ABSTRACT
The job of the political communication scholar is to improve and enhance our understanding of a complex set of communicative dynamics that influence political outcomes, both as means and as ends. The political outcomes studied within the field represent the spectrum of effects, from the most basic matters of exposure and attention (e.g., news use and reliance) to more advanced outcomes like political behaviors (e.g., voting and other forms of participation) or post-behavior cognitive integration (e.g., perceptions of campaign legitimacy, perceptions of vote count accuracy). The communication theories developed to study a broad range of phenomena continue to expand and evolve, and these theoretical developments are taking place within the context of an ever-changing communication landscape (Bimber, 2003; Campus, Pasquino, & Vaccari, 2008; Holbert & Benoit, 2009; Prior, 2009; Scheufele, 1999).
