Terri L Towner
Biographic Data
| ID | 4123702 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Terri L Towner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Terri L |
| FAMILY NAME | Towner |
| SIGNATURE | TOWNER T L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oakland University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8046-7086 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 171 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Platform Politics in the U.S. Congress: Diffusion of TikTok and Threads
This study investigates which members of the 118th U.S. Congress adopt and use Threads and TikTok, and what political, demographic, and constituency-level characteristics explain this variation. Grounded in diffusion of innovation theory, we ask: What factors predict the adoption and use of these emerging platforms? We compiled original data on all members of Congress ( N = 535) by collecting social media account information from official congres…
Tell Me an Instagram Story: Ephemeral Communication and the 2018 Gubernatorial Elections
Political campaigns are embracing the visual social media platform Instagram. One digital feature, the Story, has taken over feed sharing across social media. A Story is a sequence of images or videos uploaded to a profile that disappear after 24 hours. The Story is a novel feature relatively unexamined in political communications and marketing research. Specifically, it is unclear how Gubernatorial candidates employ the Instagram Story feature i…
Choosing Reviewers: Predictors of Undergraduate Manuscript Evaluations
There is a substantial amount of research examining bias in the peer-review process and its influence on the quality and content of political science journal articles. However, there is limited research examining how students peer review other undergraduate research for publication. To better understand the predictors of manuscript evaluations and build on prior literature, this study examines seven years of undergraduate peer evaluations submitt…
A Long Story Short: An Analysis of Instagram Stories during the 2020 Campaigns
Political campaigns are becoming immensely visual, with many platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, and SnapChat, employed by candidates. We focus on the second most popular platform, Instagram, examining how the 2020 presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, utilize “Stories” in their digital campaigns. Instagram “Stories” allow users to capture and post related images and videos in a slideshow format that disappears after 24-hours. Y…
Learning through Peer Reviewing and Publishing in the Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics: Twenty Years Later
The Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics (PSAJ) , sponsored by the Pi Sigma Alpha National Honor Society, was founded in 2001 at Purdue University. After 20 years, much has changed in undergraduate research and publishing, but the benefits of producing a peer-reviewed journal remain the same. Undergraduate research has increased in prominence, and the journal has modernized to meet these transformations. This article describes the his…
The Effects of 'Live,' Authentic, and Emotional Instagram Images on Congressional Candidate Evaluations
This study examines how Instagram's design and norms influence expectations for political imagery and, subsequently, the effects of these images on electability, vote likelihood, and candidate evaluations. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we propose three norms of Instagram that likely function as heuristic cues and affect the reception of political visual communication on the platform: liveness, authenticity, and emotionality. We experime…
Instagramming Issues: Agenda Setting During the 2016 Presidential Campaign
Mass media can set the public's agenda, particularly during political campaigns. In the social media era, the public can now also set the mass media's agenda, resulting in intermedia agenda setting. This study's purpose is to examine the intermedia agenda-setting effects between Instagram posts and mainstream newspapers during the 2016 presidential primary period. To test this relationship, a content analysis was conducted, recording the frequenc…
The Infographic Election
Newspapers and its use of photographs during presidential campaigns has also been frequently examined. During the 1996 presidential election, P. Waldman and J. Dewitt content analyzed newspaper photographs of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, finding little pictorial favoritism. Television fundamentally altered the relationship between voters and candidates by using moving pictures and sound, rather than the printed image and word, to communicate campai…
The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season
The 2016 presidential primary candidates expanded their social media marketing campaigns to include the image- and video-centered social network platform Instagram. To explore the role that images play in framing political character development and to identify which images received higher levels of engagement, content analyses were performed on the top seven primary candidates’ Instagram accounts. Results indicate that candidates most frequently …
Picture Perfect? The Role of Instagram in Issue Agenda Setting During the 2016 Presidential Primary Campaign
Instagram emerged as a pivotal campaign tool in the 2016 presidential campaign. This study examines the agenda-setting effects between the presidential primary candidates’ Instagram posts and articles published in the mainstream newspapers during the primary period. A reciprocal relationship between Democratic and Republican candidates’ Instagram posts and newspaper articles is expected. A content analysis of issues recorded daily issue frequenci…
Baby Boom or Bust? the New Media Effect on Political Participation
A considerable number of studies have investigated the influence of new media on political attitudes and behaviors. However, much of this research focuses on young people, ignoring other age cohorts, particularly Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964). To fill this gap, this research examines the influence of attention to specific forms of traditional and online media on Baby Boomers' online and offline political participation during the fall …
A Wise Latina or a Baffled Rookie? Media Coverage of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Ascent to the Bench
We examine newspaper coverage of the US Supreme Court confirmation process to investigate whether Sonia Sotomayor received different coverage than other nominees due to her status as a minority woman. Sotomayor was the only justice seated over the last three decades who received extensive attention to her race and gender, and her coverage was more negatively toned than that received by other nominees. Compared to her counterparts, the press downp…
Boomers versus Millennials: Online Media Influence on Media Performance and Candidate Evaluations
Facebook posts, YouTube videos, tweets and wooing political bloggers have become standard practice in marketing political campaigns. Research has demonstrated the effect of new media on a host of politically-related behavior, including political participation, knowledge acquisition, group formation and self-efficacy. Yet, issues related to media trust, media performance and candidate evaluations have not been fully explored. In addition, much of …
All Political Participation Is Socially Networked: New Media and the 2012 Election
This research examined the influence of attention to specific forms of traditional and online media on young adults’ online and offline political participation as well as voter turnout during the fall 2012 presidential campaign. A three-wave panel survey demonstrated that attention to traditional media did not increase offline and online political participation in September; instead, participation was heightened by attention to online sources, pa…
New Media and Political Marketing in the United States: 2012 And Beyond
Technology is an ever-evolving aspect of political campaigns in the United States. Even before the days when sophisticated survey research or television advertising burst on the scene, campaigners were seeking ways to campaign more efficiently and effectively. The Internet has provided a wealth of opportunities for candidates and their campaigns to use technology in creative and innovative ways. The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign clearly illustr…
Back to the “wall”: How to use Facebook in the college classroom
The evolving world of the Internet — blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks — offers instructors and students radically new ways to research, communicate, and learn. Integrating these Internet tools into the college classroom, however, is not an easy task. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the role of social networking in education and demonstrate how social network sites (SNS) can be used in a college classroom setting. To do…
The Web 2.0 Election: Does the Online Medium Matter
The 2008 U.S. presidential election saw the first significant integration of Web 2.0 technologies; however, scholars know little about how Web 2.0 sources influence political attitudes. To address this, the authors test the effects of exposure to various Web 2.0 sources during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. They find that young adults exposed to television network sites and candidate Web sites consider them more trustworthy and high-quality…
An experiment of campaign effects during the YouTube election
The 2008 US presidential election was called the ‘YouTube Election’. However, scholars know little about how the internet influences attitudes toward politics. To address this, we conduct an experiment to test the effects of exposure to the YouTube channel, ‘YouChoose’08’, on young adults during the 2008 US presidential election. We find that those exposed to YouChoose’08 exhibit more cynicism toward the US government, yet also had a heightened s…
Interviewing the Interviewers: Journalistic Norms and Racial Diversity in the Newsroom
Many mainstream newspapers have diversified their organizations—at least to some extent—by hiring minority journalists. Some scholars argue that a diversified newsroom will improve media coverage of minority communities and issues; others think that the power of journalistic norms will constrain minority journalists so that they will be unable or unwilling to enhance the news coverage of minorities. In this article, the authors examine journalist…
The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season
The 2016 presidential primary candidates expanded their social media marketing campaigns to include the image- and video-centered social network platform Instagram. To explore the role that images play in framing political character development and to identify which images received higher levels of engagement, content analyses were performed on the top seven primary candidates’ Instagram accounts. Results indicate that candidates most frequently …
Interviewing the Interviewers: Journalistic Norms and Racial Diversity in the Newsroom
Many mainstream newspapers have diversified their organizations—at least to some extent—by hiring minority journalists. Some scholars argue that a diversified newsroom will improve media coverage of minority communities and issues; others think that the power of journalistic norms will constrain minority journalists so that they will be unable or unwilling to enhance the news coverage of minorities. In this article, the authors examine journalist…
All Political Participation Is Socially Networked: New Media and the 2012 Election
This research examined the influence of attention to specific forms of traditional and online media on young adults’ online and offline political participation as well as voter turnout during the fall 2012 presidential campaign. A three-wave panel survey demonstrated that attention to traditional media did not increase offline and online political participation in September; instead, participation was heightened by attention to online sources, pa…
An experiment of campaign effects during the YouTube election
The 2008 US presidential election was called the ‘YouTube Election’. However, scholars know little about how the internet influences attitudes toward politics. To address this, we conduct an experiment to test the effects of exposure to the YouTube channel, ‘YouChoose’08’, on young adults during the 2008 US presidential election. We find that those exposed to YouChoose’08 exhibit more cynicism toward the US government, yet also had a heightened s…
Picture Perfect? The Role of Instagram in Issue Agenda Setting During the 2016 Presidential Primary Campaign
Instagram emerged as a pivotal campaign tool in the 2016 presidential campaign. This study examines the agenda-setting effects between the presidential primary candidates’ Instagram posts and articles published in the mainstream newspapers during the primary period. A reciprocal relationship between Democratic and Republican candidates’ Instagram posts and newspaper articles is expected. A content analysis of issues recorded daily issue frequenci…
New Media and Political Marketing in the United States: 2012 And Beyond
Technology is an ever-evolving aspect of political campaigns in the United States. Even before the days when sophisticated survey research or television advertising burst on the scene, campaigners were seeking ways to campaign more efficiently and effectively. The Internet has provided a wealth of opportunities for candidates and their campaigns to use technology in creative and innovative ways. The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign clearly illustr…
Boomers versus Millennials: Online Media Influence on Media Performance and Candidate Evaluations
Facebook posts, YouTube videos, tweets and wooing political bloggers have become standard practice in marketing political campaigns. Research has demonstrated the effect of new media on a host of politically-related behavior, including political participation, knowledge acquisition, group formation and self-efficacy. Yet, issues related to media trust, media performance and candidate evaluations have not been fully explored. In addition, much of …
A Wise Latina or a Baffled Rookie? Media Coverage of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Ascent to the Bench
We examine newspaper coverage of the US Supreme Court confirmation process to investigate whether Sonia Sotomayor received different coverage than other nominees due to her status as a minority woman. Sotomayor was the only justice seated over the last three decades who received extensive attention to her race and gender, and her coverage was more negatively toned than that received by other nominees. Compared to her counterparts, the press downp…
The Web 2.0 Election: Does the Online Medium Matter
The 2008 U.S. presidential election saw the first significant integration of Web 2.0 technologies; however, scholars know little about how Web 2.0 sources influence political attitudes. To address this, the authors test the effects of exposure to various Web 2.0 sources during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. They find that young adults exposed to television network sites and candidate Web sites consider them more trustworthy and high-quality…
Baby Boom or Bust? the New Media Effect on Political Participation
A considerable number of studies have investigated the influence of new media on political attitudes and behaviors. However, much of this research focuses on young people, ignoring other age cohorts, particularly Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964). To fill this gap, this research examines the influence of attention to specific forms of traditional and online media on Baby Boomers' online and offline political participation during the fall …
A Long Story Short: An Analysis of Instagram Stories during the 2020 Campaigns
Political campaigns are becoming immensely visual, with many platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, and SnapChat, employed by candidates. We focus on the second most popular platform, Instagram, examining how the 2020 presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, utilize “Stories” in their digital campaigns. Instagram “Stories” allow users to capture and post related images and videos in a slideshow format that disappears after 24-hours. Y…
Tell Me an Instagram Story: Ephemeral Communication and the 2018 Gubernatorial Elections
Political campaigns are embracing the visual social media platform Instagram. One digital feature, the Story, has taken over feed sharing across social media. A Story is a sequence of images or videos uploaded to a profile that disappear after 24 hours. The Story is a novel feature relatively unexamined in political communications and marketing research. Specifically, it is unclear how Gubernatorial candidates employ the Instagram Story feature i…
Learning through Peer Reviewing and Publishing in the Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics: Twenty Years Later
The Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics (PSAJ) , sponsored by the Pi Sigma Alpha National Honor Society, was founded in 2001 at Purdue University. After 20 years, much has changed in undergraduate research and publishing, but the benefits of producing a peer-reviewed journal remain the same. Undergraduate research has increased in prominence, and the journal has modernized to meet these transformations. This article describes the his…
The Effects of 'Live,' Authentic, and Emotional Instagram Images on Congressional Candidate Evaluations
This study examines how Instagram's design and norms influence expectations for political imagery and, subsequently, the effects of these images on electability, vote likelihood, and candidate evaluations. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we propose three norms of Instagram that likely function as heuristic cues and affect the reception of political visual communication on the platform: liveness, authenticity, and emotionality. We experime…
Interviewing the Interviewers: Journalistic Norms and Racial Diversity in the Newsroom
Many mainstream newspapers have diversified their organizations—at least to some extent—by hiring minority journalists. Some scholars argue that a diversified newsroom will improve media coverage of minority communities and issues; others think that the power of journalistic norms will constrain minority journalists so that they will be unable or unwilling to enhance the news coverage of minorities. In this article, the authors examine journalist…
Back to the “wall”: How to use Facebook in the college classroom
The evolving world of the Internet — blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks — offers instructors and students radically new ways to research, communicate, and learn. Integrating these Internet tools into the college classroom, however, is not an easy task. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the role of social networking in education and demonstrate how social network sites (SNS) can be used in a college classroom setting. To do…
The Web 2.0 Election: Does the Online Medium Matter
The 2008 U.S. presidential election saw the first significant integration of Web 2.0 technologies; however, scholars know little about how Web 2.0 sources influence political attitudes. To address this, the authors test the effects of exposure to various Web 2.0 sources during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. They find that young adults exposed to television network sites and candidate Web sites consider them more trustworthy and high-quality…
An experiment of campaign effects during the YouTube election
The 2008 US presidential election was called the ‘YouTube Election’. However, scholars know little about how the internet influences attitudes toward politics. To address this, we conduct an experiment to test the effects of exposure to the YouTube channel, ‘YouChoose’08’, on young adults during the 2008 US presidential election. We find that those exposed to YouChoose’08 exhibit more cynicism toward the US government, yet also had a heightened s…
New Media and Political Marketing in the United States: 2012 And Beyond
Technology is an ever-evolving aspect of political campaigns in the United States. Even before the days when sophisticated survey research or television advertising burst on the scene, campaigners were seeking ways to campaign more efficiently and effectively. The Internet has provided a wealth of opportunities for candidates and their campaigns to use technology in creative and innovative ways. The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign clearly illustr…
All Political Participation Is Socially Networked: New Media and the 2012 Election
This research examined the influence of attention to specific forms of traditional and online media on young adults’ online and offline political participation as well as voter turnout during the fall 2012 presidential campaign. A three-wave panel survey demonstrated that attention to traditional media did not increase offline and online political participation in September; instead, participation was heightened by attention to online sources, pa…
Baby Boom or Bust? the New Media Effect on Political Participation
A considerable number of studies have investigated the influence of new media on political attitudes and behaviors. However, much of this research focuses on young people, ignoring other age cohorts, particularly Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964). To fill this gap, this research examines the influence of attention to specific forms of traditional and online media on Baby Boomers' online and offline political participation during the fall …
A Wise Latina or a Baffled Rookie? Media Coverage of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Ascent to the Bench
We examine newspaper coverage of the US Supreme Court confirmation process to investigate whether Sonia Sotomayor received different coverage than other nominees due to her status as a minority woman. Sotomayor was the only justice seated over the last three decades who received extensive attention to her race and gender, and her coverage was more negatively toned than that received by other nominees. Compared to her counterparts, the press downp…
Boomers versus Millennials: Online Media Influence on Media Performance and Candidate Evaluations
Facebook posts, YouTube videos, tweets and wooing political bloggers have become standard practice in marketing political campaigns. Research has demonstrated the effect of new media on a host of politically-related behavior, including political participation, knowledge acquisition, group formation and self-efficacy. Yet, issues related to media trust, media performance and candidate evaluations have not been fully explored. In addition, much of …
The Infographic Election
Newspapers and its use of photographs during presidential campaigns has also been frequently examined. During the 1996 presidential election, P. Waldman and J. Dewitt content analyzed newspaper photographs of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, finding little pictorial favoritism. Television fundamentally altered the relationship between voters and candidates by using moving pictures and sound, rather than the printed image and word, to communicate campai…
The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season
The 2016 presidential primary candidates expanded their social media marketing campaigns to include the image- and video-centered social network platform Instagram. To explore the role that images play in framing political character development and to identify which images received higher levels of engagement, content analyses were performed on the top seven primary candidates’ Instagram accounts. Results indicate that candidates most frequently …
Picture Perfect? The Role of Instagram in Issue Agenda Setting During the 2016 Presidential Primary Campaign
Instagram emerged as a pivotal campaign tool in the 2016 presidential campaign. This study examines the agenda-setting effects between the presidential primary candidates’ Instagram posts and articles published in the mainstream newspapers during the primary period. A reciprocal relationship between Democratic and Republican candidates’ Instagram posts and newspaper articles is expected. A content analysis of issues recorded daily issue frequenci…
Instagramming Issues: Agenda Setting During the 2016 Presidential Campaign
Mass media can set the public's agenda, particularly during political campaigns. In the social media era, the public can now also set the mass media's agenda, resulting in intermedia agenda setting. This study's purpose is to examine the intermedia agenda-setting effects between Instagram posts and mainstream newspapers during the 2016 presidential primary period. To test this relationship, a content analysis was conducted, recording the frequenc…
Learning through Peer Reviewing and Publishing in the Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics: Twenty Years Later
The Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics (PSAJ) , sponsored by the Pi Sigma Alpha National Honor Society, was founded in 2001 at Purdue University. After 20 years, much has changed in undergraduate research and publishing, but the benefits of producing a peer-reviewed journal remain the same. Undergraduate research has increased in prominence, and the journal has modernized to meet these transformations. This article describes the his…
The Effects of 'Live,' Authentic, and Emotional Instagram Images on Congressional Candidate Evaluations
This study examines how Instagram's design and norms influence expectations for political imagery and, subsequently, the effects of these images on electability, vote likelihood, and candidate evaluations. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we propose three norms of Instagram that likely function as heuristic cues and affect the reception of political visual communication on the platform: liveness, authenticity, and emotionality. We experime…
Choosing Reviewers: Predictors of Undergraduate Manuscript Evaluations
There is a substantial amount of research examining bias in the peer-review process and its influence on the quality and content of political science journal articles. However, there is limited research examining how students peer review other undergraduate research for publication. To better understand the predictors of manuscript evaluations and build on prior literature, this study examines seven years of undergraduate peer evaluations submitt…
A Long Story Short: An Analysis of Instagram Stories during the 2020 Campaigns
Political campaigns are becoming immensely visual, with many platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, and SnapChat, employed by candidates. We focus on the second most popular platform, Instagram, examining how the 2020 presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, utilize “Stories” in their digital campaigns. Instagram “Stories” allow users to capture and post related images and videos in a slideshow format that disappears after 24-hours. Y…
Tell Me an Instagram Story: Ephemeral Communication and the 2018 Gubernatorial Elections
Political campaigns are embracing the visual social media platform Instagram. One digital feature, the Story, has taken over feed sharing across social media. A Story is a sequence of images or videos uploaded to a profile that disappear after 24 hours. The Story is a novel feature relatively unexamined in political communications and marketing research. Specifically, it is unclear how Gubernatorial candidates employ the Instagram Story feature i…
Platform Politics in the U.S. Congress: Diffusion of TikTok and Threads
This study investigates which members of the 118th U.S. Congress adopt and use Threads and TikTok, and what political, demographic, and constituency-level characteristics explain this variation. Grounded in diffusion of innovation theory, we ask: What factors predict the adoption and use of these emerging platforms? We compiled original data on all members of Congress ( N = 535) by collecting social media account information from official congres…
Political science (16 works) · Social Media and Politics (15 works) · Media Studies and Communication (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Advertising (11 works) · Business (10 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Presidential system (9 works) · Law (8 works)