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Women in Second Amendment Jersey
2022 ElectionsReleases

2022 Midterm TV Ad Volume Off to a Record Start

Photo Gage Skidmore/Flickr Outside Groups Airing a Third of All Ads; Spotlight on Abortion, Immigration, and Guns (MIDDLETOWN, CT) June 23, 2022 - Driven by competitive primaries for U.S. Senate seats and gubernatorial races, the volume of advertising on television so far in the 2022 midterms is shattering records, according to a new report by the Wesleyan Media Project. Between January 6, 2021, and June 19, 2022, U.S. Senate contests have seen just over half a million television ad airings, which is a 66 percent increase over the volume of Senate ads in 2020 and a 227 percent increase over…
Wesleyan Media Project
June 23, 2022
The front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC.
2022 ElectionsReleases

Abortion Mentions Climb After SCOTUS Draft Opinion

25 Percent of Pro-Republican House Ads in Past Week Mention Abortion (MIDDLETOWN, CT) May 12, 2022 – Mentions of abortion in televised political advertising have risen in the wake of the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a new analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project.  The increase was especially pronounced in races for the U.S. House, where prior to May 3, 6.2 percent of pro-Democratic ads and 13.5 percent of pro-Republican ads mentioned the issue (Table 1).  Since that day, 22 percent of pro-Democratic ads and 24.5 percent of pro-Republican ads…
Wesleyan Media Project
May 12, 2022
Blog

WMP Joins Proposal for Universal Digital Ad Transparency Standard

Photo: anyaberkut/iStock(MIDDLETOWN, CT) December 9, 2021 – Given the rapid recent growth in spending on political advertising online (at least 25 percent of 2020 presidential spending) and the challenges that the current ad libraries pose for research and for accountability in elections, the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) proposes a new universal transparency standard for platforms that sell digital ads and meet certain eligibility thresholds.A new WMP paper, jointly authored with researchers at NYU and Mozilla and released today, outlines a universal transparency standard that would require these platforms to report advertising by sponsor to a centralized repository maintained by a…
Wesleyan Media Project
December 9, 2021
Blog

Updated Book on Political Advertising Released

The second edition of Political Advertising in the United States, written by the Wesleyan Media Project’s co-directors, has been released. The book, by Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz and Travis N. Ridout, examines the volume, distribution, content, and effects of political advertising in congressional and presidential elections. The book considers the role of television ads using extensive data on ad airings on local broadcast stations. It also analyzes newly available data on paid digital ads, including ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube. The book covers the role of outside groups in airing ads, including the rise of dark…
Wesleyan Media Project
November 19, 2021