ABSTRACT
Political advertising has developed as one of the most dominant sources of political communication. Political advertising research has a long-standing history, but with the recent growth in advertising expenditures and the use of new media outlets such as Twitter, academic interest has revitalized. We see rapid changes in campaign dynamics and new ways of advertising evolving, which impacts the research agenda. However, television advertising is still dominant, both in advertising expenditures and research interest. In this chapter, we examine the effects of political advertising in general, and the effects of negative campaigns in particular. We start with an examination of the use of political spots in the U.S. compared to countries with different political, electoral, and media systems.
