The Persuasive Power of Campaign Advertising by
"The Persuasive Power of Campaign Advertising" offers a comprehensive overview of political advertisements and their changing role in the Internet age. Travis Ridout and Michael Franz examine how these ads function in various kinds of campaigns and how voters are influenced by them. The authors particularly study where ads are placed, asserting that television advertising will still be relevant despite the growth of advertising on the Internet. The authors also explore the recent phenomenon of outrageous ads that go viral on the web-which often leads to their replaying as television news stories, generating additional attention. It also features the first analysis of the impact on voters of media coverage of political advertising and shows that televised political advertising continues to have widespread influence on the choices that voters make at the ballot box.
Pulp Politics by
Pulp Politics argues that the stories of American politics have found their most vivid expression in campaign advertising. It is the central argument of this book that adopting the readily identifiable audiovisual conventions of popular culture is particularly attractive to candidates and communicators, and that analysts can benefit from a closer study of the audiovisual narratives of campaign advertising than scholars have engaged in. From the audiovisual evocation of horror in 1988 ads that read as 30-second trailers for the nightmare on Elm Street that would be the Dukakis presidency to the Bush-Cheney spots in 2004 that drew upon the look and feel of the popular anti-terrorism thriller O24, O evocation of popular culture has proven an extremely effective tool of mass communication in a televisual age
Campaign Advertising and American Democracy by
Campaign Advertising and American Democracyexplores the relationship between exposure to political advertisements and voter behaviour. Contrary to widely held beliefs, political ads do not turn people off to politics. Using evidence from two election cycles and covering House, Senate and Presidential campaigns, the authors show that ads disseminate information about the candidates and generate voter interest. Advertising even prompts voters to feel confident about the functioning of American democracy. The authors find little evidence that ads have adverse effects on voter behaviour; at worst, campaign advertising falls on deaf ears, rather than diminishes voters' interest in politics.