Medium and the Message Television Advertising and American Elections

The chapters inThe Medium and the Message: Television Advertising and American Electionswere originally presented at a conference in April 2001. The conference was attended by political scientists, journalists, consultants, and lawyers. This combination of campaign experts, who too often sit at separate intellectual and practical tables, was able to listen to and learn from each other in important ways. Our goal with this book is to build on the synergies at the conference, to communicate serious social science research on important policy issues to a wide variety of audiences, and to create a dialogue among scholars, journalists, and political professionals. Generous grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts made this conference possible. More importantly, grants from the Trusts have made possible the purchase, processing, and analysis of content and targeting data on television advertising. These funds are not only allowing scholars and journalists to describe the nature of modern campaigns, but also allowing scholars to gauge their effectiveness. In the long term, these television advertising data will be a valuable archive for future scholars. We would like to thank Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, for making these data available to academics at a reasonable cost. His help and insight have made this project possible. We would also like to thank Michael Franz and Joel Rivlin for their excellent work as research assistants on all aspects of the project. Without the help of all of these people the work of the Wisconsin Advertising Project would not be possible, and we are immensely grateful. Kenneth M. Goldstein Patricia StrachGoldstein, Kenneth M. is the author of 'Medium and the Message Television Advertising and American Elections', published 2003 under ISBN 9780131777743 and ISBN 0131777742.