Weighted content analysis of political advertisements

This article proposes weighted content analysis as a methodological extensi on of traditional (unweighted) content analysis of political advertising. W eighted content analysis distinguishes between political ads that were prod uced but not aired and ads that actually aired in a particular media market . To illustrate the advantages of weighted content analysis, this article e xamines the 1996 presidential campaign in Columbus, Ohio. The tone of 132 p residential campaign ads produced by both candidates is compared with the t one of the 2,522 ads that aired on the three major network affiliates in Co lumbus. The price of the ad buy is used as an alternative weight that takes into account audience size and thus allows a further distinction between a ired and watched ads. Both weighting procedures show that Republican advert ising in 1996 in Columbus was more negative than Democratic advertising dur ing the fall campaign, a result that remains undetected by unweighted conte nt analysis. The article concludes by describing three different ways to ob tain weighting data: political files kept by television stations and cable providers, commercial tracking data, and internal campaign records.