COMM 317: Negative ads?

Stanford University's Political Communication Lab posts video clips of campaign advertisments as they are aired on its "PCL News and Events" page.

When Negative is a Positive: Nasty Politics is Winning Politics, Pat Morrison interviews Shanto Iyenga on California Public Radio (audio 17:32)

The Political Communication Lab is housed within the Institute for Communication Research; the research arm of the Department of Communication at Stanford University.

Claude Hopkins, on a website for commercial advertisers, says, "To attack a rival is never good advertising. Don't point out others' faults. It is not permitted in the best mediums. It is never good policy. The selfish purpose is apparent. It looks unfair, not sporty." It hurts sales and tarnishes the product.

But negative ads work. A study at Notre Dame and the University of Texas-Dallas showed "that, although negative political ads are explicitly disliked, they have a powerful impact on voters’ mindsets that positive ads do not – and the potential to change preference and behavior in ways that benefit the advertiser." They hurt both the sponsor and the target, but the target more than the sponsor.

A scientitic study, "Effectiveness of Negative Political Advertising" by Won Ho Chang, Jae-Jin Park, and Sung Wook Shim in the Web Journal of Mass Communication Research, suggsts that negative advertising hurts both the sponsor and the target --

As expected, negative political advertising was perceived as untruthful, and perceived truthfulness was positively related to favorable attitudes toward the sponsor and negatively related to favorable attitudes toward the target.

Although the perceived truthfulness of negative political advertising was as expected, a minority of the respondents perceived such ads to be true. Overall, negative political advertising produced negative evaluations of both the sponsor and the target.

A bit of history ... in May 2004 the Washington Post analyzed President Bush's re-election campaign and found it overwhelmingly went negative on Democratic Sen. John Kerry:

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total.