Attack Ads Research Articles

Tell Me an Instagram Story: Ephemeral Communication and the 2018 Gubernatorial Elections

Political campaigns are embracing the visual social media platform Instagram. One digital feature, the Story, has taken over feed sharing across social media. A Story is a sequence of images or videos uploaded to a profile that disappear after 24 hours. The Story is a novel feature relatively unexamined in political communications and marketing research. Specifically, it is unclear how Gubernatorial candidates employ the Instagram Story feature in campaigning. To address this gap, we content analyze 730 Instagram Stories drawn from 20 Gubernatorial candidate accounts one week before and after Election Day 2018. Results reveal that over half of the candidates employed the Story feature over the two-week period. The Story content primarily included indoor rallies and speeches rather than outdoor canvassing. Campaigns featured more static images than video in Stories and rarely used interactive features, such as animation, location tags, and emojis. Stories were also geared toward mobilization messages rather than voter support, behind-the-scenes looks, and attack ads. Last, some gender and political party differences were evident, as women and Democratic candidates utilized Instagram more.

Outside of the Old Boys Club? Gender Differences in Outside Groups’ Advertising Support for U.S. Senate Candidates

Since 2010, televised campaign ads have proliferated, raising questions about gender differences in the number of ads outside groups air. Assuming incumbent Democratic women and Democratic women with prior office-holding experience run with support from their party and interest groups, we expect Democratic-leaning groups air more favorable ads supporting Democrats in races that include experienced or incumbent Democratic women than they do in races that include experienced or incumbent Democratic men. Conversely, we assume Republican women receive less support from their party and interest groups. We expect outside groups air more favorable ads supporting Republicans in races featuring experienced or incumbent Republican men than races including experienced or incumbent Republican women. Given the potential for backlash to attack ads, we expect Democratic- and Republican-leaning groups air more ads in races including experienced or incumbent male opponents than in races that include experienced or incumbent female opponents. We test these hypotheses by focusing on 2010–2018 U.S. Senate races and combining original data with data from the Wesleyan Media Project, the U.S. Census, and the Cook Political Report. Democratic- and Republican-leaning groups both sponsor significantly fewer ads in races featuring experienced female Democratic candidates compared to races including experienced male Democratic candidates.

When Politics Disgust: Emotional versus Rational Processing of Attack Ads

ABSTRACT Following the 2016 Presidential election, 82% of respondents felt disgusted with politics. This revulsion persisted into the 2020 Presidential campaign with voters reporting avoidance of voting and increased disgust with the opposition. Previous political research has noted a moderate negative correlation between negative political campaigning and trust in government and mixed findings on voting intentions. We make a distinction between emotional versus rational processing of political attack ads and use that distinction to demonstrate that emotional processing of these ads evokes disgust and accordingly avoidance of voting and decreased trust in government. Moreover, disgust evoked by political attack advertisements is transferred to politics in general, dampening voting intentions, trust in government, and in the short term political aspirations. This research helps explain previous mixed findings in the negative political campaigning literature and suggests how emotional processing and the disgust response are alienating portions of the electorate.

“Only YOU Can Prevent This Nightmare, America”: Nancy Pelosi As the Monstrous-Feminine in Donald Trump’s YouTube Attacks

The construction of Nancy Pelosi as the monstrous-feminine reveals itself in the highly misogynistic attack advertisements of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection campaign. In our analysis of five YouTube attack ads, we demonstrate how short-form digital advertisements use the conventions of digital platforms to heighten the elements of horror used to construct the monstrous-feminine. Drawing from horror genre logics and editing conventions, the Trump campaign produces a narrative strategy that preys on conservative fears regarding women, race, and breaches in a gendered social contract. Targeting one of the most powerful women in American politics, Trump’s digital ads deploy a variety of editing strategies combined with common horror tropes to push audiences toward violent conclusions of how to “defeat” the monstrous-feminine, Pelosi.

Negative campaigning

AbstractThis paper develops an argumentative perspective on attacks in political election campaigns. The perspective highlights the role that attack ads play in the justification of vote claims aiming to advance our understanding of the notorious practice and to bring about a nuanced assessment of its benefits and risks. In the examination, special attention is paid to the argumentative potential that links a certain criticism of an adversary to the defense of the negative vote against the adversary as well as to the defense of the positive vote claim in favor of a campaign’s candidate. Considering the argumentative potential is especially beneficial for capturing the role of attacks in important political processes, including accountability and the stimulation of an informed public political participation.

Telescope Matching for Reducing Model Dependence in the Estimation of the Effects of Time-Varying Treatments: An Application to Negative Advertising

Abstract Time-varying treatments are prevalent in the social sciences. For example, a political campaign might decide to air attack ads against an opponent, but this decision to go negative will impact polling and, thus, future campaign strategy. If an analyst naively applies methods for point exposures to estimate the effect of earlier treatments, this would lead to post-treatment bias. Several existing methods can adjust for this type of time-varying confounding, but they typically rely on strong modelling assumptions. In this paper, we propose a novel two-step matching procedure for estimating the effect of two-period treatments. This method, telescope matching, reduces model dependence without inducing post-treatment bias by using matching with replacement to impute missing counterfactual outcomes. It then employs flexible regression models to correct for bias induced by imperfect matches. We derive the asymptotic properties of the telescope matching estimator and provide a consistent estimator for its variance. We illustrate telescope matching by investigating the effect of negative campaigning in US Senate and gubernatorial elections. Using the method, we uncover a positive effect on turnout of negative ads early in a campaign and a negative effect of early negativity on vote shares.

Negative Campaigning (Election Campaigning Communication)

Negative Campaigning (Election Campaigning Communication)

Leave the Attacking to Others: Assessing the Effectiveness of Candidate Endorsed and Independently Sourced Televised Attack Ads in the 2016 Presidential Election

ABSTRACT Modern campaigns in the Citizens United era are awash with negativity, much of which originates from independent political groups (e.g., Super PACs, 501c organizations, etc.). In contrast to the plethora of work showing candidate endorsed attacks to be ineffective, more recent experimental evidence suggests that candidates may benefit from these independently sourced attack ads. However, the findings derived from this experimental research on independent attacks suffer from three critical shortcomings. The present paper identifies and addresses these shortcomings by assessing the net result of candidate endorsed and independently sponsored negativity using real presidential campaign data. The following develops a theory on the effects of source in negative campaigning for the highest office of the land, and tests whether it conforms to political behavior exhibited during the 2016 presidential campaign at both the state and county level. Results show the source of an attack matters, even in presidential contests, a finding particularly relevant given the hundreds of millions of dollars of attack ads from outside sources which saturate the televised airwaves of presidential campaigns today and well into the foreseeable future.

Judicial Elections, Public Opinion, and Decisions on Lower‐Salience Issues

Scholarship finds that in states with judicial elections, public opinion affects judges’ decisions on hot‐button campaign issues such as the death penalty or marijuana legalization. Yet the literature leaves open the question of how public opinion affects judicial decisions on less salient issues, which not only dominate the dockets of state supreme courts but also encompass areas of major legal and policy significance. We consider one such issue that infrequently emerges in judicial campaigns, environmental law. Specifically, we collect an original dataset of over 5,000 judicial votes on nearly 1,000 cases heard in 40 state supreme courts from 1990–2014. We find that for the dataset as a whole, there is not a significant effect of public opinion on judicial decisions in any of the major judicial selection systems. However, in the few states in which environmental issues have been the subject of campaign attack ads, we find evidence of such a relationship during the years following the ads. These results contribute to a growing literature that suggests elections can reduce judicial independence from public opinion.

Voter Reasoning Bias When Evaluating Statements from Female and Male Political Candidates

AbstractThe article examines whether female political candidates are disfavored in terms of persuasiveness potential based on their expertise and trustworthiness. Using a Bayesian argumentation paradigm in which candidates endorse policies, this study shows that male voters regard female candidates as less persuasive than male candidates. A controlled between-subjects experiment among 202 potential voters in the United States suggests that female election candidates are subject to sex biases in two central ways. First, despite agreeing on their trustworthiness and expertise, male voters find highly credible female candidates less persuasive than identical male candidates. Second, female candidates are affected more adversely if they are perceived as lacking in trustworthiness. Male candidates, on the other hand, are affected more negatively if they are perceived as lacking in expertise. Whereas perceived lack of expertise is relatively easy to repair, trustworthiness may be difficult to regain once it is lost. In a political environment in which attack ads are prevalent, this may carry a greater negative impact for female candidates.

A Multimedia Analysis of Persuasion in the 2016 Presidential Election: Comparing the Unique and Complementary Effects of Political Comedy and Political Advertising

In this study, we test the indirect and conditional persuasive effects of a broadcast media echo chamber by combining political campaign attack ads with mockery and criticism on a late-night comedy program. A randomized experiment was conducted in which participants (N = 559) were assigned to view one of four reconstructed episodes of Late Night with Seth Meyers: (a) anti-Trump comedy with anti-Trump campaign ads, (b) anti-Trump comedy with nonpolitical ads, (c) nonpolitical comedy with anti-Trump ads, and (d) nonpolitical comedy with nonpolitical ads. Results suggested that both comedy and ads exert persuasive effects on image perceptions of the candidates that subsequently influence vote intention. Furthermore, effects were largely confined to those who were high in need for cognition. There was no additive benefit to pairing ads with political comedy. The results are discussed regarding their contribution to theories of persuasion and information processing when applied to political comedy and political ads.

Narratives in Political Advertising: An Analysis of the Political Advertisements in the 2014 Midterm Elections

This study examined the use of narrative political advertisements during the 2014 midterm elections. A content analysis of 243 ads identified three narratives types: autobiographical, voter stories, and testimonials. Narrative ads were mostly positive and focused almost equally on issues and candidates’ characters. Negative attack ads and anonymous announcers were primarily used by candidates who lost the election, whereas winners employed more often autobiographical spots and included family members in the ads. The growing use of narratives in political advertising as found in the present study suggests that future research should further examine the effects of narrative political ads on individuals.

How Encouraging Niceness Can Incentivize Nastiness: An Unintended Consequence of Advertising Reform

Enacted in an effort to discourage negative political advertising, American regulations mandate that candidates endorse their ads (“My name is ___, and I approve this message.”). Four studies suggest that mandatory endorsements enhance the perceived credibility of some ads these regulations were designed to discourage. This research tests for what types of messages mandatory endorsements have this effect, and why. Mandatory endorsements boosted evaluations of policy-focused attack ads—those typically plagued by overcomeable skepticism—but had no consistent effect on positive or character-focused ads. Mandatory endorsements boost ad believability—largely outside of participants' awareness—for two reasons: (1) the tagline offers a legitimizing association with regulation and (2) the candidates' own personally delivered endorsement language offers an implicit promise of the ads' truth value. The authors discuss how these findings bring order to and extend previous work on mandatory endorsements and ironic effects of communications requirements. Finally, they consider how regulations could be reformed to promote the public good by informing (without misleading) the electorate.

Judicial Elections, Public Opinion, and Decisions on Lower Salience Issues

Scholarship finds that in states with judicial elections, public opinion affects judges’ decisions on hot‐button campaign issues such as the death penalty or marijuana legalization. Yet the literature leaves open the question of how public opinion affects judicial decisions on less salient issues, which not only dominate the dockets of state supreme courts but also encompass areas of major legal and policy significance. We consider one such issue that infrequently emerges in judicial campaigns, environmental law. Specifically, we collect an original dataset of over 5,000 judicial votes on nearly 1,000 cases heard in 40 state supreme courts from 1990–2014. We find that for the dataset as a whole, there is not a significant effect of public opinion on judicial decisions in any of the major judicial selection systems. However, in the few states in which environmental issues have been the subject of campaign attack ads, we find evidence of such a relationship during the years following the ads. These results contribute to a growing literature that suggests elections can reduce judicial independence from public opinion.

El uso estratégico de la publicidad política de ataque en la elección federal intermedia de 2015 en México

In professionalized election campaigns, political parties and/or candidates present their policy proposals to the electorate and seek to maximize votes, primarily, through media appeals. The purpose of this paper is to content-analyze all media appeals (30 second spots) broadcasted by Mexican political parties during the 2015 mid-term congressional elections, in order to identify their campaign strategies. The results show an increasing level of professionalization and centralization of media-based electoral strategies. They also show that attack ads were a central component of parties and candidates media strategies during the campaign.

Going positive: The effects of negative and positive advertising on candidate success and voter turnout

Given the depth of research on negative advertising in campaigns, scholars have wondered why candidates continue to attack their opponents. We build on this research by considering real-world campaign contexts in which candidates are working in competition with each other and have to react to the decisions of the opposing campaign. Our results suggest that it is never efficacious for candidates to run attack ads, but running positive ads can increase a candidate’s margin of victory. These results are conditioned by two factors: candidates must both stay positive and out-advertise their opponent. Second, the effects of positive advertising are strongest in areas where the candidate is losing or winning by a large margin—areas where they might be tempted to not advertise at all.

Checking the Fact-Checkers in 2008: Predicting Political Ad Scrutiny and Assessing Consistency

Which types of political ads are most likely to draw criticism from fact-checkers? Are fact-checkers consistent in their evaluations of political ads? Examining general election television ads from the 2008 U.S. presidential race, and based upon the evaluations of FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker, this study demonstrates it was the attack ads from candidates that were most likely to draw scrutiny from the fact-checkers. Most importantly, a high level of agreement between the fact-checkers indicates their success at selecting political claims that can be consistently evaluated. While political advertisers are increasingly using evidence to support their claims, what may be more critical in drawing evaluations from fact-checkers is the verifiability of a claim. The implications of consistent fact-checking on the public, political actors, journalism and democracy are discussed. With the revelation that fact-checking can be consistently practiced, localized efforts at fact-checking need encouragement, particularly as political TV ads increasingly drown out other potential sources of information for the public and increasingly are used in downballot races, local initiatives, referendums and judicial races.

Offering of a Veneer of Legitimacy: An Ironic Consequence of Political Advertising Regulation

Enacted in an effort to discourage negative political advertising, American regulations mandate that candidates endorse their ads (“My name is _____, and I approve this message…”). Four studies suggest that mandatory endorsements ironically enhance the credibility of some ads these regulations were designed to discourage. We test when (i.e., for what types of ads) and why (by distinguishing seven accounts) mandatory endorsements have this effect. Mandatory endorsements boosted evaluations of policy-focused attack ads — those typically plagued by overcomeable skepticism — but had no consistent effect on positive or character-focused ads. We found that mandatory endorsements boost ad believability for two reasons: 1) the tagline offers a legitimizing association with regulation, and 2) the specific endorsement language (“I approve this message”) offers assurance of the ads’ truthfulness. We discuss how these findings bring order to and go beyond seemingly discrepant findings on the influence of mandatory endorsements, compare and contrast these findings to previously-documented unintended effects of communications requirements, and discuss new ideas for how to best promote the greater good by informing (without misleading) the electorate.

Attacks without Consequence? Candidates, Parties, Groups, and the Changing Face of Negative Advertising

Prior work finds that voters punish candidates for sponsoring attack ads. What remains unknown is the extent to which a negative ad is more effective if it is sponsored by a party or an independent group instead. We conducted three experiments in which we randomly assigned participants to view a negative ad that was identical except for its sponsor. We find that candidates can benefit from having a party or group “do their dirty work,” but particularly if a group does, and that the most likely explanation for why this is the case is that many voters simply do not connect candidates to the ads sponsored by parties and groups. We also find that in some circumstances, a group‐sponsored attack ad produces less polarization than one sponsored by a party. We conclude by discussing the implications our research has for current debates about the proper role of independent groups in electoral politics.

Ads by 527 Groups and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

With the emergence of newly legislated 527 groups and their barrage of television attack ads against each major party candidate, the landscape of the U.S. presidential election changed markedly in 2004. Although these special interest groups—named after the amendment to the U.S. Federal Tax Code that authorized them—seem to function as political action committees, the lack of federal regulation allows 527 groups more latitude in ad content and opaqueness of ad sponsorship. The extant literature on the increasing effectiveness of negative political advertising suggests the relative efficacy of the promotional tactics used by 527 groups. After a discussion of the select 527 group ads run during 2004, the future regulation of 527 groups is broached.