An Experiment to the Memory Enhancement and Attitudinal Effects of Political Posters

THE Power of the poster An experiment to the memory enhancement and attitudinal effects of political posters By Thom Rietberg - 6151841 Master's Thesis - Graduate School of Communication Supervisor: Dr. Linda Bos June 2014 The power of the poster |Political Communication - 1 Abstract Even though marketing technologies evolve rapidly, political parties still use paper posters during elections. Elaborating on previous literature about political visuals, in this study a closer look will be taken at the effects of a poster. By separating three main cues; a photograph, a logo and a slogan, an attempt to a better understanding of these elements is developed. Both the single effect of the cue is analyzed as well as the interaction between cues. In an experimental study, respondents will be randomly assigned to one of the seven conditions. Each condition has its own political poster with an unique set of cues. Using knowledge and attitudinal questions the effects of memory enhancement and attitudes due to the cues are measured. Results show that having a photograph of the politician always improves the attitude, both toward the politician and the party. Adding a logo to the poster causes the memory enhancement of the political party to increase. All in all, the three cues differ in the effects they cause. It is up to the political party to decide what goal they want to achieve and to add the cues appropriate to the goal. These results could serve as a strategic media advice for political parties or function as a guideline for future research to the effects of visuals. Keywords: poster, visuals, logo, photo, slogan, Dutch politics, attitude, memory enhancement, recall. Introduction Ever since the, arguably most important, invention of the printing press was introduced by Johannes Gutenberg, marketing has gotten the opportunity to be more widespread than ever. Not longer were corporations and elitist organizations bound to word of mouth for gaining popularity. While all printed material was initially covered with ty- pography, this later shifted to more graphical imagery in the late 19th century. Painters and graphic designers started to create non-fictional objects, like trains and persons, in which art and marketing overlapped. Among the clients of these poster we could find military organizations, theaters and political parties. All with the same goals in mind: in- fluencing the viewer into a change of action or thought. Even nowadays, with emerging advanced technologies as social media and personalized advertisements, printed images are still everywhere to be seen. With every upcoming election new posters, leaflets and banners are spread to each town and city. These forms of marketing look to be tied with The power of the poster |Political Communication - 2 politics. But why is there still value in text and image on a paper? Does it cause effects to its viewers? And if so, does it cause the intended effects? In this master thesis I will take a closer look at political imagery. By conducting an experiment with several conditions, I will attempt to answer what kind of effects political visuals have on its viewers. I will mainly focus on the change of memory enhancement and attitude after seeing a political poster. This unique combination of both studying the memory enhancement and attitudes, could create a more complete answer to in what way visual elements work together best. This develops valuable information for political parties, but also for the marketing of companies or the receiver of the message. Knowing in what way companies try to influence you, can create an awareness about how vulner- able a person can be. Designing an experiment like this means not only the field of communication and political communication will be discussed. Results also tell more about the human psyche; how we react to certain elements on a daily basis and what the underlying consequences are. There is still much to explore about effects we endure everyday and going beyond the field of communication and look at psychology gives us great insights into these effects. But the interdisciplinarity does not stop here, since we take an in-depth look at the print media, a media strategy advice for political parties can be made. This might create knowledge that could be used in media and marketing studies. Academic literature on memory enhancement and attitudinal changes by visuals is plen- tiful, especially in the early eighties a vast landscape of articles has been developed. How- ever, if we look at the effects of political visuals on memory enhancement and attitude changes, the amount of literature leaves much to be desire; this combination has simply not been explored yet. There is a noticeable gap in the research when combining certain effects of visuals and by using these two, much used, effects we can add knowledge to this gap. Two of the cues used in this experiment, a photo and a text, have been research be- fore, but about the third cue, the logo, is still a lack of information in academic literature. I would argue that a logo is a very valuable brand identification and brand recognition visual for viewers and might have a big impact on the recall and attitude towards parties. The power of the poster |Political Communication - 3 Combining the gap in the literature with the continuous salience of political posters the following research question arises: To what extent do characteristics of political advertising change the knowledge and attitude of the receiver? Theoretical Background In this paragraph a theoretical framework about political visuals is provided, notably with the addition of the logo of the political party as visual. It will start by defining political visuals and the historic development of these communicational cues and will end by summarizing the known effects of political visuals described by other researchers. Political visuals There are different forms of convincing the voter of the justness of a political party. One may be drawn to substantive debates, while others are better persuaded by a party pro- gram. Another form we have seen for about a century (Vliegenthart, 2011) are political visuals, usually published with a favorable photograph or text by its party (Boen & Van- beselaere, 2002). However, political visuals can also be directly targeted against other parties (Smith, 2001). One important form of these visuals are the posters (Dumitrescu, 2012). Taking a 20 per cent share of the campaign budget in most European countries, these visuals play a substantive role in the political communication of parties. But also other forms, like leaflets (Rosenberg, Bohan, McCafferty & Harris, 1986) or banners (Tschabrun, 2003) are ways to visually communicate with the voter. So, even in a day and age where interactive and personalized message can be created, paper posters keep to be prevalent. Usually, these visuals are displayed on designated areas in a city or to be found on a web site (Petchesky, 1987; Vliegenthart, 2011; Prior, 2014;). The visual can contain one or multiple elements or cues, like the politicians’ face (Banducci, Karp, Thrasher & Rallings, 2008; Prior, 2014), the logo of the political party (Bennett, 2004; Van Ham, 2001; Vliegenthart, 2011) or a textual cue, like a call to vote or a slogan (Van Ham, 2001; Tschabrun, 2003; Vliegenthart, 2011). These elements solely or combined try to persuade the viewer into voting (Boen & Vanbeselaere, 2002; Tschabrun, 2003). The power of the poster |Political Communication - 4 Change in visuals As mentioned in the previous paragraph, political visuals have always played a role in the communication of political parties. Historically, visuals like posters and flyers have always been rather cheap and local instruments for the advertisement of politicians (Tschabrun, 2003). But since the invention of the television, political marketing has been professionalized (Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999; Brants and van Praag, 2006), shifting the political communication from political logic to a media logic. In here, the mass media decides what topics will be addressed on the agenda. Nowadays, some researchers suggest that we have shifted to another era, the post-modern political communication. Strömbäck (2007) points out that this new era, the marketing logic, consists out of specialized campaign teams that are able to broadcast personalized messages to voters. Indeed, in an increasing amount of countries we see highly professionalized, per- manent campaigns (Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999; Strömbäck, 2008). However, some might argue that these 24/7 campaigns are the case in Anglo-Saxon countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, but not yet to be seen in smaller Western Eu- ropean countries, like The Netherlands and Denmark (Farrell & Webb, 1998). But it looks clear that the political landscape is shifting to be more professionalized. By having dedicated teams, we see more efficient and better thought out campaigns. Strömbäck (2008) also mentions an ever growing personalization in politics. This means, relative to the party, more attention will be given to politicians and they have more aware how they should look and talk. This professionalization and personalization also carries out to the political advertisement; the political leader is presented more often (Iyengar, Norpoth & Hahn, 2004; Sellers & Schaffner, 2007; Vliegenthart, 2011), the logo of the party is used more frequently (Farrell & Wortmann, 1987; Bennett, 2004) and the message of the text is seperate from the message of the image, rather than both having a complementary message (Vliegenthart, 2011). Memory enhancement When discussing the effects of political visuals, one of the most common is the memory enhancement when a visual is seen. Multiple research findings show that when a face is presented, the chance of recalling the name of that person and what he or she The power of the poster |Political Communication - 5 does is significantly higher (Cohen, 1993; Dumitrescu, 2012; Prior, 2014), and even more when the face of that person is similar to that of the viewers (Schill, 2012).

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