Friday, July 27, 2012

Prelim Research Was Way Off


As with most research, just when you think you have reached your conclusion, you find something else that completely throws you in another direction.  In my last post I explored research that argued negative advertising demobilizes the electorate and discourages people from participating in politics.  As I dug a little deeper, I found a multitude of more recent studies that not only refuted the methodology and conclusions from those earlier studies, but in fact argued the complete opposite: negative ads actually mobilize the electorate, encouraging participation.

I summed up my findings in my literature review, below is another excerpt:

In 1999 Wattenberg and Brians replicated the experiments used by those earlier studies and found “that their aggregate study is deeply flawed and that Ansolabehere et al. exaggerated the demobilization dangers posed by attack advertising, at least in voters' own context,” (Wattenberg and Brians, 1999).  The Wattenberg study went even further, arguing that by making the choice between the candidates seem like an important one to the voter, negative ads actually motivate the voter to participate in the election (Wattenberg and Brians, 1999).  Wattenberg and Brians were some of the first to challenge the popular position that negative ads discourage voter participation, but their findings were confirmed by a later study performed by Goldstein and Freedman in 2002 who argue “by engaging voters, by raising interest, and by communicating the notion that something important is at stake in the outcome of an election, negative ads… should be more likely to stimulate than depress voter turnout,” (Goldstein and Freedman, 2002).

While I concede that this may not be the end of the story, it does seem that the recent studies of negative advertising overwhelmingly point to an increase in voter participation as a direct effect of negative ads.  Satisfied with that conclusion, I will now move to the "how" aspect of negative advertising.  If it does indeed encourage voter participation, how does it accomplish that?  Are negative ads more or less effective in encouraging participation than positive ones?  Look for the answers to these questions in my next blog.

References

Goldstein, Ken and Paul Freedman.  2002.  “Campaign Advertising and Voter Turnout: New Evidence for a Stimulation Effect,” The Journal of Politics vol. 64, no. 3: 721-740.

Summers, Matthew.  2012.  “Literature Review.”

Wattenberg, Martin P. and Craig Leonard Brians. 1999.  “Negative Campaign Advertising: Demobilizer of Mobilizer?”  The American Political Science Review vol. 93, no. 4: 891-899.

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if this is something that you find relevant to your research project/ if it is somewhat obvious but have you considered the effects of positive campaigning on voter mobilization? Have you discovered that positive campaigns have any effect on voters or do you think that these campaigns simply reinforce a voter's original political stance and, thus, don't play much of a role in campaign politics? It seems to me that, in this case, the more negative the campaign the more attention/ controversy it causes which mobilizes the voters more in comparison to being exposed to campaign ideas that have already been reinforced. Maybe this could be an interesting counter-argument/facet to explore in your final paper? Just a thought!

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  2. Thanks for your comment... I have since posted about the differences between positive and negative advertising (it was a recurring theme among comments). Feel free to read on, I will however respond briefly to one of your notions. Negative ads can create controversy and attention, but the wrong kind can damage the image of the campaign. Hence, campaigns must be very careful about the type of negative ads they produce and they messages they send. Hope that satisfies your inquiry and thanks again!

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