The Effects of HDTV on Perceptions of Obama and McCain in a 2008 Presidential Debate

Abstract

As high-definition television (HDTV) becomes more prevalent, it may affect how people perceive politicians. This study experimentally tests the effects of HD on people's perceptions of John McCain and Barack Obama during their second presidential debate, hypothesizing that the HD format will hurt McCain. Consistent with the authors’ expectations, it was found that the HD format negatively influenced global evaluations toward McCain. In addition, HDTV viewers free-listed more negative responses to McCain, including several pertaining to his age. This report discusses why these findings were observed, and implications for candidate strategy and the study of media effects are discussed.

Keywords:

• Debate
• HDTV
• Political Campaign

Notes

Note. N = 48, R ² = .4920, root MSE = 31.185.

*p < .10. **p < .01.

Note. Cell entries are the proportion of positive or negative statements for each candidate in each condition (high definition [HD] or non-HD). Standard errors are in parentheses.

*p < .001.

See http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/research/hdtvstudy.html

Aspect ratio is the relationship between screen width and screen height. In high-definition television (HDTV), this ratio is larger and more horizontally stretched than in non-HDTV.

High definition has more lines of resolution, which leads viewers to see clearer images. As Zettl (2008) stated, such images can affect the relative energy (also known as the aesthetic energy or power) of images on viewers.

The second debate was the town hall-style debate held at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, and was moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw.

The television had 720p high-definition resolution.

We operationalize our independent variable as either watching the debate in high-definition (HD) format or in the traditional format, both on 40” screens. The students attended a residential college where 98% of students lived on campus. At the time of the study, the campus cable plan did not include HD capability. Thus, the students may have experienced HD programming at their permanent homes, but did not view it regularly on campus.

The percentage of agreement between the coders was high: They agreed on 136 of 141 ratings (96%).

We compared the proportion of female participants in the high-definition (HD) verses non-HD condition by computing a z statistic using the following equation: .

McCain's mean favorability score among non-high-definition (HD) viewers was 48.85, compared to 29.64 among HD viewers. In contrast, Obama was perceived more favorably by HD (M = 78.82) than non-HD (M = 62.38) viewers. The repeated factor accounts for the within-subjects correlation or that a single respondent's response for McCain and for Obama was likely correlated. We chose this model over a t test approach because the power went up a bit.

To conduct these difference of proportions tests, we used the coded open-ends to create two separate variables for each candidate. The first dummy variable coded each positive statement as “1” and negative and neutral statements as “0,” whereas the second dummy coded negative statements as “1” and positive and neutral statements as “0.” Thus, we compared the proportions of positive statements of total statements in some tests and the proportion of negative statements of total statements in others.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angela L. Bos

Angela L. Bos (PhD, University of Minnesota, 2007) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the College of Wooster.

Bas W. van Doorn

Bas W. van Doorn (PhD, University of Minnesota, 2008) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the College of Wooster.

Abbey C. Smanik

Abbey C. Smanik (BA, College of Wooster, 2011) is a Graduate Fellow in Public Policy and Management at Ohio State University. We thank the students in PSCI 206: Political Parties and Elections at the College of Wooster in Fall 2008, who collected the project's data as part of a class research project. We also thank Sarah and Wes Davis, who graciously hosted study participants to view the debate, and Geoff Sheagley, who offered useful feedback.