Atlantisches Forum: Words Apart: Campaign Narratives in the 2016 Election

The process by which individuals decide who they will vote for, and the strategies candidates use to try to persuade them are linked by the way humans assemble information into narrative forms in order to make sense of the world. What narratives are the candidates in the current race projecting? How are voters responding? What does this tell us about the immense changes taking place in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century? A closer look at the interplay between voters, the candidates, and the events that occur throughout the course of a campaign offers insights into these and other dimensions of a presidential election.

Photo: (c) Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz by DonkeyHotey licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Dr. Sass received his Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Iowa. He holds an MA degree in American Studies from the University of Heidelberg, where he also wrote an interdisciplinary doctoral dissertation titled Swaying the Nation: Campaign Narratives in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.