Are "Fake News" Articles Worse Than Negative Campaign Ads?

I have always disliked negative campaign ads. I personally believe that a campaign should be centered on promoting oneself, not running a smear campaign against the opponent. Before I came into my current position, I was the campaign manager for a candidate in east Alabama. The candidate and I had the same views on running negative ads, and we ran a clean campaign. Unfortunately, negative political advertisements work. Thankfully, I got out of the political world because today it is not easy to have a clean campaign and win an election.

According to Science Daily, negative ads are successful, but they work better if they are paid for by the candidate, not a Political Action Committee, or PAC. In fact, negative messages from the candidate are twice as effective as PACs. On the other hand, according to the study, positive ads have no effect on an election. During the 2016 Presidential election, there were so many negative ads, you couldn’t watch TV or listen to the radio without coming across one. According to conversation.com, negative ads made up 76% of the TV ads for the general election. Both candidates spent millions of dollars on ads attacking their opponents, and not just their politics, but their character and their families.

These negative ads are constant, and for good reason. The more people see these ads, the more likely they are to remember them. Political ads are kind of their own entity because there is a time frame. A person will be overexposed for a year or so, but then they will go away for a time. According to a study on message repetition, ads will cause a consumer to like a product/person initially, but after too much exposure they will begin to dislike. With political ads, they have just enough time to cause people to listen to the message, but will end right as people are beginning to get tired of them.

I asked my future sister-in-law her opinion on negative political ads and she said “I really don’t like them. It seems like a cop-out to me. They are attacking each other instead of talking about their own issues.” When I asked her if she thinks they are effective, she said “Yes, unfortunately common sense is not common any more. They use these ads to cause discord among those with opposite political views.” Gabby, who is not incredibly interested in politics, gets put-off by the amount of advertisements during campaign season, but she does understand their place. “In a perfect world, we would be able to have campaigns that are positive, but that doesn’t happen.”

In addition to the ads on TV and radio running rampant, we also have articles and advertisements on social media. The emergence of the internet and social media has drastically changed how we view campaign ads, both negative and positive. We now have almost constant access to ads and information. You may think that this ability to see a negative ad and immediately go research more into its credibility. Instead, it seems like most people will read a headline and repost without ever even opening the link and reading the article. If they do open the article, which is unlikely if the headline seems to be the opposite of what they think, it is most likely not going to change their mind.

Now, we have more of a problem with “fake news” articles, and not the “fake news” that President Trump is always talking about. These are truly ridiculous claims that get shared around social media, particularly on Facebook. Articles like these can be truly damaging to candidates, even more so than the real negative campaign ads.

I always try to research the outlandish claims that you will sometimes see shared on Facebook, but most people are not like me. People are quick to share posts after reading just a headline and not doing any further research into the validity of the post. In 2016, BuzzFeed even posted about the craziest posts shared. Some of the headlines included “Obama Signs Executive Order Banning the Pledge of Allegiance in Schools Nationwide” which had more than 2 million shares, comments and reactions and “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement” which had over 960 thousand. People have difficulty distinguishing between obviously fake news stories and satire, and legitimate news articles.

I believe that these fake news articles are more detrimental to a candidate’s campaign than the negative ads sponsored by opponents or opposing PACs. They seem to be more likely to be widely shared across social media, and have more outlandish claims. As much as I dislike negative ads, there is at least some truth behind the story. Along with that is the length of time that the ads or articles stay relevant. Because most people can recognize a sponsored campaign ad, there is less of a chance that it will be shared on social media after campaign season ends. These fake articles look like legitimate news articles, just with incorrect information. They are more likely to be shared weeks, months or even years after a campaign or event. I think they cause significantly more damage to a candidate.

Does negative political advertising actually work? (2018, June 04). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180604124913.htm

Parry-Giles, S., Hunter, L., Hess, M., & Bhat, P. (2019, January 09). 2016 presidential advertising focused on character attacks. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/2016-presidential-advertising-focused-on-character-attacks-68642
Petty, R. (1979). Effects of Message Repetition and Position on Cognitive Response, Recall, and Persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Shah, D. V., Cho, J., Nah, S., Gotlieb, M. R., Hwang, H., Lee, N., . . . Mcleod, D. M. (2007). Campaign Ads, Online Messaging, and Participation: Extending the Communication Mediation Model. Journal of Communication,57(4), 676-703. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2007.00363.x

Silverman, C. (2016, December 30). Here Are 50 Of The Biggest Fake News Hits On Facebook From 2016. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/top-fake-news-of-2016