BIDEN ON POLITICAL ADS
Political communication in advisement
evokes images of candidates and campaigns, debates and issues, propaganda, and
persuasion. Joe Biden appears in numbers of positive political ads for the 2008
Obama/Biden campaign that promotes the “belief for change” instead of “more of
the same”. After doing some searching online, I came across many different advertisements
for the Obama/Biden 2008 campaign on the website livingroomcampaign.org which
we used to work with in class.
Prior to the election of 2008, the 2004 election was occurring when
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were important issues, but foreign policy was extremely
overshadowed by the economic issues when the credit and mortgage crisis hit the
country head on. I believe these issues that happened before ignited the Obama/Biden
campaign in 2008 to promote change for our country. Advertisements were created
in a fast and effective pace. Also, the shift in popular culture towards usage
of the internet, and social media increased rapidly and it really supports the advertisement
style of forward ability and change amongst the campaign. As a result, 2008 ads
were sharper, effective and more aggressive than ads in past elections reaching
and effecting more Americans which ended up making 2008 election the most historic
election in history, the nation’s first African American president was elected.
In a particular ad I came across, titled Scranton (Obama 2008).
This was a candidate positive ad that focused on the image on the candidate,
rather than target the opposing party. Personally, I am a fan of character
building and positive messages being shared on the political level than attack
ads. Even though attack ads are effective with showing false statements and
wrong actions from the opposing party, I believe that positive ads makes the candidate
look better. Joe Biden starts out by expressing how
everything he knows about working hard, he learned growing up with his
grandparents in a small town. He uses
that statement to transition and explain how Barack Obama holds the same values
of hard work while also growing up in a small town with his grandparents and
single mother. He uses vocabulary like heart, responsibility, determination,
respect, and dignity to stand up for all families that can influence a positive
reflection of not only Barack Obama’s character but making a peer to peer
relationship to the audience that can influence
the audience that they are the typical good American citizens. I believe the
obvious strategy that was used for this 30 second video ad was the use of candidate
image; which constructs an array of perceived attributes projected by an object,
event, or person. This strategy can help form a connection to views and targeting
audiences that Barack Obama is a friend, can influence formation of
attributions that voters attach to candidates whom they support and oppose.
Source: Thelivingroomcampaign.org
I agree that positive campaigns make the candidate look better and stronger in a way. I also agree that it was candidate image. Since he used positive words and connected himself to Obama makes people think of him in a good way. Do you think he will continue to use positive ads or do you think/know if he has/will do attack ads?
ReplyDeleteI think he will continue to lean more on the positive ads. Although attack ads are out there, I believe that the message there sending is being understood when its coming from a positive perspective.
DeleteI completely agree with you that positive ads are my preference too. However, do you think using this approach is more successful than using attack ads?
ReplyDelete