Broadcast Adwatch Effects

Abstract

Several national news networks adopted a strategy for responding to misleading, attack ads during the presidential campaign of 1992. These were called adwatches. The adwatches evaluated the content of political commercials for errors and deceptive and misleading claims. They did so, not simply by replaying the offending material and then offering commentary, but rather by interrupting the ad with commentary and repositioning the ad on the screen. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of the adwatch on people's attitudes toward the source of the ad, the target of the ad, the ad itself, and recall and interpretation of the ad's content. A field experiment was conducted to evaluate overall effects of the adwatch procedures on an ad generated by the Buchanan campaign during the Michigan primary. The ad attacked the credibility of George Bush and his advisers. Particular formats were also tested. The adwatches affected attitudes toward the source of the ad and toward the perceived fairness and importance of the ad. Adwatches did not affect attitudes toward the object of the attack ad nor interpretation of the ad's content. Education interacted with experimental condition such that interpretations of the ad by the least well-educated portion of the sample were adversely affected by the adwatches in contrast to the better educated.