Stray the course: Technology's impact upon the representative‐elector artifact

Rhetorical critics usually understand political communication as messages in terms of speeches, campaign strategies, and voter behavior. By focusing upon messages, critics have failed to understand political communication as structurally formative of communication. A new methodology is proposed which conceives of rhetorical artifacts as enhancements of political communication. American congressional elections are presented as the artifact to be analyzed from the new perspective. Because the proposed methodology treats congressional elections as a structural genre, the contemporary, technological impact of electronic media can be criticized and compared to the artifact originally invented by the founders; the course they set has been strayed. Implications for political communication and its research conclude that we face what Habermas would call a “legitimation crisis.”;