Newswise — A study of U.S. elections by communication researchers at Auburn University, Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin provides new evidence that image soundly trumps issues in today's media-saturated political environment.
The results, published this spring in the Journal of Communication, an international academic journal for communication scholars, show that, other than college graduates, most voters did not pay much attention to the news media and had little knowledge of policy issues in the 2000 presidential elections.
"Issues simply do not play an important role," said the study's primary author, Sei-Hill Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at AU. "We may want campaigns to be about issues, but that is not the case; the winner is usually the candidate who is most successful in creating a persona that the voters like."
Kim and two other researchers based their conclusions on data from the 2000 American National Election Study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, but Kim said he expects similar results from the 2004 election. The study with co-authors Dietram Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin and James Shanahan of Cornell University shows that Republican George W. Bush used a winning strategy in 2000 with a campaign based almost entirely on image while Democrat Al Gore may have miscalculated with detailed discussions of policy issues.
The pattern was repeated in 2004 with Bush successfully running an image-based campaign and Democrat John Kerry attempting to discuss issues in detail. In both elections, Kim said, the Republicans used their time before the public more skillfully than the Democrats to craft a positive image of their candidate and a negative image of his opponent.
The researchers found that high percentages of college graduates correctly identified where each candidate stood on major issues ranging from defense spending to environmental regulation. College graduates also reported getting much of their information from television news and smaller amounts from radio, but newspaper coverage of the campaigns was not a significant factor for those voters.
However, most voters -- those with either some college but no degree, a high school degree or less -- did not regularly follow newscasts in the broadcast media or read campaign coverage in newspapers. Nor could they correctly identify where the candidates stood on major issues. In the majority of those cases, people voted for their political party's candidate or on subjective matters such as how presidential they thought the candidates looked and acted.
Kim said successful candidates recognize these social dynamics and respond by using the mass media, but not necessarily the news media, to define themselves and their opponents to voters through advertising and staged events.
"People who care most about party affiliation or personal values don't pay much attention to issues, perhaps because they already know how they are going to vote," Kim said. "They identify with their preferred candidate and assume he thinks like they do. They also believe the opponent will say anything to get elected, so they don't see any need to listen to the issues, anyway."
In the past two presidential elections, Bush sought to present an image of himself as a strong, stable leader and an image of his opponent as lacking those qualities. With the help of an expertly managed campaign team, Bush and the Republican Party stayed "on message," painting a broad picture of a steady, determined leader at every opportunity, but he seldom discussed details of issues. Meanwhile, Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 lost momentum every time they tried to talk about specific issues, Kim said. Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but Bush carried more states and won in the electoral college. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry in both the popular vote and the electoral college.
Writing extensively on communication topics, Kim also published a study in the journal Mass Communication and Society this spring examining media use and participatory democracy in his native South Korea. The study found that, in that country as well as the United States, the news media help promote participation in politics, but the effort is undercut by viewers' preference for entertainment programs.
Kim joined the AU faculty in 2004 after teaching at Saint Mary's College in Indiana. He holds a master's degree in advertising from Michigan State University and earned a Ph.D. in communication from Cornell University in 2001.
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