In 2003 Ikuo Kabashima and Samuel Popkin invited Professors Masaki Taniguchi, Gill Steel, Susan Shirk, Jay Hamilton and Matthew Baum to join with them in charting a new path for research on the ways changing media are changing politics. In the last two decades, media studies have moved beyond claims of minimal effects by demonstrating how various characteristics of news stories–point of view (framing), connection to political offices (priming), emotional content, or causal implications– affect public opinion and voting. (Iyengar and Kinder 1987; Iyengar 1991; Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock 1991) Here we examine the ways in which changing communications technologies change the issue content of news consumed by the public and political competition within and between parties.