Yearly Archives

2015

2016 ElectionsReleases

Super PACs Dominate Airwaves

Outside Spending Groups Air Over 80 Percent of Ads in GOP Primaries, Almost All are Sponsored by Super PACs; Big gaps between advertising and polls: Pro-Bush ads more than double nearest GOP rival, Pro-Cruz ads are rare and Trump noticeably absent, Dark money fueling Rubio December 15, 2015 Report Highlights • Ad volume in 2015 compared to 2011, 2007 • Aggregate ad spending and airings • Candidate ad volume; Trump airs zero ads • Right to Rise is most active GOP outside group advertiser • Full-disclosure groups dominate • Ads are overwhelmingly positive to date • Boston/Manchester, NH and Iowa…
Wesleyan Media Project
December 15, 2015
Blog

Voice and Inequality in Political Campaigns

This summary, by Kathleen Searles, is based on new research just published in the journal Political Communication   Is Don Draper Making Political Ads? -- AMC’s popular period drama, “Mad Men,” is set in a fictional 1960s advertising agency where ad executives attempt to sell happiness to America’s beleaguered housewives. While a lot has changed since Don Draper’s days on Madison Avenue, one aspect hasn’t: men’s voices are still the overwhelming choice when it comes to voiceover narration in political advertising. Male voice-overs outnumbered female voice-overs two to one in the 2010 and 2012 congressional campaigns. Sixty three percent of…
Wesleyan Media Project
April 28, 2015
Blog

Reducing the effectiveness of group-sponsored advertising through disclosure

This post from Travis N. Ridout was first published at The Blue Review, a journal of popular scholarship in the public interest at Boise State University. Click here for the original post.   It used to be that candidates paid for most of the political ads that aired on their behalf. If they were involved in a highly competitive race, their political party might have jumped into the “air war” to pay for some ads backing the candidate. Occasionally, an interest group even waded into the political ads game. But in the past decade, that traditional balance of advertising sponsorship…
Wesleyan Media Project
March 18, 2015
2014 ElectionsBlogReleasesYear-End Summaries

2014 Election Studies Published

Evidence about the Involvement and Influence of Interest Group Advertising   (MIDDLETOWN, CT) February 6, 2015 – Two comprehensive studies of the campaign ad trends from the 2014 election have been published by the researchers from the Wesleyan Media Project, in addition to a piece on disclosure and campaign ads. "Political Advertising in 2014: The Year of the Outside Group,” by Erika Franklin Fowler and Travis Ridout, and “Interest Group Issue Appeals: Evidence of Issue Convergence in Senate and Presidential Elections, 2008-2014,” by Michael Franz appear in the most recent issue of The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary…
Wesleyan Media Project
February 6, 2015