Page 79 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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JAMIESON, KATHLEEN HALL (1946- ) is dean of the Annenberg School
of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the most widely
quoted political communication scholars of the 1990s. This is largely because
she is clearly the country's expert on political advertising.
Jamieson is attempting to make communications the optimistic social science.
Her analysis of how political and media forces manipulate public discourse is
not a checklisting of oppression and duplicity but a program of problem solving.
In her book Dirty Politics, she outlines concrete strategies through which news
professionals can verify and critique political ads.
In her book Eloquence in an Electronic Age, she explained the decline of Old
World oratory under the glaring lights and compressed editing of television. In
Beyond the Double Bind, she shows that the rhetorically imposed contradiction
of femininity versus career success has been and can be transcended. She writes,
' 'Examined as rhetorical frames, double binds can be understood, manipulated,
dismantled." No more accurate summary of her method, goals, and attitude
toward political communication form and content could be stated.

SOURCES: Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age, 1988; Kathleen
Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and Democracy, 1992; Kathleen
Hall Jamieson, Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership, 1995.
David C. Perlmutter

JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743-1826). Any study of political communication
in the United States must begin with Thomas Jefferson. He provided the basis
for political communication when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these Truths to be self evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these rights are