The dissertation examines the use of background appeals in campaign messages. I
argue that background appeals allow campaigns to meet two seemingly conflicting
incentives in the same message—the incentive to reduce voters’ uncertainty about their
candidate, and the incentive to remain ambiguous in their issue positions. Background
appeals allow voters to know more about a candidate and develop more certainty about
what he will do in office. At the same times, campaigns can achieve this goal while
avoiding specific policy commitments, which, on controversial issues, might repel a
significant part of the electorate.
I test my argument by examining how campaigns plan on using candidates’
backgrounds by interviewing a sample of political consultants. The consultants I
interviewed make the candidate’s background a top priority in developing a message plan
for their clients. They want to show voters “who their candidate is” as a means of
developing likeability and credibility with voters. As expected, campaigns use background appeals frequently, in nearly 80% of
advertisements aired by US Senate campaigns in 2000 and 2002. But in these appeals,
campaigns avoid specifically connecting their candidate to particular policies. Also, the
appeal of ambiguity is so great that campaigns only use more specific background
appeals when discussing the opponent’s background.
Background appeals can have a positive effect on perceptions of a candidate.
Using an experimental design, I vary the background of a mock candidate for Congress
while holding constant his issue position. Respondents regard the candidate more
favorably when they learn about his occupation than when they receive no such
information. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/7511 |
| Date | 27 May 2010 |
| Creators | Arbour, Brian Kearney |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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