Negative political advertising
Oct. 31st, 2006 07:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madbaker"The difference between a positive ad and a negative ad is that the negative ad has a fact in it."
Historically I have basically bought into the conventional wisdom: that attack ads or negative ads are bad. A fact of life - and effective, which is why they are used - but bad.
John Geer, a poli-sci prof at Vanderbilt, did a survey in a book published earlier this year ("In Defense of Negativity") where he looked at nearly every presidential campaign TV ad since 1964. He rated them; "better" ads discussed relevant political issues of the day, had specific substance, and (perhaps most importantly) had documentation.
Negative ads scored better on all those.
Geer's comment: "[With attack ads] the threshold is higher. You need documentation and support. If a candidate just attacks, without documentation to back it up, it rebounds against the attacker and he looks like a fool."
It doesn't mean I want to watch them, of course. (Or the positive, content-free ones either.)
What I'm reading: Jack Campbell, Dauntless
Historically I have basically bought into the conventional wisdom: that attack ads or negative ads are bad. A fact of life - and effective, which is why they are used - but bad.
John Geer, a poli-sci prof at Vanderbilt, did a survey in a book published earlier this year ("In Defense of Negativity") where he looked at nearly every presidential campaign TV ad since 1964. He rated them; "better" ads discussed relevant political issues of the day, had specific substance, and (perhaps most importantly) had documentation.
Negative ads scored better on all those.
Geer's comment: "[With attack ads] the threshold is higher. You need documentation and support. If a candidate just attacks, without documentation to back it up, it rebounds against the attacker and he looks like a fool."
It doesn't mean I want to watch them, of course. (Or the positive, content-free ones either.)
What I'm reading: Jack Campbell, Dauntless
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-31 05:01 pm (UTC)