Genre and political information processing: How political advertising works

The study of political advertising lies at the vortex of two of the enduring questions of human behavior: how do people think and how do they communicate? This work argues that political advertisements "work" in part by employing the audio-visual conventions of genres in popular music, fiction, film and television. Genres are the readily recognizable packages of meaning that popular culture traffics in: the horror stories, romances, satires and tabloid television whose forms convey meaning and structure audience expectations. The audio-visual conventions of popular genres allow political ads to communicate efficiently in both cognitive and affective (or emotional) ways. By taking political advertising and the genres it evokes seriously, we may be better able to understand what and how people think (and feel) about politics.; The first chapter of this work provides a theoretical justification for a genre approach to political advertising grounded in popular political culture and based on recent advances in the study of political cognition. Several specific political ads are analyzed to show how genre can facilitate understanding political ads in ways that existing approaches do not.; A small group experimental design was used to collect evidence from treatment and control groups of respondents who were shown campaign ads that differed only in terms of the audio-visual evocation of popular genres. The responses (a convenience sample of undergraduates) indicate that viewers recognize the audio-visual conventions of popular genres, use those cues in processing the information in the ads, and respond in a variety of ways consistent with the ads' genres. In the concluding chapter, a number of suggestions are offered to indicate how analysts of political advertising might use genre to inform their work.