ABSTRACT
Robert Denton argues that in America, thanks to the growth in the role of television in political campaigning, the pre-eminent form of political oratory has become the advertisement. The political ad, he wrote more than two decades ago, is ‘now the major means by which candidates for the presidency communicate their messages to voters’ (1988, p. 5). Nimmo and Felsberg suggested that ‘paid political advertising via television now constitutes the mainstream of modern electoral politics’ (1986, p. 248). In Britain and other comparable countries too, although regulatory and stylistic conventions differ from those of the US, political advertising is central to political communication. Today, of course, television has been joined by the internet as a platform for advertising of all kinds, including political.
