Second Generation Hispanic-American Young Adults' Response to Political Advertisements from the 2008 Presidential Election Campaign
Embargo until
Date
2012-08
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
jhu
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
Political campaigns use television advertisements to win Latinos’ votes. These
advertisements, which are solely for electoral purposes, may not fully understand the
differences in the Latino population that can influence their political views and tend to
clump Latinos as one homogenous group just because they all speak Spanish. This study
used focus groups to examine the opinions of second-generation Hispanic American
young adults about Spanish and English political television advertisements from the 2008
Obama and McCain Presidential campaigns. Male and female participants thought that
neither the Spanish nor the English advertisements were targeted at them, and their
thoughts differed slightly according to their gender. Furthermore, participants disliked
attack advertisements and advertisements they thought were misleading or contained
false information. They were more receptive to those that contained policy information
and those that specifically talked about education.
Description
Keywords
Political advertising, Hispanic-Americans, Presidential elections