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Political Advertisements Placed on Social Media and its Effects on Young VotersA Capstone Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of theRequirements of the Renée Crown University Honors Program atSyracuse UniversityJaime Oberstein Candidate for Bachelor of Scienceand Renée Crown University HonorsSpring 2020Honors Capstone Project in Advertising Capstone Project Advisor: Anne Osborne, Professor of CommunicationsCapstone Project Reader: Rebecca Ortiz, Assistant Professor of AdvertisingHonors Director: Danielle Smith, DirectorAbstractNegative political advertising is a relatively new concept compared to the history of politics in our nation; the first attack ad aired in 1964. In the years following, there has been a plethora of quantitative research on negative political advertisements viewed on television. However, since the advent of the Internet and the rise of social media, there have been very few studies conducted to examine the effects of the negative advertising when posted on these new media. The few studies that were conducted with the Internet have been quantitative and fail to reach a deep insight into how voters are interacting with these advertisements. I have decided to conduct a qualitative study with young voters to learn how they are interacting with political advertisements through social media. Each participant was shown a negative and positive political advertisement and asked questions related to what they had seen in the advertisements and discussed their habits of political consumption. Through my research, I found that political ads must break through the clutter of social media to become memorable. In today’s political climate, young voters are not as shocked by negative political advertisements. On social media, positive advertisements get lost while attack ads seem to have more of a lasting impact. Executive Summary Negative attack advertising was created in 1964 by Presidential Candidate Lyndon B. Johnson. Ever since then, voters have been exposed to a variety of negative advertisements on a variety of traditional platforms, such as television, radio, and print. The advent of the Internet created new avenues for political advertisements to reach voters. These new technologies have influenced the methods and content of political campaigns. One thing that has not changed since 1964, is the practice of negative political advertising. Young voters are likely constantly exposed to political messages every time they log on. The 2016 Presidential Election displayed the power of social media to deliver campaign messages. In the midst of the 2020 Presidential Election, voters are being inundated with campaign messages while scrolling through their social media feeds. Social media allows for users to interact with and respond to the campaign messages they are seeing, unlike any other platform. Young voters ages 18-23 are using social media to receive almost all of their news and information from social media. According to social media user demographics, one can assume that young voters are disproportionately exposed to political messages whether they be negative or positive.Viewing advertisements on new media changes the way voters will be interacting and ingesting them. There have been many quantitative studies conducted on the effects of negative advertisements viewed on television but very few conducted using the Internet. My research question is how are individuals interacting with positive and negative political advertisements seen on social media? In order to examine this further, I interviewed 15 young voters ages, 18-23 years old. I selected two political advertisements, one negative and one positive from two senators Tod Udall and Kevin Cramer. The goal was to ensure that these candidates were relatively unknown to avoid the subjects having preconceived notions about the two candidates. Additionally, each video represented the view of each side of the major political parties in the United States. All participants were shown both videos and their responses after each were compared. This will be one of the very few qualitative studies that will examine the ways in which young voters are interacting with political advertisements on social media. There has already been extensive quantitative research conducted on how voters are responding to these politically charged ads on traditional media. However, due to the rise and prevalence of new media channels, the voters are being reached differently than ever before. It is important to understand the effects political advertising has on young voters in order to create efficient advertising in the future. Table of ContentsAbstract……………………………………….……………….…………… 2Executive Summary………………………….……………….…………… 3Introduction………………………………………………………………. 6Literature Review………………………………………………………... 7Methods…………………………………………………………………… 10Findings…………………………………………………………………… 11Conclusion………………………………………………………………… 15Limitations………………………………………………………………... 16References.………………………………………………………………... 17Appendix…………………………………………………………………. 18IntroductionThe practice of using negative political advertisements by campaigns has been around for decades. The first candidate to run an attack ad was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 (Mann 2016). His infamous “The Daisy Girl” ad only aired one time but created a public uproar that allowed him to win the election over Barry Goldwater. The commercial depicted a child, counting daisy petals in a field when suddenly a nuclear bomb goes off; implying that his opponent was too dangerous to be president. Lyndon B. Johnson won by a 22% margin, which taught every politician following the power of political attack ads. In today’s digital age, voters are given access to a plethora of information and opportunities for civic engagement in ways that had not existed before. Young voters ages 18-24, have a large social media presence. Social media usage demographics give insight to the age demographic that are more likely to be exposed to political messaging. Seventy-five percent of 18-24-year-olds use Instagram and 76% have a Facebook account. Twitter has the lowest percentage, only 44% in comparison, but still is the biggest demographic on Twitter (Chen 2020). Voters ages 18-24-years-old are being exposed to similar messaging across all channels. These new technologies have influenced the methods and content of political campaigns. One thing that has not changed since 1964 is the practice of negative political advertising. Young voters are likely constantly exposed to political messages every time they log on. Voters no longer view political ads solely through the television. The consumption of political content through social media has become so problematic that in November 2019, Twitter decided to ban all political advertisements from its platform to stop the spread of misinformation. However, Facebook will continue to allow political advertisements on its site, despite the requests of critics to ban political advertisements on its platform as well. Even with the controversy surrounding political content on social media, there still is little to no research on how voters are responding to the content they are exposed to. How does exposure to a negative political advertisement via new media change the way voters are interacting with these messages? My research aims to examine the ways in which young voters are interacting with political campaign messages on their social media feeds. If we learn how young voters are interacting with such messages, there may be more effective advertising that will increase voter interest and participation.Literature Review The power of political messaging on social media was realized with the Russian influence on the 2016 election. Fake social media accounts were created to resemble ordinary Americans posting about key topics to discredit Democratic candidates. The fake social accounts made allegations of voter fraud and boosted certain hashtags in favor of Donald Trump. The Russians purchased dozens of social media advertisements advocating for Trump (Clark, 2018). What does this mean for the upcoming 2020 election? Social media is increasingly becoming the number one source of news for young voters. Forty-five percent of young adults ages 18-22, first come into contact with news on their phone during their daily routine (Oxford Digital News Report). While they are checking the news, they are likely to come into contact with election information as well. The 18-22 age demographic is a critical demographic that is the target of political ads on social media. The messages being viewed on social media are more relevant, diverse in format, and more directed than those viewed through traditional media. On social media, campaign messages may not come directly from candidates. Exposure can come from shared content from friends, or even comments made by other users. Although social media has become a prevalent medium for receiving information, there have been few studies conducted to fully understand all the diverse ways this age group is interacting with political campaign messages. A study was conducted to investigate the effect of exposure to political information on campaign participation during the Danish national election campaign in 2015. This was a smartphone-based survey in which participants reported their media exposure via a daily phone survey. Participants were composed of young voters, 18-22, and experienced voters, 23 years old and older. Young voters were consistently exposed to more content from political actors rather than political messages from news media, friends or followers. In this study, the younger demographic was exposed to the most to political messaging; meaning that political actors are targeting their messages to this age demographic. Additionally, results support that there is a strong relationship between direct communication to voters and campaign participation. For young voters, mobilization occurs strongly when it comes directly from the political campaign rather than a news source or followers (Ohme, 2019).In the 55 years since Johnson’s “Daisy girl” ad, research has examined effects of negative political advertising delivered through traditional media. Are these advertisements memorable? It has been found that negative ads leave a more lasting impression, due to intense negative information activating physiological systems quicker than positive ads. The presence of emotion also allows for increased memory, but poor detail memory storage. Subjects often attributed material that they had not seen to the negative ads rather than positive ads (Bradley et. al, 2007). The quick arousal and increased memory are important factors in why a politician would want to employ attack ad tactics. There is a poor recall on details, but the goal of a negative political ad is to foster a negative sentiment towards the opponent, rather than providing detail about their campaigns.Very little research has compared the effects of negative political ads viewed on traditional media versus the same ads viewed on the Internet. Researchers argue that the Internet has an advantage because voters can gather more information. Campaign websites are interactive and voters can contact the candidate directly. Research has shown that there is a positive correlation between the level of interactivity of the candidate’s website and the perceptions voters have of that candidate. Research by Kaid, McKinney, and Tedesco (2000) supports that voters who do not seek out information during the campaign experience higher political cynicism. Respondents who interacted with a 2000 presidential candidate’s website were less cynical than before their exposure to the website. This suggests that although voters may exhibit low involvement and are not information seeking, the Internet can eliminate the audience's passiveness of traditional media and allow them to interact in the political process.The 2000 Presidential Election was the first time that the Internet played a significant role in the voter experience. The potential of the Internet to deliver political messages was not fully realized; however, voters were increasingly using this medium to gather information surrounding candidates and issues. An experiment was conducted just before election day in 2000 to test the differences between exposures to presidential ads on the Internet versus traditional channels. Half the respondents viewed the political advertisement on the television while the other half watched via an Internet website. Respondents were asked to rate on a scale of one to seven their desire to seek additional information or get involved with the campaign. Results found that there are differences in exposure as a result of a change in medium. The difference in media affected the vote choice of participants. In this study, Bush benefited from exposure via the television while Gore benefited from the Internet. The levels of cynicism were not impacted by either exposure. Those exposed through the Internet were significantly more likely to have a desire to get more involved in a variety of different ways (Kaid, 2002). During the 2000 Election, the Internet served as a place where voters visited to seek information from campaign websites. However, amid the 2020 Presidential Election, social media is dominating. The use of negative political advertisements on traditional media has been the subject of many quantitative studies. These studies often lack a qualitative insight on voter attitudes towards these ads. There is still a lack of clarity on how voters interact with these ads. Many of the studies include scales in which participants ranked their feelings towards the advertisement. This system does not allow an explanation as to where they are seeing those ads or information about how they are interacting with these political campaigns. When studying the political participation of young voters, it is important to consider the new forms of participation that are available today. Previous studies were not conducted in the age of social media. Several studies that do address social media are not testing negative political advertisements. Do new forms of participation change how individuals are viewing negative political advertisements? My research question is, how are young voters interacting with positive and negative advertisements on a social media platform?Methods My participants were 15 young voters, ages 18-23. There were 9 females and 6 males. Their political affiliations are 10 Democrats and 5 Republicans. They were recruited through Syracuse University Facebook groups. I began by asking them general questions about their political participation and their experience with negative political advertisements. I then showed each participant two videos that were posted to Twitter from two different senators. The first video was a positive ad focusing on a political issue. This is a video tweeted by New Mexico Senator, Tom Udall. In this ad, the senator is discussing the proposed legislation “For the People.” This is a positive ad that mainly focuses on his goals for this piece of legislation. The second video was a negative attack ad. The second ad is a video tweeted by South Dakota Senator, Kevin Cramer that is an attack on the actions of democrats. Following each advertisement, I asked them the same questions relating to the information they received from the advertisements and the actions they would take after being exposed to the ad. I gathered data qualitatively to gain a deeper insight into why participants responded the way they did. After interviews are completed, I compared the responses from the two different advertisements. I took detailed notes during the interviews and identified trends of key words or phrases and similarities in how they interacted with each advertisement. FindingsThroughout my interviews, I was able to identify three key themes. The first trend noticed is that just as statistics have stated, young voters identify the Internet as a place they go to search for more information on candidates and news. They are also receiving their political information digitally as well.“When I hear about a candidate, I will look up their website to learn about them. I also like to look at their social media accounts.” -Female, 19 years old “I try to keep up with a few times a week to stay up to date with current events.” – Female 19 years old.“I get Wall Street Journal notifications to my phone, so that’s where I get most of my information.” -Male, 21 years old The second theme, is that young voters, do not recall seeing any political advertisements on social media. When asked to recall political ads that they had seen and where, they were only able to identify ones that had been aired on television. Many subjects said they could not recall a political advertisement at all. Those that were able to recall, cited the Bloomberg 2020 advertisements that were plastered all over television from November 2019 through February 2020. Why are political advertisements more memorable on television? Young voters are being exposed to political advertisements while they are scrolling through their social media. The lack of recall on social media is not surprising. It is possible that a political ad in a social media format may seem too native inside a feed; young voters are not taking time to stop and process the advertisements. “I can’t remember the last political ad I’ve seen but I know I see them mostly on television.” – Female, 20 years old“I remember seeing the Bloomberg campaign ads all over television in the fall” – Female, 21 years old My third key finding is that there is a difference between perceptions and actions on how participants feel towards negative advertisements. They initially stated that they did not believe the practice of negative political advertisements were effective. However, after viewing the negative political advertisement, they were more engaged and likely to research the candidate. “I personally do not think negative advertisements are effective because they are just attacking one aspect of a candidate and they are usually out of context.” – Male, 21 years old“I know that attack advertisements are psychologically effective and that is why they are used but I do not necessarily agree with them.” – Female, 22 years oldContrary to how participants felt towards negative political advertisements, it seemed that the attack advertisement was able to leave more of a lasting impression on the participants. Most participants stated that they would research the candidate further after viewing this advertisement. “I really liked this ad because it was straightforward and he gave a lot of support to his claims.” – Female, 18 years old“I would research this candidate because I want to learn more about what he was talking about during the video.” – Female, 20 years old “I have never heard of this politician but if I saw this on my page, I would most likely click to see who he is.” Male, 21 years oldThe reactions to the positive advertisement were varied. A few participants said that they would research more about the candidate while the majority said it was not enough information about the candidate for them to want to look further. The consensus was that although positive, this advertisement would not break through the clutter of a social media feed. “I did not know what he was talking about so I did not really get much from the video.” – Female, 21 years old “I would not look him up after because nothing he said really connected with me.” – Male, 19 years old “This video was posted to social media to target young voters but I do not think it was meant for me.” - Female, 22 years oldThe negative advertisement was able to have more of an impact than the positive advertisement. The positive advertisement seemed to be brushed off by the participants. They described it as vague and most were not aware of the act that he was advocating for. Many participants originally stated that they thought negative attack advertisements were not effective. Then, when they were shown a negative advertisement, they were more likely to research the candidate. Participants were also able to recall more of what they had seen from the negative advertisement than from the positive one. There seems to be a discrepancy between their views and actions. In previous quantitative studies, it was found that negative political advertisements increased memory, but poor detail storage. In my research, I have found that subjects were able to recall more detail for the negative advertisement than the positive advertisement. Most participants were more interested in this candidate than Tom Udall’s positive ad. In comparison to previous studies, I used two one-minute long ads that were posted two Twitter directly from the candidates. Twitter is a social platform that at times can be filled with powerful messages. Users on that platform are accustomed to seeing strong emotional messages, whether they be positive or negative. In my research, the positive ad from New Mexico Senator, Tom Udall, was not able to make a big enough impact to be memorable. Conclusion Social media allows users to be extremely engaged with content. When it comes to being exposed to advertisements, young voters are looking for content that will stand out amongst the clutter. After finishing my interviews with 15 participants, I learned that negative advertisements are more engaging for voters on social media platforms. Negative messaging seems to stand out differently on social media than it would on television. Social media users are more accustomed to seeing negative content and therefore are more likely to be desensitized to the severity. This differs from television, where negative political commercials can seem jarring in contrast to the positive content surrounding it. The positive political advertisement by Tom Udall, that focused on political reform for a better future was not able to effectively engage with voters. Kevin Cramer's strong negative attack ad connected with young voters and the content they normally consume on social media platforms.In the midst of the 2020 Presidential Election, my qualitative research has given insight into how political messaging can be adjusted to be more effective in the upcoming months. In my interviews, young voters were only able to recall social media advertisements they had seen on television but I still believe that social media advertising has the potential to be effective. I would advise political candidates to run different messaging on television and social media, as voters are interacting with these media differently. Strong positive messages are better suited to be run on television spots for the masses. Since there is better recall for television ads, it would be beneficial to the candidate’s image to have this recall be positive. When running ads on social media, negative messages should be targeted for the 18-23-year-old demographic, as this demographic is more accustomed to viewing negative content. Negative or attack advertisements have the ability to break through cluttered social media feeds and catch the attention for voters. I do not believe that positive or negative content should be exclusive to one medium, however, it should be concentrated in order to achieve the best results. LimitationsI would like to acknowledge some limitations of my research. I chose senators that my participants would most likely not be familiar with to prevent preconceived notions. However, perhaps they were too unfamiliar with the candidates. My subjects were not able to provide me with many insights into how they felt with the advertisements because they were unaware of the candidate or what they were advocating for. Additionally, I had to conduct interviews via video chat, which was a bit difficult and did not allow me to read body language. Lastly, participants viewed the videos through links that clicked directly to the tweet. This is not exactly representative of how they would interact with the ad if it was native on their feed.ReferencesBradley, S., Angelini, J., & Lee, S. (2007). Psychophysiological and Memory Effects of Negative Political ADS: Aversive, Arousing, and Well Remembered.?Journal Of Advertising,?36(4), 115-127. , J. (2020).?Social media demographics to inform your brand’s strategy in 2020. Sprout Social. Retrieved 27 April 2020, from , D. (2018).?'Information warfare': How Russians interfered in 2016 election. NBC News. Retrieved 27 April 2020, from Younger Generations Consume News Differently. Digital News Report. (2019). Retrieved 27 April 2020, from , L. (2002). Political Advertising and Information Seeking: Comparing Exposure via Traditional and Internet Channels.?Journal Of Advertising,?31(1), 27-35. , L. (2003). Effects of Political Information in the 2000 Presidential Campaign.?American Behavioral Scientist,?46(5), 677-691. , R. (2016).?How the “Daisy” Ad Changed Everything About Political Advertising. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 27 April 2020, from , J. (2019). When digital natives enter the electorate: Political social media use among first-time voters and its effects on campaign participation.?Journal Of Information Technology & Politics,?16(2), 119-136. Interview Guide Where do you look to find research on political candidates?Do you have similar political beliefs to your parents? Why or why notWhat are important factors when choosing to support a candidate?Do you see your political beliefs represented in the media? How often do you see political advertisements?Is there a political ad you are able to recall? Do you find negative political ads effective? Why or why not?Do you feel comfortable speaking openly about your political beliefs with your friends?Why do you think candidates choose to advertise on social media?After Watching Each Political AdvertisementHow much information did you receive from watching? Was it enough to have an informed opinion on either candidate?Would you research the candidate aWhat specific elements from the ad stood out to you? How can this advertisement be applied to our political climate today? How are you feeling going into the 2020 Presidential Election? Political Ads Shown:Positive Ad: Tom Udall (D) - New Mexico Senator Ad: Kevin Kramer (R)- North Dakota Senator ................
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