BU Research Blog

We are delighted to announce the publication of U.S. Election Analysis 2020: Media, Voters and the Campaign

Featuring 91 contributions from over 115 leading US and international academics, this publication captures the immediate thoughts, reflections and early research insights on the 2020 U.S. presidential election from the cutting edge of media and politics research. It is a collaboration between BU academics, American University, and Kent State University, in partnership with the Political Studies Association, American Political Science Association and the International Political Science Association.

Published within eleven days of the election, these contributions are short and accessible. Authors provide authoritative analysis – including research findings and new theoretical insights – to bring readers original ways of understanding the campaign. Contributions also bring a rich range of disciplinary influences, from political science to cultural studies, journalism studies to geography.

In 24 hours, the report website has already had over 5000 hits and has been featured by Nieman Lab.

As always, these reports are free to access.

The report can be found on https://www.electionanalysis.ws/us/ alongside our previous reports on UK and U.S. elections.

Direct pdf download is available at:  http://j.mp/USElectionAnalysis2020_Jackson-et_al_v1  (please note, large file size!)

The table of contents is below.

1. Introduction 
Daniel Jackson, Danielle Sarver Coombs, Filippo Trevisan, Darren Lilleker and Einar Thorsen

Policy and Political Context

2. The far-too-normal election 
Dave Karpf
3. One pandemic, two Americas and a week-long election day 
Ioana Coman
4. Political emotion and the global pandemic: factors at odds with a Trump presidency 
Erik P. Bucy
5. The pandemic did not produce the predominant headwinds that changed the course of the country 
Amanda Weinstein
6. Confessions of a vampire 
Kirk Combe
7. COVID-19 and the 2020 election 
Timothy Coombs
8. President Trump promised a vaccine by Election Day: that politicized vaccination intentions 
Matthew Motta
9. The enduring impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on the 2020 elections 
Gabriel B. Tait
10. Where do we go from here? The 2020 U.S. presidential election, immigration, and crisis 
Jamie Winders
11. A nation divided on abortion? 
Zoe Brigley Thompson
12. Ending the policy of erasure: transgender issues in 2020 
Anne C. Osborne
13. U.S. presidential politics and planetary crisis in 2020 
Reed Kurtz
14. Joe Biden and America’s role in the world 
Jason Edwards
15. President Biden’s foreign policy: engagement, multilateralism, and cautious globalization 
Klaus W. Larres
16. Presidential primary outcomes as evidence of levels of party unity 
Judd Thornton
17. A movable force: the armed forces voting bloc 
Amanda Weinstein
18. Guns and the 2020 elections 
Robert Spitzer
19. Can Biden’s win stop the decline of the West and restore the role of the United States in the world? 
Roman Gerodimos

Voters

20. A divided America guarantees the longevity of Trumpism 
Panos Koliastasis and Darren Lilleker
21. Cartographic perspectives of the 2020 U.S. election 
Ben Hennig
22. Vote Switching From 2016 to 2020 
Diana Mutz and Sam Wolken
23. It’s the democracy, stupid 
Petros Ioannidis and Elias Tsaousakis
24. Election in a time of distrust 
John Rennie Short
25. Polarization before and after the 2020 election 
Barry Richards
26. The political psychology of Trumpism 
Richard Perloff

27. White evangelicals and white born again Christians in 2020 
Ryan Claassen
28. Angry voters are (often) misinformed voters 
Brian Weeks
29. A Black, Latinx, and Independent alliance: 2020 
Omar Ali
30. Believing Black women 
Lindsey Meeks
31. The sleeping giant awakens: Latinos in the 2020 election 
Lisa Sanchez
32. Trump won the senior vote because they thought he was best on the economy – not immigration 
Peter McLeod
33. Did German Americans again support Donald Trump? 
Per Urlaub & David Huenlich

Candidates and the Campaign

34. The emotional politics of 2020: fear and loathing in the United States 
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen
35. Character and image in the U.S. presidential election: a psychological perspective 
Geoffrey Beattie
36. Branding and its limits 
Ken Cosgrove
37. Celtic connections: reading the roots of Biden and Trump 
Michael Higgins and Russ Eshleman
38. Kamala Harris, Bobby Jindal, and the construction of Indian American identity 
Madhavi Reddi
39. Stratagems of hate: decoding Donald Trump’s denigrating rhetoric in the 2020 campaign 
Rita Kirk and Stephanie Martin
40. Campaign finance and the 2020 U.S. election 
Cayce Myers
41. The Emperor had no clothes, after all 
Marc Hooghe
42. Trump’s tribal appeal: us vs. them 
Stephen D. Reese

News and Journalism

43. When journalism’s relevance is also on the ballot 
Seth C. Lewis, Matt Carlson and Sue Robinson
44. Beyond the horse race: voting process coverage in 2020 
Kathleen Searles
45. YouTube as a space for news 
Stephanie Edgerly
46. 2020 shows the need for institutional news media to make racial justice a core value of journalism 
Nikki Usher
47. Newspaper endorsements, presidential fitness and democracy 
Kenneth Campbell
48. Alternative to what?A faltering alternative-as-independent media 
Scott A. Eldridge II
49. Collaboration, connections, and continuity in media innovation 
Valerie Belair-Gagnon
50. Learning from the news in a time of highly polarized media 
Marion Just and Ann Crigler
51. Partisan media ecosystems and polarization in the 2020 U.S. election 
Michael Beam
52. What do news audiences think about ‘cutting away’ from news that could contain misinformation? 
Richard Fletcher
53. The day the music died: turning off the cameras on President Trump 
Sarah Oates
54. When worlds collide: contentious politics in a fragmented media regime 
Michael X. Delli Carpini
55. Forecasting the future of election forecasting 
Benjamin Toff
56. A new horse race begins: the scramble for a post-election narrative 
Victor Pickard

Social media

57. Media and social media platforms finally begin to embrace their roles as democratic gatekeepers 
Daniel Kreiss
58. Did social media make us more or less politically unequal in 2020? 
Dan Lane and Nancy Molina-Rogers
59. Platform transparency in the fight against disinformation 
Valerie Belair-Gagnon, Bente Kalsnas, Lucas Graves and Oscar Westlund
60. Why Trump’s determination to sow doubt about data undermines democracy 
Alfred Hermida
61. A banner year for advertising and a look at differences across platforms 
Markus Neumann, Jielu Yao, Spencer Dean and Erika Franklin Fowler
62. How Joe Biden conveyed empathy 
Dorian Davis
63. The debates and the election conversation on Twitter 
G.R. Boynton and Glenn W. Richardson
64. Did the economy, COVID-19, or Black Lives Matter to the Senate candidates in 2020? 
Heather K. Evans and Rian F. Moore
65. Leadership through showmanship: Trump’s ability to coin nicknames for opponents on Twitter 
Marco Morini
66. Election countdown: Instagram’s role in visualizing the 2020 campaign 
Terri L. Towner and Caroline L. Munoz
67. Candidates did lackluster youth targeting on Instagram 
John Parmelee
68. College students, political engagement and Snapchat in the 2020 general election 
Laurie L. Rice and Kenneth W. Moffett
69. Advertising on Facebook: transparency, but not transparent enough 
Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Patricia Rossini, Brian McKernan and Jeff Hemsley
70. Detecting emotions in Facebook political ads with computer vision 
Michael Bossetta and Rasmus Schmøkel

Popular culture and public critique

71. On campaigns and political trash talk 
Michael Butterworth
72. It’s all about my “team”: what we can learn about politics from sport 
Natalie Brown-Devlin and Michael Devlin
73. Kelly Loeffler uses battle with the WNBA as springboard into Georgia Senate runoff 
Guy Harrison
74. Made for the fight, WNBA players used their platform for anti-racism activism in 2020 
Molly Yanity
75. Do National Basketball Association (NBA) teams really support Black Lives Matter? 
Kwame Agyemang
76. The presidential debates: the media frames it all wrong 
Mehnaaz Momen
77. Live… from California, it’s Kamala Harris 
Mark Turner
78. Who needs anger management? Dismissing young engagement 
Joanna Doona
79. Meme war is merely the continuation of politics by other means 
Rodney Taveira
80. Satire failed to pack a punch in the 2020 election 
Allaina Kilby
81. Election memes 2020, or, how to be funny when nothing is fun 
Ryan M. Milner and Whitney Phillips

Democracy in crisis

82. Social media moderation of political talk
Shannon McGregor
83. The speed of technology vs. the speed of democracy 
Ben Epstein
84. The future of election administration: how will states respond?
Jennifer L. Selin
85. How the movement to change voting procedures was derailed by the 2020 election results 
Martin P. Wattenberg
86. From “clown” to “community”: the democratic potential of civility and incivility 
Emily Sydnor
87. Searching for misinformation 
David Silva
88. Relational listening as political listening in a polarized country 
Kathryn Coduto
89. QAnon, the election and an evolving American conservativism 
Harrison Lejeune
90. President Trump, disinformation, and the threat of extremist violence 
Kurt Braddock
91. The disinformed election 
Saif Shahin
92. Election 2020 and the further degradation of local journalism 
Philip Napoli

We hope you enjoy reading it.

Dan, Danielle, Filippo, Darren and Einar