ABSTRACT
Over the past several decades, numerous scholars have sought to identify the conditions under which political communication can affect various forms of political behavior. Research has focused on such behaviors as voter turnout, volunteerism, information acquisition, and more recently, small campaign donations. Many advancements in this area have been due to the use of experiments. The use of experiments has allowed researchers to isolate focal relationships by measuring individual responses immediately after exposure to strategic communication (Brader, 2005; Kinder & Palfrey, 1993). In many ways, the experimental approach has proven to be ideally suited to analyzing the effects of political communication.
