From Scott Baios endorsement of Donald Trump to Sarah Silvermans endorsement of Bernie Sanders and subsequent rejection of the Bernie or Bust crowd at the DNC, celebrities have habitually inserted themselves into the political sphere, however, there has been little empirical research on celebrity endorsements of political candidates.
Rooted in branding theory, this study seeks to understand the effectiveness of celebrity political endorsements by utilizing advertising effectiveness models. The primary model, derived from work done by Amos, Holmes, and Strutton (2008), translates source factors of a celebrity product endorser to those of a celebrity candidate endorser, such as credibility, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. While in traditional advertising research, effectiveness is measured by outcomes such as brand attitude, and intention for product purchase, this study defines effectiveness in terms of attitudes toward the candidate, endorsement believability, recognition, and willingness to engage in electoral and online civic behaviors.
After providing demographic information and information about digital media use and partisanship, participants were provided with a social media post, allegedly from a famous actor, endorsing a fictitious candidate and were asked to rate the actor on 21 attributes of a good endorser (source factors) and answer questions relating to their identification with the celebrity, perceptions of the celebrity-candidate fit, and their perceptions of the candidates viability in the election. They were subsequently asked to evaluate the candidate, the endorsements believability, recognize information from the endorsement, and indicate how likely they were to perform nine civic behaviors for the candidate.
The data suggest that the endorser effectiveness model used by advertising researchers is useful for understanding the source factors and other considerations upon which celebrity political endorsement effectiveness is predicated. The study found that source factors vary in effectiveness between attitude, cognitive, and behavioral measures, leading to the conclusion that celebrity endorsers with different characteristics may be useful to political campaigns depending upon desired voter outcomes, particularly with regard to time during a campaign cycle.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04102017-110804 |
| Date | 02 May 2017 |
| Creators | Sanati, Melissa |
| Contributors | Sylvester, Judith, Jeong, Yongick, Garand, James, Hill, R. Carter |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04102017-110804/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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