helping journalists cover social media in the presidential campaign
Learn about Dr. Stromer-Galley’s recent presentation, where she discussed campaign advertising practices on Facebook during the 2020 presidential election and surfaced patterns in Trump’s Facebook messaging on mail-in and absentee ballots.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump spent a historic $217 million advertising on the Facebook and Instagram social media platforms during the 2020 general election. This report provides analyses by the Illuminating 2020 project for how both campaigns used Facebook and Instagram advertising in the general election campaign, including targeting and messaging.
If you’re a regular visitor to the dashboard, blog or reader of the newsletter, you may have noticed some issues with the site the last few weeks. A few weeks ago, we identified some issues with our collections. We have now corrected the issues, and removed incorrect blog posts that contained inaccuracies.
The campaigns of Donald Trump and Joe Biden together spent US $65.8 million on social media advertising between June 1 and Sept. 13. With these ads, which amount to about 30% of both campaigns’ spending, the candidates are trying to mobilize voters – find supporters and then spark them to get involved.
Learning Biden’s and Trump’s visions for the future are critical, now more than ever. Unfortunately, the post-debate analysis was unanimous: the public did not get to hear in depth how Trump and Biden will tackle the pressing issues.
Our team at the Illuminating 2020 project analyzed Biden’s and Trump’s messaging in their Facebook and Instagram ads on the issues. Our curiosity was whether the public could glean some understanding of the two candidates’ policies in their ads. Our analysis suggests that Biden, in particular, is less likely to share his policy positions in his ads. He is more likely to emphasize his character and personality and to attack Trump.
Text messages and emails from political campaigns are pouring into Americans’ phones and inboxes right now. This is because campaign operatives believe that the more messages they send, the greater the odds that you will act. Each time you act, the campaign gets insight on what types of messages seem to work with you. They’ll learn from your responses, and send you more messages, in the hopes you’ll stay involved and that they can eventually secure your vote.