The 1988 presidential campaign was considered by many
members of the news media as one of the most negative
presidential campaigns in twenty years. Since then a good
deal of attention has focused on negative televised political
commercials. Negative televised political commercials are
commercials which attack or criticize opponents and often only
towards the end remind the voter of the alternative candidate.
The goal of negative ads is to affect voters on both a
rational and emotional level.
Critics of negative political advertising believe
negative ads are detrimental to the democratic process because
they create a negative atmosphere which may engulf the
campaign, dissuade voters from participating in the democratic
process, impair the ability of voters to make informed
decisions, and they often play on the prejudices and fears of
the voters. critics have offered various solutions which
would curb the use or help candidates protect themselves
against negative attacks, and one such solution is the
"inoculation message strategy." In their book Attack
Politics, Michael Pfau and Henry Kenski offer the "inoculation message strategy" as a method in the defense of negative advertising. The inoculation message strategy uses two-sided
arguments to defend against attack messages. In Pfau and
Kenski's research they used written attack messages in their
experiments. This thesis will test the ability of the
inoculation message strategy to defend against actual
televised political commercials.
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