Suchergebnisse

This study explores whether negative political advertising has any impact on adolescents. Two datasets are merged for this inquiry: (1) content-coded ad-buy data on the placement of campaign messages on a market-by-market and program-by-program basis and (2) national survey data of parent-child dyads collected immediately after the 2008 presidential election. The authors' analysis finds that the negativity of political advertising to which adolescents were exposed predicted human-interest candidate knowledge, but not policy-relevant candidate knowledge. In addition, the negativity of political advertising exposure suppressed political consumerism among adolescents, but had no effect on their levels of political participation. This study shows that political campaigns can affect adolescents' knowledge and participation in unconventional and potentially deleterious ways.

In this article, we test the relationships between Twitter and Facebook use on mobile phones and political conversation with offline and online political participation, as well as online expressive communication. Our findings show that using Twitter on mobile phones is associated with a higher likelihood for both online and offline political participation, as well as online expressive communication. Using Facebook is associated with a higher likelihood for online expressive communication only. The key contribution of this article is to show empirical differences between the relationships of social media and social networking on mobile devices with political participation and online expressive communication. Public social media apps, such as Twitter, bring mobile communication back into the public realm of a (albeit diffused) broadcast-like channel. Mobile Twitter adds to the affordances of mobility, networked connectivity, and the publicness of social media.

This study examines how the campaign information environment influences individuals' ambivalence reduction and polarization. Based on the 2008 presidential television campaign advertising data and individuals' electoral behavior data in 208 designated market areas nationwide, this study utilizes multilevel modeling to better understand the interactions between the effects of individual-level predispositions and that of the contextual-level campaign information environment. The findings of the study indicate that the campaign information environment does matter in ambivalence reduction and polarization. Individuals living in a media market where the volume of campaign advertising is relatively high are less ambivalent and more polarized in candidate evaluations. The patterns appear to be amplified among partisans, suggesting the campaign information environment functions as a "motivator." The partisan bias of the ads in a media market, however, exerts only limited influence. The implications for the functioning of democracy are discussed.