Media and Society Essay

Media & Society

Media can have a strong influence on society. Media has the ability to shape how people view the world, how they perceive different issues and media can also have a direct influence on behavior in society as well. With political ads, the objective is direct behavioral influence, the behavior being voting, so the media role with these ads is a content-dependent relationship. The ads are intended to bring about a specific behavior, but the ads are also intended to change perspectives and dialogue, both about candidates and about the issues for which those candidates stand. This paper will examine two advertisements from the 2012 Presidential election campaign, one from each side, in order to illustrate this concept.

Cognitive/Affective/Behavioral

The Romney ad "Stand up to China" works primarily on the affective level. The copy of the ad is hilariously childish to anybody who understands anything about foreign policy or economics, so it certainly has little cognitive appeal, and indeed there is no authoritative substance to the ad at all, using random quotes for nobody worth remembering to support the point. The affective element plays on a few elements -- racism, fear of Communism and fear over one's economic stability (the jobs thing) in order to stir up the idea that Obama is not a strong enough leader.The implication is that Romney would actually be different, which is why this ad in particularly ironic, given Romney's history of outsourcing American jobs to China. So the ad at this point seeks to create an affective response about Obama, rather than appealing to the cognitive. Placed in late September, it is too early to focus on the behavioral aspects and there was no push at the end to vote, so the behavioral message is only implied here.

Intended/unintended

The unintended element of the Obama ad's Swiss bank account quip was to undermine the credibility of some of the other parts of that ad, where Team Obama makes a halfway cognitive case for itself vs. Romney -- but engaging in fear of the rich stereotyping the ad finishes weakly, which was not the intended consequence. That finisher also makes this more of a reinforcing ad than anything that is going to change minds -- track record arguments can help to change minds, but stereotyping and name-calling serve mainly to reinforce.

Macro/Long-Term

There is a macro to these ads however, because they are part of much larger campaigns that seek to change behavior. So as part of a larger narrative, these ads only need to a communicate a single element,….....