Stepping Back to Look Forward

The key word, the operative word, is science.  Science requires a level of thoroughness and scrutiny that exists in very few arenas.  Anyone can reach a conclusion based on a set of facts or statistics, but science requires that conclusion to be placed under extreme scrutiny by other academics, by other political scientists.  Only then, after being rigorously tested, can an argument or conclusions be considered valid or sound.  Furthermore, science seeks to explain that which is not understood, not just in one specific instance but in all similar instances.  In all of my research one thing was consistent, no political scientist attempted to explain the results of one elections or the cause for one defeat, but for numerous defeats and numerous elections over years and decades.  Using this they attempted to explain anomalies, predict future outcomes, illuminate inconsistencies.

If you can explain how a bill becomes a law then you have studied politics, the political system; but if you can show what bills are most or least likely to pass the House, or the Senate, or be signed into law, based on extensive evidence to support your conclusion, then you have practiced political science.

What amazes me most is the reach of political science.  Politics covers all areas of life.  The decisions made in Washington have implications across the United States and beyond.  As a political scientist, the research I conduct can affect those decisions, thus affecting the World and everyone that lives in it.  That’s how the academic nature of political science translates into real-life applications. 

As I continue my studies in law school next year, I look forward to continuing my research into political science.  With the tools and insights gained from this past semester, I imagine my excitement will only increase with every new idea or new concept I discover due to advanced research skills.  I just hope that one day the research I do will have the same effect on some young, motivated academic as this past research has had on me.

Knowledgeable Voters Make Quality Voters

Another argument I wanted to address regarding campaign advertising in general is their informational content (or lack thereof).  Some critics believe that campaign ads are character attack driven, rather than issue driven, thus leaving the electorate with little or no informational value regarding core problems in the United States.  I admit, I too have felt that way sometimes when seeing a political ad that seems to focus only on negative issues that are personal in nature.  I did, however, find conflicting results in the relevant literature.

I have since finished my research paper, but wanted to update my bloggers as to my results.  Below is an excerpt from that paper regarding a study done in 2004 focusing on the informational content of campaign ads.  The study was done by Freedman, Franz and Goldstein, and they

argue that over the last several decades, television campaign advertising has subsidized the informational needs of the American citizenry.  In their conclusion, Freedman et. al. argued convincingly that “exposure to campaign advertising produces citizens who are more interested in the election, have more to say about the candidates, are more familiar with who is running, and ultimately, are more likely to vote” (Freedman, Franz and Goldstein 2004).  Additionally, their study found that the impact of the campaign ads had the greatest effect on those who had the least amount of initial information (Summers 2012).

The last sentence of that excerpt is of particular interest.  In order for an electoral process to be of high democratic quality, the citizenry who vote must be well-informed on the issues at hand and the qualities of the candidates.  If campaign ads only stimulated voter turnout, but didn’t increase the knowledge level of those voters, the quality of our democracy would be at risk.  Since that study found that campaign ads do indeed increase voter knowledge, it can be concluded that they are beneficial to the electoral process and our democracy as a whole.

References

Freedman, Paul, Michael Franz and Kenneth Goldstein.  2004.  “Campaign Advertising and Democratic Citizenship,” American journal of Political Science vol. 48, no. 4: 723-741.

Summers, Matthew.  2012.  “Campaign Advertising: The Downfall of Democracy?”

So... How do they do it?

I have talked in previous blogs about the effect negative ads have on the electorate: they encourage participation.  I also explored the differences between positive ads and negative ones, both in terms of effect and magnitude of effect.  To recap: while positive ads can also be used to mobilize the electorate, negative ads are more effective in doing so.  That leads to an obvious question, how do negative ads encourage voter participation?  In my research I found several answers, below is an excerpt from that research:

In his study in 2004, Martin concluded that “Exposure to negative advertisement should encourage participation by heightening perceptions of public problems, making an election appear of greater importance, and thereby stimulating republican duty” (Martin 2004).  He went on to identify three mechanisms that are used by negative ads to motivate the electorate to participate: negative ads increase the voter’s want to fulfill their republican duty, they create the perception of a close election, and they increase the voter’s perception that the other candidate is a threat (Summers 2012).

Creating the perception of a close election is somewhat of a misleading argument.  Well, not misleading, but rather self-reinforcing.  Studies have shown that negative advertising (and campaign advertising in general) increases the closer the election becomes.  This seems rather obvious; if the election is a landslide with one candidate miles ahead of the rest, why spend enormous amounts of money on advertising?  So, a close election produces more negative ads which in turn creates the perception of a close election.  For you science majors, this is essentially a temporal causality loop.

Regardless of the science behind the argument, I think it is clear that negative ads stimulate the voter by increasing their awareness of a close election and thus portray the notion that the decision between the candidates is a critical one.  I look forward to your comments regarding that conclusion; in my next post I’ll be discussing the informational content of campaign advertising.  Some questions to simmer on: Are campaign ads more character attack driven than information driven?  Is it a bad thing if they are?


References

Martin, Paul S.  2004.  “Inside the Black Box of Negative Campaign Effects: Three Reasons Why Negative Campaigns Mobilize,” Political Psychology vol. 25, no. 4: 545-562.

Summers, Matthew.  2012.  “Campaign Strategy and Election Outcomes.”

Summers, Matthew.  2012.  “Literature Review.”