Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The popularization of plastic surgery, continual issues of low self-esteem with women, and a variety of inadequately defined terms for the ideal image is reason to complete this study. In addition, the ideal image is now a commodity within the US and its capitalist society. A literature review was conducted to analyze the role of ideal image and the variety of terms used in similar ways. Ideal image is conceptually important as its definition extends beyond an ideal of beauty to encompass many dimensions, such as behavior. In this re-conceptualization, the term is examined through its creation, production, and commoditization in the American society. Establishing ideal image as the concept for the differing terms, recognizing the dimensions within the concept, and understanding the impact of ideal image upon a consumer society will advance communication and feminist literature in providing a common understanding between scholars and consumers alike.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Modeling work, emerging as it did from the postindustrial shift toward service work and consumerism in which non material goods such as services, ideas, and images have become products of capitalist development and circulation, exemplifies tendencies that have been instrumental in the spread of the affective economy. This paper looks at how developments in imaging technology, from photography to film to television, brought with them changes in the valuation and types of images in circulation, that brought about changes in the organization and demands of modeling work. These changes include the level of investment in the various elements of models� labor, with the result that modeling work was paid increasingly well, and oriented more toward capitalizing on a kind of labor that is affective, that is, that deals with producing and modulating the bodily capacity to act, engage, or to connect.
These changes in the history of modeling work include the process by which modeling became paid labor, its incorporation into professional agencies, the evolution of the fashion model into an icon and media personality, and the globalization of the modeling industry. These shifts in focus and structure arguably serve as an example of how technology calibrates affectivity for productive ends, and point toward a trend in which the technical is becoming inseparable from our ability to act, engage, or connect. Viewed through this theoretical lens, I claim that changes in imaging regimes have in turn have resulted in an intensification of the affective labor and production of models, changes that are inextricably entangled with growth of the infrastructure of affective production more generally.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Researchers have started to analyze how politician behavior and rhetoric can prime certain image dimensions, leading citizens to evaluate politicians along these dimensions. This incipient body of work provides intriguing evidence that politicians can and do change image perceptions through speeches and policy activity, especially in the foreign policy domain. In this paper, I contribute to this literature by assessing the image persuasive and image priming effects of presidential responsiveness and unresponsiveness. I argue that changes in public perceptions of the extent to which a politician possesses a certain trait (image persuasion) do not necessarily change the weight given to that trait in overall approval evaluations (image priming). I report the results of an original experiment manipulating whether a president is responsive or unresponsive to public opinion, either on a foreign policy issue or on a domestic issue. This allows me to compare the differential effects of (un)responsiveness in the different issue domains. My findings confirm that image persuasion does not necessarily lead to image persuasion. I discuss the implications for research on politician strategy, presidential politics, priming, and persuasion.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper intends to lay the initial theoretical groundwork for developing an analytical framework integrating two widely-used approaches in political psychology for analyzing world leaders-at-a-distance: image theory (developed by Richard Cottam) and leadership trait analysis (developed by Margaret G. Hermann). Although each of these approaches have produced a rich body of literature and been used to analyze and predict the foreign policy behavior of a wide-range of world leaders, there has (to this point at least) not been any attempt to meaningfully integrate these two approaches in a way that would increase our overall analytical power. With the goal of beginning the process of developing more robust, multi-method models for analyzing and predicting leader behavior and policy making-at-a-distance, we intend to review and synthesize the research literatures from both approaches. This will identify the areas where there is ?mutual fit? between the approaches (where their individual findings usefully complement or augment the explanatory power provided by the other) and those where these approaches provide more unique perspectives. By integrating these two approaches into a common, overall analytical framework, we hope to greatly increase our ability to accurately assess leader perceptions, decision making, and foreign policy behavior at-a-distance. Throughout the paper, examples of world leaders will be used to illustrate the potential ?value-added? nature of this new, combined analytical model.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract: The trend among new nuclear proliferants in the past three decades has been to develop arsenals clandestinely. These proliferants compensate for an underdeveloped arsenal through existential deterrence, exploiting the uncertainty of their adversary, and creating concern throughout the nonproliferation regime. This paper expands upon Cottam’s “image theory” to propose that states which favor opaque proliferation as a means of generating security tend to hold strong image beliefs of their adversaries. Through qualitative comparative case studies of Israel, India, and North Korea, we shall attempt to prove that opaque proliferants hold both a strong “enemy” and “imperialist” image of key adversaries. The paper will also suggest that the perception of an alliance between the enemy and imperialist states is important to the decision to proliferate clandestinely. Ultimately, this paper attempts to achieve some predictive value into recognizing those states which may be likely to attempt opaque nuclearization as a solution to their security problems.