Spanish language advertising by prominent groups in the 2020 presidential election
By Angela Loyola ’21 and Sam Feuer ’23 A prior Delta Lab research project on the amount of spending by presidential candidates Joseph Biden and Donald Trump on Spanish language Facebook ads found that while Trump was leading in spending until a few weeks before the election, Biden’s spending skyrocketed as the election neared, eventually […]
Summaries of Student Presentations / Summer Activities
Many of our Delta Lab students presented their research in May 2021 at the Wesleyan Media Project’s Political Advertising Workshop. Others conducted research over the summer and presented posters. Summaries of these projects are shared below.
Assessing Discrepancies in Reported Advertiser Spend by Google
By Natalie Appel Although Facebook requires sponsors of ads about politics, elections, and social issues to disclose who paid for the advertisement, how much was spent, and who was targeted, there have been a number of instances in which Facebook has failed to recognize and label these advertisements. A study by digital experts at NYU […]
Trump’s Lead in Spending on Spanish Facebook Ads was Surpassed by Biden’s Last Minute Push
By Angela Loyola According to the NYT and several other news outlets, as the election neared, polling in battleground states like Texas and Florida indicated that Biden was not leading Trump with the Latino vote in every case. And even in the cases when he did hold a lead, it was by a much smaller […]
Presidential advertising by candidates reveals microtargeting tactics on Snapchat
By Spencer Dean ’21 Introduction The booming market for political advertisements on digital platforms remains dominated by two major players, Facebook and Google. Together, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have spent nearly $300 million on ads run on these platforms since mid-April. However, a new player may be emerging in social media app Snapchat, which […]
Racial Justice in Presidential & Senatorial Candidate Ads
By Sam Feuer ’23, Angela Loyola ’21, and Natchanok Wandee ’23 According to the New York Times, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement may be the largest movement in U.S. history. With fifteen to twenty-six million people protesting across the country after the murder of George Floyd, the quantity of people and their geographic spread […]
Digital Spending on Facebook by Geography
By Roshaan Siddiqui (’22) and Pavel Oleinikov In its tracking of campaign spending on Facebook, Wesleyan Media Project focuses on identifying the sources of money behind the ads. Facebook requires that advertisers post the “Paid for By” disclaimer, listing the organization that paid for the ad. Often, the same organization will engage dozens of Facebook […]
Long-term monitoring helps identify gaps in Facebook reporting
By Pavel Oleinikov In Facebook’s Ad Library, Facebook reports spending on political advertisements by day, week, 30-day, and 90-day summaries, and total spending to date by Facebook Page and Disclaimer (for example, Page: Donald J. Trump, Disclaimer: TRUMP MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN COMMITTEE). Through long-term monitoring of the Facebook reports, we became aware that not […]
Delta Lab students present their research
Three Delta Lab students are presenting their research using Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) data during virtual sessions this summer. Two Delta Lab students, Brianna Mebane (’22) and Roshaan Siddiqui (‘22), presented their ongoing work and preliminary findings at Wesleyan University’s virtual Summer 2020 Research Poster Session on July 30, and Adina Gitomer (’20) will be […]
Examining Women’s Issues in Political Advertising and Candidate Gender
By Lance Lepelstat Previous studies of gender in political advertising indicate strong similarities between the self-presentations of male and female candidates in ads (Sapiro, Walsh, Strach & Hennings, 2011). Because past studies have focused only on federal government races, we aim to update these findings with data on advertising in down ballot races in addition […]
