March 23, 2010

Pat Sellers in class.

by Kelly Beggs

Davidson College Professor of Political Science Patrick Sellers is giving spin a good name in his new book, Cycles of Spin: Strategic Communication in the U.S. Congress.

"A lot of people dismiss spin as being fabricated," he said, "but the competing messages that politicians produce do a good job of communicating the priorities of their competing parties. They may not always communicate the details of policies, but that's not the role of those messages."

Sellers defines a cycle of spin as the process by which politicians' statements are transmitted to the news media and then coverage of those statements feeds back to influence the politicians' behavior and decisions .

The cycle occurs in four distinct stages. First, politicians craft a message that they feel aligns with the values and positions of their party. In stage two, they try to convince other party members to promote the message. In stage three, the media decides whether or not to cover the message, and in the fourth stage, media coverage feeds back to influence policy makers.

The idea of a spin cycle first came to Sellers when he was working in then Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's leadership office on an American Political Science Association Fellowship in Washington, D.C. in 1997.

"During that spring, a number of states had faced pretty severe natural disasters, especially in the upper Midwest," Sellers said. "Members of Congress from these states, largely Democrats, wanted to push a supplemental appropriations bill through Congress to fund disaster relief. When the Republican congressional majority attached controversial provisions to the bill, Democrats launched a full-scale media blitz. It really boiled down to a battle of media coverage."

Though media battles are common now, 10 years ago they were a novelty. A striking element of this particular media blitz was an all-night vigil organized by Daschle's office. The vigil was televised by CNN and broadcast by numerous radio talk shows, and members of Congress communicated with the public in Internet chat rooms while at the vigil. Sellers recalled, "It was 5 a.m., and I was standing out on a Capitol balcony with Daschle and other senators, as they talked about strategy for moving the bill forward. I remember thinking ‘This is politics!'" The Democrats ultimately won the media battle, and the Republicans withdrew the provisions.

That event led Sellers to scrutinize the dynamics of communications between politicians and the media. "The debate really crystallized in my head this dynamic of cycles of spin, because the politicians who conduct these kinds of promotional activities are trying to influence other members of Congress, media coverage, and -- over the long term -- the American public," he said.

Sellers has continued to research cycles of spin, and the work has engaged many Davidson students. In addition to informal discussions in class, Sellers got research help from numerous student assistants in wading through and analyzing a large body of information.

He said, "Taylor Ansley '07 and Jared Taylor '07 spent a summer coding press releases for me," he said. "I remember spending hours over at Summit Coffee arguing with them about exactly what Trent Lott meant when he was talking about partial birth abortion. Learning how to use language precisely is one of best skills you can develop at Davidson. Ansley and Taylor were very smart and a huge help to the project."

Sellers noted that politicians are also precise in crafting their messages. He said, "We don't always appreciate how carefully politicians choose their words and language, and how their statements shape the news coverage that we read and watch."

In researching the book, Sellers fortified his close reading of political language with statistical analysis, quantitatively measuring the relationship between promotional efforts and news coverage. In addition to his personal observations from working in Daschle's office, Sellers interviewed the press secretaries of 41 senators. His evidence also included roll call votes, public opinion data, thousands of public statements by legislators, and more than one million news stories from national and local outlets across the country.

His extensive research left him with a positive opinion of the established news media.

"If there's any bias in news media in my findings, it's bias from an effort to be balanced," Sellers said. For example, if Democrats are intensely promoting a message to the press without a response from Republican legislators, Sellers found that the press will still balance the coverage, minimizing the Democrats' voice and maximizing that of the Republicans.

"They really make an effort to do a good job in reporting the truth," he said, though he noted that blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and similar outlets provide a navigational challenge for mainstream media, politicians and voters alike. But a crucial benefit is the public's increased awareness of political issues and events.

"We know a lot more about the current healthcare debate than we did about other debates 10 years ago, and that's because of new technology in media," he said. "We can't shortchange the process by focusing just on the negatives. There are some real positives, which lead me to be more optimistic about new media world we're entering."

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,800 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.
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