Understanding political leaders and political processes through language

Abstract

Political leaders and processes have long been studied by many disciplines including political science, communication, and psychology. Developments in technology and methodology make it possible expand and refine our understanding of how people move in the political realm. The current work builds from existing multidisciplinary work to explore political questions using psychological text analysis. Beyond the content of what people say, how people use words like pronouns, articles, and prepositions can illuminate deeper psychological traits such as thinking style, authenticity, and confidence (Boyd, 2017; Kacewicz et al., 2014; Pennebaker et al., 2014; Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010). By combining psychological text analytic methods with traditional questions and methods, a more holistic understanding of how people act and interact within the political sphere can be developed.

This dissertation presents a set of three studies exploring political leaders and processes through the lens of leaders, citizens, and the media. The first published study examined trends in leadership traits over time with a focus on a narrative, confident communication styles (Jordan, Sterling, Pennebaker, & Boyd, 2019). The second published study explored how citizens during the 2016 presidential election talked about the candidates on Twitter and what impact that conversation had on people’s perceptions of the candidates (Jordan, Pennebaker, & Ehrig, 2018). The third study looked at the media as a mediator of perceptions of political candidates by analyzing coverage of major party presidential candidates in the last five U.S. election (Jordan, in preparation).