Assess The Impact Of Political Advertising

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Political ads can have a lot of different impacts on voters. Depending on their context and content, they can sway a voter or change the behaviors of a voter. Positive ads can sway a voter to become more involved with a campaign, while negative ads can force a voter to question their beliefs (Brader 2005; 2006). Different primes that go along with advertisements can change the way someone feels about specific issues, like race (Banks and Bell 2011). Other areas of impacts include how lasting and impactful the advertisment’s information is or how the information is presented. In recent years, televised political advertisements have become the predominant way in which political campaigns have spread information (Goldstein and Ridout 2004). The …show more content…
Lodge, Steenbergen and Brau (1995) studied the long term recollection of campaigns in voters. They found that the general public often did not remember most information about campaigns and candidates. It was previously thought that this was a result of being ignorant or not being well educated about the campaign. However, the findings of Lodge, Steenbergen and Brau (1995) show that forgetting information about a campaign was not a result of knowledge but rather a result of political sophistication and level of information processing. Most people were found to still forget most of the information they learned about a campaign, regardless of the amount of information they gained during the campaign (Lodge, Steenbergen and Brau 1995). They also found that people were responsive to all information given to them, but the affective, or emotional, information lasted longer in people's memories. This fits along with more recent findings that emotions are often coded along with memories in the long term memory (Lodge and Taber …show more content…
Research has shown that depending on the type of show a person is watching, they might be more receptive or remember the advertisement better (Kaid and Chanslor 1992). Kaid and Chanslor (1992) apply some old research about advertisements and television programs to political advertisements. Some of the older research that is applied by Kaid and Chanslor state that viewers are less receptive to advertisements if the show they are watching ends on a cliffhanger or is not an involving program. Advertisements that are paired with programs that have more involvement, like mystery shows, have higher rates of information retention and interest. If a show is too emotionally charged or ends on a cliffhanger, the advertisement will be seen as an interruption and attention will not be directed to the advertisement. All of these things will result in less interest in the ad and lower impacts on the voters. Kaid and Chanslor (1992) found through their research that political advertisements follow many of the same rules. When campaigns are paying for television ads, they should give specific attention to the programs in which their ads will be played