We all know that the media plays a huge role in the lead up to Election Day. The media obviously played a very important role in the 2012 presidential race including many major political media events such as the debates, coverage of major campaign events and major gaffes like The leaked Mitt Romney 47% video.
Turning our eyes to the role of media during the midterm elections taking place next month, I would like you to take 30-60 minutes exploring various aspects of media during this election. You can get a lay of the land by looking at the race ratings for all Senate, House, and Governors races and you can always see Nate Silver's predictions for the Senate majority and individual races here (from fivethirtyeight) .
Next I would like you to focus on TV ads. Take a look at this fascinating study, just released by the Wesleyan Media Project analyzing the amount of money spent on ads, who is spending it, (if we know), and how positive or negative various races are (spoiler alert: its a lot of cash!). Finally take a look at many of the ads that have been aired during this contentious (or downright nasty) campaign season.
Feel free to use any of the prompts below to start a wide ranging discussion about the midterms and media:
- What are the most notable aspects of media use during this election cycle? What does that suggest about campaigning today or the changing role of media?
- What media strategies should campaigns use to help win in the future?
- Who is in the driver's seat, the media or the campaigns?
After a thorough review of this week’s blog materials, one observation stands out: neither the media nor the political campaigns are in the driver’s seat: money is! This is probably the most striking characteristic about campaigning today in the US. The media appears to be the “dump” for political ads, rather than a political institution as such. The adversarial relationship is dominated by money and interest groups. The importance of outside groups, especially “dark money” or Super PACs in the financing of ads is worrisome for democracy in my opinion. What does this mean for future conflicts of interests when so much money is at stake? Plus, is there a true difference between promoting the candidate by paying for his ads and donating directly to the candidate?
ReplyDeleteAfter watching a few ads, I was struck by how negative they were, as described by the study of the Wesleyan Media Project. The appeal to negative feelings (anger, fear and sadness) is overall of 97.5 points, while the appeal to positive feelings (enthusiasm, pride and humor) is only 55 points. This has for direct consequence the rise of cynicism about politics nowadays. The almost lack of humor within political ads adds to the global despondency. In my opinion, negative ads are generally bad for democracy.
Finally, regarding successful strategies: I found that the uniformity and consistency within the themes tackled by GOP campaigns is efficient, but this is made possible only because they are in the opposition (they do not have the Presidency). However, it makes sense for Democrats to focus on locally important issues rather than national. It is also interesting to note that you spend more when about to lose the elections. One question remains for me: should the Democrats’ campaigns have focused more on defending, and positively presenting, the Affordable Care Act? And for today: aren’t positive ACA ads more likely to reawaken the controversies?
Piggybacking on what Claire mentioned, it is all about the "Benjamins" for campaigns. The Wesleyan Media Project study says that ads this election are poised to break (cue in Dr. Evil impression) one billion dollars. That number is unsettling because it only means it will rise in the coming elections (unless there is some change made in how politicians campaign). There are city's that are struggling financially (::cough:: Chicago) that have candidates (or the groups financing these candidates) spending outrageous amounts of money to get elected.
ReplyDeleteWorst of all, these ads are very manipulative and subvert the viewer’s attention from the real issues that should be discussed about. Ads can often focus on personal traits and not on experience or qualifications. The private conduct of a politician can have public consequences. Going a positive route and making the ads more about the candidate’s views and qualifications would be a good strategy (and frankly, refreshing).
Also I would be remiss if I did not mention the fact that media corporations endorse candidates. Only a few days ago the Chicago Sun-Times endorsed gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner (this was significant because the Sun-Times had stopped endorsing candidates for a long time). The press might have a marginal tilt on the popularity of a candidate, but it is a tilt nonetheless.
Going along those lines, Dave McKinney resigned for the Chicago Sun Times after getting suspended for an article that Rauner was not pleased with. Does the media really have all that much power?
This may be the age of "attack journalism," but why does it feel that campaign ads get carte blanche on how to portray the politicians they are smearing?
I guess this all goes back to what was mentioned before. Money. Unfortunately, money gives you influence. He who reigns on top of the financial mountain has more control than the lowly peasants that are below.
I would like to address the question of “who is in the driver's seat, the media or the campaigns?” Campaigns could not be successful without the media, and the media controls the campaigns.
ReplyDeleteI believe the media is in the drivers seat. Without the media, Americans would not be able to keep up with the incredible amount of information happening every minute of the day during the election time. The media plays a crucial part in educating, reporting, and providing information to us. Since they also report on the “horserace” of the elections and allow the politicians to publicly debate with each other, they have a large amount of power. The way I think of it is if we were to imagine an election time without the media. No political advertisements, no information on who is and is not winning, no stage where regular citizens can voice their opinions and try to understand others views. Without media, campaigns and elections just would not be.
An interesting article I read about political campaigns was “How Billionaire Oligarchs Are Becoming Their Own Political Parties,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/how-billionaire-oligarchs-are-becoming-their-own-political-parties.html) it’s about the super PACs that are dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaigns we were looking at. This includes them funding ads, events, phone-banks and so on. Majority of the billionaire’s money goes to the races that are closest – today this includes races in Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
ReplyDeleteIn the article, negative campaign ad strategies are discussed and this is the aspect I find most notable about the ones on the Real Clear Politics website. When discussing the race between Charlie Crist and Rick Scott, the author writes, “A series of recent polls found that both candidates were extremely unlikable… Baldick said this could actually be a positive development. ‘Both of them are not liked,’ he explained, but ‘if you think people are going to show up because they hate, not love — I do — there’s more people who hate Scott.’… ‘You think that’s what gets people to vote?’ he asked.
‘Oh yeah, hate, fear —‘” I had never thought about this before, candidates using negative ads in order to become the least hated.
Not only is this money in the driver’s seat of campaigns, but also the media/news has some influence also. I bring this up because we have just witnessed this with the midterm elections and Ebola. The media has made Ebola in to a force that is going to destroy the U.S. and this in turn has forced politicians to react. Politicians are either calling for the government to close borders or they are trying to stay as far away from President Obama as they can because of the government’s lackadaisical response to handling the few cases of Ebola in the U.S.. Either way the media’s overhype about the situation has affected the midterm campaigns.
I think the campaigns are in the driver’s seat, for the most part. Over the course of the time period leading up to elections, we see lots of different stories come out about candidates on either side, both good and bad. Take the Illinois gubernatorial campaign: the Tribune and the Sun-Times have both come out with several negative stories concerning Bruce Rauner and his past allegedly corrupt business practices. Pat Quinn, while not immune to criticism, has nothing like the amount of scandalous stories that have come out surrounding Rauner. Yet despite all this, the candidates are still extremely close in the polls, especially for a blue state like Illinois. Curiously enough, almost all newspapers have endorsed Rauner as well. I think Rauner’s campaign has been able to steer away from the negative attention the media has given him because of the money he has poured into his own campaign to fund the ads we see about every three commercials on TV. So, I say campaigns are in the driver’s seat, but I guess I really mean campaigns with deep pockets.
ReplyDeleteI would like to answer the question of who is in the driver’s seat between media and campaigns, since it is fascinating to me because I grew up and lived half of my life in a country where media is the opposite way of media here in the United States.
ReplyDeleteI cannot imagine election campaigns without media here in the U.S.The candidates relay more and more on the internet, television, and newspapers to promote their agenda and aims. As we have read about and discussed in class, media is all around us, and we are exposed to media without us even knowing it. Media is in the mail we get every day, in our email, when we watch out favorite television show at night, when we read our favorite newspaper or magazine, and even when we check our Facebook page, to name just a few. Media is all of these things, and it is immense. Often being names the fourth branch of government and the driving force behind politics, it would be unrealistic to believe that politics drives media. Even though both benefit each other and fuel each other’s work, I believe media is in the driver’s seat and not campaigns. Being so involved in people’s every day lives and thinking, it is media that is acting as a driving force and campaigns are relaying on it. Being in the driver’s seat, media also provides the public with the opportunity to respond to politicians, give their opinions, and voice their needs to future leaders when it comes to campaigns. This power of the media, even though taken for granted by many people, is just fascinating to me because I have lived in a country and witnessed the media being a tool to politicians. I have seen the media being used in campaigns completely driven by politicians. This type of media is a one way street, unlike here. Yes, there are positives and negatives to both, but I prefer media that will keep politicians accountable and always aware than politicians running their campaigns and using media as their own partisan political newspaper.
Again, sort of going off what my classmates mentioned, money is truly the deciding factor of who wins an election because they can buy more ad space and really vocalize their messages to the public. But, as Haley mentioned, the politicians can’t succeed without the media talking about them. The media needs to turn the public’s attention to the candidate, otherwise, even with all the advertisements, people might just tune them out. If the media puts together a package of a candidate discussing their mission and goals moving forward, I think people are more likely to listen and understand than they would from a 30-second commercial (it seems like audiences tune those out more than anything.) Yet, candidates still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these ads. It’s crazy.
ReplyDeleteThese advertisements often attempt to distract viewers from asking the real questions, and sometimes often their opposing candidates under the bus. Who really wants a politician in power that doesn’t talk about what he will do, just about what he won’t do? Apparently, they seem to think Americans do. It’s becoming more vicious and based seemingly on who’s the “better” (aka less horrible) candidate and I don’t think that’s a good thing for the future of American politics.
Moving forward, I think it’d be nice to have a little more honesty in campaigns, to see politicians honest about their mistakes but also have specific plans of action for improvement.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of political ads in relation to the current election cycle is the blatant display of politicians verbally abusing and discrediting their opponents in immensely childish fashion through online and television commercials. It appears as though each add displaying unwarranted and inappropriate criticisms serves as a precedent for an even worse commercial to follow shortly thereafter. These ads possess little value aside from emotionally manipulating the viewer into disliking a particular candidate. The media contributes towards the perpetuation and worsening of the continual display of such previously mentioned ads. Instead of wasting constituents' time and money displaying such mindless ads, it would be extremely more beneficial to constituents to develop and display ads that briefly but effectively demonstrate the particular candidate's goals and strategies to improve conditions and promote legislation for their potential constituents. The campaigns appear to be in the drive seat of this matter as they possess the funding that allows for such ads to be extended to the public. Since incumbents generally collect more money than challengers in relation to funding political campaigns, ads in support of the incumbent and against the challenger are far more likely to be displayed.
ReplyDeleteEvery election cycle it seems like campaigns are spending more and more, and the ads get more negative. The problem is that there is a large amount of money being used for campaigns resulting in more ads. So they have to be more aggressive in order to catch people’s attention, resulting in negative ads. So what we have is more ads and more negativity, making it less effective e.g. Republicans in the article. Media has become a tool where objectivity has lost meaning and is based on who can out spend the other.
ReplyDeleteAs the population gets younger I think social media will grow and be more affective then media on TV. Social media is a platform of individuals based on social interaction while TV is based on a collective viewers for entertainment purposes. Plus social media caters to individuals and is cheaper and less negative. So if you combine all those together you get a more objective media platform, because its easier to look up facts and respond to the people claiming false information. It also gives the campaign faster feedback.
Campaigns are in the drivers seat media is just the vehicle. The money for media ads is what makes it possible you can call it the oil for the vehicle, so you can argue that without money campaigns are less affective. But by definition campaigns are in the drivers seat.
For this blog, I primarily focused on watching campaign ads for the gubernatorial race in IL. In particular, I noticed that the vast majority of political ads in Illinois were totally negative in nature or only included a brief positive description of the “attacker” at the end of the video. Politico lists the Illinois’ gubernatorial race as a “toss-up,” which is somewhat surprising. Although, I do concede that it is a mid-term election, so the lower voter turn out would put an already unpopular Pat Quinn at a disadvantage. Real Clear Politics also features a far greater number of videos that are pro-Quinn (well anti-Rauner, in this case). On Pandora Radio, I use to hear more positive Rauner Ads the ones with his “loving democrat wife” (about a month ago), but this past week, they have primarily been Quinn funded or pro-Quinn group funded ads attacking Rauner. Ads on social media or online radio are the way of the future, considering less college students are regular TV watchers or print newspaper readers. Generally, I would say that the negativity in ads must be a useful tactic, especially in the last few election cycles because of the increased funding for these types of ads. On the other hand, I feel like these grave, depressing, hopeless, and despairing ads, come across as cheesy and inauthentic for younger voters. In turn, youth or persons that are highly educated may not be impacted at all by dramatic scare tactics from either partisan side. Still, they may have a different impact on middle age and older folks. My mom for instance, who votes democrat, but is not a Quinn fan per se, was genuinely alarmed by the negative TV ads about Bruce Rauner’s and has decided that voting for Quinn (rather than not voting at all) is essential for her (and somehow me) this election season.
ReplyDeleteRebecka Bronkema
ReplyDeleteI really liked Mike’s comment about advertisement’s role in the elections and political sphere. In my opinion, it is ridiculous how our culture has developed a need to win no matter the cost. American political advertisements tend to ridicule the individual rather than the individual’s platform. The rhetoric of most ads is phenomenal, but the ads themselves lack integrity and respect for the political process. Their purpose is to persuade its audience (the general public) to listen to their ad and vote for their politician with either positive (for their candidate) or negative (against the opponent) advertisements. According to Wesleyan’s data, approximately half of all gubernatorial advertisements were negative; they attempted to gain a vote by shedding their opponent in a negative light, either personally or politically. This media strategy, although effective, causes distrust among the public; people tend to have negative reactions to politics because of how horrible the election process is. The midterms are a chance for public to replace representatives that may have not lived up to the platform they campaigned on. When the advertisements turn nasty, the integrity of the election process is lost. It becomes a game of who can find the most dirt on their opponent first rather than an honest debate of the issues that should be concerns of the constituents.
As many have stated, money is critical to political campaigns and winning elections. However, having the media on your side is important as well. This reminds me of the "advice" I gave in my last blog post to a politician who wanted to go public via new media. Because of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, politicians have to ensure they have all their ducks in a row and "practice what they preach." Any slips taken and the media is on it super fast and usually move quickly exploit it.
ReplyDeleteAs evidenced by the overflow of television ads, it is clear that the media (and money spent on political ads) are a huge part of winning elections. In the months leading up to the midterm elections I have seen countless ads on several different television networks that have utilized mudslinging like it is an art form. Every time I see one of these ads (for both Quinn and Rauner) all I think is, hmmm....I wonder how much this cost the campaign?
Finally, to answer the question of who is in the driver's seat, I would say the media. While most politicians spend time interacting with constituents at events, speeches, and rallies, this is very limited. The public's perception of most politicians is driven by the media's portrayal of that candidate.
For my journalism class, I've been closely watching the gubernatorial elections in Illinois. I think that television and social media have played a huge role in this race. The two candidates have used media to highlight themselves but also jab at their opponent's credibility. I've seen two sides of the spectrum when it comes to the ads that I've seen; they're either positively cheesy or aggressively negative. I think what lacks is a sense of sincerity. The candidates don't seem that genuine or come off as "real" in their own positive commercials. I also think that at the end of the day it takes away from why these candidates should be governor. There has been too much bashing of one another and not enough promotion of initiatives. Television and social media, conversely, have worked hand in hand this race. During the televised debates discussion and reaction were quite high especially on twitter. Both candidates and their supporters pushed out tweets, links to stories, and positive PR consistently. What I found interesting is how powerful newspapers still are within the media. When Bruce Rauner was endorsed by the Chicago Tribune, Crain's Chicago Business, the Daily Herald, and the Chicago Sun-Times, media went insane for various reasons. But what I found important was how prevalent newspaper industries still are. Their endorsements still mean something in a society which is engulfed in social media. I think that speaks volumes to the amount of respect they still hold today.
ReplyDeleteI think the most notable aspect of these midterm election ad campaigns is how Obama is being used as a tool for candidates to gain some leverage on certain issues, more pronouncedly on the Republican side. Most campaign ads that I’ve watched contain some kind of negative reference to Obamacare, linking the opponent with the bill. However, Democrats have also almost completely distanced themselves from Obama, especially those candidates in the toss-up states. I don’t think that this strategy will work well in favor of the Democrats. I think that distancing themselves from the President is a terrible mistake on their end. Especially on the issue of Obamacare, which I believe is still a heavily misunderstood issue, resulting in bad polling data. Republicans have been able to use this particular issue and turn it on its head, causing Democrats distance themselves, and thus show a lack of unity, at least on this issue. This strategy of consistent opposition to a presumably unpopular president/policy can prove to be an effective one. I find this particularly interesting because if indeed this strategy works out in favor of the Republicans, what can we expect but more gridlock in Washington… that is until after the next election cycle.
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