DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: CHANGING MEDIA ENVIRONMENTS AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE PRESIDENT

Although there has been a great deal of research on the impact of new media on the ways in which presidents present themselves, less attention has been given to the ways in which these media shape the social construction of the president. This study focuses on how one public, those who write letters to presidents, expresses their sense of the role of the president in different media environments. Letters written to Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and London Johnson were examined for clues as to how changes in media environments were linked to changes in the letter-writers' constructions of presidents. The results of this research suggest that changes in the media environment do indeed have an impact on the social construction of the president.