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Videostyle in Presidential Campaigns: Style and Content of Televised Political Advertising. By Lynda Lee Kaid and Anne Johnston. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., 2000. xii + 226 pp. $65.00.
American elections have increasingly become candidate-centered campaigns in which solitary aspirants for office bear the primary responsibility for generating their own money, issues, imagery, and support. Candidates present themselves through televised advertising appearing as social tribunes instead of representatives for political and governmental institutions. News media respond by depicting campaigns as ongoing battles among individual combatants and direct much of their attention to the question of who is winning and who is not.
In an...