ABSTRACT
Fully exploring this idea would require several types of studies. We might carry out a survey to find out whether the average voter actually thinks that campaigns are negative and to gauge their opinions about the tone. However, such research wouldn’t tell us whether ads actually cause these attitudes. So, we could use an experiment to test whether negative ads actually affect the people who watch them. This would give us good evidence of causality but wouldn’t tell us whether this is really an issue in actual campaigns. The best bet to truly understand the nature of the ads would be to look at the ads themselves-maybe our assumption about the tone of the advertising is wrong, or perhaps there are concerns we have not yet considered. We need a systematic way to consider media content-to look for patterns and trends. We call this approach content analysis .
