| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 美國研究所 === 88 === The prevalence of the TV has changed the practice of American presidential campaign. The so-called "Americanization" campaign is referring to that party elite has given way to media elite in building the campaign strategies. The electronic media has become the main source for voter to access the political information. Each candidate spends huge amount of money for paid media, which has become the single biggest portion of campaign spending. The use of the political TV advertisement could reflect all these characters of "Americanization" campaign. The author will take this political phenomenon to exam the practice, effect and controversies of the U.S. presidential TV campaign commercials. The main discussion as below:
The TV political advertisement is found to contain more substantive issue and also easier to be memorized by voters than TV news. TV Political advertisement is also found to have positive effective in improving and positing the image of the candidates and also setting the agendas in campaign. Recently, candidates are using more and more negative TV ads, however the "boomerang effects" might happen if they are not manipulated properly. The research found that negative ads contain more issue and is easier to be memorized than positive ads. It also found that negative ads were easier to get reported and manipulated. It was suggested that avoiding personal attack, focus on policy issue, bring the evidence and taking comparative form will be easier to be accepted by the voters.
The victory of Bush in 1988 is equal to his success attack ad strategies. Clinton practiced successful political marketing strategies, which includes precisely ad buy strategies, using ads to setting the agendas and defusing the impact of his negative news, successful negative ad strategies for winning two elections in 1992 and 1996.
The impact and controversies of using political advertisements toward American society includes: The rising of the "money politics" was blamed to huge expense of TV political ads. The campaign report by the media was influenced by the TV ads in terms of wording and analysis angle. The using of negative ads discourage voter participation and shrinking and polarizing the electorate.
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