Television Ads in US Presidential Campaigns Have a History of Exploiting Fear (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,7, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: Election campaigns are common rituals in democracies.
Politicians try to persuade voters in order to be elected.
Therefore, political candidates usually make use of professional
campaigning strategies that involve the television as the most
important medium. Since the 1960s US presidential campaign
ads on TV have been increasingly successful and cutting-edge.
They sometimes were so convincing they even swung a
decision. Over the last decades the predominant topics in US
federal politics were the Cold War as well as national security
and the US military. In 1964 the presidential election campaign
was highly influenced by the escalating situation in Vietnam and
the general disquiet caused by the arms race and nuclear
weapons. The American psyche was collectively anxious about
the latent atomic menace so it suggested itself to address fear
in a presidential campaign ad. The Nixon campaign 1972 dealt
with one of the genuine Republican topics: Military. Due to its
success it was remade in two subsequent campaigns called
"Tank Ride" in 1988 for George Bush and 2004 in "Weapons
Florida" for George W. Bush. The latter will be examined in this
paper, too.
However, there are different approaches to persuade the
voting public; one of the most favorable techniques is playing
on the people's emotions. Thus, it is not surprising that US
presidential campaign ads have a history of exploiting fear in
television ads. It leads from 1964 until 2004 and aims at
persuading voters by the well-directed use of sounds, images
and language.