It takes a savvy voter to separate fact from fiction when it comes to making sense of political advertisements.
Matthew Peddie, host of "Florida Matters" and the podcast "Our Changing State," interviewed Alex Mahadevan, the director of MediaWise — the Poynter Institute’s digital media literacy project — to talk about what voters need to know to make informed decisions.
Voters can expect to see an influx of new and different political advertisements this election season. From AI to social media influencers, the advertising possibilities will be endless.
With these new advertising methods, it may be tricky to decipher the truth from exaggeration. Some voters might not even recognize that they are consuming a political advertisement at all.
Here are some key takeaways, and how voters can maintain media literacy with new advertising trends.
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— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 16, 2024
The growth of social media
While traditional TV ads are still frequent this election season, social media ads are growing.
Social media has already started impacting the political advertisement campaigns that voters see. In a social media ad, viewers will see a much different focused advertisement than the traditional TV ads, Mahadevan said.
“If I’m watching TV, I’m going to see a horizontal ad whereas a vertical video, you’re going to see it more focused on just the candidate, more personality, more off the cuff,” Mahadevan said.
Political advertisements have started growing on social media sites such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Along with social media, there has been an increase in political advertisements on streaming apps such as Hulu or Peacock, Mahadevan said.
The impact of social media influencers
With the popularity of social media, there is a significant popularity surrounding influencers, especially for young voters.
“But it’s really difficult because young people aren’t necessarily just scrolling and seeing traditional campaign ads on Facebook. So they’re seeing and listening to eight hours of streaming that might have a political advertisement in it, even if it’s not paid and absorbing that.”Alex Mahadevan
Mahadevan said that while young voters are less likely to be influenced by traditional advertisements, they can be swayed by social media influencers and what they have to say about the election and political candidates.
Influencers are unknown territory when it comes to advertising, and Mahadevan said it takes a new kind of media literacy to recognize these ads.
“But it’s really difficult because young people aren’t necessarily just scrolling and seeing traditional campaign ads on Facebook,” Mahadevan said. “So they’re seeing and listening to eight hours of streaming that might have a political advertisement in it, even if it’s not paid and absorbing that.”
The AI effect
Recent legislation in Florida concerns the use of AI in political advertisements, but Mahadevan said politicians will get called out for using AI deep fakes, which the law targets. Voters can still expect to see the impact of AI.
“How AI is going to affect the selection is it allows candidates with, however small their war chest is, to create lots and lots and lots of content,” Mahadevan said. “And that might be dozens and dozens of Instagram ads. It might be a website copy that’s a mile long. It might be op-eds that are sent out to every newspaper in the country.”
Mahadevan said the creation of so many ad copies could change things.
With AI and advertising, Mahadevan said politicians will most likely disclose when an advertisement is created using AI. Still, it also allows anyone to have power in creating political advertisements.
Text messages: Where are they coming from?
Text message chains are also growing in popularity for advertising political campaigns.
Mahadevan said text messages are concerning because there is no way to fact check the messages.
“There's no way to monitor all these messages that are going out,” Mahadevan said. “So that's really what concerns me is I don't know the scale or how effective it is, but intuitively I think it's got to be really a way to target people with campaign ads.”
New voters and mailers
Unlike most text message ads, voters — especially those casting ballots for the first time — are many times able to see who a mailer ad is coming from.
Mahadevan said that the first thing a voter should do is look at who paid for the advertisement. This then enables the voter to do some research and figure out what political party or candidate they support. It is also very important to investigate any claims that are made in the advertisement.
“Instead of taking it at face value, fire up your computer or get on your phone and search for information about the claim that's actually being made in that mailer,” Mahadevan said. “I think that's why mailers can be effective is there's friction between when you see what a politician is saying, and then when you hear it on like the evening news, whereas if you just go right to your phone, you can close that gap and find out if the mailers bunk.”
What to watch for in TV/radio ads
Similar to mailer ads, it is important for voters to check out the who paid for the radio or TV advertisement and investigate any claims made.
Mahadevan said to do even more digging into advertisements that make the viewer feel emotional.
“So if you see a commercial and it's got some really scary music, maybe it's in black and white and you feel really emotional, then that's a hint that you need to like check out and really try to disregard it as much as you can,” Mahadevan said.
Our Changing State is a production of WUSF. Matthew Peddie is the host and Gracyn Doctor is executive producer. Scott Wachtler produces the podcast; videos by Warren Buchholz and Chandler Balkcom, who also does our graphics. Engineering support from Blake Bass. Jackson Harpe composed the theme music.
