NEGATIVE POLITICAL ADS--A TWO-EDGED SWORD.

Back-stabbing and name-calling, standard fare on soap operas or racy television talk shows, can become common in real life around election time as some candidates for public office take to the airwaves with negative political advertising. "The use of negative political ads has increased dramatically over the last 25 years. Most elections have a lot of negative advertising," indicates William Schenck-Hamlin, associate professor of speech communication, Kansas State University, Manhattan.

The effects of a steady diet of negative political advertising on the electorate can be counterproductive, according to research by Schenck-Hamlin and David Procter, head of the university's Department of Speech Communication, Theater, and Dance. Their research has found that candidates who use negative ads to attack their opponents' character--called theme ads--can produce voter cynicism and a distrust of government institutions. A candidate who attacks his opponent's character through negative advertising also can end up lowering his own image with voters.

"Theme ads can be `character assassination,'" Schenck-Hamlin notes. "Given a steady diet of candidate theme ads, voters may view both candidates as tainted goods, that they've poisoned each...