Hey, Watch Me!

C. Danielle Vinson has published A Tale of Two Senators: Using Media to Gain Influence in the Senate as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper.

This paper is an attempt to learn more about how senators use the media to enhance their influence in policymaking. Using content analysis of both newspaper and television coverage and interviews, I examine the cases of two relatively junior senators — Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, both Republicans from South Carolina — to investigate the strategic decisions involved in going public, the reasons for choosing that strategy, and the effects of that strategy. The paper tests the theory that politicians use the media to compensate for institutional weaknesses and enhance their influence over policy and politics. I find that media attention is certainly a source of power in the Senate, and it is available to even the most junior senators. And although their success is not guaranteed, senators can adapt going public to different goals, and there are multiple paths to gaining media attention. The results of the study reveal the changing nature of power and the tools for asserting power in the US Senate. As Graham put it, thanks to the media, “a new senator doesn’t have to wait two years to say hello in the Senate anymore.”

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.