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                    Effects of Campaign Ad Coverage

Submitted to the Leslie J. Moeller Award Competition



                       The Effects of Campaign Advertising Coverage on
    Candidate Evaluation, Candidate Preference, and the Likelihood of Voting
                                          : An Experimental Analysis





         Running Head: Effects of Campaign Ad Coverage





                                          Submitted
                                                by

                                          Young Min

           Doctoral Student
                                                           School of Journalism
       College of Communication
                  University of Texas at Austin


   Address: 3373 Lake Austin Blvd. Apt. # D.
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                            Submitted to the Mass Communication and Society Division
     and the Leslie J. Moeller Award Competition
                                                       of the 2001 conference
              of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication





                                    The Effects of Campaign Advertising Coverage
             on Candidate Evaluation, Candidate Preference, and the Likelihood of Voting
                                                  : An Experimental Analysis


                                                   Abstract


Attending to the increase in campaign ad coverage, the present experimental study examines the joint effects of advertising and campaign news. More specifically, this study investigates the impacts of the tone of the ad under review and the tone of the news analysis of the ad in ad-watch reports on individuals' candidate evaluations, their candidate preferences, and their likelihood of turning out to vote. Findings indicate that both advertising tone and news-analysis tone have significant effects on individuals' evaluations of candidate credibility; the subjects exposed to a negative ad or a deflating tone of news analysis perceived the candidate sponsoring the ad as less honest and less believable than did those exposed to a positive ad or a reinforcing tone of news analysis. More importantly, the tone of the news analysis did significantly swing individuals' likelihood of voting for the sponsoring candidate; a deflating tone of journalistic comments on a campaign ad substantial
ly decreased the audiences' preferences toward the sponsor. Furthermore, the data do not support an across-the-board "negativity-demobilizing" hypothesis; neither negative advertising nor deflating news analyses significantly depressed individuals' participatory intentions.




          The Effects of Campaign Advertising Coverage
             on Candidate Evaluation, Candidate Preference, and the Likelihood of Voting
                                                : An Experimental Analysis


Many scholars agree that negativity has been a commanding attribute of both political journalism and campaign advertising (Ansolabehere and Iyengar, 1995a; Jamieson, 1992; Patterson and McClure, 1976). On the former claim, some go as far as to say that American journalism is "dysfunctional." For example, Patterson (1994) contends that campaign coverage, governed by a deeply cynical view of politics and politicians, threatens the media's ability to make a constructive contribution to the electoral dialogue. On the latter claim, political advertisers have also been regarded as a negative industry. As Finkel and Geer (1998) observe, negative political ads, especially negative presidential ads, have continually increased since 1976.
Campaign ads, meanwhile, have recently attracted great attention from the news media, and this increase in campaign ad coverage enhances the possibility that the interaction of these two sources of negative campaign discourse may have a magnifying effect. Attending to this possibility, this study aims to investigate the joint impact of campaign news and advertising on voters. More specifically, this paper focuses primarily on the so-called "recirculation" effects, that is, whether the ways in which reporters cover ads affect the audiences' evaluations of and their preferences toward the sponsoring candidates. It will also be examined whether ad coverage can modify the impact of political advertising per se, especially the impact of its tone, (i.e., negative or positive), on individuals' participatory attitudes.
According to Kendall (2000), campaign ads have spawned negative coverage. "Ad watch" features, a new genre of campaign journalism popularized through the 1990s elections, have particularly contributed to the negative aura of campaign coverage by dissecting political ads and exposing lies and distortions in them. This regular reporting of political ads, indeed, focuses more on negative spots than on positive ones, thus convincing candidates of the advantage of using negativity in gaining free coverage.
This "spiral of negativity" between the paid and the unpaid media has not attracted much scholarly attention, although many have suspected that negativity in campaign communication may cause the decline in citizens' interest and participation in the political process (Ansolabehere and Iyengar, 1995a; Ansolabehere et al., 1994; Cappella and Jamieson, 1996; Patterson, 1994). Considering that more and more people have become about as likely to see ads through the news as to see them directly, however, the interaction of political ads and subsequent news coverage deserves more attention in assessing the overall effects of campaign communication.
As Jamieson and Birdsell (1988) maintain, the filter provided by press commentary is a powerful determinant of the public's perception of direct candidate communication, such as debates, speeches, and ads. Negative statements about the candidates' performances in post-debate coverage, for instance, may depress voters' initially favorable reactions to the debates (Kraus, 2000). Likewise, if campaign ads are regularly covered and evaluated by the news media, the impact of political advertising can be either magnified or mitigated, depending on how journalists report those ads.
According to Downs (1957), the rational voters often delegate part or all of their voting decision-making to others such as experts or the media. By delegating the tasks of analyses or evaluations to others, they can reduce the costs involved in the decision-making process. As Popkin (1991) also notes, "evaluative cues" in the news concerning political candidates or policy issues function as "information shortcuts" through which voters can evaluate, obtain, and store information about the candidates or the issues. In this regard, journalistic contextualization of campaign ads may work as an information shortcut for the audiences' evaluations or their judgments of the ads and the sponsors. Cappella and Jamieson (1994) similarly argue that the audience of ad-watch reports may be "alerted to the importance of the [journalistic] contextualizing remarks and be primed to process them" in interpreting the ads under review (p. 346).
According to West (1993), campaign ads that are recirculated through other news outlets generally have several advantages over those aired purely through the paid channels; the news media deliver the ads to a large audience that tends to lend greater credibility to news than to commercials. Campaign ad coverage, on the contrary, may also undermine candidates' messages by challenging their accuracy. In summary, campaign ad coverage can affect the electoral success of a political ad by reinforcing or deflating the advertised message.
                         Recent Studies of Campaign Ad Coverage and Its Effects

According to Kendall (2000), media attention to political advertising greatly increased in the 1992 presidential election, where for the first time the ads were regularly scrutinized by the news media for accuracy. Buchanan (1996) explains this intensification of media's attention to political ads in 1992 as a reformist reaction to the corrupt, dirty ad campaigns (e.g., Bush's William Horton ad) in the 1988 presidential election. Ad-watches, particularly, were an attempt to discourage candidates' outright deception by
subjecting their messages to the electorate to close scrutiny.
Lichter and Noyes (1996) contend that such reformist efforts resulted in more
active intervention in the electoral process by journalists, and this intervention produced unintended consequences detrimental to both journalism itself and the political system. Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995b) point to the failure in media's attempts to monitor campaign advertising as one of those unintended ill effects. In their experiment, the ad-watch reports were found to benefit the candidates sponsoring the ads targeted for criticism. Based upon this finding, the researchers assert that news coverage of campaign advertising rather energizes the ad messages under review, reinforcing the audiences' preferences toward the sponsors.
This so-called "recirculation hypothesis," however, should be subject to a closer examination. Ansolabehere and Iyengar's experiment investigated only the impact of the exposure to a critical tone of ad-watch story, assuming that the tone of ad-watches is unvaryingly negative. That is, it did not examine whether the ways in which journalists present the ads under review (i.e., deflate or reinforce the advertised candidate messages) could make any differences in people's reactions to the sponsoring candidates. If exposure to ad-watch coverage per se moves individuals' preferences toward the sponsoring candidates in a favorable direction, regardless of the tone of the news commentaries, the "recirculation" hypothesis can safely be accepted. If individuals' reactions to the candidates vary depending on the valence of the news analyses, the hypothesis should be further elaborated or refuted. Although journalists tend to place campaign ads in negative contexts rather than in positive o
nes, the tone of ad coverage is not invariable; sometimes, ad messages are reinforced, rather than debunked, in terms of accuracy or effectiveness.
In Going Negative, meanwhile, Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995a) argue that
negative advertising generally benefits the sponsoring candidate since oppositional strategies are effective both in strengthening partisans' partisan voting and in persuading Independents to vote for the attacking candidate. Thorson et al. (1991)'s experiment, in contrast, reports that positive advertising is more likely to increase favorable attitudes toward the sponsoring candidate than is its negative counterpart. As such, whether attack or support strategies in political advertising are more effective in getting votes remains a controversial issue. The valence of the ad monitored in the news, therefore, can be another important factor in determining the impact of ad-watch reports (i.e., the "joint" impact of news and advertising) on individuals' candidate preferences.
Whether negative campaigns demobilize or mobilize the electorate constitutes another ongoing controversy. In their series of studies on negative campaigns, Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995a) and their colleagues (1994, 1999) argue that negative political ads demobilize citizens, especially non-partisan Independents, by making them antipathetic towards politicians and political parties, and by weakening their sense of political efficacy. Finkel and Geer (1998), however, contend that it is premature to accept the negativity-demobilizing hypothesis, noting that the importance and relevance of the information contained in negative messages may contribute to stimulating individuals' interest in politics and, in turn, to enhancing their involvement in the electoral process. Their analysis of the relationship between aggregate turnout levels and the proportion of negative forms among presidential campaign ads from 1960 to 1992 actually provides little support for the demobilizing hypothesis. Several experimental analyses also have demonstrated no differences in voting intention between subjects in the negative ad condition and those in the positive ad condition (Garramone et al., 1990; Rahn and Hirshorn, 1999; Thorson et al., 1991).
Given this controversy surrounding the demobilizing effects of negative campaigns, and the possibility of a "spiral of negativity" through the interaction between news and ads, it would be another important inquiry to investigate whether the tone of journalistic contextualization (e.g., deflating or reinforcing) and further, the tone of the ad under press review (e.g., negative or positive) influence individuals' willingness to participate in the electoral process.
Against this backdrop, I will examine the direct impact of campaign ad coverage particularly, that of ad-watches, on voters' important behavioral decisions. My independent variables are the tone of the news analysis of a campaign ad and the tone of the ad under review in the news, while my dependent variables are candidate evaluation, candidate preference, and the likelihood of turning out to vote. Here, the impact of ad-watch reports on candidate evaluation is investigated in order to elucidate precisely how exposure to campaign ad coverage moves people's preferences with regard to the sponsoring candidates.
The following three hypotheses address the relationships between these independent and dependent variables. The first two deal with the main effects of each independent variable. The third concerns a possible interaction between the two independent variables in determining dependent measures:
Hypothesis 1. The tone of the news analysis of a campaign ad will affect
individuals' evaluations of the sponsoring candidate, their candidate preferences, and their likelihood of turning out to vote.

Hypothesis 2. The tone of the campaign ad under review in an ad-watch story will affect individuals' evaluations of the sponsoring candidate, their candidate preferences, and their likelihood of turning out to vote.

Hypothesis 3. The tone of the news analysis of a campaign ad will modify the impact of the tone of the ad on individuals' evaluations of the sponsoring candidate, their candidate preferences, and their likelihood of turning out to vote.

Methods
To test these hypotheses, I rely on an experimental analysis. Experiment is the best research design for isolating specific causal linkages. There are, of course, limitations. For example, West (1993) contends that experimental designs cannot properly capture "the interactive quality of candidates' strategies, media coverage, and electoral contexts" because experiments separate only certain features of advertisements (p. 22). The present experiment, however, focuses on the interaction between media coverage (i.e., the ways in which journalists contextualize campaign ads) and candidates' strategies (i.e., whether oppositional or self-promotional strategies are employed in their ads), in order to expound more thoroughly on the impact of campaign communication on voters' evaluations of and attitudes toward candidates and their participatory dispositions. Although this design cannot fully capture a broader electoral context, where the interaction between the advertising media and the
news media actually occurs, a preliminary content analysis of actual campaign ad coverage[1] will help to enhance the external validity of this laboratory experimental analysis.
Subjects and Design: The subjects in this experiment were 88 students of voting age enrolled in an undergraduate marketing course at the University of Texas at Austin. In a 2 ( 2 factorial design, subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and read one article each.[2] The treatment news articles were constructed based upon the actual formats of the New York Times' ad-watch features.[3] The first part of each article consisted of the script of a television commercial sponsored by a Democratic candidate running for a hypothetical U.S. House of Representatives election for Texas District 10; the second part of each article was comprised of journalistic assessments of the fictitious ad.[4] Manipulations varied in terms of the tone of the ad under review (negative or positive) and the tone of the news analysis of the ad (deflating or reinforcing). The treatment message combinations, therefore, were as follows: negative-deflating; negative-reinforcing; positive-deflating; positive-reinforcing.[5]
Procedure: Before participating in the experiment, participants signed a consent form informing them that they would each read an Austin American-Statesman story and fill out a questionnaire asking how they feel about the ad reported on in the news story and their attitudes toward the upcoming Congressional election. After filling out the questionnaire, they were debriefed about the nature of the experiment. They were especially informed that the news article they had read was not a real story but one created by the experimenter, and that the two Congressional candidates reported in the article were fictitious figures (For details, see Appendix III).
Experimental Stimuli: Each treatment story reviewed the hypothetical campaign ad in terms of both accuracy and effectiveness. The deflating tone of ad analysis in the news was manipulated as presenting the content of the ad as both inaccurate and ineffective. The reinforcing tone of news analysis, on the other hand, was constructed as portraying the ad as both accurate and effective.[6] To manipulate advertising tone while holding all other features of the ads constant, meanwhile, both negative and positive ads addressed the same policy issue (e.g., the spending and taxes issue) in equivalent formats. As Buchanan (1996) suggests, in this study, negative advertising is understood as that focusing mainly on "comments on an opponent's personal traits, characters, records, and policy positions" (p. 95). Similarly, positive advertising refers to that focusing mainly on self-promoting comments on personal traits, characters, records, and policy positions by the candidate him/herself.
Dependent Measures: Candidate evaluations, candidate preferences, and the likelihood of turning out to vote were measured on 5-point scales. To measure candidate evaluations, subjects were asked to indicate whether they agreed or disagreed with each of a total of six statements about the fictitious candidates. These statements represent such essential dimensions of candidate images as commitment to the people, leadership, credibility, and likability. Candidate preferences were measured by asking subjects to indicate their intended voting choice, in that vote choice is the most telling indicator of candidate preference, as Iyengar et al. (1997) suggest. More specifically, voting choice was operationalized as the likelihood of voting for the sponsoring candidate[7] (For details,
see Appendix I).
Other Measures: In addition to the above measures, individuals' partisan identification was measured on a 7 point scale primarily in order to investigate whether (and how) partisanship mediates the impact of the tone of advertising and, further, that of the tone of the news analysis of the ad[8] (For details, see Appendix I). At the end of the questionnaire, subjects' demographics were measured to test whether the subjects assigned to the different conditions were equivalent in terms of such key characteristics as gender and ethnicity. Chi-square tests showed no significant differences among the
four different conditions in terms of party affiliation, gender, and ethnicity.
               Results
At the beginning of the post-treatment survey, participants were asked to assess
the content (or information) of the ad under review in the treatment news story with seven 7-point, bipolar adjective pairs. These data indicate that my two main experimental stimuli were validly manipulated. Subjects perceived the ad in the negative conditions (i.e., the negative-deflating and negative-reinforcing conditions) as more negative (t = 7.827, p < .001) and as more unpleasant (t =  5.531, p < .001), than that in the positive conditions. Participants also assessed the ad in the reinforcing conditions (i.e., the negative-reinforcing and positive-reinforcing conditions) as significantly more effective (t = 2.518, p [one-sided] <  .01) and as slightly more accurate (t = 1.651, p [one-sided] =

               Table 1.  The Evaluation of the Sponsoring Candidate's Honesty
                                 by  News-Analysis Tone and Advertising Tone

Source                             Sum of Squares     df             F           Significance
Main Effects

 Tone of News-Analysis          2.340            1           3.178              .078
 Tone of Advertising               7.066             1           9.598              .003

 Interaction                                .550              1            .747              .390

                                                             Negative                    Positive

                                                            M           n                   M         n

Deflating                                             2.30       23                2.65        20
Reinforcing                                         2.48       22                3.22        23

      Note. N = 88.  Higher numbers indicate higher levels of perceived honesty of the
      sponsoring candidate among the subjects.

Table 2.  The Evaluation of  the Sponsoring Candidate's Believability
                                 by  News-Analysis Tone and Advertising Tone

Source                             Sum of Squares     df             F           Significance
Main Effects

 Tone of News-Analysis         6.405              1          9.299             .003
 Tone of Advertising               2.746              1          3.987             .049

 Interaction                                .629              1            .913             .342

                                                             Negative                    Positive

                                                            M           n                   M         n

Deflating                                            2.48       23                2.70        20
Reinforcing                                        2.86       22                3.39        23

      Note. N = 88.  Higher numbers indicate higher levels of perceived believability of the
      sponsoring candidate among the subjects.

.051), than that in the deflating conditions.
The multivariate analyses of variance reported in Tables 1 and 2 show that both the tone of the news analysis and the tone of political advertising influenced individuals'
evaluations of the sponsoring candidate, especially in the credibility dimension. That is,
the subjects exposed to the negative ad embedded in the news evaluated the sponsoring candidate as less honest and less believable than did those exposed to the positive ad. The subjects who had read the news analysis deflating the ad message perceived the candidate sponsoring the ad as slightly less honest and significantly less believable than did those who had read the news analysis reinforcing the ad message. There were, however, no interaction effects between news and advertising on individuals' evaluations of candidate credibility.
These results indicate that how the news media cover a candidate ad has a
substantial impact mainly on people's evaluations of the candidate's credibility. The remaining question is why the tone of the ad which specifically dealt with the spending
and taxes issue affected only the credibility dimension of perceived candidate images, not other dimensions, such as commitment to the people, leadership, or likability. In order to expound more thoroughly on the impact of advertising tone on candidate evaluation, therefore, future research needs to vary the topics addressed in the treatment ad.
How the news media contextualized a campaign ad, meanwhile, influenced the audiences' attitudes toward the sponsoring candidate. That is, the tone of the news analysis significantly affected individuals' voting choice (i.e., their likelihood of voting for the sponsoring candidate), as shown in Table 3. The news analysis negatively

Table 3.  The Likelihood of Voting for the Sponsoring Candidate
                               by  News-Analysis Tone and Advertising Tone

Source                             Sum of Squares     df             F           Significance
Main Effects

 Tone of News-Analysis          8.44               1           6.314             .014
 Tone of Advertising               4.69                1             .351             .555

 Interaction                             1.617               1           1.210             .275

                                                             Negative                    Positive

                                                            M           n                   M         n

Deflating                                              2.74       23                2.68        20
Reinforcing                                          3.14       22                3.52        23

      Note. N = 88.  Higher numbers indicate higher levels of voting preference for the
      sponsoring candidate.
presenting the ad message (i.e., inaccurate and ineffective) significantly reduced people's willingness to vote for the sponsoring candidate, regardless of whether the hypothetical candidate attacked his opponent or self-promoted his own position in the ad. This finding does not support Ansolabehere and Iyengar's (1995b) "recirculation" hypothesis which posits that even a critical tone of ad-watch story strengthens audiences' preferences toward the sponsoring candidate. In conclusion, whether or not the news account is consistent with the ad message affects the persuasiveness of the ad per se, as Jamieson (1992) points out.
As Figure 1 illustrates, the impact of the tone of the news analysis on voting choice was consistently observed across different partisan groups. There were found, however, neither the main effects of advertising tone nor the interaction effects of news

  Figure 1.  The Impact of News-Analysis Tone on Voting Choice
                                                by Partisan Identification

and advertising on voting preference. Unlike Ansolabehere and Iyengar's (1995a) argument, negative advertising was not particularly effective for the sponsoring candidate to attract more votes.
According to the results of the multivariate analyses of variance reported in Table 4, the subjects in the negative ad conditions did not significantly differ from those in the positive ad conditions in their likelihood of turning out to vote. That is, negativity in the ad message did not depress individuals' interest in voting, and this invalidates Ansolabehere and Iyengar's "negativity- demobilizing" hypothesis. The tone of journalistic assessment of the ad also had little impact on individuals' participatory intentions.
There was, however, a slight interaction impact of news-analysis tone and ad tone on the likelihood of voting, although it was not statistically significant (F = 3.589, p =

                                Table 4. The Likelihood of Turning out to Vote
                     by  News-Analysis Tone and Advertising Tone

Source                             Sum of Squares     df             F           Significance
Main Effects

 Tone of News-Analysis         2.277             1            1.588             .211
 Tone of Advertising                .506              1             .353             .554

 Interaction                             5.148               1           3.589            .062

                                                             Negative                    Positive

                                                            M           n                   M         n

Deflating                                             3.26       23                2.70        20
Reinforcing                                         3.05       22                3.43        23

       Note. N = 88.  Higher numbers indicate higher levels of likelihood of voting.
.062). The negative ad deflated by the news account was slightly more likely to stimulate individuals' involvement in the electoral process than was that reinforced by the news analysis. This finding indicates that the "spiral of negativity" does not necessarily drive away the citizens from the polling places. Rather, when the news media contextualize negatively appealing candidate messages in critical tones, people are slightly less likely to be abstinent on Election Day. The positive ad presented as accurate and effective in the news, on the other hand, was more likely to increase turnout than was that discredited in the ad-watch stories (t = 1.896, p [one-sided] =  .033).
While the negativity-demobilizing hypothesis is generally disconfirmed, Figure 2 indicates that negative campaigns might depress Independents' willingness to vote, although the difference between the negative and positive ad conditions in the

              Figure 2. The Impact of Advertising Tone on Turnout
                                     by Partisan Identification

Independent turnout was not statistically significant (probably because of the small number of Independent respondents).
In summary, findings in this experimental analysis provided partial support for Hypotheses 1 and 2, in that the tone of the news analysis influenced individuals' evaluations of candidate credibility and their vote choice, but not their likelihood of turning out to vote, and in that the tone of the ad affected individuals' evaluations of candidate credibility, but not their vote choice nor participatory intention, respectively. The data, however, showed little support for Hypothesis 3, although there was a marginal level of interaction impact of news and advertising on individuals' participatory dispositions.
Discussions
This study has demonstrated that the filter provided by press commentary is a powerful determinant of individuals' perceptions of and attitudes toward a political candidate, as Jamieson and Birdsell (1988) suggest. More specifically, it has disproved the "recirculation" hypothesis positing that exposure to ad-watch stories reinforces the audiences' preferences toward the candidates sponsoring the ads under review, regardless of the tone of the news analyses. That is, when a campaign ad is presented as reliable and effective in the news, exposure to the ad-watch story tends to strengthen the perceived credibility of the sponsoring candidate among the audiences, intensifying their intention to vote for him/her. When the ad is interpreted as inaccurate and politically impotent in the news, however, the ad-watch story significantly damages the cause of the sponsoring candidate, in that it decreases the perceived credibility of the candidate among the audiences and depresses their like
lihood of voting for him/her. As such, journalistic evaluative remarks on campaign ads function as information shortcuts by which the audience evaluates the ad sponsors.
In short, unlike West's (1993) generalization (and political candidates' common expectations) that campaign ads that are recirculated through other news outlets have advantages over those aired purely through the paid channels, free coverage of campaign ads does not always benefit the advertisers. Only the news coverage containing favorable commentaries on the ads can increase the likelihood for the sponsoring candidates to be elected to the offices they are seeking (probably by lending images of credibility or legitimacy to them). In this regard, ad-watch reporting does not represent merely an "unintended" ill consequence of the reformist campaign journalism, at least in the print media, which concentrate on scrutinizing the contents of advertised candidate messages, rather than on amplifying the visual images of televised ads. Ad-watch practices in the print media, therefore, may force the candidates to devise their advertising strategies, not merely based upon the effectiveness of their own appeals, but also by considering the truthfulness of the messages.
Through a preliminary content analysis of actual campaign ad coverage in the 1990s elections, the treatment ad-watch stories in the current experiment were constructed as monitoring a campaign ad for both accuracy and effectiveness rather than for accuracy or for effectiveness only. The content analysis indicates that press commentaries on the accuracy, fairness, or legitimacy of advertised candidate claims often convey substantial information on the candidates' issue positions, while those on the effectiveness of campaign ads focus mainly on the hidden motives or strategies of the sponsoring candidates. The two criteria most frequently used for ad assessment in the news, therefore, may differ in their effects on the audiences' reactions to the ads under review or to the candidates sponsoring the ads. Future research needs to address whether (and how) these two criteria provide different filters through which the audiences perceive the ad messages or the sponsoring candidates.
This study does not confirm an across-the-board negativity-demobilizing
hypothesis, although findings show a marginal possibility that negative advertising may more suppress Independents' participatory attitudes than those of partisan voters.  This hypothesis, however, needs more rigorous examinations.
        The tone of campaign advertising recirculated in the news influenced individuals' evaluations of the sponsoring candidates, as did the tone of the news analysis. People perceived negatively appealing candidates as less honest and less believable than positively appealing candidates. Unlike the tone of the news analysis, however, advertising tone did not significantly swing individuals' voting preferences. This is probably due to the simple fact that people tend to grant greater credibility to news than to commercials. That is, the candidate images formed by the exposure to news reporting may function as a more critical factor in citizens' making of voting decisions, than do those derived by the exposure to political ads. This study, however, does not provide any empirical evidence supporting this possible linkage between candidate evaluation and voting choice (i.e., candidate preference).
Given the growing interaction between the two major sources of negative campaign discourse (i.e., news and advertising), people may be concerned about the possible depressing effects of the "spiral of negativity" on citizens' involvement in the electoral process. This study which generally disproves the negativity-demobilizing hypothesis, however, shows the possibility that the news media's critical (and appropriate) contextualization of negativity in campaign ads may rather enhance individuals' willingness to participate. As Jamieson (1992) suggests, therefore, the ritualized condemnation of negativity in political discourse among scholars and reporters should be cautioned. Some forms of negative campaign discourse (e.g., ad-watch reporting) are useful to engage people in the democratic decision-making process.

[1] Notes.

 To manipulate experimental stimuli that would be externally valid, this study conducted
  a preliminary content analysis of campaign ad coverage in the 1992, 1996, and 2000
  general election campaigns. A stratified sample (n = 118) of the ad-watch stories
  published from the first of September to the eve of Election Day by the New York Times
  and the Washington Post was constructed. The entire news story was consulted as the
  unit of analysis and examined in terms of the tone of the ad under review in the story,
  the tone of news analysis of the ad, and the criteria used for ad assessment. Findings
  indicate that the press in the 1990s monitored campaign ads more frequently for both
  accuracy and effectiveness (40 %) than for accuracy (28 %) or effectiveness only
  (14 %). The treatment ad-watch story was, therefore, constructed such that a campaign
  ad is being reviewed both in terms of accuracy and effectiveness in the news.
  Concerning the tone of advertising, it was found that negative ads were about twice as
  likely to appear in the news as were positive ads. The press, in general, was more
  likely to deflate the accuracy of an ad message, whereas it tended to reinforce the
  effectiveness of the ad. In about 50 percent of the news stories in which campaign ads
  were monitored for both accuracy and effectiveness, however, the press commentary on
  the accuracy and that on the effectiveness of the ad under review were consistent with
  each other. This finding demonstrates the external validity of my operationalizations of
  the "deflating" or "reinforcing" tone of news analysis as presenting an ad as both
  inaccurate and ineffective or as both accurate and effective. More importantly, the
  preliminary analysis of campaign ad coverage attests that the positive-deflating or
  negative-reinforcing ad-news combination is not an artificial stimulus in a laboratory
  experiment, thus validating this particular 2 ( 2 factorial design. A Chi-Square test
  shows that the news media presented positively appealing ads slightly more favorably
  than negatively appealing ads, both in terms of accuracy ((ý(2, N = 79) = 5.172, p =
  .075) and effectiveness ((ý(2, N = 57) = 5.829, p = . 054), but the differences were not
  statistically significant.

[2]  The treatment booklets were randomized in advance and distributed to participants
  according to the order in which the booklets were randomized. The four groups in this
  experiment, therefore, were equivalent in terms of gender, ethnicity, and partisan
  compositions.

[3]  This study examines primarily the impact of print news coverage of campaign ads
  (perhaps, mostly television ads) rather than that of television ad coverage. This is
  primarily because major studies of political ad journalism have focused on network ad
  watches rather than on print ad watches (Ansolabehere and Iyengar, 1995b; Jamieson,
  1992; West, 1993). All these studies alike contend that the visual representation of
  campaign ads in television news overwhelms the critical analyses of the advertised
  messages, thus simply reinforcing the causes of the advertisers. The researchers point
  to this as one of the "unintended" ill effects of network ad watches. Newspaper ad
  watches which concentrate on the analysis of the contents of candidate ads, however,
  may play a different role, thus achieving the ultimate goals of ad watches (i.e.,
  monitoring candidates' paid communications for accuracy, fairness, or legitimacy). This
  is another reason why this study attends mainly to the impact of print ad coverage.

[4]  To enhance the external validity of experimental stimuli, news commentaries of the ad
  were presented in relatively balanced and unobtrusive ways. For instance, in the
  deflating assessment conditions, the campaign ad was portrayed as "only partially
  accurate," rather than "totally misleading." This manner of manipulation, however,
  might sacrifice the internal validity of causal linkages between the news-analysis tone
  and other dependent variables.

[5]  In every treatment message, a fictitious Democratic candidate Jim Davis was presented
  as either the attacking or the self-promoting candidate. His rival, Republican candidate
  Dan Miller, was actually visible only in the negative ad conditions, where Davis attacks
  Miller's position on the spending issue, although all the stimuli articles contained a brief
  introduction of the two fictional Congressional candidates. (For details, see Appendix
  II).

[6]  The binary opposite of deflating versus reinforcing was borrowed from Semetko et al.'s
 (1991) content-analysis categories for examining journalists' contextualizing remarks in
  campaign coverage.

[7]  Subjects were asked, "If you could vote in the Davis-Miller election, would you vote for
  Jim Davis (D) or Dan Miller (R)?" and they marked one among the following five
  options: "voting for Jim Davis," "undecided, but leaning toward Jim Davis,"
  "undecided," "undecided, but leaning toward Dan Miller," and "voting for Dan Miller."
  Answers were transferred into numeric codes such that "voting for Dan Miller" was
  regarded as least willing to vote for Jim Davis and given a "1," and "voting for Jim
  Davis" as most willing to vote for him and given a "5."

[8]  Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995a) maintain that the impact of advertising tone is
  conditioned by party identification. That is, whether people identify with a negatively
  appealing candidate in terms of partisanship influences their voting preferences and
  their likelihood to participate in the election.


References

Ansolabehere, S. D., and Iyengar, S. (1994). Riding the wave and claiming ownership
over issues: The joint effects of advertising and news coverage in campaigns. Public Opinion Quarterly, 58: 335-357.

Ansolabehere, S. D., and Iyengar, S. (1995a). Going Negative: How Political
Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate. New York: Free Press.

Ansolabehere, S. D., and Iyengar, S. (1995b).Winning through advertising: It's all in the
context. In J. A. Thurber and C. J. Nelson (Eds.), Campaigns and Elections American Style (pp. 101-111). Boulder, Colorado: Westview.

Ansolabehere, S. D., Iyengar, S., and Simon, A. (1999). Replicating experiments using
aggregate and survey data. American Political Science Review, 93: 901-910.

Ansolabehere, S. D., Iyengar, S., Simon, A., and Valentino, N. (1994). Does attack
advertising demobilize the electorate? American Political Science Review, 88: 829-838.

Berelson, B., Lazarsfeld, P., and McPhee. W. (1954). Voting: A Study of Opinion
Formation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.

Buchanan, B. (1996). Reviewing Presidential Politics: Campaigns, Media and the Public
Interest. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Cappella, J. N., and Jamieson, K. H. (1994). Broadcast adwatch effects: A field
experiment. Communication Research, 21: 342-365.

Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper Collins.

Finkel, S. E., and Geer, J. G. (1998). A spot check: Casting doubt on the demobilizing
effect of attack advertising. American Journal of Political Science, 42: 573-
595.

Garramone, G. M., Atkin, C. K., Pinkleton, B.E., and Cole, R. T. (1990). Effects of
negative political advertising on the political process. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 34(3): 299-311.

Iyengar, S., Valentino, N. A., Ansolabehere, S., and Simon, A. F. (1997). Running as a
woman: Gender stereotyping political campaigns. In Norris, P. (Ed.). Women, Media, and Politics, (pp. 77-98). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jacques, W., Meilinger, F., Balmoris, M., Gerns, C., and Denby, S. (1993). Some aspects
of major newspaper coverage of the 1992 presidential debates. American
Behavioral Scientist, 37: 252-256.

Kraus, S. (2000). Debate effects: Voters win. In Televised Presidential Debates and
Public Policy, 2nd Edition, (pp. 181-240). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Jamieson, K. H. (1992). Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy. New
York: Oxford University Press.

Jamieson, K. H., and Birdsell, D. S. (1988). Presidential Debates. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Just, M., Crigler, A., and Buhr, T. (1999). Voice, substance, and cynicism in presidential
campaign media. Political Communication, 16: 25-44.

Kahn, K. F., and Kenney, P. J. (1999). Do negative campaigns mobilize or suppress
turnout? Clarifying the relationship between negativity and participation. American Political Science Review, 93(4): 877-889.

Kendall, K. E. (2000). Communication in the Presidential Primaries: Candidates in the
Media, 1912-2000. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Lichter, S. R., and Noyes, R. E. (1996). Good Intentions Make Bad Bews: Why
Americans Hate Campaign Journalism. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Patterson, T. E., and McClure, R. D. (1976). The Unseeing Eye. New York: Putnam.

Patterson, T. E. (1994). Out of Order. New York: Vintage Books.

Popkin, S. (1991). The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential
Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rahn, W. M., and Hirshorn, R. M. (1999). Political advertising and public mood: A study
of children's political orientations. Political Communication, 16(4): 387-407.

Semetko, H. A., Blumler, J. G., Gurevitch, M., and Weaver, D. H. (1991). The Formation
of Campaign Agendas: A Comparative Analysis of Party and Media Roles in
Recent American and British Elections. Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Shaw, D. R. (1999). The effect of TV ads and candidate appearance on statewide
presidential votes, 1988-96. American Political Science Review, 93: 345-361.

Thorson, E., Christ, W. G., and Caywood, C. (1991). Effects of issue-image strategies,
attack and support appeals, music, and visual content in political commercials. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 35(4): 465-486.

Wattenberg, M. P., and Brians, C. L. (1999). Negative campaign adverting: Demobilizer
or mobilizer? American Political Science Review, 93: 891-900.

West, D. M. (1993). Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns, 1952 -
1992. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.




Appendix I.                                 Cover Letter                              Date:  October 27, 2000


Dear Participant:

Thank you for your interest and participation in this research.

My name is Young Min; I am a doctoral student in the Department of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

This survey is aimed at understanding how people feel about political advertising, their general political orientations and, more particularly, their attitudes toward the upcoming 2000 U.S. House of Representatives election.

I would like to assure you that the data I collect will be used for academic purposes and in aggregate form only. The answers you provide will be kept strictly confidential.

If you agree to take part in this survey, please take a moment to sign the attached consent form. If you don't wish to participate, please leave the questions unanswered and return the questionnaire to me.

If you take part in this survey, you will first read one news article from the Austin American Statesman and then will be asked to fill out a brief questionnaire. Participants will be given extra credit toward their class grade.

If you have any concerns or questions concerning this research, please feel free to contact me at <a href="/cgi-bin/wa?LOGON=A3%3Dind0109B%26L%3DAEJMC%26E%3D8bit%26P%3D7175612%26B%3D--%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D%253D_134717093%253D%253D_%26T%3Dtext%252Fplain%3B%2520charset%3Diso-8859-1" >[log in to unmask]</a>

I greatly appreciate your time and participation.

Sincerely,


________________________________________________________________________

      Consent Form

I understand that the answers I provide in this survey will be used only for academic purposes and will be kept confidential. I agree to take part in this research.


NAME (please PRINT)       ___________________________________________
                                               (Last name)                             (First name)

Date                                      ___________________________________________
( Below, you will be asked about the news story you have read and about your attitudes toward the upcoming congressional election. Please answer as honestly as you can.


PART I.  Using a 7-point scale, please indicate how you feel about the content (or information) of the ADVERTISING under review in the news story. Circle the number that best corresponds with your opinion about the commercial. For example, in question no. 1, a "1" would mean the content (or information) was very significant, while a "7" would mean it was very trivial. A "4" would mean it was neither significant nor trivial.

1. SIGNIFICANT          1         2         3         4         5         6         7     TRIVIAL


2. USEFUL                    1         2         3         4         5         6         7      USELESS


3. NEGATIVE               1         2         3         4         5         6         7      POSITIVE


4. UNPLEASANT          1         2         3         4         5         6         7      PLEASANT


5. UNBELIEVABLE      1         2         3         4         5         6          7     BELIEVABLE


6. ACCURATE              1         2         3         4         5         6          7     INACCURATE


7. EFFECTIVE              1         2         3         4         5         6          7      INEFFECTIVE


8. Have you ever seen this televised commercial reviewed in the news story?

O    YES                                    O     NO

PART II. The following items ask about your feelings toward the candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives election reported in the news story.

II-1. Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with each statement, by circling the
      number that best corresponds with your feelings or judgments regarding Jim Davis.

9. Candidate Jim Davis really cares about people like you.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


10.Candidate Jim Davis is a strong leader.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


11. Candidate Jim Davis is honest.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


12. Candidate Jim Davis is believable.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


13. Candidate Jim Davis is likable.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


14. Candidate Jim Davis is effective.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree

II-2.  Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with each statement, by circling the
       number that best corresponds with your feelings or judgments regarding Dan Miller.


15. Candidate Dan Miller really cares about people like you.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


16.Candidate Dan Miller is a strong leader.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


17. Candidate Dan Miller is honest.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


18. Candidate Dan Miller is believable.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


19. Candidate Dan Miller is likable.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


20. Candidate Dan Miller is effective.

 _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       strongly             somewhat        neither agree         somewhat          strongly
       disagree             disagree           nor disagree             agree                agree


PART III. The following items ask about your attitudes toward the U.S. House of Representatives election reported in the news story. Please circle the number that best corresponds with your feelings or judgments.


21. If you were eligible to vote in the Davis-Miller congressional election, how likely
      would you be to vote?

_____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
         Very               Somewhat              Don't             Somewhat              Very
       Unlikely            Unlikely                Know                Likely                Likely



22. If you could vote in the Davis-Miller election, would you vote for Jim Davis (D) or
      Dan Miller (R)?  (Please mark only one.)

O      Jim Davis
O      Undecided, but leaning toward Jim Davis
O      Undecided
O      Undecided, but leaning toward Dan Miller
O      Dan Miller


23. Here a "1" means not at all interested, while a "5" means very interested. Generally
      speaking, which number between 1 and 5 would best represent how interested you are
      in politics?

  _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       Not at all                                                                                              Very
       Interested                                                                                          Interested


24. Which number between 1 and 5 would best represent how interested you are
      in the Davis-Miller election?

  _____  1 ___________  2 ____________3 __________  4  __________  5 ______
       Not at all                                                                                              Very
       Interested                                                                                          Interested
PART IV. For the following questions, please mark the response that applies to you. Again, your responses will be used for academic research purposes only.


25. Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an
Independent, or what?

O   Strong Republican
O   Weak Republican
O   Independent leaning toward Republican
O   Pure Independent
O   Independent leaning toward Democrat
O   Weak Democrat
O   Strong Democrat


26. Gender :
O  Female                   O  Male

27. Ethnicity :
O   African-American               O Hispanic                         O Asian-American
O   Native American                 O Caucasian                       O Other



    The End!  Thank you for your time and participation in this study!














Appendix II. Experimental Stimuli
          Treatment 1. The negative-deflating condition

Copyright 2000 The Austin American-Statesman Publishing Company
                                         The Austin American-Statesman

   October 25, 2000, Wednesday 2 STAR EDITION

HEADLINE: THE AD CAMPAIGN; Questions on Spending

BYLINE:  EDWARD RICE

BODY:

This is a 30-second commercial that Representative Jim Davis, the Democrat running for the District 10 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, began broadcasting yesterday. Davis' Republican opponent is former Representative Dan Miller.

PRODUCER -- Axelrod & Associates

ON THE SCREEN -- The commercial focuses on Miller's tax proposal and his stand on Medicare. Opens with a white-on-black phrase, "Can we trust Dan Miller?" Cut to Miller standing beside Newt Gingrich. More screens starkly print the announcer's charges against Miller's economic policies. Final words: "The clear choice: Vote for Jim Davis."

THE SCRIPT -- Can we trust Dan Miller to fight for us? No. He helped write the Gingrich budget slashing Medicare. Experts say Miller's tax plan would eat up the surplus, leaving no money to pay off the debt or extend the life of Social Security and Medicare. Miller's plan would not help families pay for college and long-term care nor help small businesses create jobs. Dan Miller-he would not fight for us. Texas cannot afford a politician like him in the U.S. House of Representatives.

ACCURACY -- The commercial tries to hold former Representative Dan Miller responsible for supporting Gingrich's plan to lop off $270 billion from Medicare. In fact, Miller voted to cut the rate of growth of Medicare, but not the actual budget. The ad also criticizes Miller's tax plan by saying the proposals would leave no money for families and seniors. According to fiscal experts, however, his plan would possibly leave several million dollars of surplus.

SCORECARD -- By pointing out Miller's past votes for Gingrich's budget, the spot seeks to project the image of a conservative politician, whose policies could spell economic disaster for middle-class people. But the spending issue does not rank high among voters this election. The commercial, indeed, may not appeal to swing voters, whom pollsters describe as fiscal conservatives.

Copyright_ 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
                                Treatment 2. The negative-reinforcing condition

Copyright 2000 The Austin American-Statesman Publishing Company
The Austin American-Statesman

   October 25, 2000, Wednesday 2 STAR EDITION


HEADLINE: THE AD CAMPAIGN; Questions on Spending

BYLINE:  EDWARD RICE

BODY:

This is a 30-second commercial that Representative Jim Davis, the Democrat running for the District 10 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, began broadcasting yesterday. Davis' Republican opponent is former Representative Dan Miller.

PRODUCER -- Axelrod & Associates

ON THE SCREEN -- The commercial focuses on Miller's tax proposal and his stand on Medicare. Opens with a white-on-black phrase, "Can we trust Dan Miller?" Cut to Miller standing beside Newt Gingrich. More screens starkly print the announcer's charges against Miller's economic policies. Final words: "The clear choice: Vote for Jim Davis."

THE SCRIPT -- Can we trust Dan Miller to fight for us? No. He helped write the Gingrich budget slashing Medicare. Experts say Miller's tax plan would eat up the surplus, leaving no money to pay off the debt or extend the life of Social Security and Medicare. Miller's plan would not help families pay for college and long-term care nor help small businesses create jobs. Dan Miller-he would not fight for us. Texas cannot afford a politician like him in the U.S. House of Representatives.

ACCURACY -- The commercial tries to hold former representative Miller responsible for supporting Gingrich's plan to lop off $270 billion from Medicare. It is true that Miller voted to cut the rate of growth of Medicare as well as the actual budget. The ad also criticizes Miller's tax plan by saying the proposals would leave no money for families and seniors. According to fiscal experts, his plan would possibly exhaust the surplus.

SCORECARD -- By pointing out Miller's past votes for Gingrich's budget, the spot seeks to project the image of a conservative politician, whose policies could spell economic disaster for middle-class people. Indeed, the spending issue ranks high among voters this election. The commercial may appeal to swing voters, whom pollsters describe as moderate on social issues.


Copyright_ 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Treatment 3. The positive-deflating condition

Copyright 2000 The Austin American-Statesman Publishing Company
The Austin American-Statesman

   October 25, 2000, Wednesday 2 STAR EDITION


HEADLINE: THE AD CAMPAIGN; Questions on Spending

BYLINE:  EDWARD RICE

BODY:

This is a 30-second commercial that Representative Jim Davis, the Democrat running for the District 10 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, began broadcasting yesterday. Davis' Republican opponent is former Representative Dan Miller.

PRODUCER -- Axelrod & Associates

ON THE SCREEN -- The commercial focuses on Davis' tax proposal and his stand on Medicare. Opens with a white-on-black phrase, "We trust Representative Jim Davis." Cut to Davis talking with senior citizens. More screens neatly print the announcer's praise for Davis' economic policies. Final words: "The clear choice: Vote for Jim Davis."

THE SCRIPT -- Can we trust Jim Davis to fight for us? Yes. He fought against the Gingrich budget slashing Medicare. Experts say Davis' tax plan would preserve the surplus, leaving enough money to pay off the debt and extend the life of Social Security and Medicare. Davis' plan would help families pay for college and long-term care, and help small businesses create jobs. Jim Davis-he will fight for us. Texas needs him in the U.S. House of Representatives.

ACCURACY -- The commercial stresses that Representative Jim Davis firmly opposed Newt Gingrich's plan to lop off $270 billion from Medicare. It is true that Davis voted against cutting the rate of growth of Medicate, but he did vote for cutting the actual budget. The ad also emphasizes that Davis' tax plan would maintain enough money for families and seniors. According to fiscal experts, however, his plan would possibly exhaust the surplus.

SCORECARD --- By pointing out Davis' past votes against Gingrich's budget, the spot seeks to project the image of a moderate politician, whose policies could save middle-class people from economic disaster. But the spending issue does not rank high among voters this election. The commercial, indeed, may not appeal to swing voters, whom pollsters describe as fiscal conservatives.

Copyright_ 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
                                 Treatment 4. The positive-reinforcing condition

Copyright 2000 The Austin American-Statesman Publishing Company
The Austin American-Statesman

   October 25, 2000, Wednesday 2 STAR EDITION


HEADLINE: THE AD CAMPAIGN; Questions on Spending

BYLINE:  EDWARD RICE

BODY:

This is a 30-second commercial that Representative Jim Davis, the Democrat running for the District 10 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, began broadcasting yesterday. Davis' Republican opponent is former Representative Dan Miller.

PRODUCER -- Axelrod & Associates

ON THE SCREEN -- The commercial focuses on Davis' tax proposal and his stand on Medicare. Opens with a white-on-black phrase, "We trust Representative Jim Davis." Cut to Davis talking with senior citizens. More screens neatly print the announcer's praise for Davis' economic policies. Final words: "The clear choice: Vote for Jim Davis."

THE SCRIPT -- Can we trust Jim Davis to fight for us? Yes. He fought against the Gingrich budget slashing Medicare. Experts say Davis' tax plan would preserve the surplus, leaving enough money to pay off the debt and extend the life of Social Security and Medicare. Davis' plan would help families pay for college and long-term care, and help small businesses create jobs. Jim Davis-he will fight for us. Texas needs him in the U.S. House of Representatives.

ACCURACY -- The commercial stresses that Representative Jim Davis firmly opposed
Newt Gingrich's plan to lop off $270 billion from Medicare. It is true that Davis voted against cutting the rate of growth of Medicare as well as the actual budget. The ad also emphasizes that Davis' tax plan would maintain enough money for families and seniors. According to fiscal experts, his plan would possibly leave several million dollars of surplus.

SCORECARD -- By pointing out Davis' past votes against Gingrich's budget, the spot seeks to project the image of a moderate politician, whose policies could save middle-class people from economic disaster. Indeed, the spending issue ranks high among voters this election. The ad may appeal to swing voters, whom pollsters describe as moderate on social issues.

Copyright_ 2000, LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Appendix III.    Debriefing Letter                                               October 27, 2000


Dear Participant:


Thank you for your time and participation in this study.

This letter is for helping you understand what the survey you have participated in is really about.

This survey is a part of an experimental study to examine the effects of ad watch news stories on the audiences' perception of political advertising and the sponsoring candidate, and their likelihood of turning out to vote in an election.

Participants actually were given four different stories, which vary in terms of the tone of news assessment of a political ad and in terms of the tone of the ad under review.

The news stories you read are NOT real stories; they were created by the experimenter for this particular study, and thus, the two congressional candidates, Jim Davis and Dan Miller, are FICTITIOUS figures.

I would sincerely like to apologize to you for this kind of manipulation, although it was inevitable because of the nature of this study. Again, I would like to assure you that the date I collect from this survey will be used for academic purposes and in aggregate form only.

If you have any concerns or questions regarding this study, please feel free to contact me at my email address.

I wish that you would accept my sincere apologies and understand all the process of the survey you have taken part in.

Again, I greatly appreciate all your help.

Sincerely,



My name
My affiliation