Introduction
In Political Science, elections and voter turnout are major topics of discussion that are heavily researched. Elections in the United States, help make up our democracy. Our democratic government depends on the involvement of qualified individuals to vote to grant representation to its citizens. Voting is very important in a democratic government because it gives people the chance to voice their opinions and select candidates whom they feel best represents their ideals and beliefs. Our beliefs and ideals are molded with maturity and can sometimes be influenced by other sources (media, celebrities, family, athletes, cartoons, and even past elections). This research design will investigate the question, “In what ways do celebrities have an influence on voter turnout”? The issue that will be studied is whether celebrity endorsements have a significant impact on voter turnout in elections in the United States.
This research is important for the public because it will help determine if there is a correlation between celebrity influence and endorsements and an increase or decrease in voter turnout. Presidential elections in the United States are the most publicized elections of any kind; it is very important to find for future campaigns in there is any significance between celebrity influence and voter turnout by comparing past elections, the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, so that it may guide researchers for future elections.
Literature Review
Introduction
Endorsements play a big part in elections. An endorsement involves the act of giving public approval to a political candidate. In presidential Elections, celebrity endorsements can be used as platforms to voice political issues and increase voter turnout for their party. A celebrity is defined as (Morin, Ivory, and Tubbs 2012) as a person who is well known, or a person who lives in the state of being famous. The effects of endorser credibility can lead to explanations on voter perceptions and help better understand voter behavior. This paper will further investigate the comparative analysis between celebrity influence and endorsements during the Democratic and Republican party 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. This paper will help support the thesis that a celebrity endorsement will increase voter turnout in presidential elections.
Messages
This paper will explore the question, “In what ways do celebrities have an influence on voter turnout?”. I chose the 2008 and 2012 because there were high amounts of celebrity endorsements and public support given during both election terms, and first-time voter turnout was at its highest. The journal/ articles titled” Star power? Advocacy, receptivity, and viewpoints on celebrity involvement in issue politics” and “The Role of Celebrity Endorsements in Politics: Oprah, Obama, and the 2008 Democratic Primary” grant evidence into how celebrities publicly addressing their political viewpoints can result in higher voter turnout. “Star Power…” conducted an empirical investigation involving how celebrities carefully choose which issues they plan to voice their opinion on. The investigation showed that the lesser the political issue was, the more the issue was voice. In connection to “The Role of Celebrity Endorsements…”, it involved internationally known celebrity Oprah Winfrey influenced Barack Obama’s campaign through her talk show, online magazine, and subscriptions.
Oprah Winfrey is a celebrity who uses her voice in the media to change public opinion. Winfrey was able to show her influence when she became involved in the 2008 presidential campaign. This was not her first campaign that she decided to endorse. The article (“Star Power…”) discusses how Winfrey led a campaign in the early 1990’s to establish a database of convicted child abusers. Winfrey used her platform to gain worldwide attention to the cause. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Oprah Bill into law, this established Oprah Winfrey’s credibility as a celebrity. Credibility as a celebrity is very important. If majority public opinion about a celebrity is negative, in terms of campaigns, it may not be the best route to accept that celebrity endorsement. If majority public opinion is positive, then the candidate should be more willing to accept the endorsement from the celebrity.
Commercial endorsements play a huge role into how a candidate is viewed (Nownes 2012). Commercials allow celebrities to use their notoriety to “sell” the candidate to their audience. Because celebrities have such an influence on the public, celebrities might need to be careful what they choose to promote. Celebrities must be cautious, because who or whatever they choose to promote can generate lots of attention, and people will either stand with you, or against you. Depending on how sensitive the topic is, can determine how strongly people will react to it. Sensitive topics usually get more commercial time and address harder subjects. Commercials are a great way to gain support for an issue, or a candidate. In the article, “An experimental investigation of the effects of celebrity support for political parties in the United States.” a study was conducted involving 500 people, involving movie star Angelina Jolie advocating for first time voters to vote in the upcoming presidential campaign. It incorporated many of the values that the liberal party supports, (same-sex marriage, abortion rights, less police force, more gun control, etc.) voicing briefly how she felt about these issues.
The article in connection to the other journals wanted to investigate how star- power and the credibility of a celebrity, regardless of sex or gender (Morin, Ivory, and Tubbs 2012) (Nownes 2012) helped create the Presidential candidate’s “brand” for people to relate too. It showed that if you were in support or connected to those issues, you were more likely to vote for that candidate. Commercials help excite voters and inform voters on what candidate they are voting. The limitations found in the articles and journals were that in the counter arguments, there was barely any explanation on how candidates handled situations if the commercial had a negative impact.
Voter Turnout
Voter turnout is a very relevant topic to research in Political Science because there is so many different factors that can influence it during elections. This section is included to discuss some of the other determinants that the articles and journals consider during investigation. In the journal titled, “Political star power and political parties: Does celebrity endorsement win first-time votes?”, discussed if a celebrity endorsement brought out first-time voters, while also assessing if the influence was greater for Republican or Democratic parties (Wood 2007). Each source took into consideration the number of eligible citizens able to vote in the Presidential Elections. As a result, the sources all showed that there was a positive correlation in their studies between celebrities voicing their support, and voter turnout. In presidential campaign studies, some journals confuse eligibility with total adult population. In the United States, Age (18) and citizenship status are the criteria that determine a person’s voting rights. Barriers that can block a person from voting in elections are felons, people without ID, residents of U.S. territories, resident non-citizens (Wood 2017).
The sources also discuss some of the determinants and demographics that also influence voter turnout in their investigations. “Celebrity and politics…” discussed how habit is a determinant of voter turnout. A strong predictor that candidates and researchers take into consideration is whether a person voted in the previous election (Morin, Ivory, and Tubbs 2012). This article also discussed how childhood influences could also influence how a person views a candidate, which in terms could their willingness to vote. “Political star and political parties…” brought into consideration how some individuals’ socioeconomic status can influence their perception of a candidate and their knowledge of voting in general.
Other socioeconomic factors can have also had a major impact on voter turnout, along with celebrity endorsements. The socioeconomic factor that many researchers focus on is education. Articles such as these support the hypothesis that the more “educated” a person a is, the more likely they are to vote in an election. Another way to look it is, the more access a person has to education, the more willing they will be to vote. Other socioeconomic factors that are also determinants are income and class status. Researchers may argue that sex and gender play a factor into whether will vote or not. In the sources, it was investigated whether sex and gender influenced voter perception, which also leads to an explanation that it is unlikely that sex and gender is a strong determinant. (Wood and Herbst 2007) (Morin Ivory and Tubbs 2012) It is important to talk about these other factors when conducting research so that we do not look at the results through a straight tunnel. There are many factors that determine or influence whether an individual will be more likely to vote, but for this investigation only one variable will be focused on: celebrity endorsements.
Impact
These studies give valuable information to support the thesis of this paper. After looking at previous investigations, it is apparent that celebrities are a factor, among others that influence voter turnout. The sources provided a connection between celebrity endorsements and voter turnout rates. This study will be different from the previous studies discussed because it will look deeper into how celebrity endorsements can influence voter turnout, rather than focusing on how specific celebrities affect voter turnout. This will help determine how strong or weak the correlation between the variables is. This study will contribute to the Political Science field, by adding to existing knowledge, through asking questionnaires and investigating, and by tackling this issue by using a different approach and method.
Hypotheses
The 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections were heavily broadcasted. Celebrities from both conservative and liberal parties spoke out and endorsed the candidate of his or her choice. Celebrity endorsements have a positive correlation with voter turnout. Elections in which candidates are given celebrity endorsements will have a higher turnout rate.
I hypothesize that the following will happen after conducting the research design:
(H1) Celebrities will have a strong influence on voter turnout.
(H2) Celebrities will increase voter turnout.
(H3) Celebrity endorsers will be more favorable by voters, non-celebrity endorsers, given their likeable status.
(H4) Voters who have high levels of political salience will report will have a positive attitude towards the celebrities presented, towards the endorser’s values and opinions, towards the party identified with, and voter intentions when a non-celebrity endorser is used.
(H5) Voters who have high levels of political salience will report will have a negative attitude towards the celebrities presented, towards the endorser’s values and opinions, towards the party identified with, and voter intentions when a non-celebrity endorser is used.
Design & Methodology
The research question is: “In what ways do celebrities have an influence on voter turnout”? A more detailed version of the research question is: In what ways do celebrity endorsements have an influence on voter turnout? The dependent variable for this experiment is the celebrity endorsements that the celebrities received during the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections. This experiment was limited to only two presidential elections, to make it easier to gather data for this research experiment. The independent variable for this experiment is voter turnout during the two presidential elections.
Participants will be randomly gathered via email. Participants will be asked to read 3 articles, all the same length about voting and voter turnout. Participants will complete a series of surveys related to celebrity endorsers, ads, and candidates. This procedure will be done in a private online screening (once they click on the private link sent, the option to opt of the survey at any time will be given) and should take no longer than 30-45 minutes to complete.
This design is mixed methodology, it includes both qualitative and quantitative methods. The design/ methodology used for this experiment is a 2 (political salience; high; low) x 2 (endorser; celebrity; non-celebrity) between subject’s factorial design. In this case salience is defined as most noticeable or important (Fraenkel 1993). This concept is often used in political science to list important factors of political socialization which may influence one’s political ideology or values. They are typically listed as: family, peers, education, religion, faith, race, gender, age, and geography (Moeller 2014). A factorial design was chosen because it is a design that includes 2 independent variables, and one dependent variable. The result that I expect to gain from this design is an interaction. In factorial designs when an interaction occurs, the two factors have interacted with each other to affect the dependent variable (Fraenkel 1993). This can be studied in terms of high and low, which can be recorded on whether there is a high or low impact between the variables. A factorial design is the best route to gather information for this experiment. To continue, manipulated questionnaires will be given out randomly via email, and was restricted to U.S. citizens who were eligible to vote during the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections. Responses from hopefully at least 100,000 people should be collected from adults who are eligible. Good places to ask these questionnaires should be the public library, or other quiet places to control outside environment influence in this controlled experiment. To avoid discrepancies, each answer in the questionnaire should be carefully examined.
To choose correct endorsers for this experiment for participants to examine, I plan to ask University students and faculty to participate in a pre-test analysis. Participants will be asked to rate pictures from 30 different celebrities’ Instagram pages. Each participant will be asked to identify the name of the celebrity shown on screen (without any help from the internet of course). Celebrities that are not recognized will be removed and will not progress to the experiment. The purpose of this is to get a pre-analysis of ratings of what celebrities’ participants think would most like endorse political campaigns. Celebrities with the highest ratings will make it to the experiment. For the next part of the experiment, non- celebrity endorsers will also be chosen to match the photos of the celebrity endorsers. Fake campaign ads will also be created in a slideshow of celebrity ads with the slogan, “I voted, did you”? One ad will be presented in a liberal way, the other in a conservative to compare the differences between the two designs.
For this experiment, to determine which factor of political socialization was more salient than others, 3 articles will be created in equal length that discuss poor voter turnout in previous elections and will also discuss the importance of voting. A Likert scale (1= strongly disagree, 5= strongly agree) survey will be given before the article shows up on the computer screen, and afterwards to measure the participants feelings for politics and voting. These two tests are important to measure the significance of how participants feel about voting and politics in general. These results will be a major determinant in the factorial design, because those participants who show a high political salience have high knowledge of politics and the voting process, those with low political salience, will show that voting is not important to them as a citizen. A T-test will also be conducted in a regression analysis to determine which among the independent variables is related to the dependent variable, and to determine whether the relationship is strong or weak.
Another Likert scale survey will be given to participants to measure their attitudes towards the endorser. Questions such as: was the ad believable or non- believable? Did it persuade you to vote? Did it change your views on the candidate? Did it change your views on the party? This information will be important to gather information for the hypothesis.
The results will show that participants with low political salience will be significantly more likely to vote for the political party when a celebrity endorser is used, and the inverse effect for those with a high political salience. This is important to research, to find out whether other major factors, such as common knowledge about voter turnout and politics, have significance when it comes to voter turnout in major elections. Celebrity endorsements will have a significant impact on voter turnout depending on the participants’ initial political knowledge. The regression analysis results will determine if the hypothesis for this design is valid or invalid.
Further examination in future elections would make this experiment more reliable. Other limitations include the celebrities chosen. Is there effectiveness affected by other factors such as geography or age demographics as well? One major factor that should be investigated is voter apathy- the lack of caring of voting in general elections (Salamon 1973). A limitation or counterargument for this experiment could be that instead non-turnout being due to lack of political interest, it could be due to lack of interest in the parties or members running for election instead, which was not taken into consideration for this experiment
Conclusion
This study should be conducted because will be a beneficial addition to previous studies conducted on voter turnout and celebrity influence. Voting is the core of a democracy. The methods for this design were determined the best route for the results gained. This investigation tried to remove any personal biases from the research design. This study can help future candidates in their campaigns and make voters more aware of how celebrities and media can influence their decisions. This study fits within broader scholarship about dealing with the public problem of voter turnout and may possibly provide a resolution for future elections and campaigns. This is a relevant research proposal, because in past elections, we saw how celebrities, both conservative and liberal influenced voters to come about and voice their opinions.
Literature Review References
Becker, Amy B. “Star power? Advocacy, receptivity, and viewpoints on celebrity involvement in issue politics.” Atlantic journal of communication 21.1 (2013): 1-16.
Garthwaite, Craig, and Tim Moore. “The role of celebrity endorsements in politics: Oprah, Obama, and the 2008 democratic primary.” Department of Economics, University of Maryland (2008): 1-59.
Morin, David T., James D. Ivory, and Meghan Tubbs. “Celebrity and politics: Effects of endorser credibility and sex on voter attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors.” The social science journal 49.4 (2012): 413-420.
Nownes, Anthony J. “An experimental investigation of the effects of celebrity support for political parties in the United States.” American politics research 40.3 (2012): 476-500.
Wood, Natalie T., and Kenneth C. Herbst. “Political star power and political parties: Does celebrity endorsement win first-time votes?” Journal of Political Marketing 6.2-3 (2007): 141-158.
Works Cited
Fraenkel, Jack R., Norman E. Wallen, and Helen H. Hyun. How to design and evaluate research in education. Vol. 7. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.
Moeller, Judith, et al. “Pathway to political participation: The influence of online and offline news media on internal efficacy and turnout of first-time voters.” American Behavioral Scientist 58.5 (2014): 689-700.
Salamon, Lester M., and Stephen Van Evera. “Fear, apathy, and discrimination: A test of three explanations of political participation.” American Political Science Review 67.4 (1973): 1288-1306.
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