gender

Despite gains made over the past three decades, women remain the most underrepresented group in Congress relative to the general population. The purpose of this project is to better understand how women in Congress represent women generally. To this end, the project examines the relative influence of partisanship and gender on the content of congressional communications about women's issues and voters' responses to those messages. To accomplish this task, the project analyzes the content of more than 40,000 congressional newsletters about women's issues and uses the findings to generate a survey experiment to test how men and women in the electorate interpret messages about women's issues differently based on the gender of the messenger. This project contributes to an important, ongoing debate about representation --do women substantively represent women, are all members purely partisan, or is it something in between? And, how are voter opinions about women's issues affected by the gender of the person who presents them? This research will push forward our understanding of the character of women's representation in Congress, and will broaden the knowledge held by both voters and members of Congress concerning the quality of descriptive and substantive representation of women on women's issues.The purpose of this project is to evaluate the relative influence of partisanship and gender on the content of congressional communications about women's issues and voters' responses to those messages. To accomplish this task, the project uses structural topic modelling to identify how gender and partisanship influence communication about women's issues in congressional newsletters. It utilizes these findings in a survey experiment that randomizes the gender of the representative delivering the content to test how men and women in the electorate interpret messages about women's issues differently based on the gender of the messenger. This project presents several distinct contributions to the field of American politics generally, and scholarship on representation and political communication in particular. Methodologically, it utilizes an innovative methodological tool --structural topic modelling--to analyze a large corpus. It compares the content of these texts between categories available in the metadata, including gender and partisanship. The project then employs these findings in a survey experiment to assess the effect of the differing content on the electorate. This project will be the first scholarship, as of this date, to use this method to identify distinct patterns of communication between male and female members of legislatures and to assess the impact of these differences on the electorate. This contribution, and future research that utilizes a similar methodological approach, will allow us to better understand the character of women's representation and will facilitate a broader understanding of the content and impact of political messages generally.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

尽管在过去三十年中取得了进步，但相对于总人口而言，女性仍然是国会中代表性最不足的群体。该项目的目的是更好地了解国会中的女性如何代表女性。为此，该项目研究了党派偏见和性别对国会有关妇女问题的沟通内容以及选民对这些信息的反应的相对影响。为了完成这项任务，该项目分析了 40,000 多份有关妇女问题的国会时事通讯的内容，并利用研究结果进行了一项调查实验，以测试选民中的男性和女性如何根据信使的性别对有关妇女问题的信息进行不同的解读。该项目引发了一场关于代表性的重要且持续的辩论——女性是否实质上代表了女性，所有成员是否纯粹是党派之争，还是介于两者之间？而且，选民对妇女问题的看法如何受到提出这些问题的人的性别的影响？这项研究将加深我们对国会中妇女代表特征的理解，并将扩大选民和国会议员对妇女在妇女问题上的描述性和实质性代表质量的认识。该项目的目的是评估党派偏见和性别对国会有关妇女问题的沟通内容以及选民对这些信息的反应的相对影响。为了完成这项任务，该项目使用结构主题模型来确定性别和党派之争如何影响国会时事通讯中有关妇女问题的沟通。它在一项调查实验中利用这些发现，随机化发送内容的代表的性别，以测试选民中的男性和女性如何根据信息传递者的性别对有关妇女问题的信息进行不同的解读。该项目对美国政治领域，特别是代表性和政治传播方面的学术做出了一些独特的贡献。在方法论上，它利用一种创新的方法论工具——结构主题建模——来分析大型语料库。它将这些文本的内容与元数据中可用的类别进行比较，包括性别和党派之争。然后该项目在调查实验中利用这些发现来评估不同内容对选民的影响。该项目将是迄今为止第一个使用这种方法来识别立法机关男性和女性成员之间不同的沟通模式并评估这些差异对选民的影响的奖学金。这一贡献以及未来使用类似方法的研究将使我们能够更好地了解妇女代表的特征，并将有助于更广泛地了解政治信息的内容和影响。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并被视为值得通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。