IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v115y2021i1p130-149_10.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Advertising Online and Offline

Author

Listed:
  • FOWLER, ERIKA FRANKLIN
  • FRANZ, MICHAEL M.
  • MARTIN, GREGORY J.
  • PESKOWITZ, ZACHARY
  • RIDOUT, TRAVIS N.

Abstract

Despite the rapid growth of online political advertising, the vast majority of scholarship on political advertising relies exclusively on evidence from candidates’ television advertisements. The relatively low cost of creating and deploying online advertisements and the ability to target online advertisements more precisely may broaden the set of candidates who advertise and allow candidates to craft messages to more narrow audiences than on television. Drawing on data from the newly released Facebook Ad Library API and television data from the Wesleyan Media Project, we find that a much broader set of candidates advertises on Facebook than television, particularly in down-ballot races. We then examine within-candidate variation in the strategic use and content of advertising on television relative to Facebook for all federal, statewide, and state legislative candidates in the 2018 election. Among candidates who use both advertising media, Facebook advertising occurs earlier in the campaign, is less negative, less issue focused, and more partisan than television advertising.

Suggested Citation

  • Fowler, Erika Franklin & Franz, Michael M. & Martin, Gregory J. & Peskowitz, Zachary & Ridout, Travis N., 2021. "Political Advertising Online and Offline," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(1), pages 130-149, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:1:p:130-149_10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055420000696/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Beknazar-Yuzbashev, George & Stalinski, Mateusz, 2022. "Do social media ads matter for political behavior? A field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    2. Guy Aridor & Rafael Jiménez-Durán & Ro'ee Levy & Lena Song, 2024. "The Economics of Social Media," CESifo Working Paper Series 10934, CESifo.
    3. Michaela Fischer & Fabrizio Gilardi, 2023. "Level Playing Field or Politics as Usual? Equalization–Normalization in Direct Democratic Online Campaigns," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(1), pages 43-55.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:1:p:130-149_10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.