Political Communication Lab
The Political Communication Lab is housed within the Institute for Communication Research; the research arm of the Department of Communication at Stanford University.
— PCL News and Events —
- Crime, Foreigners and Hard News: A Cross-national Comparison of Reporting and Public Perception, J. Curran, I Salovarra-Moring, S. Coen & S. Iyengar
- The Shifting Foundations of Political Communication: Responding to a Defense of the Media Effects Paradigm, W.L. Bennett & S. Iyengar
-
Media Systems, News Delivery and Citizens' Knowledge of Current Affairs
"Transformation of the Public Sphere" essay by Shanto Iyengar and James Curran -
Experimental Designs for Political Communication Research: Using New Technology and Online Participant Pools to Overcome the Problem of Generalizability
Overview of online experimental research conducted by PCL - A New Era of Minimal Effects? The Changing Foundations of Political Communication, W.L. Bennett & S. Iyengar
-
Polarization in Less than Thirty Seconds: Continuous Monitoring of Voter Response to Campaign Advertising
Feedback graphs and an example of an online feedback dial are available from our Senate Ad dial study. - 'Dark Areas of Ignorance' Revisited: Comparing International Affairs Knowledge in Switzerland and the US, S. Iyengar, K. Hahn, H. Bonfadelli & M. Marr
- Media Systems, Public Knowledge and Democracy: A Comparative Study, J. Curran, S. Iyengar, A. B. Lund & I. Salovaara-Moring
-
Media Politics: A Citizen's Guide
Book provides the first comprehensive account of the causes and consequences of image-based politics.
Research Objectives
The lab was formed to develop and administer experimental studies of public opinion and political behavior through the use of both online and traditional methods. The advantages of online experimentation are clear in light of the explosion in the number of households with access to the Internet. Moreover, issues of sampling bias -- previously endemic to experiments -- can be overcome through the greater "reach" of online experiments and by the application of standard probability sampling techniques to the recruitment of online experimental participants. These developments significantly alleviate concerns over the generalizability of experimental research and as a result, experiments now represent a dominant methodology for political communication researchers.