Political advertising and election campaigns

Glenn W. Richardson

Chapter 18 in Handbook of Political Discourse, 2023, pp 288-300 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter is a political scientific and discourse analytical account of political advertising, focusing on its development in the US in the 20th and 21st centuries. It offers a diachronic picture of advertising in American election campaigns, discussing the nexus of discourse, politics and technology in relation to sociopsychological underpinnings of human communication in general. It demonstrates that, over time, epic changes in technology and politics have profoundly shaped the practice of electioneering. Consequently, assessing the effects of campaign appeals has been the most enduring line of advertising studies, motivating some of the best social science research between the early 20th century and now. Crucially, ads have been seen as proxies for the growing influence of money in politics, and the era of capital-intensive campaigning spawned numerous projects designed to determine ad spending effects through big data and advanced statistical modelling techniques. Looking to the future, the chapter outlines opportunities for researchers to situate political advertising yet better, in an environment with many communication platforms and ongoing discourses spanning multiple elections and jurisdictions.

Keywords: Politics and Public Policy Research Methods; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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