Television and Political Advertising

Book excerpt: This volume represents one of the first major scholarly efforts to unravel the psychological and symbolic processing of political advertising. Utilizing survey, experimental, qualitative, and semiotic methodologies to study this phenomenon, the contributors to Television and Political Advertising trace how political ads help to interpret the psychological reality of the presidential campaign in the minds of millions of voters. A product of the National Political Advertising Research Project, this interdisciplinary effort is valuable to researchers in advertising, communication, and consumer psychology since it helps define future work on the relationship between television, politics, and the mind of the voter. This volume, Television and Political Advertising: Signs, Codes and Images, is the second of two, and covers such areas as Generating Meaning in the Pursuit of Power, Analyses of the Meaning of Political Ads, The Campaign Documentary as an Ad, and Regulating Signs and Images.