Spin
Control
Wilkes Professor Helps
Voters Focus on the Facts
By Helen Kaiser
Wilkes | Fall 2012
W
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Wilkes Communication Studies Professor Jane
Elmes-Crahall teaches a class on political communications.
photo by michael touey
ith an estimated
$2 billion being spent
on this year’s presidential
election race, Americans
are subjected to an onslaught
of political pitches for nearly two years. Is
it any wonder many in the electorate have
tuned out or feel overwhelmed at making
what is a crucial choice for the nation?
For Wilkes communication studies
Professor Jane Elmes-Crahall, however,
the presidential election is a timely tool
for teaching students how to think for
themselves.
Her popular “Controlling Spin” class
is offered every four years during the
heated primary season, affording students
real-world opportunities to assess what is
being said during debates, commercials,
media interviews and online. The goal
is to enable students to cut through
the rhetoric and choose the candidate
who best meets their criteria on issues
important to them.
“I have always been a strong supporter
of nonpartisan groups, like the League
of Women Voters,” Elmes-Crahall
says. “That’s because I believe in the
importance of each individual voter
forming his or her own opinion, rather
than being influenced by groups lobbying
for one position or another.”
For Dominick Costantino, a Wilkes
junior from Hanover Township, Pa.,
last spring’s course provided an in-depth
look at political campaigns that will
help prepare him to vote in his first
presidential election.
“As a communications major, I really
was interested in the public relations
aspects of the race—how certain messages
are framed,” he says.
“The whole spin aspect of politics
is important to analyze, because this
is what they (campaign staffs) all do,”
says senior Trevor Kurtz, another
communication studies major, from
Harleysville, Pa.
A frequent provider of expert analysis on political speeches,
debates and policy statements for regional and national news
media, Elmes-Crahall shared her strategies for “controlling spin”
and evaluating candidate communications:
• Don’t let anyone else frame a political event for you. Don’t
listen to commentators who are providing analysis. Just focus
on the candidates themselves.
• Realize that strategists are providing spin even before a
candidate’s speeches, town halls or debates. They try to lower
your expectations so your impression is more positive if the
candidate’s performance is only average.
• Learn some of the basics of reason and logic so you can see
through any argument that may be fallacious.
• Take the time needed to evaluate what you’re hearing. You
can record and replay or watch most interviews and debates
again online if necessary.
• Give some thought to what issues are most important to you,
and research candidates’ positions on them.
• Develop what you might call a voter’s manifesto—as if you
were saying “This is what you, the candidate, must do to win
my vote.”
• Post your thoughts online in a blog or on the candidates’
websites. Begin a discussion and influence the news cycle
yourself. Today, any voter with a computer has a chance to
impact other voters.
Focus Groups Evaluate Political Attitudes Of Youth
When class members
analyzed the responses,
they found today’s young
voters and prospective voters
are being shaped by their
personal and social media
relationships. They are fed
up with party politics.
According to Wilkes communication studies professor Jane
Elmes-Crahall, there has been
a dramatic evolution in the
electorate in just the past
four years. In 2008, television
This poster, designed by Wilkes
student Bryan Calabro, advertised a
was the primary source of
young voters rally organized by the
campaign information for
Controlling Spin class.
most people, she said. Now
social media has surpassed broadcast media, especially
for the younger generation of voters.
“Young voters get almost all their information about the
2012 presidential campaign from conversations with friends
and from social media (especially Facebook and Twitter),”
the focus group research discovered. When they do tune
in to broadcasts, it’s likely to be for CNN Headline News, or
Comedy Central’s John Stewart and the Colbert Report.
The focus group interviews also revealed a distrust of the
two-party political system, coupled with growing identification
among 18- to 24-year olds as Independents.
“Please embrace nonpartisanship—I am so sick of campaigning
in Republican or Democratic terms,” pleaded one student.
“Address the whole nation’s needs.”
The focus groups found that 32.5 percent of respondents
identified themselves as Democrats, and 21 percent as
Republicans. Independents (23 percent) and Libertarians (18.5)
together totaled nearly 42 percent. Two participants had not
made a choice.
“Ten years from now, almost no young voters will identify with
either the Republicans or Democrats,” one student predicted.
The focus group participants were fed up with the increasingly
used tactic of negative advertising. Said one student:
“Polarizing language insults me . . . don’t candidates realize
young voters can see right past these cheap tactics?”
The issues that meant the most to the young focus group
participants were: jobs, mounting student debt, improving
the quality of education, civil rights for gay individuals and
separation of church and state.
More on the Web
For more details about the results of
the focus group research on young voters or to
comment on the spring 2012 focus groups, visit
http://controllingspin.blogspot.com/2012_08_
01_archives.html
Wilkes | Fall 2012
The “Controlling Spin” class offered at Wilkes in spring
semester 2012 conducted focus groups to determine
students’ perceptions of the 2012 presidential campaign.
Four discussions involving a
total of 43 participants ages
14 to 24 were held in March
and April.
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