Politicians in the United States, as well as in many other countries, use the media frequently and it is one of the most important factors in their campaigns. The president elections are always big, especially in the United States. One of George W. Bush´s strategy was to use fear. Here is an example of one of his advertisments where fear is the main factor:
If we look at his ratings we can see that they shot up whenever there was a crisis:
This though does not work every time. Hillary Clinton tried this in a campaign ad, and got very negative responses. You could say that the U.S. citizens picked up on the intention. Here is the ad:
My god that Clinton ad was terrible.
ReplyDeleteNot that the other one was any more admirable, but at least it was better made to push the buttons!
Would be interesting to see a comparison on the approval ratings/crisis relationship with a different president with a different media personality - although Bush was famously effective at capitalizing on crises.