Suchergebnisse

This study examines presidential general election television advertising (1952-2004), primary advertising (1952-2008), and non-presidential advertising from 2002 (gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, U.S. House) to understand the use of evidence (statements for which sources are provided) in such campaign messages. 8% of the themes in these spots were supported by evidence (that is, identified a source for a claim). However, the longitudinal presidential data suggests that evidence in advertising was rare until the 1990s, when Bill Clinton in particular employed a great deal of evidence in his spots. Although the appeals across all ads were mainly positive (70% of the themes in these ads were acclaims), evidence disproportionately supported attacks (65% of the utterances with evidence were attacks). No consistent topic evidence emerged for use of evidence in these ads (a tendency to use evidence to support policy in general presidential ads, and to support character in senate ads). Candidates in this sample used newspapers most frequently as sources of evidence, followed by governmental reports and statements from one's opponent, voting record, and other sources.

This study investigates the extent to which candidates in the 2008 presidential primary campaign adhered to the convention wisdom that candidates should stay "on message." Content analysis investigated multiple media (announcement speeches, TV spots, radio spots, debates, candidate webpages, and candidate MySpace/Facebook pages) from 9 Democratic and 12 Republican candidates. Four variables were investigated: functions, topics, party issue emphasis, and own party issue ownership. Although there was considerable consistency across message form, results revealed that 63 of 76 comparisons candidates were not consistent in tone, topic, party issue emphasis, or own party issue emphasis across messages. Post hoc analyses excluding debates (where the candidates have less control over the content of their messages, given the expectation that they will respond to the questions asked) revealed differences even among the message forms over which candidates have complete control over content.