Like most things, campaign ads have changed in the past 60 years. The University of Nebraska Campaign Ads Project examined the evolution of presidential campaign ads since 1952, analyzing and categorizing hundreds of general election commercials. Researchers made the resulting database of ad characteristics publicly available on the Web in time for the 2012 presidential campaign, including a blog analyzing long-term campaign ad trends. The team, led by UNL assistant professor of political science Dana Griffin and assistant professor of communication studies Damien Smith Pfister, expect their dataset will aid interdisciplinary research on political communication.

       Tweet