A presidential campaign is a vast
exercise in communications. Personal encounters are
usually most telling in shaping impressions of a
candidate, but a candidate can only meet so many people
first-hand and must get his or her message out to a wider
audience through an infinite variety of free media
opportunities and paid advertising.
Presidential candidates and their
campaigns, political parties, groups supporting or
opposing various candidates, and groups seeking to inject
their issues into the presidential campaign dialogue are
working hard to get their messages out. Crafting an
effective message is not an easy task; citizens are
bombarded with countless communications every day and are
busy with their day to day lives, so the intended target
may not even receive or pay attention to the
message.
Among the possibilities for paid media, depending on its budget, a campaign can run ads on broadcast, cable or satellite television, on radio stations with varying formats, it can run print ads in national, local or community newspapers or in magazines, it can put ads on the Internet or on various social media, it can print up nice, glossy brochures or less expensive flyers, it can do direct mail or robocalls, or it can put up a billboard. Television continues to get the majority of campaign media spending, while direct mail and Internet also receive significant shares. An interesting article on Neilsen website describes how businesses can use "marketing mix modeling to support fact-based budget allocation decisions;" campaigns face the same kind of decision-making.1
In terms of free media, a candidate do
all manner of interviews and media appearances,
deliver a formal policy speech at a think tank in
Washington or New York, hold a town hall meeting outside
the Beltway, write a book and do a book tour (+),
make
a photo-friendly visit to a significant location such as
the border or an energy plant, or even stop in for an
impromptu visit to a local cafe. Some candidates are
better communicators than others. Careful
consideration of a candidate's use and misuse of language
can provide insights into his or her outlook and world
view.2 Because
the candidate cannot go everywhere, the campaign will
sometimes send surrogates, generally family members,
elected officials or celebrities. A candidate's wife
can be a particularly effective ambassador for the
candidate. The campaign can generate free media as
well, for example by rolling out a coalition, doing a
canvass or posting an edgy video on YouTube.
Campaigns continue to devote increasing attention and
resources to social media; Donald Trump's use of Twitter
in 2016 was a major factor in his success. Facebook,
a titan of social media, has come under considerable
scrutiny. Social media's role in spreading
misinformation is a significant problem, and the big
social media companies have taken differing approaches to
stem abuses.3
For the latter part of the primaries and the Fall campaign, the coronavirus pandemic changed the communications equation in a number of ways. In the Fall, the Trump campaign pushed forward with a very active schedule of campaign travel by the principals and surrogates, including airport rallies by Trump, Trump family member events, surrogate bus tours, busy field offices and people out knocking on doors. This approach was criticized as it ran counter to public health recommendations. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign went largely virtual. The state campaign teams organized a lot of virtual events with surrogates. The relatively few in-person events Biden and Harris did had very limited numbers of participants and pooled media. Instead of large rallies to energize participants, there were unpublicized, contrived events to make the news. Instead of active field offices and canvassing, Democrats opened voter activation centers or depots where supporters could stop by to pick up materials.
In determining the message he or she
wishes to convey, a candidate starts with his or her
individual experience, intelligence and values and has
input from a team of trusted advisors. Paid
consultants may weigh in to determine how the message
should be presented, i.e. what medium, what approach
(serious and straightforward, humorous, dramatic...) and
so forth. Consultants at times seem to be
ubiquitous and some argue that they have changed
campaign discourse for the worse.
The effectiveness of the message depends on such factors as timing (what other events are happening in the world), the medium used (how the message is delivered), and the receptivity of the audience. In modern campaigns there is a lot of testing, focus grouping and polling to shape the message.4 Sometimes a meticulously crafted message will flop, while a slapped together one will go viral. During the long campaign, candidates will inevitably stray from the talking points or make gaffes which completely overshadow the message. Meanwhile supporters are out spreading the word. A contact through social media, a call, note or visit from a neighbor, supporter or campaign staffer can be much more effective than an annoying robocall. Even small features such as the logo or typeface a campaign uses or the musical zing at the end of an ad can make a difference. With more and more Americans using the Internet and mobile devices to obtain news and information about politics, campaigns are devoting more resources to online communications and social media.
Of course, the candidate and the
campaign are not the only ones communicating; the
message environment is crowded with communications from
competing campaigns, interest groups and the political
parties. Groups such as American
Bridge 21 Century PAC and America
Rising PAC, are trying to tar potential candidates
of the other side with as many negatives as
possible. The media are sifting
through and reporting these messages or parts of them.
Notes
1. See:
Josh Kowal. "5 Important Questions To Ask Your
Marketing Mix Vendor." Neilsen, Jan. 10, 2019.
Also: According to Kantar Media, CMAG, an
estimated $5.25 billion was spent on political advertising
in the 2018 midterms comprising $3.1 billion on local
broadcast TV, $1.2 billion on local cable TV and $950
million on digital. (>)
And: Tom Edmonds, a Republican media strategist and former president of the American Association of Political Consultants, estimated in 2012 that 55-percent of campaign advertising dollars go to television, 15-percent to direct mail, 13-percent to Internet, 8-percent to radio, 8-percent to newspaper and 1-percent to outdoor advertising. (Presentation at Newspaper Association of America/American Society of Newspaper Editors Convention in Washington, DC, April 5, 2012).
And: John Sides, Lynn Vavreck and Christopher
Warshaw. "The Effect of Television Advertising
in United States Elections." Conditionally accepted
at the American Political Science Review, Aug. 24,
2021.
2. Candidates have a variety of
rhetorical approaches and abilities ranging from stream of
consciousness rambles (Trump) to blunt and plain spoken
(former candidate Richard Ojeda or former potential
candidate Michael Avenatti) to cautious (Sen. Kamala
Harris) to garrulous and meandering (former Vice President
Joe Biden) to abstract (Marianne Williamson). Is a
candidate able to connect with his or her audience; can he
or she deliver a stirring speech or does he or she seem to
take the air out of a room; does he or she come across as
direct and authentic or seem overly scripted; can he or
she think on his or her feet and respond to
questions?
One aspect of language which candidate and
President Donald Trump has put a spotlight on is the
question of truthfulness. The Washington Post found
that through Dec. 30, 2018, President Trump had made 7,645
false claims, including two days in early Nov. 2018 where
he made over 100 false claims on a single day. The Toronto Star has also
been tracking false claims by President Trump and tallied
over 4,000 false claims by him as of Jan. 2019; the
project notes that "the sheer frequency of Trump’s
inaccuracy is a central story of his
presidency." By April 18, 2020 the Washington Post tally
had increased to 18,000 false claims in 1,170 days.
Data: Washington
Post | Toronto
Star.
Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly.
"President Trump has made 7,645 false or misleading claims
over 710 days." Washington
Post, Dec. 30, 2018
Daniel Dale. "Trump has said 1,340,330 words as
president. They’re getting more dishonest, a Star study
shows." Toronto
Star, July 14, 2018. Trump provides an extreme
example for those studying the use and misuse of
language.
Joan Conrow. "What drove the COVID
misinformation 'infodemic'?" Cornell
University Alliance for Science, Oct. 1, 2020.
3. Amid concerns about competitiveness (+),
privacy, manipulation, and complaints by conservatives and
others about bias (+),
there are arguments that big tech companies need to be
broken up or at least better regulated (+).
Political speech is at stake and these
companies are grappling to find the right approach.
Twitter has been adjusting its policies throughout the
cycle, trying to find the right balance, while Facebook
has drawn criticism for "unkept promises, uneven policies
(+)."
On Feb. 4, 2020, after much input, Twitter announced a new
rule on synthetic and manipulated media (+).
On
May
26
Twitter
applied
fact
checking
to
a
couple
of Trump tweets for the first time (+).
On Sept. 10 Twitter announced expanded policies to protect
civic conversation under which it will "label or remove
false or misleading information intended to undermine
public confidence in an election or other civic process (+)."
On Oct. 9 Twitter announced additional steps to
"increase context and encourage more thoughtful
consideration before Tweets are amplified (+)."
There has also been much focus on paid
advertising. In Oct. 2019 the Biden campaign asked
Facebook and Twitter to stop running a video ad from the
Trump campaign that contained false claims about Biden and
the Ukraine; as reported by the New York Times, Facebook refused.
On Oct. 10, 2019 the Warren for President campaign started
running intentionally false ads on Facebook that put a
spotlight on the platform's policy on political
advertising. The ads, which met Facebook's criteria,
stated, "Breaking News: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook just
endorsed Donald Trump for re-election (+)."
Facebook did implement some changes as the
general election approached. In a Sept. 3, 2020 post
Zuckerberg announced Facebook would block new political
and issue ads during the final week of the campaign
because "in the final days of an election there may not be
enough time to contest new claims." On Oct. 7, 2020
Facebook announced it would temporarily not run political
ads in the days immediately following the Nov. 3 election
"to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse."
The late Oct. restriction on new ads resulted in technical
issues which affected some advertisers, who were not happy
(+).
In contrast to Facebook's generally
hands-off approach, Twitter tried a different route.
On Oct. 30, 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced
Twitter would stop political advertising on the
platform. He stated, "Internet political ads present
entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine
learning-based optimization of messaging and
micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and
deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication,
and overwhelming scale (+)."
Google also announced a few changes to
its political ads policy in 2019 (+)
and said it will not run election-related ads in the days
following the Nov. 3 election.
4. Sasha Issenberg. "The Death of
the Hunch" May 22, 2012. Slate.
See for example Nielsen link below.
"a nonpartisan, nonprofit 'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding... FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania."
The Computational
Propaganda Project
Project at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University..."a team of researchers investigating the impact of automated computer scripts–computational propaganda–on public life. This work includes analysis of how tools like social media bots are used to manipulate public opinion by megaphoning or repressing political content in various forms: disinformation, hate speech, fake news, political harassment, etc."
this is very old but it'll make you think...
Marketing
Nielsen
"a global measurement and data analytics company that provides the most complete and trusted view available of consumers and markets worldwide."
Digital IQ Index® seeks to provide an
actionable metric for digital competence--"a robust tool
to diagnose digital strengths and weaknesses and help
organizations prioritize incremental investment in
digital." The methodology considers an
organization's website, digital marketing, social media,
and mobile.
"Founded in 1997, ClickZ has grown to be one of the largest digital marketing communities in the world today. Alongside the growth of Facebook, YouTube and more, ClickZ has been there, providing the latest news, insights and intelligence along the way."
TV Ads and Other
Communications
Stanford University:
Political Communication Lab
Museum of
the Moving Image: The Living Room Candidate
Internet Archive:
Political TV Ad Archive
Mike Dec's site on presidential campaigns
and candidates.
Brendan Brown has put together this archive of Trump tweets from May 4, 2009 to the present.
Television
Bureau of Advertising | Political
NCTA-The Internet &
Television Association
News Media
Alliance (formerlyNewspaper
Association of America)
