The irrelevance of negative campaigns to political trust: Experimental and survey results

This article examines how media and partisan mechanisms of accountability influence presidential agendas in Latin America. The authors argue that responsiveness increases in powerful presidential systems when opposition parties and free media help citizens hold presidents accountable between elections. Where presidents must contend with a cohesive, ideological opposition and effective constraints to their power, they turn to valence issues with broad appeal and over which they have greater control. A free media—one without significant economic, legal, or political constraints—pressures the president to respond to the electorate's concerns, which include crime and corruption due to the incentives that motivate news content and the media's agenda-setting powers. Analyzing more than 50 presidential terms across 18 countries, the authors show that when Latin American presidents face either free and competitive media or strong legislative oppositions, homicide rates and the level of perceived corruption tend to be lower. Thus, this study proposes that efforts to improve media or partisan environments, or both, would help address Latin America's accountability deficit and promote good governance in the region.     

The Mundane Experience of Political Culture

In light of the foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, the present research asks the question of whether the digital media has become the stealth media for anonymous political campaigns. By utilizing a user-based, real-time, digital ad tracking tool, the present research reverse engineers and tracks the groups (Study 1) and the targets (Study 2) of divisive issue campaigns based on 5 million paid ads on Facebook exposed to 9,519 individuals between September 28, 2016, and November 8, 2016. The findings reveal groups that did not file reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC)—nonprofits, astroturf/movement groups, and unidentifiable “suspicious” groups, including foreign entities—ran most of the divisive issue campaigns. One out of six suspicious groups later turned out to be Russian groups. The volume of ads sponsored by non-FEC groups was 4 times larger than that of FEC groups. Divisive issue campaigns clearly targeted battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where traditional Democratic strongholds supported Donald Trump by a razor-thin margin. The present research asserts that media ecology, the technological features and capacity of digital media, as well as regulatory loopholes created by Citizens United v. FEC and the FEC’s disclaimer exemption for digital platforms contribute to the prevalence of anonymous groups’ divisive issue campaigns on digital media. The present research offers insight relevant for regulatory policy discussion and discusses the normative implications of the findings for the functioning of democracy.     

A typology of communication functions in ballot issue campaigns

The increased importance of ballot issue campaigns creates a need for communication and political science scholars to study the rhetorical strategies employed in such campaigns. This essay presents a typology of four communication functions employed in successful ballot issue campaigns: education, trust development, development of a positive message, and neutralization of the opposition. The typology is applied to an analysis of the 1986 campaign for liquor‐by‐the‐drink in Kansas.     

Hearing Campaign Appeals: The Accountability Implications of Presidential Campaign Tone

Citizen understanding of candidate priorities is highly consequential for both elections and postelection accountability and is especially key to the office of the presidency. I examine the impact of campaign advertising tone on citizen understanding of candidate agendas in the context of the 2000 presidential election. Merging data on political ads from the Wisconsin Advertising Project with individual survey data, I test whether citizens are more likely to accurately hear a positive campaign theme. The analysis provides empirical support for this benefit of positivity.     

Remembering to Forget: A Note on the Duration of Campaign Advertising Effects

Exposure to an Obama campaign ad as part of an Internet survey conducted during the final weeks of the 2012 presidential race produced a substantial 2.8-point increase in intentions to vote for Obama. A post-election follow-up survey found an increase in reported votes for Obama that was only half as large, consistent with the notion that ad effects decay over time. However, a closer look at the pattern of decay indicates that the effect of ad exposure remained virtually constant among people who were undecided or predisposed to support Obama. The reduced aggregate effect was almost entirely attributable to Romney supporters who moved toward Obama in the immediate wake of ad exposure but returned to Romney by Election Day. This divergence is inconsistent with an interpretation of decay as reflecting simple forgetting. Rather, it suggests an active process of motivated reasoning in which short-term persuasive effects are gradually eroded or even reversed by counterarguing among people predisposed to resist them.     

Blogging in the Shadow of Parties: Exploring Ideological Differences in Online Campaigning

Blogging is an increasingly important practice in election campaigns, showing interesting variations across contexts. Recent research has shown that the adoption and use of blogs is strongly shaped by national institutional settings, that is, the different roles given to parties within political systems. However, intra-national differences in the practice of political blogging are yet to be explained. This article investigates the variation in usage of blogs in electoral campaigns in Sweden, a country characterized by strong political parties and a party-centered form of representative democracy. The central argument is that different parties utilize blogging in different ways. Just as blogging is shaped by how institutions support persons or parties, we propose that political blogging is shaped by party affiliation and ideological positions on individualism and collectivism. The empirical analysis, based on a survey among over 600 blogging politicians, confirms that ideological positions towards individualism and collectivism have a great impact on the uptake and usage of political blogs, portraying political blogging as a strongly ideologically situated practice of political communication.     

Corporate Ownership and News Bias Revisited: Newspaper Coverage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Ruling

The clear financial benefits accrued to owners of television stations as a result of the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) decision opens the door to an important question: Did the degree to which media corporations benefited from the changes in campaign finance law influence their news outlets’ coverage of the Citizens United decision? In other words, is it possible to identify variation in how media outlets covered the Supreme Court decision that correlates with the degree to which those outlets’ parent companies profited from the resulting increase in campaign spending? Answering this question will provide an important and much-too-uncommon opportunity to systematically test for bias in news coverage. Replicating the method used by Gilens and Hertzman (2000) in their own test of coverage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, this analysis reveals that newspapers belonging to media corporations that own more television stations covered the Citizens United ruling systematically differently—and more favorably—than those with few or no television stations. This has important implications for the degree to which the news produced by increasingly conglomerated and corporatized media companies may eschew neutral or balanced coverage in favor of news frames that promote their own financial interests.     

A Review of: “Free Press vs. Fair Trial: Examining Publicity's Role in Trial Outcomes,by Jon Bruschke and William E. Loges”

Using data from the 2002 Wisconsin Advertising Project and a Democratic direct mailing firm, we ask if candidates publicly court African American and Hispanic voters through the inclusion of these groups in their campaign advertisements or through appeals to their substantive policy interests. We find evidence that Democratic and Republican candidates make symbolic and substantive appeals only when these appeals are very unlikely to be viewed by White voters. These findings lend credence to studies that conclude that candidates are hesitant to publicly court minority voters due to concerns that such activities may harm their existing electoral coalitions, particularly their standing with White voters.     

Ethnic politics and election campaigns in contemporary Africa: evidence from Ghana and Kenya

Why do some political parties in new democracies base their campaigns on promises of national public goods while others do not? Parties in new democracies often eschew programmatic policy proposals in favour of appealing to voters’ ethnic identities, distributing non-programmatic benefits, or emphasizing the personalities of their candidates. However, this is not universally the case. This article examines recent campaign strategies in two nascent democracies in Africa: Ghana and Kenya. The findings suggest that programmatic campaigning is much more common than is assumed, but that parties have different preferences for how much programmatic content they include in their campaigns. The article argues that differences in campaign strategies are largely due to differences in the composition of ethnic support for competing parties. Parties that draw a majority of their support from a single large ethnic group are more likely to develop campaign strategies based on programmatic, policy-based appeals in the form of specific proposals for national public goods than are parties with a more diverse ethnic base of supporters. I argue that these appeals serve as a pre-election commitment to counteract fears among the electorate of domination by the large ethnic core of the 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.     

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 Campaign Disconnect: Media Coverage of the 2000 South Carolina Presidential Primary

Campaigns are an interactive process in which candidates, outside groups, the media, and voters communicate with each other to create an information environment that allows the various participants to construct meaning and form an understanding of the candidates and the campaign. Presidential primaries add a layer of complexity to this process as candidates and the press deal with both local and national audiences. In this article, we analyze the campaign communications in the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina—including candidate ads, mailings, and phone calls; local and national newspaper coverage; and network television coverage. We find that there was a disconnect as news media often focused on events and issues that diverged from the messages of the candidates' campaigns. In addition, we find substantial differences between local and national media coverage of the primary resulting from their distinct audiences and the reporters' own understanding of the local context that created significantly different information environments for voters in the state and those out of the state. We consider the implications of these findings for how voters and journalists understand the candidates as well as the challenges presidential candidates face in simultaneously campaigning locally and nationally.     

Memory for Positive and Negative Political TV Ads: The Role of Partisanship and Gamma Power

Despite generating widespread contempt, political TV ads play an important informational role in the lives of citizens. This study examines effects of Ad Type (Positive, Negative, and Comparison) on recognition memory for candidate issue positions. Potential moderators (Ad Sponsor Partisanship X Viewer Partisanship, Ad Type X Viewer Ideology, Ad Type X Viewer Partisanship) of political ad memory are explored, and electroencephalography (EEG) recordings are used to examine whether semantic processing (indexed as brain activity in the gamma band frequency range) mediates main or moderated effects of Ad Type on Memory. Results reveal a significant interaction between Ad Type and Partisanship, with Republicans remembering more from positive relative to negative ads (significant), and Democrats remembering more from negative ads (marginally significant). A direct effect of Gamma on Memory highlights the considerable potential that EEG (in general) and the gamma frequency band (in particular) may hold for the study of message processing.     

Effects of Economic and Symbolic Threat Appeals in Right-Wing Populist Advertising on Anti-Immigrant Attitudes: The Impact of Textual and Visual Appeals

Right-wing populist parties portray immigrants as economic or symbolic threats in their political advertisements by constructing a moral divide between the “good” ordinary people and “bad” immigrants. Yet, it remains unclear how these different threat appeals contribute to the formation of anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens and what role visual elements play in producing these effects. A survey-experiment with a quota sample of 471 participants reveals that, overall, symbolic threat appeals exert stronger effects on anti-immigrant attitudes than economic ones. When presented via text alone, only symbolic—not economic—threat appeals increased anti-immigrant attitudes via the activation of heuristic processing such as the reliance on negative stereotypes or feelings of anxiety, in particular among lower-educated citizens. When visuals were present, both types of threat appeals enhanced anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens across all education levels based on heuristic processing. Additionally, high image-text congruency induced cognitive argument approval resulting in higher anti-immigrant attitudes.     

Orphan Counties and the Effect of Irrelevant Information on Turnout in Statewide Races

Over 10% of the American electorate lives in counties served by out-of-state media because of the mismatch between media markets and state boundaries. Frequently, these “orphan” counties face a different information environment than others in their home state: they receive no news coverage and political advertising for their own statewide races, irrelevant information pertaining to candidates in the neighboring state who will not appear on their ballots, or both. With a combination of county-level, individual-level, and political advertising data, our analysis evaluates the effect of orphan county residency and irrelevant political information on political participation. Results indicate that orphan counties have lower turnout rates than non-orphan counties and that this difference is explained by lower levels of interest in the campaign stemming from exposure to irrelevant information.     

A classification framework for out-of-home advertising media in South Africa

Abstract

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising media have expanded worldwide and the shape and format of these media globally, as well as in South Africa, have changed considerably. Until recently, the OOH advertising media landscape consisted primarily of outdoor advertising or billboards reaching vehicular traffic, but now has expanded to include a wide range of OOH advertising media types which aim to reach a mobile audience wherever they live, work, play, drive, shop or commute. Currently there is no coherent contemporary framework to compare and select the most effective media options to reach a selected target market in a specific OOH audience environment. This article draws from academic and practitioner sources to propose a classification framework for OOH advertising media in South Africa comprising four major platforms: outdoor advertising, transit media advertising, street-and-retail furniture advertising, and digital and ambient OOH media channels. The framework serves to inform marketers of viable and cost-effective traditional and contemporary OOH advertising media options. It also indicates what platforms are appropriate to reach specific audiences effectively in a variety of environments outside their homes. This is the first framework of its kind for the South African context that offers an orderly, integrated basis for future research.     

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.     

The broadcast media: A persuasive institution

At present, the broadcast media (radio and television) because of their pervasive presence in society are a “taken‐for‐granted” part of the social environment, as natural as the air one breathes. The persuasive power of the media is not so readily ascertained by all who watch and listen. Looking at the growth and spread of the media in three highly industrialized countries, namely Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, each with its own particular broadcast system, one can see the variety of emphasis on commercial and public broadcasting. Since the media have more in common with interpersonal communication than they have differences, the public is constantly open to media messages, continuously processing as well as responding to information received via media sources. The persuasive effect of these broadcast media in terms of the latent function of commercial messages needs deep and careful analysis.     

A Watershed in White House Journalism: Explaining the Post-1968 Rise of Aggressive Presidential News

Presidential journalism is known to have grown substantially more aggressive through the 1970s and beyond, but a definitive explanation for this trend remains elusive. Some suggest that events surrounding Vietnam and Watergate transformed the professional norms of journalism. However, the trend could also be a more superficial and transitory response to other circumstantial factors that converged in the same time period, such as president-level characteristics (the prevalence of Republicans, Washington outsiders, and more vigorous news management efforts), the political environment (the rise of official discord), and the economic environment (a downturn in the business cycle). This study disentangles these various factors and assesses their relative success in explaining trends in journalistic conduct in the postwar era. Data are drawn from a large sample of presidential news conferences from 1953 through 2000, focusing on the aggressiveness of journalists' questions. The results strongly support the normative shift hypothesis, although economic factors have also been consequential. These results suggest a punctuated equilibrium model of journalistic change in relations between the White House press corps and the presidency.     

A critical discourse analysis of 2008 advertising campaigns against software piracy in South Africa

Abstract

This article examines the discursive landscape of anti-piracy campaigns run by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) on behalf of major global software companies. Using semiotic techniques, rhetorical analysis and critical discourse analysis, the article demonstrates the primacy of new capitalism in reinforcing the public understanding of global knowledge economy. But the BSA's strategies and tactics are also found to offer mixed discursive messages, possibly attenuating a major objective of any communication campaign: social behaviour change.