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Keywords

Town hall, drama, media coverage, politics

Abstract

When the new Congress took their seats at the beginning of 2017, Republicans were on a mission to replace Obamacare. To gear up for the legislative struggle, legislators took to the streets and towns of their districts to speak to constituents about Obamacare and other policies. During the first town halls in January and February, Republican legislators found themselves confronted with rowdy and raucous crowds who nearly shouted them down every time they had chance to speak. The News took note of this phenomena in late February and started reporting on the story. The popular headlines from The Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN all reported that Republicans were facing wild crowds in their home states. These same media outlets then discovered that Republicans were cancelling their town halls, presumably so they didn’t have to face the tough crowds. This issue gained a lot of media attention. I aim to test whether a pattern did develop where legislators, especially Republicans, backed down from town halls after the reports of bad crowds.

Hypothesis: Republicans did do fewer town halls after the news coverage, but this trend will not be specific to the GOP and is due to other factors.

Description

The Annual Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Research Conference showcases some of the best student research from the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences. The mentored learning program encourages undergraduate students to participate in hands-on and practical research under the direction of a faculty member. Students create these posters as an aide in presenting the results of their research to the public, faculty, and their peers.

Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

2017-05-11

Language

English

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Political Science

Town Hall Drama: What's all the Gossip About?

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