How presidential candidate TV ads use news evidence

Required Availability

Fall 2016

Preferred Majors

Advertising & Public Relations | Journalism | Political Science

Keywords

news | political science | campaign advertising | content analysis

Description

Many presidential campaign TV spots include mentions of news-mediated evidence. (Example: The New York Times says (fill in candidate's name) once smoked pot with Oscar the Grouch.) Ads use this third-party evidence, of course, because people generally don't trust political ads -- and third-party evidence, especially from a news organization, is more likely to be trusted. The question is: How often is this news evidence distorted from the news organization's original meaning? This content analysis requires us to find all the political ads that mention a news source, find the news content, and then determine whether it was used "correctly." We hope to analyze all the presidential spots we can find from 2008, 2012 and 2016. We need people to help find those ads, download them, seek the news-mediated content, and then analyze the ads for use of news evidence. All the analysis is done on a website created especially for this.

Special Skills

Computer skills to download ads. (Dr. Roberts will teach you.) Ability to locate news information. (Dr. Roberts will teach you.) Ability to correctly analyze spots for ad use. (Dr. Roberts will teach you)

Contact Phone #

205-348-8619

Contact Email

croberts@ua.edu

Research Website

N/A