| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 行銷傳播管理研究所 === 104 === In recent years, negative campaigning has been found in most Taiwan’s elections, which almost became one of the corrupt customs that are deeply ingrained in electoral culture. Although candidates who are defamed usually sternly deny that or strongly rebut to rumors by clarifying the facts, they still may be overwhelmed by the malicious attacks, even eventually went into mudsling. It doesn’t only encourage low quality elections, but also bring dishonor to the spirit and value of democracy. This study proposes strategies of humorous rebuttal and applies it to advertising as a countermeasure to negative image advertising with an aim to protect the images of candidates and bury the hatchet by the power of witty utterance. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to compare the advertising effects among different types of rebuttal advertising and examine the moderation of the gender of responding candidate and different types of negative advertising.
A 2 (types of negative advertising: mocking attack vs. linking attack)x 4 (types of rebuttal advertising: traditional rebuttal-positive response vs. traditional rebuttal -negative response vs. humorous rebuttal- self-deprecation vs. humorous rebuttal- other-deprecation) x 2 (responding candidate gender: male vs. female) between-subjects design experiment was conducted to test seven hypotheses and one research question. The results indicate that (1) using humorous rebuttal leads to better advertising attitudes and better voters’ responses toward the responding candidates, while using traditional rebuttal can undermine opponents’ images and voters’ attitudes toward the opponents more effectively; (2) male (vs. female) candidates can strengthen the positive effectiveness of humorous rebuttal (vs. traditional rebuttal) on advertising attitudes and responses toward the responding candidates, while by using traditional rebuttal, only female candidates can effectively injury opponents’ images and make voters have poor responses to them; (3) in terms of sub-strategies of traditional rebuttal, female (vs. male) candidates can strengthen the positive effectiveness of positive (vs. negative) response on advertising attitudes and voters’ responses toward the responding candidates; (4) in terms of sub-strategies of humor rebuttal, the effectiveness of humorous self-deprecation and other-deprecation advertising used by male candidates are near the same, but it is more proper for female candidates to use self-deprecation other than other-deprecation advertisements; and (5) mocking attack (vs. linking attack) will strengthen the positive effectiveness of humorous rebuttal (vs. traditional rebuttal) used by candidates and weaken the positive effectiveness of positive (vs. negative ) response on advertising attitudes and voters’ responses toward the responding candidates, while in the case of linking attack, opponents’ image and voters’ attitudes toward them can only be injured by using traditional rebuttal.
This research can not only make theoretical contribution to the rebuttal advertising, political humors and gender stereotypes, but also offer practical suggestions for campaign teams about how to rebut negative political advertising.
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