ABSTRACT
Political ads have become a fixture of modern political campaigns. Accordingly, political advertising has been studied from a variety of perspectives and methodological approaches. Even a cursory review of political advertising literature is likely to produce evidence of methodological diversity. The majority of studies examining political advertising deploy empirical methods, but researchers have also used rhetorical and interpretive methods (e.g., Gronbeck, 1992; Kates, 1998; Parmelee, Perkins, & Sayre, 2007; Reyes, 2006; Richardson, 2000; Sheckels, 2002). Researchers often use rhetorical and interpretive methods to examine specific themes or case studies, but this research informs much of the empirical research on political advertising as well.
