Traditional democratic theory holds that the mark of a democracy is captured by citizens’ engagement with their government. Even in a representative democracy, such as the U.S.A., a modicum of political knowledge is necessary for citizens to elect officials who represent their interests. Yet political science has continually noted a drought of political sophistication among the masses. Thus the broad question is whether such a lack of information is indicative of a democratic deficit – and, more specifically, what effect this variance in information has on political behavior and what institutions exacerbate or mitigate such information shortcomings in the citizenry.
This project focuses on the role of the media as the key institution in the dissemination of new political information during electoral campaigns. In particular, I look at the effect of televised campaign advertisements on individuals’ knowledge about campaigns, which campaign information they seek out, sentiments of sufficient information to make a vote choice, participation in the campaigns and voting in line with stated preferences. I find that the relationship between campaign advertisements and political sophistication is rich with complexity. Individuals generally learn about a particular aspect of the campaign when they live in advertisement saturated environments. However, the relationship between political attitudes, behavior and advertisements is often moderated by political sophistication.
The results show how individuals’ varying exposure to campaigns and political sophistication combine to affect their processing of new political information and political behavior. Individuals with low sophistication use ads as substitutes for information seeking, feel they have enough information to choose a candidate regardless of exposure to ads, generally do not participate in politics, learn nothing directly from campaign ads and yet manage to vote more correctly when exposed to ads. Contrarily, high sophisticates seek out large amounts of campaign information and vote very consistently regardless of exposure to campaigns, appear capable of turning campaign ads into modest gains in real political information, have higher rates of participation in campaign politics and are less likely to feel they have insufficient information to make a vote choice when exposed to campaign ads. In sum, this project paints a fuller picture of how campaigns are interpreted and utilized by an information heterogeneous electorate within different electoral environments.