Political Graffiti Research Articles

Graffiti of Canadian High School Students

This study classified sex and cultural differences as reflected by inscriptions in washrooms and confirmed hypotheses that (1) females will write more graffiti than males, (2) there will be no sex differences in the proportion of sex-related graffiti to the total number of graffiti between males' and females' washrooms, (3) female students will write more sex-romantic graffiti than males, and male students will write more sex-erotic graffiti than females, and (4) French Canadians will write more political than any other graffiti than English Canadians. Two English and two French high schools were selected for the purpose. Wales and Brewers' (1973) scheme to classify the graffiti was used. The results are strikingly different from earlier studies. These differences might be explained in the terms of changes in prevailing attitudes and values of the society. Canadian data show more political graffiti than comparable American data.

Contents of Graffiti and Bumper Stickers as Measures of Political Behavior

It has been suggested that the content of political bumper stickers mirrors political attitudes. There is also evidence that the content of graffiti reflects the current attitudes of the writer (Jorgenson & Lange, 1975; Landy & Steele, 1967; Sechrest & Flores, 1969; Sechrest & Olson, 1971). This implies that the content of political graffiti could be used to assess political attitudes. To the extent that such attitudes also predict behavior, it was expected that the proportion of bumper stickers and the proportion of political graffiti which support a candidate would be similar to the proportion of people who indicate a verbal preference for that candidate. As a measure of political behavior, voters' preference for each presidential candidate in the 1976 election within the specific population of students at a large western university was determined in two separate surveys (Ns = 160 and 417). The results of both surveys showed a slight margin for Ford. To assess the content of bumper stickers, all cars parked in all student lots at the same university between 8:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. both on the day before and on the day of the election were examined and the incidence of cars with one or more bumper stickers supporting each candidate for president was tallied. Of those observed 28 supported Ford and 25 supported Carter. This difference was consistent with the survey of voter preference (x ' = .34, 1 d f ) . In the survey of graffiti all restrooms in 16 classroom buildings at the same university were examined for graffiti one day prior to the election. Graffiti were first judged as either political or nonpolitical, then political graffiti were coded as favorable or unfavorable to a presidential candidate. The percentage of political graffiti which contained favorable statements about Ford (25%) was greater than that for Caner (15%) , a difference which was once again consistent with the results of the voters' preference (Xa = 1.34, 1 d f ) . As expected the contents of both bumper stickers and graffiti show some preliminary promise as measures of behavior, at least political behavior.