Erika Franklin Fowler
Biographic Data
| ID | 178964 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erika Franklin Fowler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erika Franklin |
| FAMILY NAME | Fowler |
| SIGNATURE | FOWLER E F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wesleyan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3141-572X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 413 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 57 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
“Shelter in place”: Early Covid-19 TV news reporting at the intersection of housing and health policy
How do local media report on housing and health during major crises? The current study examines how housing and policy issues were discussed in the local television (TV) media during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when policy measures were first introduced and communicated to the public. Drawing from a sample of housing-related news stories between March 2020 and June 2020 (N = 87), we explore how local TV news covered housing policy …
Television and Digital Advertising in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Campaign
Attributing digital election advertising to races and candidates: A multimodal approach to measuring outside group influence
Outside groups have become increasingly central to U.S. election campaigns since Citizens United, but their true reach remains opaque: gaps in reporting requirements and limited ad library data obscure how much they spend and which races they target. This gap limits our ability to evaluate their role in shaping electoral competition and influencing policy. We develop a scalable multimodal system that attributes digital ads to contests by identify…
Community Characteristics Predict Local News Agenda Building About Racial Health Disparities
We examined market-level social and demographic characteristics and station-level factors as predictors of local television news coverage of COVID-19-related racial disparities using the theoretical lens of agenda building and the community structure theory. We analyzed closed captioning of evening news broadcasts from 758 stations tracked in all 210 media markets from February 1 2020, to November 23 2021. We systematically validated keywords to …
Testing message strategies that minimize White Americans’ backlash to racial equity information
Scholars have worried that messages about racial equity can produce backlash from White respondents. Drawing upon psychological reactance theory, we compared cognitive and affective responses to a message emphasizing how a redistributive policy would benefit everyone (universalist message) to a message that also emphasized how the policy would especially benefit minoritized racial groups (targeted universalist message) among a sample of 871 White…
Racism as a Public Health Crisis: How Declarations Shape Local TV News Attention to Racism
Since 2020, many local, state, and federal governments have passed resolutions or formal statements that officially declared racism as a public health crisis in their communities. These declarations have created opportunities to raise public awareness about the harmful consequences of racism and have provided a platform for advocates and policymakers to propose policies and allocate resources to address the problem. This study contributes to our …
Election Advertising on Meta, Google, and Snapchat in 2024
We analyze digital advertising by candidates in federal races (presidential and congressional campaigns) in the 2024 U.S. general election cycle. We focus on election ads placed on Meta (which includes Instagram and Facebook) and Google (which includes YouTube, search, display and banner), and we provide some spending numbers from Snapchat advertising. We consider variation in ad spending across Meta and Google to get a sense not only of how digi…
Beyond fear of backlash: Effects of messages about structural drivers of Covid-19 disparities among large samples of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White Americans
Although U.S. health disparities are well-documented, the very communities that bear the brunt of those disparities are, ironically, underrepresented in scientific efforts to understand and address them. In two experiments (total N = 9523), we explored the consequences of omitting those perspectives for efforts to understand and address disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that, by prioritizing the perspectives of White Americans, studi…
Quantifying Data-Driven Campaigning Across Sponsors and Platforms
Although modern data-driven campaigning (DDC) is not entirely new, scholars have typically relied on reports and interviews of practitioners to understand its use. However, the advent of public ad libraries from Meta and Google provides an opportunity to measure the scope and variation in DDC practice in advertising across different types of sponsors and within sponsors across platforms. Using textual and audiovisual processing, we create a datab…
Public perceptions of television and online political advertising
For decades, television has dominated political advertising, but that is changing due to the rise of advertising online and on social and digital media. How do people view online political advertising and how does this compare to their views of television advertising? To address these questions, we examine a nationally representative survey of 1200 U.S. adults that was fielded in February 2021. The survey contains an experiment in which the descr…
Platform Convergence or Divergence? Comparing Political Ad Content Across Digital and Social Media Platforms
When it comes to the study of the messaging of online political campaigns, theory suggests that platform divergence should be common, but much research finds considerable convergence across platforms. In this research, we examine variation across digital and social media platforms in the types of paid campaign messages that are distributed, focusing on their goals, tone, and the partisanship of political rhetoric. We use data on the content of pa…
Politicizing Masks? Examining the Volume and Content of Local News Coverage of Face Coverings in the U.S. Through the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly became a political and health communication crisis whose impact varied by geographic location in the United States. Although local television is known to be an important source of public information, little is known about how it covered the pandemic. We analyze the volume and content of local TV coverage of masks from 758 stations across all 210 U.S. media markets in the first 22 months of the pandemic to assess how …
Understanding the Message(s): Spending and Content of Political Advertising on Television in 2024
This paper leverages comprehensive data on political advertising on television sponsored by candidates, parties and outside groups in the 2024 election. We show, for one, that the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was extremely close in terms of the volume of advertising. Second, Harris and Trump focused their ads on bread-and-butter issues like the economy and taxes, though Harris focused more on abortion and women’s right…
Prevalence and Potential Consequences of Exposure to Conflicting Information about Mammography: Results from Nationally-Representative Survey of U.S. Adults
As scientific evidence evolves and clinical guidelines change, a certain amount of conflicting health information in the news media is to be expected. However, research is needed to better understand the public's level of exposure to conflicting health information and the possible consequences of such exposure. This study quantifies levels of public exposure to one paradigmatic case: conflicting information about breast cancer screening for women…
Digital Advertising in the 2022 Midterms
This analysis focuses on candidate-sponsored digital advertising spending in federal races in the 2022 midterm elections. We focus the analysis on spending on Meta (which includes Facebook and Instagram) and Google (which includes YouTube and search-related ads). We identify just under $150 million in candidate spending in federal races on these two platforms. We find, perhaps surprisingly, that combined spending on Meta and Google was lower in f…
Television Advertising in the 2022 Midterms
This analysis focuses on broadcast advertising spending in congressional races in 2022. We discuss four patterns that characterized ads in these races. First, there was a record volume of television advertising for a midterm election. Despite frequent claims that traditional ads would begin to decline, the air war featured more spots than in 2014 and 2018. Second, Democrats continued to dominate ad totals, a trend that persisted from congressiona…
Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in Covid-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March–June 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted health and social outcomes for people of color in the United States. This study examined how local TV news stories attributed causes and solutions for COVID-19-related racial health and social disparities, and whether coverage of such disparities changed after George Floyd’s murder, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We systematically validated keywords to extract relevant news co…
Spending Fast and Furious: Political Advertising in 2020
This article is a “first look” at political advertising in 2020. Spending on political advertising in the United States in 2020 obliterated records, and Democrats held huge advantages in the presidential race and in most congressional and senatorial races. In addition, all indicators suggest that spending on digital advertising continued to rise. Political advertising was largely similar in tone to past years and, in the presidential race, was su…
Campaign Advertising and the Cultivation of Crime Worry: Testing Relationships With Two Large Datasets From the 2016 U.S. Election Cycle
Previous research has documented that political information in the mass media can shape attitudes and behaviors beyond voter choice and election turnout. The current study extends this body of work to examine associations between televised political campaign advertising (one of the most common forms of political communication people encounter) and worry about crime and violence in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We merge two l…
The Influence of Goals and Timing: How Campaigns Deploy Ads on Facebook
We examine how campaigns use advertising in the current digital era – and how spending decisions depend on the stage of the campaign and the particular goal being pursued. Our investigation relies on a database consisting of thousands of ads placed on Facebook by 24 different U.S. Senate campaigns in 2018. In the end, we find that campaigns pursue a large number of goals in their Facebook advertising and that the sequence of the campaign has a ma…
Paid family leave on local television news in the United States: Setting the agenda for policy reform
Access to paid family and medical leave ("paid leave") has bipartisan support among lawmakers in the United States, but the issue remains stalled on the public policy agenda. The U.S. does not currently have a federal paid leave policy, and unpaid leave-guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993-is all that is available to the majority of workers. In this study, we examine the content of local television news as representations of, an…
When “Tried and True” Advocacy Strategies Backfire
A core principle of policy advocacy is that to engage decision makers in the urgency, complexity, and controversy of problems, advocates must effectively tell the story of those issues. Policy stories, or narratives, paint mental pictures of what a problem is, who is affected, and how it came to be. Yet, the persuasive effects of narratives on one key group, state legislators, remain understudied. Drawing from the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF)…
Exposure to televised political campaign advertisements aired in the United States 2015-2016 election cycle and psychological distress
There was a consistent positive association between the volume of campaign advertising exposure and a reported diagnosis of anxiety among American adults
Correlates and disparities of intention to vaccinate against Covid-19
Political Advertising Online and Offline
Despite the rapid growth of online political advertising, the vast majority of scholarship on political advertising relies exclusively on evidence from candidates' television advertisements. The relatively low cost of creating and deploying online advertisements and the ability to target online advertisements more precisely may broaden the set of candidates who advertise and allow candidates to craft messages to more narrow audiences than on tele…
Political Advertising Online and Offline
Despite the rapid growth of online political advertising, the vast majority of scholarship on political advertising relies exclusively on evidence from candidates' television advertisements. The relatively low cost of creating and deploying online advertisements and the ability to target online advertisements more precisely may broaden the set of candidates who advertise and allow candidates to craft messages to more narrow audiences than on tele…
Correlates and disparities of intention to vaccinate against Covid-19
Negative, Angry, and Ubiquitous: Political Advertising in 2012
Record amounts of money went to purchase television advertising during the 2012 election cycle, resulting in unprecedented volumes of advertising. This increase was due in part to the ease with which outside groups, such as super PACs, were able to raise and spend advertising dollars in the current, post-Citizens United, regulatory regime. Advertising in 2012 was also extremely negative, especially at the presidential level, and frequently evoked…
The Content and Effect of Politicized Health Controversies
Health issues are increasingly becoming politicized, but little is known about how politicization takes shape in the news and its effect on the public. We analyze the evolution of politicization in news coverage of two health controversies: the uproar over the 2009 mammography screening guidelines and the 2006-2007 debate over mandating the HPV vaccine as a requirement for middle school-aged girls. We then examine the public response to politiciz…
Issue Consistency? Comparing Television Advertising, Tweets, and E-mail in the 2014 Senate Campaigns
This research explores the extent to which campaigns are consistent across communications channels in the issues that they emphasize. We compare the issue agendas in candidates' television advertising, tweets and emails from dozens of U.S. Senate races in 2014, creating a measure of issue convergence for each candidate. We find moderate levels of issue consistency, though issue agendas match more strongly for television ads and Twitter, two chann…
Local Television and Newspaper Coverage of Political Advertising
How often do the news media cover the advertising of political candidates? And how do the characteristics of the news outlet, the media market, the race, and the advertisements themselves influence the extent to which this ad amplification takes place? Examining Senate and gubernatorial campaign coverage by several newspapers and local television stations in five midwestern states in 2006, we find that coverage of advertising is quite extensive, …
Sponsorship, Disclosure, and Donors: Limiting the Impact of Outside Group Ads
This research examines how an attack ad’s sponsorship conditions its effectiveness. We use data from a survey experiment that exposed participants to a fictional campaign ad. Treatments varied the ad’s sponsor (candidate vs. group), the group’s donor base (small donor vs. large donors), and the format of the donor disclosure (news reports vs. disclaimers in the ads). We find that ads sponsored by unknown groups are more effective than candidate-s…
In a Different Voice? Explaining the Use of Men and Women as Voice-Over Announcers in Political Advertising
We draw on a comprehensive database of American political advertising and television audience profile data to investigate the ways in which gender influences choices about the use of voice-overs in political advertising. Our findings suggest that although men voice the vast majority of political ads, campaigns do strategically choose the sex of the voice-over announcer and that it systematically varies with candidate characteristics, ad tone, and…
Loose Cannons or Loyal Foot Soldiers? Toward a More Complex Theory of Interest Group Advertising Strategies
Recent court decisions have encouraged new types of interest groups to become involved in election campaigns. Yet questions remain about whether interest group sponsorship of advertising affects the content of the issues being discussed. The ability of interest groups to influence the campaign agenda has implications for the extent to which politicians can be held accountable by citizens. In this research, we present a new conceptual framework fo…
Explaining Perceptions of Advertising Tone
The authors investigate whether the news media and the tone of actual ads aired during a political campaign influence people’s perceptions of campaign ad tone. Using data on the content of political advertising, local television news coverage, and local newspaper coverage in nine races in five midwestern states in 2006, the authors discover that perceptions of ad tone respond to both exposure to advertising and exposure to local news media. Both …
The Influence of Goals and Timing: How Campaigns Deploy Ads on Facebook
We examine how campaigns use advertising in the current digital era – and how spending decisions depend on the stage of the campaign and the particular goal being pursued. Our investigation relies on a database consisting of thousands of ads placed on Facebook by 24 different U.S. Senate campaigns in 2018. In the end, we find that campaigns pursue a large number of goals in their Facebook advertising and that the sequence of the campaign has a ma…
Political Advertising in 2016: The Presidential Election as Outlier
The 2016 presidential campaign broke the mold when it comes to patterns of political advertising. Using data from the Wesleyan Media Project, we show the race featured far less advertising than the previous cycle, a huge imbalance in the number of ads across candidates and one candidate who almost ignored discussions of policy. This departure from past patterns, however, was not replicated at the congressional level. We draw some lessons about ad…
The Long-Term and Geographically Constrained Effects of Campaign Advertising on Political Polarization and Sorting
Scholars agree that there has been an increase in polarization among political elites, though there continues to be debate on the extent to which polarization exists among the mass public. Still, there is general agreement that the American public has become more sorted over the past two decades, a time during which political ad volumes have increased and ads have become more negative. In this research, we explore whether there is a link between …
Exploring the validity of electronic newspaper databases
Do electronic newspaper databases contain all of the stories that appear in the print edition? And does this depend on the database used? To explore these questions, we collected print copies of newspapers from cities across the USA and Canada. We compared coverage of two topics in these newspapers with the coverage obtained from keyword searches in three electronic newspaper databases. We conclude that the stories obtained through electronic sea…
Issue Emergence, Evolution of Controversy, and Implications for Competitive Framing: The Case of the HPV Vaccine
Although scholarship on competitive framing acknowledges that framing is a dynamic process in which the early stages may matter most, very little research has focused on the dynamics of issue emergence. In this article, we draw on several literatures to develop theories for how controversy related to new issues will emerge and expand in news coverage. Through a comprehensive content analysis of 101 local newspapers across the fifty U.S. states, w…
The Issue Focus of Online and Television Advertising in the 2016 Presidential Campaign
Theories of campaign issue emphasis were developed in a pre-digital era. How well do these theories explain spending in the current era, when digital media allow for targeting of specific types of voters? In this research, we compare how the 2016 campaigns, both primary and general election, deployed television advertising with how they deployed online advertising. We suggest that, because online messages are targeted to specific viewer profiles …
Television vs. YouTube: Political advertising in the 2012 presidential election
Few studies have examined political content on YouTube, especially in comparison to the traditional television spots. Relying on both audience- and platform-based theories, we develop expectations of differences in content between political ads posted online and aired on television. We use content analysis to compare both online political ads and televised political ads from the 2012 presidential campaign, relying upon data from YouTube and the W…
Political Advertising in 2014: The Year of the Outside Group
The volume of televised political advertising plateaued in 2014, as did levels of negativity. Yet the most interesting story about this advertising was the extensive involvement of outside groups, many of which did not disclose their donors. In many of the most competitive Senate races, groups surpassed the parties – and sometimes even the candidates – as the primary sponsors of political advertising. We speculate on what these patterns from 2014…
Racism as a Public Health Crisis: How Declarations Shape Local TV News Attention to Racism
Since 2020, many local, state, and federal governments have passed resolutions or formal statements that officially declared racism as a public health crisis in their communities. These declarations have created opportunities to raise public awareness about the harmful consequences of racism and have provided a platform for advocates and policymakers to propose policies and allocate resources to address the problem. This study contributes to our …
Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in Covid-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March–June 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted health and social outcomes for people of color in the United States. This study examined how local TV news stories attributed causes and solutions for COVID-19-related racial health and social disparities, and whether coverage of such disparities changed after George Floyd’s murder, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We systematically validated keywords to extract relevant news co…
Spending Fast and Furious: Political Advertising in 2020
This article is a “first look” at political advertising in 2020. Spending on political advertising in the United States in 2020 obliterated records, and Democrats held huge advantages in the presidential race and in most congressional and senatorial races. In addition, all indicators suggest that spending on digital advertising continued to rise. Political advertising was largely similar in tone to past years and, in the presidential race, was su…
When “Tried and True” Advocacy Strategies Backfire
A core principle of policy advocacy is that to engage decision makers in the urgency, complexity, and controversy of problems, advocates must effectively tell the story of those issues. Policy stories, or narratives, paint mental pictures of what a problem is, who is affected, and how it came to be. Yet, the persuasive effects of narratives on one key group, state legislators, remain understudied. Drawing from the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF)…
Politics as Usual? When and Why Traditional Actors Often Dominate YouTube Campaigning
This research explores the extent to which YouTube helps democratize campaigns by allowing nontraditional political actors to be heard. We examine political advertisements posted on YouTube in races for the U.S. Senate in 2010. We find that ads posted by citizens and quasi-political organizations are viewed just as often as ads sponsored by some traditional electoral actors, such as parties and interest groups, but that ads sponsored by candidate…
The Blue Wave: Assessing Political Advertising Trends and Democratic Advantages in 2018
This research offers a post-mortem on political advertising in 2018, providing important context for 2018’s “blue wave.” In a majority of US House of Representatives races, there were more pro-Democratic than pro-Republican ads, including in the most competitive contests. The one theme that united pro-Democratic advertising was health care, which was mentioned in nearly three of every five Democratic ads in the fall campaign. Contrary to the narr…
The Effects of Men’s and Women’s Voices in Political Advertising
Campaigns disproportionately choose men to voice their political ads, but it is not clear that men’s voices are more credible or better able to persuade an audience. We employ experimental data and novel survey data to test theoretical expectations about the circumstances under which men’s and women’s voices might be more or less effective, specifically looking at how gender association of the ad issues and gender of the message recipient shape t…
Spanish- and English-language Local Television Coverage of Politics and the Tendency to Cater to Latino Audiences
Congressional mandates, federal regulatory policy, local broadcasters, and democratic ideals agree that local media should present local news in a way that adequately represents (and ideally unifies) local communities. But how do local broadcasters determine the composition of their local community? And is their portrayal of the community consistent with the ideals of representative democracy? Through one of the first systematic examinations of S…
Local Television and Newspaper Coverage of Political Advertising
How often do the news media cover the advertising of political candidates? And how do the characteristics of the news outlet, the media market, the race, and the advertisements themselves influence the extent to which this ad amplification takes place? Examining Senate and gubernatorial campaign coverage by several newspapers and local television stations in five midwestern states in 2006, we find that coverage of advertising is quite extensive, …
Does Local Television News Coverage Cultivate Fatalistic Beliefs About Cancer Prevention
A substantial proportion of American adults hold fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention despite evidence that a large proportion of cancer deaths are preventable. Several scholars suggest that news media coverage is one source of these beliefs, but scant evidence has been brought to bear on this assertion. We report findings from two studies that assess the plausibility of the claim that local television (TV) news cultivates fatalistic belief…
Advertising Trends in 2010
Political advertising offers an important window on American campaigns and elections. We analyze a comprehensive database of political ads aired during the 2010 midterms to shed light on campaign strategies in this history-making election. We find that with the increase in competitive races in 2010, the volume of advertising rose too, as did its negativity. Moreover, we track the issues mentioned by each party, finding that while the parties agre…
Issue Emergence, Evolution of Controversy, and Implications for Competitive Framing: The Case of the HPV Vaccine
Although scholarship on competitive framing acknowledges that framing is a dynamic process in which the early stages may matter most, very little research has focused on the dynamics of issue emergence. In this article, we draw on several literatures to develop theories for how controversy related to new issues will emerge and expand in news coverage. Through a comprehensive content analysis of 101 local newspapers across the fifty U.S. states, w…
Exploring the validity of electronic newspaper databases
Do electronic newspaper databases contain all of the stories that appear in the print edition? And does this depend on the database used? To explore these questions, we collected print copies of newspapers from cities across the USA and Canada. We compared coverage of two topics in these newspapers with the coverage obtained from keyword searches in three electronic newspaper databases. We conclude that the stories obtained through electronic sea…
Explaining Perceptions of Advertising Tone
The authors investigate whether the news media and the tone of actual ads aired during a political campaign influence people’s perceptions of campaign ad tone. Using data on the content of political advertising, local television news coverage, and local newspaper coverage in nine races in five midwestern states in 2006, the authors discover that perceptions of ad tone respond to both exposure to advertising and exposure to local news media. Both …
Political and News Media Factors Shaping Public Awareness of the HPV Vaccine
Negative, Angry, and Ubiquitous: Political Advertising in 2012
Record amounts of money went to purchase television advertising during the 2012 election cycle, resulting in unprecedented volumes of advertising. This increase was due in part to the ease with which outside groups, such as super PACs, were able to raise and spend advertising dollars in the current, post-Citizens United, regulatory regime. Advertising in 2012 was also extremely negative, especially at the presidential level, and frequently evoked…
Political Advertising in 2014: The Year of the Outside Group
The volume of televised political advertising plateaued in 2014, as did levels of negativity. Yet the most interesting story about this advertising was the extensive involvement of outside groups, many of which did not disclose their donors. In many of the most competitive Senate races, groups surpassed the parties – and sometimes even the candidates – as the primary sponsors of political advertising. We speculate on what these patterns from 2014…
Advances in the Study of Political Advertising
One of the biggest recent advances in the study of political advertising has been the availability of systematic sources of data on when and where ads air—and their content. In this piece, we review the various data sources that scholars have used to study political advertising, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses. We then discuss recent studies that have employed data on political advertising to examine the effects of ad exposure on citiz…
Political Advertising
Political advertising provides a key link between the politician and the public. The concern over massive manipulation through political propaganda that drove early empirical research on the subject has subsided; however, newer research concludes that advertising can have nontrivial but short‐lived influence on voter preferences. Furthermore, increasing levels of negativity and concerns over the consequences of such negativity spawned a heated de…
Covering Controversy: What Are the Implications for Women's Health
Politics as Usual? When and Why Traditional Actors Often Dominate YouTube Campaigning
This research explores the extent to which YouTube helps democratize campaigns by allowing nontraditional political actors to be heard. We examine political advertisements posted on YouTube in races for the U.S. Senate in 2010. We find that ads posted by citizens and quasi-political organizations are viewed just as often as ads sponsored by some traditional electoral actors, such as parties and interest groups, but that ads sponsored by candidate…
Sponsorship, Disclosure, and Donors: Limiting the Impact of Outside Group Ads
This research examines how an attack ad’s sponsorship conditions its effectiveness. We use data from a survey experiment that exposed participants to a fictional campaign ad. Treatments varied the ad’s sponsor (candidate vs. group), the group’s donor base (small donor vs. large donors), and the format of the donor disclosure (news reports vs. disclaimers in the ads). We find that ads sponsored by unknown groups are more effective than candidate-s…
In a Different Voice? Explaining the Use of Men and Women as Voice-Over Announcers in Political Advertising
We draw on a comprehensive database of American political advertising and television audience profile data to investigate the ways in which gender influences choices about the use of voice-overs in political advertising. Our findings suggest that although men voice the vast majority of political ads, campaigns do strategically choose the sex of the voice-over announcer and that it systematically varies with candidate characteristics, ad tone, and…
The Content and Effect of Politicized Health Controversies
Health issues are increasingly becoming politicized, but little is known about how politicization takes shape in the news and its effect on the public. We analyze the evolution of politicization in news coverage of two health controversies: the uproar over the 2009 mammography screening guidelines and the 2006-2007 debate over mandating the HPV vaccine as a requirement for middle school-aged girls. We then examine the public response to politiciz…
Political Advertising in 2016: The Presidential Election as Outlier
The 2016 presidential campaign broke the mold when it comes to patterns of political advertising. Using data from the Wesleyan Media Project, we show the race featured far less advertising than the previous cycle, a huge imbalance in the number of ads across candidates and one candidate who almost ignored discussions of policy. This departure from past patterns, however, was not replicated at the congressional level. We draw some lessons about ad…
Loose Cannons or Loyal Foot Soldiers? Toward a More Complex Theory of Interest Group Advertising Strategies
Recent court decisions have encouraged new types of interest groups to become involved in election campaigns. Yet questions remain about whether interest group sponsorship of advertising affects the content of the issues being discussed. The ability of interest groups to influence the campaign agenda has implications for the extent to which politicians can be held accountable by citizens. In this research, we present a new conceptual framework fo…
The Effects of Men’s and Women’s Voices in Political Advertising
Campaigns disproportionately choose men to voice their political ads, but it is not clear that men’s voices are more credible or better able to persuade an audience. We employ experimental data and novel survey data to test theoretical expectations about the circumstances under which men’s and women’s voices might be more or less effective, specifically looking at how gender association of the ad issues and gender of the message recipient shape t…
Local Television News Coverage of the Affordable Care Act: Emphasizing Politics Over Consumer Information
Objectives. To examine the public health and policy-relevant messages conveyed through local television news during the first stage of Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation, when about 10 million Americans gained insurance. Methods. We conducted a content analysis of 1569 ACA-related local evening television news stories, obtained from sampling local news aired between October 1, 2013, and April 19, 2014. Coders systematically collected data u…
Women’s Awareness of and Responses to Messages About Breast Cancer Overdiagnosis and Overtreatment: Results From a 2016 National Survey
BACKGROUND: Scientists, clinicians, and other experts aim to maximize the benefits of cancer screening while minimizing its harms. Chief among these harms are overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Although available data suggest that patient awareness of these harms is low, we know little about how patients respond to information about these phenomena. OBJECTIVES: Using the case of breast cancer screening, this study assesses women's awareness of and …
The Evolution of Mammography Controversy in the News Media: A Content Analysis of Four Publicized Screening Recommendations, 2009 to 2016
Television vs. YouTube: Political advertising in the 2012 presidential election
Few studies have examined political content on YouTube, especially in comparison to the traditional television spots. Relying on both audience- and platform-based theories, we develop expectations of differences in content between political ads posted online and aired on television. We use content analysis to compare both online political ads and televised political ads from the 2012 presidential campaign, relying upon data from YouTube and the W…
Issue Consistency? Comparing Television Advertising, Tweets, and E-mail in the 2014 Senate Campaigns
This research explores the extent to which campaigns are consistent across communications channels in the issues that they emphasize. We compare the issue agendas in candidates' television advertising, tweets and emails from dozens of U.S. Senate races in 2014, creating a measure of issue convergence for each candidate. We find moderate levels of issue consistency, though issue agendas match more strongly for television ads and Twitter, two chann…
Political science (49 works) · Advertising (38 works) · Business (36 works) · Politics (35 works) · Law (29 works) · Media Studies and Communication (29 works) · Media Influence and Politics (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Social Media and Politics (25 works) · Political advertising (22 works)