This chapter asks the question: Where did Black individuals' desire for community commitment come from? The answer this, I draw on numerous primary and secondary sources starting in the Reconstruction era to show where Black voters' expectations of those representing them came from and how they shifted over time. The latter part of the chapter focuses on the Civil Rights Movement out of which many Black voters received the right to engage in politics. I contend that these new rights and those who helped acquire them for the Black community created the lens through which most Black people see effective leadership today, and solidified the desire for representatives willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of the racial group's progress.

This chapter begins with a description of the arrival and proliferation of Fox News across the United States during its early years and concludes with a description and some analyses of Fox News’ content. Both demonstrations are critical to our case. The former is required because our identification strategy requires that we satisfy the assumption that the Fox News rollout was as-if random – or haphazard – in the sense that it is not related to political factors capable of shaping House members’ behavior. The latter is important for both our empirical evidence and theoretical arguments. First, if we expect the arrival and presence of Fox News to have a unique influence on elite political behavior, it is important to demonstrate whether and to what degree Fox News’ content is different from other networks. Second, examining Fox News’ content can tell us something about the mechanisms for its effects or the process by which it shapes the attitudes and behaviors of political elites.

This chapter sets up our main research question, which is what effect, if any, did the arrival and proliferation of Fox News have on US politicians? It summarizes the history of Fox News and describes the natural experiment created by the haphazard rollout of Fox News. It goes on to summarize the scholarly literature on media effects and, specifically, how little of it focuses on the behavior of politicians. In turn, it summarizes the scholarly literature on members of Congress and how little of it focuses on the media. It then explains our open science approach.

This chapter highlights the role media play in political accountability. If Fox News’ entry and presence can shape candidate and member perceptions about what districts want (as we saw in Chapters 3 and 4), can Fox News also shape how responsive representatives are to constituents’ policy preferences? This responsiveness to the district – also known as dyadic representation – is the subject of our examinations in Chapter 5. To test this question, we quantify the degree to which representatives’ voting behavior diverges from what it should be (if they were faithfully following district public opinion). Here we find, once again, that Fox News increases the tendency for Democratic members in marginal districts to “move rightward” in response to rising Fox News availability in the district. In this analysis, our measures reflect the tendency for Democrats in right leaning districts to err on the conservative side of the median voter in their district, and that tendency gets worse as district-level availability of Fox News increases.

Appreciating that films can influence audiences’ political imaginations and expectations, this chapter looks at first lady characters in feature length presidential movies released during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama were all politically active, setting new standards as presidential advisors, campaign fundraisers, and policy advocates. Presidential movies partially reflected this change, though historic gender constraints on women characters endured. These movies set an affirming wife-husband relationship as a prerequisite for first ladies to exercise political influence. Still, the films presented those relationships as alliances between politically knowledgeable and engaged individuals. That depiction was not extended to first ladies’ interactions with other decision-makers, which were rare and seldom successful. As a result, while presidential movies present their audiences with politically knowledgeable first ladies, these films do not yet encourage ticket holders to recognize these women as actually exercising political influence.

This chapter uses the lens of feminine rhetorical style to examine how gendered expectations affect first ladies’ public speeches and how their rhetorical styles evolved over time. Selected speeches of first ladies from Eleanor Roosevelt to Melania Trump are analyzed and five recurring themes are reviewed. These include the discussion of feminine topics such as family and childcare and envisioning women’s role in society, addressing masculine issues such as war and politics through feminine rhetoric, connecting with audiences as peers, use of personal narratives, and use of expert sources and statistics. The chapter concludes that first ladies’ addresses are usually delivered within the bounds of stereotypical gendered expectations, though subtle deviations can be found depending on the first lady’s public image, her professional experience, and the popular opinion of the times. The analysis of first ladies’ rhetorical styles helps us better understand their evolving role in US politics.