Topic > A Study of Television Images During Presidential Debates: How They Affect Viewers and Their Ability to Evaluate the Candidates

The evening of September 26, 1960 marked the date of the first Nixon-Kennedy presidential debate. Even though it only lasted 59 minutes, to this day it is still considered an important debate to study in the science of political behavior. It was the first televised presidential debate, in which a majority of those watching on TV thought Kennedy had won, while those listening on the radio believed Nixon had won. In the Druckman paper, he revisits this historical debate to see how television influences political behavior, what voters learn about candidates, and whether the rise of television has distracted voters from the issues. In particular, Druckman examines the effect of television images during a presidential debate: the criteria viewers use to evaluate a candidate, the candidate's overall evaluation, and what the viewer learns about politics. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay First, Druckman has four different hypotheses before starting his experiment. The first is that “television viewers will be significantly more likely than audio listeners to use personality criteria (e.g., integrity) when evaluating candidates (debaters), all else constant.” Suppose there are two candidates, one with a better personality and another with a preferable view on the issues. Druckman believes the candidate with the better personality will benefit from TV, while the other candidate will benefit from radio. His second hypothesis states that “TV viewers will learn much more than audio listeners, everything else remaining constant.” Television images often increase the viewer's attention and improve memory and learning. The third predicts that “sophisticated individuals will learn significantly more than unsophisticated individuals, regardless of medium, all else constant” based on prior work. The latest, stating that "unsophisticated individuals will learn much more from television than from audio, while sophisticated individuals will show significantly smaller or no difference in learning from different media, all else constant." People already knowledgeable about politics may not depend on television images to hold their attention. Overall, these assumptions are important because none of them were used in the Nixon-Kennedy debate; it is a new forecast that takes a new view of the historical debate, in the hope of finding data on political behavior. The independent variables in the experiment are the medium used to broadcast the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, perception of the candidates' image and personality traits, perception of the candidates' issue positions, political predispositions, and demographics. The two mediums used to transmit are TV (audio and video) or radio (audio only). While the dependent variables include: criteria for candidate-specific ratings, overall ratings, viewer/listener learning, and who won the debate. The experiment included 171 University of Minnesota summer students with no prior knowledge of the Kennedy-Nixon debate regarding the differing opinions of those who experienced it on TV versus radio. They were given a short questionnaire beforehand to determine demographic data. Next, the participants' students were randomly assigned into two groups (one group would watch the debate on TV and.