A Functional Analysis Of Television Advertising In Congressional Campaigns 1980 2000 PDF Download

Congressional elections are crucial to the American political system, and candidates spend millions of dollars attempting to capture the voting public's attention with television spots. In spite of this, relatively few studies have taken a long-term, comprehensive approach to studying the content of these advertisements. This study utilized the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to content-analyze over 600 television spots for House and Senate candidates from 1980-2000. Candidate discourse in these spots employed acclaiming (positive) strategies much more frequently than attacking or defending strategies (67% to 32% and .5%). Likewise, Republican candidates, House candidates, winning candidates, and incumbents acclaimed more frequently than their counterparts. This study also found a roughly equal emphasis on policy (50%) and character (50%) in these television spots, with Democrats and losing candidates discussing policy more frequently than their counterparts. Policy issues most frequently discussed were spending, taxes, jobs and labor, and education, but Democrats and Republicans play it safe by campaigning on issues traditionally identified with their parties. Incumbents and challengers have distinct styles of campaigning, but open-seat candidate styles are between the two. House and Senate candidates exhibit many similarities in their discourse, while Republicans and Democrats exhibit several important differences. Trends since 1994 indicate a turn toward positive discourse in these campaigns. Trends also suggest a shift in emphasis from character issues to policy issues over the twenty years of the study. This study advances the Functional Theory by incorporating policy issues into the coding scheme. It also suggests several implications for congressional campaigns. First, character is extremely important in congressional campaigns. Second, issues related to economics, such as taxes and spending, are critical in congressional campaigns. Finally, this study challenges the popular perception that candidate spots are negative and image-focused, demonstrating that acclaims accounted for nearly two-thirds of candidate discourse in these spots, and that policy themes accounted for nearly half.