Gendered Narration of Electoral Campaign Radio Advertisements

• In Event: Looking and Sounding Like a Leader

Abstract

Political advertisements play an essential role in campaigning. One form of political advertisement heavily relied on during electoral campaign cycles are radio advertisements (Overby and Barth 2006). Though electoral campaigns take place within a multimedia space (Greer and Greer 2003), the effect and importance of radio advertisements in political campaigns within the United States has been largely overlooked. Radio advertisements are distinct campaign tools in that they are a purely aural mode of communication, lacking the visual cues found in television ads, social media ads, or even campaign flyers. We propose that the choice of the gender of the ad’s narrator is therefore both an important strategic choice candidates must make, and also one that will in turn influence voters’ perceptions of the ad’s effectiveness, and the candidate herself. We expect that the gender of a radio ad’s narrator will influence how voters evaluate ads and candidates, and that important differences likely exist based on voters’ gender and party identification. Using a survey experiment, we examine whether changing simply the gender of the narrator of a political ad from a female voice to a male voice influences (1) how voters’ evaluate the effectiveness of the ad itself, as well as (2) their likelihood of voting for a particular candidate. Our findings will speak to multiple literatures, including identity and politics, elections and campaigning, and voter behavior.

Authors

• Morgan Noel Smith, Georgia State University

• Amy L. Steigerwalt, Georgia State University