Media and Society

Media & Society Media can have a strong influence on society. Media has the ability to shape how people view the world, how they perceive different issues and media can also have a direct influence on behavior in society as well. With political ads, the objective is direct behavioral influence, the behavior being voting, so the media role with these ads is a content-dependent relationship.

The ads are intended to bring about a specific behavior, but the ads are also intended to change perspectives and dialogue, both about candidates and about the issues for which those candidates stand. This paper will examine two advertisements from the 2012 Presidential election campaign, one from each side, in order to illustrate this concept. Cognitive/Affective/Behavioral The Romney ad "Stand up to China" works primarily on the affective level.

The copy of the ad is hilariously childish to anybody who understands anything about foreign policy or economics, so it certainly has little cognitive appeal, and indeed there is no authoritative substance to the ad at all, using random quotes for nobody worth remembering to support the point. The affective element plays on a few elements -- racism, fear of Communism and fear over one's economic stability (the jobs thing) in order to stir up the idea that Obama is not a strong enough leader.

The implication is that Romney would actually be different, which is why this ad in particularly ironic, given Romney's history of outsourcing American jobs to China. So the ad at this point seeks to create an affective response about Obama, rather than appealing to the cognitive. Placed in late September, it is too early to focus on the behavioral aspects and there was no push at the end to vote, so the behavioral message is only implied here.

Intended/unintended The unintended element of the Obama ad's Swiss bank account quip was to undermine the credibility of some of the other parts of that ad, where Team Obama makes a halfway cognitive case for itself vs. Romney -- but engaging in fear of the rich stereotyping the ad finishes weakly, which was not the intended consequence.

That finisher also makes this more of a reinforcing ad than anything that is going to change minds -- track record arguments can help to change minds, but stereotyping and name-calling serve mainly to reinforce. Macro/Long-Term There is a macro to these ads however, because they are part of much larger campaigns that seek to change behavior. So as part of a larger narrative, these ads only need to a communicate a single element, contributing to the affective change that hopefully will result in behavior change.

But the ads work on the affective level because they are part of a larger, macro-level narrative. The Obama ad was released in May, so much earlier than the Romney ad, and therefore its macro level narrative is better to explore. The Obama ad seeks to portray a theme that is repeated throughout the campaign, that Romney and by extension the Republicans are the party of the rich, and that their ideas have little merit to the average American.

While the core cognitive content of the ad only plays to this a little bit, the Swiss bank account quip is a strong salvo in the direction of creating this overarching narrative of this rich guy who cannot be trusted to govern with the interests of the average American in mind -- a theme that would be repeated throughout the Obama campaign. Conclusion I see these ads as being designed to fit into a larger series of ads.

They both seem to be reinforcing in nature, however, which highlights the importance of getting your supporters out to vote rather than to actually change minds. Further, there is little behavioral element to these ads -- they are affective and somewhat cognitive in nature because they seek to help their candidates build momentum, even if just negative momentum against their opponent. Unfortunately, both ads suffer from bad copy that really undermines the effectiveness at changing the affective dimension of the audience -- reinforcement is the only possibility when.