A functional analysis of political advertising across media, 1998

摘要: This study applied the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to 118 political advertisements (television spots, newspaper ads, direct mail, and WWW pages) from 1998. Acclaims (self‐praise; positive statements) were most common function (84%), followed by attacks (criticism, negative statements; 15%). Defenses (refutation attacks) relatively infrequent (1%). There some differences medium (WWW pages had acclaims, while television spots attacks; no defenses occurred on or in mail) but these functions are consistent both across media with prior research presidential campaign advertising. Incumbents produced more acclaims than challengers, who attacked incumbents. Finally, policy utterances character all www pages. The overall consistency Junctions topics levels campaigns (presidential non‐presidential) strongly suggests existence imp...