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

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

Floridä 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.