Do Celebrities Help Get Out The Vote?

Late last week, a PR push began for a study coming out of Washington State University's Mass Communication and Society journal. The study made some interesting, if extremely limited, findings about the utility of celebrity GOTV campaigns. The media, however, has jumped ahead of the gun and is using the study to validate a simplistic idea that celebrity endorsements directly caused higher turnout in 2004. Such stories have already run in the Seattle PI and Reuters. These stories go beyond the extremely limited findings of the study.

The study, Celebrity Endorsements and Their Potential to Motivate Young Voters, measures the effects of celebrity promotions on "apathy" and "complacency" in young voters, in which apathy is defined as a total lack of interest and an unwillingess to get involved, whereas complacency is defined as a satisfaction with the current the state of affairs that puts the relevance of political participation at a distance and decreases one's motivation to be civically engaged.

Furthermore, scholars studying social capital raise concerns about young adults’ self-absorption and lack of concern with the larger society (Buckingham, 1997). Complacency, therefore, seems to comprise an important target for GOTV campaigns because the motivation to participate in public affairs derives, in part, from the identification of a public problem that affects the individual or those about whom the individual cares (Delli Carpini, 2000; Holbert, Kwak, & Shah, 2003).

Given that many GOTV promotions have been targeted directly toward energizing young adults, it seems useful to examine whether this type of campaign can provide an opportunity to decrease complacency among young voters. To the extent young adults are receptive to the identification-based appeals of the promotions, the campaigns may encourage them to recognize and develop an understanding of societal issues that previously seemed irrelevant.

The study interestingly suggests that it is in "complacent" youth that celebrity endorsements have the greatest impact. I'm not sure how useful the finding is, given that a field director can't exactly target for "complacent" vs. "apathetic" youth, nor can communications directors buy their ad time to hit the complacent demographic more than that apathetic demographic. Nevertheless, it's an interesting look into why celebrity PSAs might be effective in some instances but not in others.

The results of this study therefore suggest that the celebrity-based promotions seemed to hold more promise for easing involvement through the reduction of complacency than for reducing apathy. Receptivity to promotions predicted lower levels of complacency and reduced complacency associated positively with both involvement and self-efficacy. Although not tested directly in this study, these promotions may have the ability over time to help arrest young citizens’ spiral into disaffection by helping to reduce their complacency, thereby contributing to their heightened public affairs involvement and sense of self-efficacy.

This suggests that celebrities who appeal to youth can help motivate engagement in the civic affairs as their fans emulate attitudes and behaviors supportive of public affairs participation. The results suggest that this process encourages fans to become more aware of the personal relevance of issues, which motivates them to use the media to learn more, thereby further increasing efficacy.

All well and good, but the authors themselves admit that their findings are extremely limited by the scope and makeup of their sample, which consisted of only 305 youth all attending the same 4-year university:

The findings of this study are limited in that the sample was one of convenience and not generalizable to the national population of young adults.These promotions may have had a different effect in other geographic regions, as well as with other segments of young voters. In addition, all participants of the study were enrolled in a 4-year university, which could have implications for their political activity and interest in politics. Education consistently associates with voting behavior in older adults; therefore, college students may be more receptive to voting promotions than others in their age group. In addition, McDevitt and Chaffee (1998) indicated that top-down, GOTV promotions fail to motivate individuals of low socioeconomic status, thereby contributing to the ever widening knowledge gap. To gain a better understanding of mechanisms that can motivate young citizens, future research will require a study utilizing a more diverse sample. In addition, our study is limited by having occurred at a single point in the 2004 election process. Longitudinal data will be required to fully address the extent to which these promotions have lasting influence.

I would also add here that the study made no attempt to control for other factors such as how the celebrities were used. Some groups, like Music for America, Head Count, and Punk Voter, employed a field-based, peer to peer model in their celebrity partnerships. Others like Hip Hop Summit Action Network held massive, educational stadium concerts. MoveOn's Vote for Change primarily used older artists more appealing to Gen X or Boomers, and focused solely on stadium sized shows in swing states. Rock the Vote and Vote or Die ran massive PR campaigns. How a celebrity is utilized in a GOTV campaign could also determine their efficacy.

The study also does not take into account other factors influencing young voter turnout, including field and communications programs of campaigns and nonprofit groups like YDA, College Democrats, the Bus Fed, and The League, who are out there contacting voters on a daily basis.

Ultimately, this study provides some nice, tentative evidence that celebrities can do more than build a brand for an organization; they can actually help drive engagement. But far more work needs to be done before I'm comfortable seeing headlines like Celebrities can coax youth to vote, study shows, or reading interviews like this that play up the importance of celebrity endorsements without any solid data. On that note, it would be very interesting to see the study's authors team up with Music for Democracy to test the efficacy of their Be the Change tool.