ABSTRACT
The European Parliament (EP) elections present a unique situation for campaign advertising. One important consideration rests in the fact that each country in the European Union (EU) follows the national rules for televised electoral advertising. Televised advertising may be a particularly important channel of information for parties in the EP elections. The study of videostyle in political advertising suggests a way of describing how politicians and parties present themselves in televised political advertising. Videostyle considers three components of television political advertising, the verbal content, the nonverbal content, and the production techniques used in the ad. The limited but negative coverage in the news media leaves an information gap for citizens that televised advertising may fill. Negative advertising, or ads focused on the opposition parties, play a lesser role in European advertising than in the United States. The Internet provides transnational parties with a mechanism for communicating messages that supersede country and traditional media boundaries.
