International Journal of Public Opinion Research Vol. 18 No. 3 © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.
Recent Books in the Field of Public Opinion Research
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
John G. Geer (2006). In Defense of Negativity. Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 201 pp., ISBN 0–226–28499–9.
John Geer argues in this book that negative advertising in presidential campaigns has more value than it is given credit for. He develops this argument from theoretical, normative, and empirical perspectives. He challenges the conventional concerns about negativity by stating that any deliberative process usually benefits from having criticism and debate. Why shouldn’t that also apply to political advertising? He develops a general and systematic understanding of how negativity works in presidential campaigns and whether it promotes or hinders political debate. To show the validity of his arguments he carried out a content analysis of political advertisements. These data show the trends in negativity in the U.S. presidential campaigns from 1960 to 2004. After establishing normative standards for assessing the quality of information in campaign