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Yanlin is a Senior in Mathematical Economics from Shanghai, China

Introduction and Literature Review

2020 was one of the most dramatic years entering into the 21st century, filled with natural disasters, global health crisis, perplexed international affairs, unexpected deaths of celebrities, and what we focus on here, the new round of selecting a president. This chapter examines the military ads offered during the 2020 presidential election period.

Political advertising in the United States has been among the most common topics of political communication research. Johnson and Kaid in their 2002 comprehensive study of techniques, strategies, narratives, and symbols used in televised political spots in US presidential campaigns find that issues ads are more common than image ads, that attacks are more common in issues ads, and that image ads focus primarily on candidates’ credibility. However, this is updated by Mahone (2009) based on empirical estimation of US election ads in 2004 and 2008. He concludes that North American political advertising might be shifting from a policy focus to a character focus.

This chapter focuses on the cross-comparison of the strategies, techniques, narratives, and various elements of the political ads surrounding military themes and issues. Very few literatures have touched on this topic, with most studies focusing on political ads generically or in another issue arena. A likely reason for the dearth of attention is the simple fact that advertising regarding military were far and few between in previous cycles.

The United States has an especially liberal environment regarding political advertising regulation. There is little regulation of content, allowing campaign to advertise and invent messaging at will. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 pointedly did not enforce the verifiability of content of political advertising (Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, n.d.). Therefore, it is not entirely surprising to see melodramatic ads, some of them even uncomfortable to watch.

Appealing to emotion is an important aspect in political ads. Research on the role of emotions in political persuasion (Brader, 2005) shows that presidential candidates use campaign ads to elicit emotions and thereby influence the political behavior of viewers in predictable ways. From a historical perspective, the campaign ads and political ads tend to address the negativity of the opponent more often than the positivity of the sponsoring candidate (Krupnikov, 2014).

Methodology

To analyze advertisement’s themes, I created codebook that consists of seven variables: Sponsorship, Timeline, Standpoint, Slant Form/Style, Type of Organization, and Theme. Frequency distribution and cross-tabulation among variables were the primary analysis outcomes. 74 ads were scrutinized.

Sponsorship refers to which groups of presidential candidate, political organizations or activist groups officially endorsed the video message. Many of the ads are from the direct endorsement of either presidential candidate, and therefore I denote them as “Biden” or “Trump.” There are also a solid number of endorsements from political action committees (PAC) like Lincoln Project and VoteVets. Lastly there are video clips from media sources like Fox News, presented as political ads, typically by the Trump campaign.

Timeline is where I classify all the advertisements according to specific months in 2020. Some of the months were when key events or “turning points” happened, for example, was variable when the conventions for both parties took place.

The Standpoint variable consists of five values: “pro-Biden”, “Biden-affiliated”, “pro-Trump”, “Trump-affiliated”, and “independent.” One of the purposes is to categorize each ad according to their general standpoint. If the ad is a direct endorsement from either presidential candidate, then it would be marked as “pro-Biden” or “pro-Trump.” If the ad producer itself is an activist group or political organization, mostly PACs, whether it publicly endorses either presidential candidate will determine if it is affiliated or independent. For example, The Lincoln Project is categorized as “Biden-affiliated” because the organization officially announced to endorse Joe Biden for president on Twitter, Apr. 8, 2020. VoteVets, on top of endorsing Joe Biden, urged Biden to name Senator Tammy Duckworth as his Vice-Presidential candidate. Trump-affiliated organizations include Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA and the PAC that campaigns against Democrats during the 2020 election season [i]. To determine whether a group is independent or not is a little more nuanced task. Organizations like Patriots for change, though posted ads that went directly against Trump administration, did not officially claim their endorsement to the other extreme and they are therefore considered independent. A cross-table between Standpoint and Sponsorship will be presented and explained later.

Slant, different from Standpoint, is to address more of the political tendency that the content of specific ads reveals. There are five possible entries: “neutral”, “pro-Biden”, “anti-Biden”, “pro-Trump”, and “anti-Trump.” However, of all 74 ads in the Military-Troop-Arlington dataset, none of them employs an “anti-Biden” strategy in the content, and therefore only the remaining four entries are present. As aforementioned, ads from Patriots for change, although the organization itself is most likely to be independent, the content of its ads is consistently criticizing Trump’s behaviors and policies. The same rule applies to Stand Up Republic and Really American PACs. Therefore, those ads, or observations in the dataset, will be denoted “independent” in Standpoint yet “anti-Trump” in Slant. Besides, there are also a decent number of ads that technically are also against Trump but convey the message mostly based on supporting Biden’s policies and plans, such as one ad by Unite the Country. Those ads, in terms of Slant, will be denoted as “pro-Biden.” There is a peculiar ad, a short video clip of Trump addressing police and military issues from Fox News, is classified as “neutral” since it is part of Trump’s statement that should be objective. One may argue the clip is cropped and perhaps aimed to degrade or ascend Trump’s image, but I do not go that far. Therefore, it is treated as an outlier and was removed it from the sample.

Form/Style is a general categorization of the form or style of those video advertisements. They are annotated as “Speech” if they are highly unedited video clips of Trump, Biden, or Congressmen. They are annotated as “Documentary/Narrative” if they use montage or other types of editing styles, oftentimes accompanied by background music, and may use actors/actresses to play out the plots instead of real clips. They are annotated as “Testimonial” if they are highly unedited video clips of veterans themselves talking about their political opinions. For example, almost every ad from Lincoln project is “documentary/narrative” since the production and content are highly artificial and original. A few ads from Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT) and Veterans for Responsive Leadership (VFRL), on the other hand, are based on “Testimonial.”

Type of Organization is a variable that classify the groups or organizations that produced the ads. An ad is “Political Party” if it is directly endorsed by either presidential candidate,

“Political Organization” if it is produced by PACs or, literally, political organizations like Lincoln Project or Pacronym, “Activist Group” if it is produced by non-political organizations like RVAT, or “Media”[ii] if it produced by cable channels like Fox News or news channels like Bloomberg News (See Table 1).

Theme is the last variable that describe what is advertisement is generally addressing. There are instances like hostages, Russia, veterans opinions, etc., but the most frequent is the “general” category, which is essentially addressing military/troops in general rather than focusing on one or two specific themes/issues.

Data Description and Result

Figure 1 shows the frequency distribution for sponsorship. Notably, 27% of the ads are sponsored by Biden team, 20.27% are from VoteVets, and 16.2% are from Lincoln Project. It is not surprising to see that, for the general theme of military and troops, most of the ads are from organizations, like VoteVets, that either focus on the interests and rights of veterans, or those themselves less affiliated with the military but actively uses Trump’s disparaging of the US military as an effective weapon to reproach Trump administration and thereby supporting Biden. There are also 9.46% of the 73 military-related ads that are sponsored by Trump team, focusing generally on Trump’s behaviors that honor the courage, patriotism, and utter devotion of the US military.

Figure 2. Timeline: relative frequencies

Figure 2 shows the frequency distribution for Timeline from January to December 2020. 38% of the ads were posted in September 2020, when Trump was accused of nixing a visit to France’s Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in 2018, the absentee ballots to voters were started to mailed out in North Carolina, various presidential and vice presidential candidates attended 911 memorial ceremonies, Supreme Court justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg died, the first presidential debate took place, etc. Ads published in June, July, August, taking up roughly 35% of the ads in total, when both parties’ primaries and conventions took place, reactions to the George Floyd killing varyingly intensified, Trump’s tax records got subpoenaed, Kanye West announced campaigns, etc. Not to take away from October, when 11% of the ads were posted, Trump and Melania tested positive for COVID-19, candidates attended multiple town halls, deadlines of absentee ballot got extended, second presidential debate took place.

Figure 3 shows the frequency distribution for Standpoint. Ads that endorsed directly by Biden or created by Biden-affiliated organizations make up of more than 70% of all the military-themed ads, in contrast with only 10% ads from Trump or Trump-affiliated sources. Those percentages explain themselves, showing how military-relevant themes and contents leave Trump open to a variety of charges and accusations, and subsequently how pro-Biden ads utilize such vulnerability to touch up Biden’s propositions and to strengthen his legitimacy. In the Slant frequency distribution right after, and the cross-table of Standpoint versus Slant in later sections, we further see how independent groups align themselves with Biden or at least demarcated themselves from Trump in terms of military scenarios.

Figure 4 shows the frequency distribution for Slant. There are 73% of the ads, overwhelmingly, present anti-Trump content relevant to the military themes. Many of them focus on veterans’ opinions, John McCain, families of military, or the general rhetoric that built up various materials that Trump reprimanded war heroes, veterans, sacrificed troops. On the contrary, significantly fewer military ads support Biden without including Trump’s self-aggrandizing demeanor. I go into specific examples of advertisements later, yet Trump is vulnerable in public opinion battleground of military issues.

Figure 5 shows the frequency distribution for Form/Style. Not surprisingly, 86.5% of the ads fall into the category of documentary/narrative as it is a favored mode for establishing credibility with campaign advertising. These ads are exquisitely produced, rehearsed, and even micro-films, with melodramatic background music, classic or in some cases formalist style of editing, testimonial, speech, or documentary fragments, resulting in a synthetic rhetorical device. Though small in numbers, nearly 10% of the ads featured less-edited clips of the statements and opinions from veterans or families of US military. Therefore, regardless of which side specific ads were supporting, the overall advertising strategy consists of 90% of artificial documentary/narrative and 10% of more “realistic” materials. I will go into specific examples later. Figure 5, likewise, shows the highly skewed distribution of what video style the ads utilize.

Figure 6 shows the frequency distribution for Type of Organizations. 28% of the ads are created by activist groups including RVAT, Stand Up Republic, VoteVets, VFRL, and NatSecForBiden. Just to note that NatSecForBiden, fully known as National Security Officials for Biden, should be part of the activist group Defending Democracy Together 29.1% of the ads are created by political organizations, mostly PACs, including American Bridge, Lincoln Project, Meidas Touch, Pacronym, Patriots for Change, Really American, Turning Point Action, and Unite the Country. 37.8% of the ads are endorsed by presidential candidates directly. Last there are 3 ads, taking up 4% of the 74 military ads, are from the media sources.

Table 2 Frequency Distribution for Theme

Lastly, Table 2 shows the themes addressed. A variety of themes and topics were touched on, while topics of Russia, veterans’ opinion, families of military are addressed multiple times, representing 11%, 16%, and 6.7% respectively. There is also notably 24% of the ads that may not have a specific topic, discussing general or a combination of military-relevant issues. The nature of those small-numbered items in the table is that there was a variety of different ways to talk about the issue beyond Arlington, such as Vietnam War, women in the military, as well as a combination of two or three individual topics, like a June Stand Up Republic ad, with Russia, police, and military combined (Donald’s Betrayal, 2020).

Effect of negativity in political advertising

Figure 7: Standpoint vs Slant 1

Figure 7 is a cross-tabulation of Standpoint versus Slant, the political stance versus actual content of the ads. This is trying to build upon the individual frequency distribution of Standpoint and Slant content, showing that regardless of the political stance of an organization (except for pro-Trump ads), the general rhetorical strategy is consistently anti-Trump, attacking his inappropriate statements toward US military or suspected misbehavior with Russia. Those military ads are rhetorically strong and distinctive, criticizing Trump in a multi-faceted manner.

Let us consider one short statement by Joe Biden in A Betrayal (2020). It is a short clip of Biden criticizing Trump regarding his alleged connection to Russia. The context is the FBI and several US congressional committees have been investigating links between Russia government officials and individuals associated with Donald Trump, in part resulting from the investigation of the Russian interference in the 2016 US elections (Borger, 2017). Following Trump confidant Roger Stone dropping his appeal of seven felony convictions which detailed ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the final reported released by US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Aug. 18, 2020, stated that there were significant ties between 2016 Trump presidential campaign and Russia (Gerstein, 2020). Specifics revealed transactions between several Russians as a back-handed way to relieve his personal debt and tax issues. Regardless of the actual case, his affiliation with Putin and Russian businessmen has been condemned both in speeches and writings for years and inevitably is an opportunity to exploit for Biden and his supporters.

In Biden’s June 28 video, he framed his words concisely addressing this topic, “Not only did he fail to sanction or impose any kind of consequences on Russia for this egregious violation of international law, Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin…he sought to invite Russia to rejoin the G7…It’s betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation to protect and equip our troops when we send them in a harm’s way.” Biden commentary works in the way to scapegoat Trump, while consensus is signaled by supporting advertising from other anti-Trump ads groups.

It is not uncommon to see one candidate form his or her own message by attacking another candidate. Geer & Vavreck (2014) points out that in a polarized political environment, exaggeration by candidates in attacking an opponent creates more value for negativity. Geer (2006) and Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995) demonstrate the statistical correlation between polarization and negativity. Such polarization in the US bipartisan atmosphere is exacerbated after Trump’s 4-year effort in creating an iconoclastic style of politics with Biden portraying an imminent need for a national leader with expertise, establishment, and pluralism. Therefore, instead of yielding confusion and misinformation, anti-Trump negativity worked to capture the Trump backlash.

Table 3: Sponsorship & Standpoint vs Type of Organization

Table 3 is a cross-tabulation of Sponsorship, Standpoint versus Type of Organization. It shows the military-themed ads were dispensed by a varied collection of political organizations, including Lincoln Project, Meidas Touch, Pacronym, Patriots for Change, Really American, Turning Point Action, Unite the Country, and activist groups, including NatSecForBiden, RVAT, Stand Up Republic, VFRL, and VoteVets, and for both categories there are mostly independent and Biden-affiliated organizations.[iii]

Those different activist groups or political organizations are founded by both political and non-political people, varying in size and initiative, but most of them are anti-Trump republicans or right-leaning individuals. Patriots for change is a group of former reporters, video producers, political veteran, website developers, and others who are harnessing social media to reach American voters and sought to replace Donald Trump and nine GOP Senators in the election. Meidas Touch is a PAC formed by three brothers to stop the re-election of Trump. Really American is an anti-Trump PAC, as is Pacronym and Stand Up Republic, more progressive leaning PACs. Unite the Country is a PAC founded by several former aides to Joe Biden to support his presidential campaign (Meyer & Severns, 2019). Republicans Vote Against Trump (RVAT), the name speaks for itself, focuses on hundreds of testimonials of republicans, conservatives, moderates, and right-leaning independent voters. Except for Unite the Country that is more directly Biden-affiliated, other independent or republican organizations use essentially similar rhetoric in their ads, calling Trump “betrayers” due to his actions relevant to Russia, criticizing his attitude towards John McCain, etc.

One of the few pro-Trump ads was issued by college Republicans, Turning Point Action’s ad (Gold Star Families, 2020), a cropped Fox News video clip praising Trump for supporting Gold Star Families. The spot shows an interview with Brittany Jacobs, a Gold Star widow who expressed her gratefulness of what Trump had done for her family. She specifically mentioned the effort Trump made to help eliminate the SBP-DIC Offset (Survivor Benefit Plan/Dependency and Indemnity Compensation Offset (Phased Elimination, 2121).

The Trump campaign, however, did use the military extensively in its general advertising. Some ads were predominantly aimed at the military issue, for example his Commander in Chief spot where the central actor Trump dominates the scene surrounded by military venues. He lauds accomplishments, radiates leadership, and in “bigger than life visuals” his voiceover proclaims being Commander-in-chief “it’s more than just a job, it’s a sworn duty, to keep America safe” (2020).

As compared to the various anti-Trump ads showing multidimensional content, the pro-Trump ads were relatively standard in the sense they reinforce already well-known leadership virtues, not nearly as the “shocking” revelations from opposing quarters. Both in terms of strategy and numbers, pro-Trump ads in the realm of military issues seemingly were at a disadvantage.

Is September 2020 pivotal?

Table 4: Timeline vs Sponsorship & Theme

Table 4 is a cross-tabulation of Timeline versus Sponsorship and Theme. Note that all ads from the refined sample were posted in 2020. Earlier Figure 2 revealed that September was most concentrated with military ads, we also see ads by organizations including Lincoln Project, VFRL, RVAT, VoteVets, and American Bridge 21st Century, centralizing their advertising within the August-October period. Ads by Biden were posted throughout the year, and there are also ads by Stand Up Republic, for example, scattered out a little more and not necessarily targeting 3-month period. Besides, we also discern a variety of different themes being addressed in the September period, including 9/11, families of military, bounties, deceased, military vote, Spanish language troops, Vietnam, and veterans’ opinion.

September 2020 appeared to be crucial considering concurrent happenings. The trigger event appeared September 3 when The Atlantic published an article by Jeffery Goldberg claiming that Trump did not want to join other heads of state visiting France’s Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in 2018 to honor US troops buried there. He said, according to The Atlantic reporting, they were “losers” and “suckers” (Goldberg, 2020).

The occurrence of Trump calling sacrificed troops losers and suckers became a signature event that inflamed the US military families, veterans, opposing politicians, and organizations. The Lincoln Project ad 9/11 (2020) addressed the dedication and sacrifice of the US military, simultaneously reprimanding Trump’s ignorance of the military. The 9/11 ad explicitly linked 9/11, COVID-19, and Trump’s transactional core, creating strong comparisons the daily death of the pandemic and the total casualties of 9/11. The ad replays a Trump statement “that he now had the tallest building in New York” after World Trade Center collapsed. The ad tallies the virus deaths, “a 9/11 death toll every three days, because of the fool that sits behind the president’s desk.”

The 9/11 ad also implicitly points out Trump’s arrogance in the aftermath civil unrest of the George Floyd incident. The death of George Floyd in police custody contributed to the public’s examination of racial inequality across society, but also within the US military (George Floyd’s Death, 2020). The fear was people might become more disbelieving of the authorities linked with maintaining social order, including the military.

In a VoteVets’ Spanish language spot Mi País, former military veteran Pablo Pantoja reveals he received his military ID on 9/11, 2001, yet Donald Trump made him a “double loser”, “treated us as if we were worthless.” He intoned, “we cannot stop the hurricane, but we can stop Donald Trump.” In the latter VoteVets Spanish ad, the combat of hurricane Laura was brought up, a way of implying Trump administration’s history of politicizing disaster responses and the inability to deal with crises, where military is all about crisis.

Trump also threatened to deploy the army to quash the upheaval (Zurcher, 2020), undermining the military’s reputation as it might be compelled to turn against American citizens. These spots illustrate how ads associated with military became fiercely demarcated via Trump repute. These ads also are discerning examples of how campaign’s put together different, perhaps irrelevant, pieces together to target Trump.

At a White House press conference (President Donald Trump, 2020), Trump referred to The Atlantic article, as a “hoax.” The former ad makes a defensible point regarding a hoax in the sense he is calling out hyped “out-of-context” piling on. From that reading of what he said the latter statement by Trump might not be as flat as it seemed to be. Nonetheless, a few “trivial” enactments, disavowals of accusations, could be easily outweighed by multiple kinds of anti-Trump permeations. As Trump himself described it in the press conference, the media puts so many “unrelated things” together when it got closer to the election, and at least in the realm of military-Arlington-troops, those accusations/criticisms/ads/evidences become rhetorically compelling.

Giving September some leeway, we see on Oct. 2, 2020, Trump was tested positive for COVID-19 coronavirus (Baker & Haberman, 2020), a pivotal incident undercutting his effort to shift the campaign focus away from the pandemic. It was made it even more sarcastic was Trump suggesting Gold Star families might be whom to blame for his infection and the spread of the coronavirus at the White House (Steinhauer, 2020).

Forms and Styles

Table 5: Theme & Sponsorship vs Form/Style

Table 5 is a cross-tabulation of Theme, Sponsorship versus Form/Style. Most military ads exhibited an editing style of documentary/narrative, while a few testimonial focused ads also have their own power. For example, a Republican Voters Against Trump ad films a less edited clip of Scott, a Republican Veteran of North Carolina sharing his views of John McCain and Donald Trump (Army Vet, 2020). Along with showing respect to John McCain, he called Trump a “coward” running away from Vietnam. And the short clip of Trump saying “I like people that weren’t captured” is included and repeatedly incorporated in other anti-Trump ads. Like other testimonial-based ads, this one is sliced together with other fragmented elements and intertwined with montages, designed to enhance the persuasiveness. These ads worked as “fact-based with emotional appeals.”

On the other extreme, most documentary/narrative style military ads in our dataset are more “emotional-based with factual supplements.” A good example would be a Meidas Touch ad addressing John McCain as well. Biden’s honoring of and Trump’s presumptuous statements of John McCain alternate in this one minute and a half video, intersected with edited documentary short clips, Fox News short clips, and stills which combined organically biting montage of Biden praising and Trump disapproving (Arizona Knows Honor, 2020).

One potential reason the combination of two different styles has strength is they target both the audiences’ heuristic processing and systematic processing. Schwartz (2000) finds that in the realm of political advertising, positive moods lead to greater reliance on existing beliefs or heuristics, whereas negative moods lead to greater reliance on systemic processing [iv]. Similarly, Brader (2005) suggests that negative images and music elicit meticulous reasoning while positive messages encourage fidelity to prior beliefs. Moreover, Geer and Vavreck (2014) point out that the public learns more from attacks, and attacking an opponent is an implicit way of offering one’s own position on the issue, and therefore a pure, entirely negative campaign would not be as effective. Therefore, since overt negativity leads the voters to the central route of information processing inevitably, it is important combine the emotional appeals with at least partial facts in the form of statistics, documentary clips, testimonial statements, etc. In terms Aristotelian modes of persuasion, documentary/narrative-type ads are primarily utilizing Pathos, the appeal to the audience’s emotions, but the contents are also supplemented with Ethos, the appeal to the credibility of the argument and source.

Conclusion

This chapter discussed the content, form, context, and strategy employed by the political/campaign ads relevant to the US military. The empirical result found that anti-Trump ads are fewer and less rhetorically diversified, in part due to the prevailing media narratives which put Trump at a serious disadvantage. Considering “standpoint and slant,” the overt and cutting negativity in anti-Trump ads fueled by 2020 turbulence, combined with Trump’s iconoclastic persona likely had an impact.

Military ads were generally a late campaign phenomenon with most airing in September, a timeline associated with news stories (“losers” and “suckers” from The Atlantic). Other media shocks earlier drove advertising, for example, the Russian bounties on US troops in Afghanistan.

Most of the ads took the form of documentary/narrative, an emotion-appealing approach deployed with military ads. Those ads are more of less backed up with reason-based evidence, asking voters to think about the ads message, an approach aligned with the cognitive principles of persuasive messaging.

Previous literatures on US military advertising have been scarce.[v] This analysis, largely demographic in scope, represents a beginning effort to understanding the military ads in 2020.

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