Political Communication Lab
The Political Communication Lab is a research group that includes faculty and graduate students from Stanford University's Communication and Political Science departments who work on large-scale content analysis of news and elite rhetoric, experimental studies of political polarization, and cross-national investigations — spanning more than fourteen countries — of public opposition to immigration.
— PCL News and Highlights —
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Do Attitudes About Immigration Predict Willingness to Admit Individual Immigrants? A Cross-National Test of the Person-Positivity Bias, S. Iyengar et al.
Citizens in seven advanced industrialized democracies generally oppose more open immigration policies, but stand ready to admit individual immigrants. - View ObamaCare issue ads
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Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization, S. Iyengar, G. Sood & Y. Lelkes
Exposure to messages attacking the out-group reinforces partisans’ biased views of their opponents. -
The 2012 Elections: Why Obama Won and the Implications for Governance
Symposium featured Dan Balz, Washington Post, Matthew Kaminski, the Wall Street Journal, David Brady, Hoover Instution, Douglas Rivers, YouGov/Polimetrix. Moderated by Shanto Iyengar, Political Communication Lab. - View campaign ads from the 2012 Presidential election
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Forum: The Final Presidential Debate, KQED Radio
Analysis of the impact of the debate with Carla Marinucci, Henry Brady, and Shanto Iyengar. -
Stanford Open Office Hours: Shanto Iyengar (part 2)
Prof. Iyengar responds to your questions about political polarization and its implications on this year's elections. -
Stanford Open Office Hours: Shanto Iyengar (part 1)
Prof. Iyengar responds to your questions about the role of media in the US presidential race.
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.