ABSTRACT
Attitudes toward political advertising in the public and even among scholars are ambiguous. Ads are often seen as a necessary evil rather than a public good. On the positive side, ads are accepted as a way to provide the public with “low cost” political information. The public shares academics’ concerns about political advertising. Advertising is belittled compared to more verbose political statements because they cannot contain extensive argument. Political candidates are motivated to suppress turnout of supporters of their competitors. Journalists generally fact-check political ads as they do other political communication. Political advertising employs other techniques to avoid “counter-arguing,” such as surprise, humor or story-telling. Unlike television, where political ads appear unbidden and are sometimes unavoidable, ads online are viewed primarily when people search for them. New distribution networks have emerged on Facebook and Twitter for distributing videos both from parties and candidates as well as unofficial producers.
