2015

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…

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…