Presidential campaign advertising in Chile, Brazil, and Peru

Abstract

Project Summary: These videos of presidential campaign advertising in Chile, Brazil and Peru were collected in order to characterize the evolution of campaign strategies in new democracies. The author conducted a human-coded content analysis of the advertising videos as one data source for scoring three separate dimensions of campaign strategy for each candidate: linkage (direct versus intermediated), policy focus (from high to low), and the presence or absence of cleavage priming. This scoring also drew on three additional data sources: interviews with key political actors, coverage of each campaign in local print media, and, for the 2005-2006 electoral cycle, direct observation of campaign events. These latter data sources were also used to provide insight into why each candidate adopted a particular strategy. The study finds that campaign strategies have diverged across Chile, Brazil, and Peru since democratization. It develops a theory, success contagion, to account for this pattern of evolution. The theory of success contagion claims that the first presidential candidate in each country to combine a victorious electoral strategy with a successful term in office establishes a model that other candidates across the ideological spectrum are likely to employ in the future. In cases like Peru, where victorious campaign strategies are continually delegitimized by the poor governing record of elected presidents, candidates will not converge upon a common approach because they are wary of adopting strategies that voters associate with discredited politicians. Rather, each candidate is likely to choose his or her strategies through an inward-oriented process of reacting to prior errors. Data Abstract: The author aimed to collect every piece of televised campaign advertising broadcast by a major presidential candidate in Chile, Brazil, and Peru from the 1980s through 2011 (with the exception of Peru’s 1995 and 2000 elections). Major candidates are defined as the first- and second-place finishers, plus any third candidate who received over 20% of the valid vote. All material obtained is shared. Most of the videos being shared were analyzed for the associated research project, but some were not. In Brazil, only the evening electoral broadcasts were analyzed. Most of the evening broadcasts for every major candidate since 1989 are available; in no case are more than 25% of episodes missing, and in most cases, the figure was closer to five percent. For candidates who had broadcast more than four hours of advertising in any one election, a systematic random sample of half of the episodes from that campaign were analyzed (i.e., every other episode with a random start). In other cases, all episodes were analyzed. The 15-, 30-, and 60-second campaign spots aired for free at various times throughout the day in Brazil since 1996 were not collected or analyzed because a) they are often included as segments in the longer broadcasts, and b) they are only available for part of the period under study. In Chile, all broadcasts (daytime and prime time) for major candidates were obtained, except for the first four days of Buchi’s advertising in 1989. All of this material was analyzed, except for the 1988 plebiscite, for which a systematic random sample of half of the episodes was analyzed. In elections without a concurrent legislative race (1999-2000, and the second-round elections in 2006 and 2010), presidential candidates receive free television advertising in both time slots, and they typically repeat programs. In all other elections, however, legislative and presidential candidates alternate daytime and evening slots on successive days, and candidates generally produce different programs for each slot. In Peru, because of the nature of campaign advertising (broadcast at various times throughout the day, and on different channels) it is more difficult to assess the completeness of data collection. For the 2006 and 2011 elections, the collection was checked against data on spots aired in Lima from the tracking firm MediaCheck. For 2006, only a handful of spots aired 2–4 times are missing. For 2011, the collection is spottier but still includes the majority of candidates’ advertisements. For earlier years, there is no independent source of verification, but since most of these spots were obtained by the author directly from the advertising producers themselves, the collection should be fairly comprehensive. All available spots from Peru were analyzed. Files Description: The data were collected through archival research and compilation of existing material between June 2005 and December 2009, with follow-up research conducted during 2009-2011. Advertising from the 2009-2011 electoral cycle was obtained from the major candidates’ YouTube channels. For the 2005-2006 campaigns, the author recorded it directly from broadcast television. For the earlier years, he obtained copies of videos from a variety of archival sources. In Chile, sources included the Consejo Nacional de Television; Television Nacional de Chile; Canal 13; the journalism school of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile; the Corporacion Justicia y Democracia; the Fundacion Frei; the Government of Chile’s Secretaria de Comunicacion y Cultura; the Stanford University Bing Overseas Study Program in Santiago; the library of the Universidad Diego Portales; Juan Enrique Forch of Vision Comunicaciones; and the personal collections of Eduardo Bustos, Patricio Dussaillant, and Cristobal Marin. In Peru, sources included the Communication Department of the Universidad de Lima; the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad; Ricardo Ghibellini of Amazonas Films; Alfonso Maldonado of Cinesetenta; Ruben Bonilla of Corporacion Internacional de Comunicaciones; and Abel Aguilar. In Brazil, the author obtained material from the Doxa communication research lab at the Instituto Universitario de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ) and from the Fundacao Perseu Abramo of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). All videos that were not already in digital form (e.g., they were on a VHS videocassette) were digitized using a laptop and the appropriate playback device.