The use of political advertising has been transformed from useful to integral in the fifty years that television has become the central channel.
"Advertising has grown from a tool used exclusively by presidential candidates to an essential element of campaign communication at all levels of government. ... As a result there has been a shift from news to advertising over the last two decades. Citizens are now exposed to huge amounts of political ads each election cycle, but exposure to news has declined over the same period." (Valentino 338)
If American voters are receiving more of their political information through political advertising, does that make them more susceptible to persuasion? Or is political advertising a more dynamic way to reach the public with relevant issues? Does it benefit this country to lower standards of political communication to meet the desires of the public? By promoting political advertising as the major form of political communication, our candidates and political parties do not advance American democracy by creating a more informed electorate.
The strongest argument supporting the widespread use of political advertisements centers around informing the least informed members of society. In the meta study "The Impact of Political Advertising on Knowledge, Internet Information Seeking, and Candidate Preference" Nicholas Valentino and his colleagues contemplate a wide array of studies on political communication and its effect on voters. "[D]rawing on extant models of opinion change", Valentino makes an important delineation in the American electorate, separating voters by their level of awareness of potential candidates as well as the political landscape. (Valentino 337) By doing so, the study is able to identify segments of the population that do benefit from the expansion of political advertising. Valentino sites a 1979 Hofstetter and Zukin study that found most political advertising focuses on substantial campaign issues. By presenting substantial issues, political advertisements make uninformed voters aware of the "important" issues. Further, these adds inform the least informed voters about their candidate's stance on such issues. Finally, strong emotions are often evoked from viewers, and provide an energy for the least informed to get more information, or, even better, for them to get involved in the campaign.
In the 1978 study, The unseeing eye: the myth of television power in national elections, Patterson and McClure found that the least informed gained the most information from political television advertising. The researchers concluded that T.V. ads helped to fill the information gap experienced by the American public, especially because the least informed segment of the population was also the most likely to watch television. (Valentino 339) This research supports the Hofstetter and Zukin argument, that the uninformed are gaining an understanding of the existence of specific issues, at the very least. The more informed would have already gained awareness of the issues.
The immediate question that must be asked, though, is whether informing the public should be the responsibility of a decidedly non-objective political source. Is it better to be ignorant, or to be informed by a source attempting to persuade? The least informed are gaining awareness of issues from a source that is also attempting to persuade viewers to choose one side of the issue. But Valentino goes on to site several studies that question the power of political advertising to persuade viewers. He states that many early studies found very little conversion of voters from one candidate to another due to campaign advertising. Later studies supported this, but found that party identification moderated the effect. Voters do change their opinion of candidates because of political advertising, but this does not often lead to a change in their vote. Persuasion does not seem to be the most glaring danger of political ads.
When provided additional information, people may change their viewpoint, but not necessarily their decisions. During the conflict with Iraq, 60% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks of the World Trade Center. Even after the non-partisan 9/11 commission concluded that Saddam Hussein was not involved in Al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center, 50% of Americans still believed that he was involved. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090502666.html) People understood that the situation was not as simple as blaming one man or one country, but yet, they decided it was important to stick behind the country, and blame Iraq and Saddam Hussein. They must not have read the report or gotten further details.
Television advertising only allows 30 seconds of information, and therefore can not provide in-depth analysis of complex situations and issues. True, television ads inform the public, but they do not create an "informed" electorate. Informing the masses is an important part of a properly functioning democracy, and has been an unfulfilled promise throughout the history of this country. Part of this problem is related to the fact that many voters are looking for a short-cut to gain political information. People are busy and lazy; becoming informed of the issues and each candidates stance on the issues requires effort, time, and research skills. Valentino states that voters are 'cognitive misers', looking to simplify complex information presented differently by different sources. (Valentino 341) Political advertisements are appealing because they offer embedded messages by implying ideals through the character of the candidate or by appealing to social groups.
The last presidential election used character as the most common tool for embedded messages. John McCain used his history in the military and his record as a war hero to imply personal virtues that would translate to his role as president. He attacked Barack Obama for his association with certain people, namely his former pastor, Rev. Wright, and Bill Ayers, a former domestic terrorist. The importance of John McCain's war record is debatable, and Barack Obama's former connections to these men are complicated. The answers they provide are therefore inaccessible to most people. Instead, people chose to either disregard these stories as irrelevant or to proclaim John McCain as a hero and connect Barack Obama to men with questionable ideas and actions. It is true that war records and associations with evil men could be important, but it also true that it is impossible to make a fair analysis in 30 seconds. The public is informed by becoming aware that John McCain is a war hero and that Barack Obama attended the Trinity United Church of Chicago. But, overall, the public remained uniformed about the relevancy of such facts.
Television ads encourage only informed voters to seek more information. In the cases provided above, only those with previous skills of information acquisition have the ability to research the claims made by television advertisements. The well informed may look deeper into the war record of John McCain, or specifically research his votes in the senate that would confirm his support of a strong military. They might also investigate the extent of Barack Obama's relationship to Bill Ayers, or Bill Ayers life since his infamous crimes during the Vietnam War. They have the skill set to find the full length versions of Rev. Wright's inflammatory speeches that were used as sound bites in conservative political advertisements.
If the only segment of the population that uses political advertisements to gain informed opinions is the group of voters that were previously informed, political advertisements add minimally to a functioning democracy. They only offer more facts for informed citizens to consider in making their vote. The uninformed citizen is given a better opportunity to gain what he or she feels is "significant" information, but from simply cursory and opinionated information.
I hope this is not the best we can hope for democracy, because if it is, democracy is not working. The public needs to gain more skills to use the information they are given. We need to further encourage and teach ways to check facts, research the issues, and build a structure to accept the plethora of information available. As we saw with the 9/11 report, the problem is not the accessibility of information, but the public's ability to assimilate this information. How can we provide it efficiently, and how can we encourage a more thorough study of it? The internet provides a clear medium and channel for information procurement, but with the popularity of twitter and facebook, it seems like cognitive misers still prevail. So, although political advertisements add to the problem, they are not the problem. It is the public that must step up and do more.
Works Cited
Valentino, Nicholas, et. al., "The Impact of Political Advertising on Knowledge, Internet Information Seeking, and Candidate Preference", Journal of Communication, June, 2004, pgs. 337-354.
When it comes to political stance and advertising, what do you feel are the most important things? Is itimage? Is it how a candidate handles himself? Or do you just focus on what the candidate represents. I think with advertising we get very caught up in the negative aspects. I almost don't like negative advertising. It is interesting and sometimes funny, but it can be very misleading.
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