Using Big Data and Algorithms to Determine the Effect of Geographically Targeted Advertising on Vote Intention: Evidence From the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election

We develop a new conceptualization of political advertising effects by looking at the effect of the marginal advertising dollar during the heat of presidential campaigns. We argue that in contrast to other studies investigating effects of political ads, our approach is more apt to capture the natural environment in which political ads are encountered during a presidential campaign. We focus on the intense inundation of political ads voters are confronted with in swing states in the weeks leading up to the presidential election, and argue that it is unclear a priori whether we should expect advertising to affect vote intention in that critical circumstance. We empirically validate this hypothesis using a trove of data from the 2012 campaign: daily polling in media markets around the country, detailed data on all registered voters in the country, all TV advertisements by market and exact airtime, and the entire Twitter corpus. We find that neither overall increases in advertising spending nor partisan imbalances in spending expanded the candidates’ electorate. In fact, total Designated Market Area (DMA)-level spending significantly moderates a negative relationship between spending advantages and advantages in vote intention, suggesting a boomerang effect of additional spending late in the campaign. In closing, we discuss the ramifications of our findings for future research, and stress the importance of research tracking advertising effects.     

Issue-Related Learning in a Gubernatorial Campaign: A Panel Study

This study is based on data from a three-wave telephone panel survey conducted during the 1998 governor's race in Florida. The evidence suggests that a considerable amount of issue-related learning (having to do with candidate policy stands and group endorsements) took place over the course of the general election campaign, though substantial differences were observed from one issue area to the next. Further analysis indicates that learning was especially likely to occur among voters (a) who were more knowledgeable about political affairs to start with (confirming that the so-called “knowledge gap” may be exacerbated during campaigns), (b) who scored high on a measure of advertising negativity (for one candidate but not the other), and (c) who early in the campaign, read their local newspaper less frequently. Consistent with prior research, TV news appears to have done little or nothing to boost issue-based learning among the electorate.     

Cambodia's broadcast TV: promotion of consumerist desires

Broadcast television in Cambodia has historically been left out of scholarship, be it that of economics, politics, or mass communication. That, however, does not mean the study of Cambodia's broadcast TV has only academic significance. Indeed, the entire mass communication industry has experienced a sea of change since the introduction of the UN-backed democracy project in 1991, followed by the call for a “free market” economy and its accompanied globalized and liberal discourses. That wholesale political and economic shift has led, and continues to lead, to the transformation of not only the macro aspects of the state, such as the imposed structural adjustments as the pre-condition for international funding, but also the micro, private aspects of the society's members, those ranging from religious practices, gender relations, social and familial values, and the like. While that shift in the early 1990s is now a thing of the past, its social consequences are now more apparent than ever with such issues as gap of inequality and conflicts in social relations and values being strongly felt. Cambodia's television is indeed at the forefront of representing and acting in these social changes, which demands of academics, development workers, and policy makers interested in the country that they attentively examine the country's broadcast TV. Thus, this paper takes the chance to primarily draw a landscape of Cambodia's broadcast television as it is at present, while at the same time juxtaposing the industry against its current societal context. In doing that, I first put into perspective a brief historical development of broadcast television in relation to the country's political and economic shift. I then proceed to introduce an overall picture of Cambodia's broadcast TV, describing its current state of ownership, technological and regulatory framework, market, and programming. Eventually, I turn to provide a critical argument about the industry as a promoter of the surging consumerist desire—“freedom of choice”—for the last several years. Towards the end of the paper, I move toward a speculation over the future of Cambodia's broadcast TV by taking into account current institutional aspects of the country's politics and economy, as well as discursive aspects of technology, free market, and regulations.     

Assessing the Television Campaign: The Impact of Party Election Broadcasting on Voters' Opinions in the 1997 British General Election

Although paid television and radio political advertising is banned in the United Kingdom, parties fielding sufficient candidates are entitled to free air time during election campaigns for a fixed number of party election broadcasts (PEBs). Over the years, parties have experimented with a variety of different PEB formats. But the impact of PEBs on voters is underresearched. This article therefore analyzes the influence of PEB viewing in the 1997 British General Election. Though a majority do not view PEBs, those who do are influenced by them, especially in terms of their evaluations of parties and their leaders: Other things being equal, viewers of a party's PEBs become more favorably disposed to the party and its leader than those who do not see the broadcast. Labour and Conservative PEBs have no impact on vote intentions, however. But viewers of Liberal Democrat broadcasts become more likely to support that party. We speculate that this reflects different background levels of media exposure for the major parties as compared to the third party.     

Tim Cook: A Remembrance

Sparse literature exists on the topic of intimacy appeals in political advertising, so in this study Horton and Wohl's para-social theory was applied to explain the “relationship” in Israel between television performers (politicians) and spectators (voters) through the intimacy concept. Altogether, 442 political ads from two Israeli election campaigns (1996 and 1999) were analyzed to test three hypotheses on the use of intimacy appeals across campaigns and political parties. The intimacy appeal measure consisted of five intimacy techniques and was thus characterized as a macro-level variable. These techniques appear in the codebook as five questions that examine whether the spots present words of intimacy, intimate situations, families of politicians, nonverbal expressions, and children. The results indicate that intimacy appeals in political spots are quite popular. Religious and left-leaning parties tended to use intimacy appeals significantly more than nonreligious and right-leaning parties. We conclude that politicians indeed use the same intimacy strategies and techniques as other television performers do; therefore, para-social theory accords with the concept of intimacy in political advertising as much as in other communication settings.     

The Electoral Salience of Trade Policy: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Welfare and Complexity

Why do some trade policies become electorally salient while others do not? While much of the literature argues that citizens act as a domestic constraint in the formation of trade policy, a general consensus has emerged that trade is most often a nonsalient issue among voters. This poses a paradox. On the one hand, trade models hinge upon voters’ rational self-interest and preferences for varying levels of protectionism to keep their governments accountable. On the other hand, the conditions by which trade becomes salient to these very voters in the first place are both undertheorized and untested. Using experimental evidence, I argue that two dimensions of a trade policy affect the likelihood of that issue becoming electorally salient. First, policies with large welfare effects should be more salient. Second, more complex issues should be less salient because such agreements are more likely to obfuscate an individual’s ability to discern its effects. I find support for my hypotheses that a trade policy’s salience tends to increase with the magnitude of its welfare effects and decrease with its complexity.     

Killing and Voting in the Basque Country: An Exploration of the Electoral Link Between ETA and its Political Branch

We deal in this article with the relationship between ETA attacks and electoral support for Batasuna, its political wing. We show that the relationship is twofold, since the geographical distribution of electoral support for the terrorists affects the location of ETA attacks, but violence also influences electoral support for the terrorist cause. On the one hand, when ETA chooses a location for its attacks, it takes into account the electoral strength of Batasuna. Our results show that the higher the vote for Batasuna in a municipality, the more likely members of the security forces will be killed there. With regard to the targeting of civilians, the relationship is curvilinear. ETA kills civilians in municipalities that are polarized, where support for Batasuna falls short of being hegemonic. On the other hand, our results also show that ETA attacks have an effect on the size of its support community. When ETA kills members of the security forces, voters punish the Batasuna party electorally. In the case of civilians, it depends on the specifics of the various campaigns. We find that when ETA kills informers and drug-dealers, the vote for Batasuna increases. ETA's killing of non-nationalist politicians, however, decreases Batasuna's vote share.     

Ethnic and Regional Politics after the Asian Economic Crisis: A Comparison of Malaysia and South Korea

This article explores the impact of the Asian economic crisis on the Malay-Chinese and Kyongsang-Cholla regional political cleavage structures in Malaysia and Korea respectively. The weakening of previously intractable cleavages and the rise of cross-cutting cleavages have the potential to contribute to democratic consolidation, by enhancing democratic uncertainty or 'organised uncertainty'. The analysis of post-crisis election results shows that Malaysia's traditional ethnic linkages between political elites and voters became more flexible after the crisis and created a strong cross-cutting dimension to the political cleavage structure. In contrast South Korea's regional cleavages remained fundamentally undisturbed and may even have been reinforced by the crisis, notwithstanding evidence of defections from regionally dominant parties.     

Presidential debates as focal points for campaign arguments

Abstract

This critical analysis of the 1988 Bush‐Dukakis presidential campaign is based on the premise that political debates can provide a framework for examining the arguments and issues within a political campaign that help shape potential voters’ perceptions about each candidate's character and fitness for office. The arguments presented within the debates are examined to determine the dominant themes each candidate developed as a way of describing himself and his opponent. Analysis of news reports of subsequent campaign speeches and polling information suggests which themes were accepted by the majority of voters.     

The Combined Effect of Advertising and News Coverage in the Mexican Presidential Campaign of 2000

In July 2000, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) lost the presidency of Mexico after 71 years of continuous rule. Research based on individual data obtained with surveys shows that important media effects occurred. Using aggregate data, in this article the author explores the effects of political advertising and media coverage on preferences during the Mexican presidential campaign. Data on voter preferences are taken from results of a trial ballot question in public opinion polls. Data on advertising are measured in gross rating points. Data on media coverage are taken from the monitoring of newscasts on the two major networks. OLS regression models are developed, with preferences as the dependent variable and campaigning differentials as the independent variables. Based on aggregate data, this research shows that in Mexico's 2000 presidential campaign, exposure to political communication led to persuasion, and news appears to have been more important than ads. Political communication was a unified process where ads and news presence acted together in a very interesting fashion, “bounding” each other in periods of major changes in preferences but with news effects prevailing over ads. Qualified news differentials accounted for 20% of the variance in preferences, and ad differentials accounted for 8%. This media effect occurred through a cumulative process where ads and news coverage acted together.     

The Interface between Western and Indigenous Signs in Zanu-PF Advertisements for July 2013 Elections

ABSTRACT

Political contestation in Zimbabwe post-2000 has been largely acrimonious. In the electoral domain of the epoch, political advertising, has been one of the key tools through which this contestation took place. However, these advertisements have been barely studied and those that have made an attempt to study them did not examine them from advertising theory and/or sign theory perspective. The study argues that locating the analysis of political advertisements in advertising theory and sign theory presents an opportunity to gain insights into how political products gain sign value, exchange value and utility value. The study deploys advertising theory and sign theory to examine the value that selected indigenous and Western signs used by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) invest in the political products: ZANU-PF and Mugabe. By interrogating four purposively selected signs in ZANU-PF advertisements for the July 2013 elections, I seek to establish how political products are produced as signs and signs as political products. The selected signs are subjected to semiotic analysis. The findings show that ZANU-PF's use of these valorised Western and indigenous, often contradictory, signs is designed to appeal to votes on the basis that it is a democratic, divine anointed, Christian and African-oriented party.     

Race,Interracial Families,and Political Advertising in the Obama Era: Experimental Evidence

Across two studies of race and interracial families in political advertising, this article finds that significant benefits accrue to Black candidates who present themselves as part of interracial families. These findings suggest Black candidates are more likely to succeed when they engage in displays of “racial novelty,” or counter-stereotypical behavior, provided that behavior signals closer affinity to White voters. For Study 1, we tested four original advertisements for a fictitious political candidate, in which we varied only the candidate’s race and the race of his son. The Black candidate with the White son prevailed over all other combinations, with respondents finding him the most trustworthy, most qualified for office, most likely to share their values, and most likely to care about people like them. For Study 2, we tested four new original advertisements for a fictitious Black candidate, varying only the candidate’s profession and the race of his son. We find, again, that Black candidates who display non-Black children do significantly better than Black candidates who display racially homogeneous families. However, we observe much more modest benefits for a Black candidate who practices a racially novel profession. We view these results as demonstrating that Black candidates are more likely to reap the rewards of racial novelty only when they are willing to provide a personal, rather than professional, signal of their affinity for Whites. As Study 2 shows, White voters in particular are responsive to personal (rather than professional) demonstrations of racial novelty. This affirms the logic of “New Racism,” whereby Blacks are looked favorably upon if they exhibit behavior associated with Whites, but penalized otherwise.     

Globalization and Political Violence, 1970–2008

The question of globalization's effect on social harmony continues to be fiercely debated. We use a comprehensive measure of globalization (the KOF index) designed to capture the intensity of connectivity among countries along economic, social, and political dimensions. Our results suggest that globalization, particularly economic and social globalization, predicts a lower risk of civil war and political repression, but economic globalization predicts lower repression even after unit heterogeneity is accounted. When country fixed effects are accounted, political globalization's effect is problematic for human rights, suggesting that politically influential states escape the constraining effects of globalization on political repression. Indeed, globalization generally shows up as more important than per capita income, a variable often found to be one of the most robust determinants of political violence. The results taken together support those who argue that increased globalization may enhance prospects for social progress, not social resistance and political violence as skeptics claim.     

Opposition Parties and the Voters in South Africa's General Election of 1999

Variance in partisan choice among South African voters can be predicted on the basis of what is known about the way voters see economic trends, evaluate government performance, perceive political parties, and rate party leaders. However, in this analysis it is demonstrated that factors related to racial divisions shape and filter how voters perceive political performance, and to some extent lead different voters to emphasize different performance criteria. But race does not affect the way voters make decisions. Thus, South Africa's opposition parties are weak not because black voters, the overwhelming majority of the electorate, operate with a decision-making apparatus that emphasizes unity over performance or is hostile to pluralism and opposition. Rather, support for the African National Congress can be accounted for first, by positive ratings of its performance in government and second, by the fact that those black voters dissatisfied with the performance of the African National Congress (ANC) do not see a legitimate alternative among the existing opposition parties.     

The left-wing armed struggle in Italy from a critical-historical perspective: the case of study of Prima Linea

This article intends to cast new light on the history of the Italian left-wing armed struggle using the research perspectives offered by Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS). The object of the analysis is Prima Linea (Front Line, PL), which in less than 5 years (1976–1981) became the second most important left-wing clandestine organisation of the Italian 1970s. On the one hand, the historical development of the organisation is divided into two distinct phases. On the other hand, three dimensions of the armed activity of PL will be considered, namely, its ideological approaches, its organisational repertoires and the choice of the targets, in order to investigate the origins, meanings and outcomes of certain framing processes related to the concept of political violence. Taking into consideration direct sources of the organisation and the debates within the social movements, this contribution contextualises these conceptualisation processes of political violence by relating them to the surrounding social context and focusing on the role played both by the structural dynamics from above, and by the theories and practices developed within the revolutionary Left. The aim is to de-exceptionalise and historicise the left-wing armed struggle in Italy and to propose a critical explanation of such phenomenon.     

The Japanese consumer finance market and its institutional changes since the 1980s

Abstract

We assert, in this article, that the joint transformation of public perception about households’ over-indebtedness and financial deregulation had important implications on the government decision to reform overall consumer credit between 2005 and 2010. On the one hand, the development of collective actions by groups of lawyers to defend borrowers from moneylenders’ abusive practices represents a source of change in the public opinion about over-indebted individuals in the context of long economic stagnation. A systematic press article analysis from 1977 to 2006 shows that the rising number of these collective actions since the early 1990s may have gradually increased the political salience of social issues related to the unsecure loan market. On the other hand, financial deregulation has been a source of change by allowing banks to enter the consumer finance market since the early 2000s. Banks entry into this market transformed the logic of complementarity among traditional consumer credit actors (Shinpan, credit card companies and sarakin) in a general context of legal consumers’ protection reinforcement. Thus, evolution of Japanese consumer finance's regulation is particularly relevant to illustrate the forces of institutional change and its consequences.     

From Women of the Year to “Soccer Moms”: The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Women

In the 1992 U.S. election year, mainstream print and television news coverage was replete with hosannas for female politicians, praised as strong and politically powerful figures during this so-called ''Year of the Woman.'' Just 4 years later, 1996 election news reports relied upon a very different image to describe women vis-à-vis electoral politics: soccer moms. Soccer mom was the term used most recurrently in mainstream television and print media to refer to an aggregate of women, vis-à-vis electoral politics, who were described as crucial to the success of either presidential candidate: President Clinton or Robert Dole. This period of time represents a dramatic shift in news discourse: from discussing women as political power wielders (Women of the Year) to discussing women as a group of swing voters defined primarily by their filial obligations. This article considers some possible implications of this shift and argues that it represents a discursive connection between women voters reduced to a demographic category characterized by womens relationships to their children and an ideology of consumerism that reduces electoral politics to personal choices around product consumption and lifestyle.     

Civil society and substantive democracy: Governance and the state of law in Belgium

Since the late 1980s, democratic institutions and an active civil society are being prescribed as important ingredients and preconditions to reduce poverty, social exclusion, and violent civil strife. Multi-party systems and elections are seen as the most important expressions of formal democracy. This paper argues that more attention is needed to substantive democracy, which requires a greater understanding of the various legal-political variants within a democratic framework. The paper discusses in some depth the crisis of governance in Belgium. The analysis raises questions about the relationship between 'political' and 'civil society', and between social movements and political parties.     

‘We care about you,but …’: the politics of EU trade policy and development

The European Union (EU) is one of the most important markets for developing countries, and trade policy has long been one of its most important instruments for promoting development. There is, however, a paradox at the heart of the relationship between the EU's trade policy and development. On the one hand the EU's trade as development policy has undergone a paradigm shift, the objective shifting from supporting the former colonies of the EU's member states to addressing poverty and with a greater emphasis on reciprocal liberalization. On the other hand, the EU's conventional trade policy initiatives—particularly its market access objectives in the Doha Round and in commercially motivated bilateral trade agreements—have adverse consequences for developing countries, as does its tendency to adopt stringent product regulations. We argue that this paradox is explained by differences in how much traction the emphasis on the development implications of trade has had in the EU's various trade policy subsystems.     

Parties,Protest and Pluralism in Cambodia

In the 1990s, early post-Cold War optimism regarding the rapid spread of democracy in the South faded, as multiparty elections in new democracies were observed to exacerbate conflicts of identity rather than ameliorating the effects of conflicts of interest. Research in Cambodia suggests, however, that the promotion by political parties of identity-based conflict offers opportunities for individuals and groups to attempt to insert a more pragmatic interest-based agenda. Party activities also offer an exemplar for political advocacy and activism, which is useful to non-party interest groups and social movements. Cambodia's electoral experience further suggests that parties attempting to respond to such interest-based agendas may be rewarded by voters at the polls. Analytical focus upon the efforts of individuals and non-party movements to make use of the opportunities offered by political parties, rather than upon the mobilizational strategies and rhetorics of party leaders, offers a more optimistic prognosis for democracy in the third world.