A Negative Edge To Political Advertising Essay — страница 2

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the racial concerns of those whom he would be representing (Melton & Ginsberg, 2000). These attacks may have lead to misinterpretations by voters or may have convinced them to vote another way according to what they have been told by the media. With this being the most expensive election in history, there have been more than enough attack ads and dirty politics. Stephen Ansolabehere, author of Going Negative, believes that negative advertising drives down voter turnout, and that political consultants intentionally use ads for this purpose (Ansolabehere, 1997). This is true for those candidates who believe that they have a significant lead in the polls, because if they already have a good enough lead, they might as well cut down on the voter turn out to guarantee their

success. When negative reporting is happening consistently it registers in the mind of the public. When the polls open, the public responds negatively (Iyengar, 1997). If a politician refuses to talk about, or counteract a negative ad posed by his opponent, he/she then denies their relationship with the voter. This action, or inaction leaves the candidate s behavior open to interpretation. This silence also allows the news media to define the politician s behavior without the leaders input into the process. Therefore, politicians in this era harm themselves. Yet, as a result, mudslinging and attack ads increase within an election period. The most popular response strategy to a negative ad is to deny the accusation and then to turn and attack the opposition (Johnson-Cartee, 1997).

This escalates the negativity of the campaign, because the counter-attack must be far more powerful than the original ad in order to draw the voter s attention away from the original ad. Kathleen Jaimeson agrees with Ansolabehere and Iyengar that negative, or attack political advertising does harm the voter. She believes that voters could avoid the negative effects of those ads. If listeners are alerted that a speech is designed to persuade them, they are less influenced by it than a group not forewarned (Jaimeson, 1992). Exposure to political commercials was the second most important criterion on voter defections (Johnson-Cartee, 1997).Research Question:1. Does the negative appeal of political advertising keep people, 21-50 years old, from voting?Hypothesis:1. Exposure to

negative (attack) advertising significantly decreases voter turnout. Methodology The variable of my experiment include the independent, dependent, and confounding variables. The independent variable for the hypothesis is negative political advertising. The dependent variable for the hypothesis is voter turnout. The voter turnout depends upon a variety of influences or confounding variables. I came up with four, which are the competitiveness of the race, the intellect of the voter, the electorate s sense of civic duty, and the length of the advertisement. This experiment would have to be done throughout an election period, during which I would chose fifty subjects non-randomly by offering them ten dollars per person. I will gather subjects by advertising in local newspapers,

putting flyers up on campus, and calling names of people on voter registration lists, making sure to get subjects in between the age requirements. The study will take approximately an hour during which the subjects will view a twenty-minute news program and fill out a questionnaire at the end. They will be given a pretest concerning their social background, how involved they are with the media, and their political interest. After completion of the pretest, the subjects will be divided into two groups and set into separate rooms with large screen televisions and headphones for each individual to lessen outside influences. They will then watch a twenty-minute video recording of a recent local newscast. One group will see the negative political ad, while the other will see the

positive ad. Following the completion of the video, the volunteers will then complete a lengthy questionnaire that focuses on their beliefs and opinions on a wide range of campaign issues. I will also include questions concerning participants voting intentions and general level of involvement in the campaign. (There is a sample questionnaire in the appendix section of this paper.) The statistical method I used is the Spearman-Rho Correlation method used to assess the correlation between the amount of time exposed to negative ads (independent variable) and their effect on voter turnout (dependent variable). What I will observe is that this study will prove that attack advertising extracts a toll on electoral participation. It will also show the more a politician gets negative