Albertson: The Use of Anxiety in the 2012 Campaign

Assistant Professor Bethany Albertson describes research she and her colleague have conducted about the use of anxiety and negative emotions in political advertising, and discusses how advertising and rhetoric in the 2012 campaign have tried to elicit anxiety and fear for political effect.

For more conversations and blogs about the 2012 elections, go to the Elections 2012 section of Know.

About the Department

The Department of Government is distinguished by the breadth and quality of its faculty, students, and curriculum.

Through some 200 courses each year, the Department offers undergraduate and graduate studies in an array of fields: American Political Institutions and Processes, Comparative Politics, Formal Theory, International Relations, Methodology, Political Theory, Public Law, and Public Policy. The Department also houses the Policy Agendas Project and the Irma Rangel Public Policy Institute research units.

Graduates go on to careers in virtually every profession and have become leaders in politics and diplomacy, education, law, business, medicine, the military, the arts, and in a great many governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations.