Cyberwar : how Russian hackers and trolls helped elect a president : what we don't, can't, and do know /
Kathleen Hall Jamieson.
- New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
- xiii, 314 pages : illustrations ;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-303) and index.
Machine generated contents note: -- Prologue -- Introduction -- Part One: Who Did It, Why, and How It May Have Mattered -- Chapter One: How Do We Know that the Russians Meddled in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election? -- Chapter Two: A Theory of Communication that Posits Effects -- Part Two: The Pre-Requisites of Influence -- Chapter Three: Pre-Requisite One: Widespread Messaging -- Chapter Four: Pre-Requisite Two: Messages Aligned with Trump's Electoral Interests -- Chapter Five: Pre-Requisite Three: Messages to Mobilize Veterans and White Christians, Demobilizing Blacks and Sanders' Supporters, Shifting Liberals to Stein -- Chapter Six: Pre-Requisite Four: Well-Targeted Content -- Chapter Seven: Pre-Requisite Five: Persuasive Appeals -- Part Three: Exposure: How the Russians Affected the News and Debate Agendas in the Last Month of the Campaign -- Chapter Eight: The Russian Effect On Press Coverage in October -- Chapter Nine: The Effect of the Stolen Emails on the Last Two Presidential Debates -- Chapter Ten: The Russian Effect on the Media Agenda in the Last Days of the Election -- Part Four: What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know About How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect Donald J. Trump -- Afterword: Lessons -- Appendices -- Appendix One: Changes in Perceptions of Clinton and Trump in October -- Appendix Two: Debate 2 and Debate 3 Exposure Effect on Candidate Trait Evaluations -- Appendix Three: Association between Perception Changes and Vote Intentions -- References.
"In Cyberwar, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who sifted through a vast amount of polling and voting data, is able to conclude with a reasonable degree of certainty that Russian help was crucial in elevating Trump to the Oval Office. Put simply, by changing the behavior of key players and altering the focus and content of mainstream news, Russian hackers reshaped the 2016 electoral dynamic. At the same time, Russian trolls used social media to target voting groups indispensable to a Trump victory or Clinton defeat. There are of course many arguments on offer that push against the idea that the Russians handed Trump his victory. Russia's goal was fomenting division, not electing Trump. Most of the Russian ads reportedly did not reference either the election or a candidate. Nor did they differ much from U.S.-based messaging that was already in play. Russian intervention did not surgically target Trump in key states. Finally, if WikiLeaks' releases of stolen email had truly affected the vote, Clinton's perceived honesty would have dropped in October. Jamieson, drawing from her four decades of research on the role of media in American elections, dispenses with these arguments through a forensic tracing of both Russian hackers' impact on media coverage as well as the ebbs and flows of Trump's polling support over the course of the campaign. Combining scholarly rigor with a bracing argument, Cyberwar shows that we can now be reasonably confident that Russian efforts helped put Trump in the White House"--
9780190915810 (hardback)
Presidents--United States Elections--United States. POLITICAL SCIENCE / General. POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Elections.