{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/13625"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/13625","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Seeing is Believing: The Strategy Behind Campaign Imagery and its Impact on Voters","abstract":"As television ads have become the primary tool of communication in American campaigns, research on campaign effects has focused more and more attention on how these ads influence the electorate. Little attention has been paid, however, to the visual content of these ads. Despite a format that delivers an enormous quantity of visual information, most research has focused only on the words spoken during the ad and the little research done on campaign images has focused only on emotional effects. But can voters learn something with the sound turned off? Do voters use campaign images to make inferences about a candidate’s issue positions and ideology? I use a multi-method approach to examine how voters use the information contained in campaign imagery to learn about the candidate. While most campaign strategists focus on voters’ social identities when designing the look of campaign ads, I find little evidence that viewers respond to campaign images based on identity congruence. Instead, people use the images shown in an ad to make substantive inferences about the candidate, and they incorporate those inferences into their overall evaluation of the candidate in the same way that they would use an explicit verbal statement. Because of the power of images within ads and their relatively low cost (practically and strategically), political candidates can realize enormous benefits by designing campaign images that appeal to voters’ policy preferences.","abstract_html":"As television ads have become the primary tool of communication in American campaigns, research on campaign effects has focused more and more attention on how these ads influence the electorate. Little attention has been paid, however, to the visual content of these ads. Despite a format that delivers an enormous quantity of visual information, most research has focused only on the words spoken during the ad and the little research done on campaign images has focused only on emotional effects. But can voters learn something with the sound turned off? Do voters use campaign images to make inferences about a candidate’s issue positions and ideology? I use a multi-method approach to examine how voters use the information contained in campaign imagery to learn about the candidate. While most campaign strategists focus on voters’ social identities when designing the look of campaign ads, I find little evidence that viewers respond to campaign images based on identity congruence. Instead, people use the images shown in an ad to make substantive inferences about the candidate, and they incorporate those inferences into their overall evaluation of the candidate in the same way that they would use an explicit verbal statement. Because of the power of images within ads and their relatively low cost (practically and strategically), political candidates can realize enormous benefits by designing campaign images that appeal to voters’ policy preferences.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Swigger, Nathaniel"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Political Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Kuklinski, James H.","Althaus, Scott L.","Gaines, Brian J.","Sulkin, Tracy E."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2009,"date_issued":"2009-08-22T22:07:25Z","date_published":"2009-08-22T22:07:25Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:04Z","subjects":["political behavior","campaigns","imagery","political psychology","campaign ads","campaign strategy"],"languages":["en"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/13625","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Kuklinski, James H.","Althaus, Scott L.","Gaines, Brian J.","Sulkin, Tracy E."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Swigger, Nathaniel"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2009-08-22T22:07:25Z","2009-08-22"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Dissertation / Thesis","text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Political Science"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["political behavior","campaigns","imagery","political psychology","campaign ads","campaign strategy"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/13625"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["As television ads have become the primary tool of communication in American campaigns, research on campaign effects has focused more and more attention on how these ads influence the electorate. 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Instead, people use the images shown in an ad to make substantive inferences about the candidate, and they incorporate those inferences into their overall evaluation of the candidate in the same way that they would use an explicit verbal statement. Because of the power of images within ads and their relatively low cost (practically and strategically), political candidates can realize enormous benefits by designing campaign images that appeal to voters’ policy preferences.","not peer reviewed","Submitted by Nathaniel Swigger (swigger@illinois.edu) on 2009-08-22T19:32:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Swigger dissertation.pdf: 9195425 bytes, checksum: 7381191277f6d7564f284f60ac9bfd86 (MD5)","Approved for entry into archive by Sarah Shreeves(sshreeve@illinois.edu) on 2009-08-22T22:07:25Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Swigger dissertation.pdf: 9195425 bytes, checksum: 7381191277f6d7564f284f60ac9bfd86 (MD5)","Made available in DSpace on 2009-08-22T22:07:25Z (GMT). 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But can voters learn something with the sound turned off? Do voters use campaign images to make inferences about a candidate’s issue positions and ideology? I use a multi-method approach to examine how voters use the information contained in campaign imagery to learn about the candidate. While most campaign strategists focus on voters’ social identities when designing the look of campaign ads, I find little evidence that viewers respond to campaign images based on identity congruence. Instead, people use the images shown in an ad to make substantive inferences about the candidate, and they incorporate those inferences into their overall evaluation of the candidate in the same way that they would use an explicit verbal statement. 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