celebrities

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.

• The New York Times reports that 6,400 voters in Colorado may be disenfrachised thanks to dishonest trainings and misinformation distributed by the Republican Secretary of State's office. Our friends at New Era Colorado are featured prominently in the piece fighting back against the disenfranchisement.
• The Obama campaign raked in the cash in September, pulling in more than $150 million. If you missed it, campaign manager David Plouffe noted that Students were one of the top donors to the campaign, along with retirees.
• For some reason, I've never seen this before. Check out YDA's Young Voter Revolution. Take the pledge and check out the tools and resources.
• The Wall Street Journal business and technology blog looks at some data from Rapleaf and says that different swing states favor different social networks. For instance, Wisconsin youth favor Bebo, while Virginians favor Black Planet and New Mexican youth are on Hi5. This bears more looking into.
• The National Review commissioned a hit piece on Campus Progress. Over at Pushback, Jesse Singal ably rips NR's piece to shreds.
• Zack has an awesome idea to make FaceBook an even greater peer pressure machine to encourage voter turnout and political discussion.
• Skaters in Wasilla fought Sarah Palin and won.
• The LA Times has a rundown on celebrity PSA campaigns.
• Meanwhile, Visible Measures tries to measure the impact of those viral videos to Get Out the Vote. The site looks at which of 4 major GOTV PSAs has the most views, and finds that Leo DiCaprio's celebrity-studded "Don't Vote" video comes out on top.
• The Hill looks at the campaign's presence online and finds Obama ahead, but McCain catching up.
• Are your parents pestering you about ACORN and "voter fraud?" Send them this article from the election law blog.
• Mashable! tries to show a correlation between online activity on FaceBook and offline events in swing states, but doesn't do that convincing a job of it.
• In The Nation, Cora Courrier asks if youth will finally swing the election.
• Finally, a little music to start your day:

You all know I'm skeptical about celebrity outreach in politics. Celebs can be very useful, but it all depends on how you use them. Generally speaking, putting them in PSAs on cable or network television is the least effective use of a celebrity spokesperson. There's no evidence that these types of PSAs drive voter turnout, and more often than not it results in a media narrative more focused on the celebrity than on the reasons behind higher youth political participation.

At the same time, celebrity involvement is hugely helpful in building a brand name for an organization, and organization can cash in on that higher level of brand recognition to register larger numbers of voters. That's certainly part of what lies behind the huge voter reg numbers that Rock the Vote and Declare Yourself have racked up this cycle.

This PSA from Why Tuesday cleverly highlights that tension between celebrity branding and effective messaging that I find so frustrating. I don't know that it will be any more effective than a normal PSA, but it certainly stands out from the crowd:

• Early voting begins today in Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia. If that's where you live, stop reading this and go vote!
• Next week is Ohio's "Golden Week," when you can register to vote and cast your ballot on the same day. If you want to go help out in the state next week, volunteer here.
• The National Conference on Citizenship released its Third Civic Health Index today. They also held their annual conference today (which I was supposed to attend - apologies to all for not making it down). I'll have more later, but for now, you can read another blogger's take here.
• 29-year-old Nate Willems, also a blogger, is running for State Senate in Iowa. Best of luck, Nate, and we'd love to have you here anytime to blog about the experience.
• Turns out that email is not a dying medium among today's youth afterall. (Warning, this link will take you to the most obnoxious sign-up process in history. Go at your own risk).
• Trying to wrap your head around this economic mess we now find ourselves in? Go read this article in The Nation.
• FiveThirtyEight.com notes that some folks are getting their feathers ruffled as the Obama campaign directs funds away from swag like lawn signs towards other things like field work. Oh, the horror! Hey, sounds right to me.
• Michael Moore is encouraging everyone to download his new movie, "Slacker Uprising," about his tour of colleges and universities in 2004. Moore will by live blogging on Daily Kos tonight at 11pm Eastern.
• The Swing Semester Syllabus is now online.
• The Daily Pennsylvanian has an excellent interview with Howard Dean about the role of young people in this election and remaking the Democratic Party.
• P. Diddy may be off on the sidelines, uploading crazy-ass YouTube videos every week, but celebrity-driven politics is bigger than ever. Ad Week has the skinny.
• New York State College Dems are gearing up for the election. So are a lot of College Dem chapters, but NYS keeps popping up in my Google Alerts and on blogs. They've got a much larger online footprint than other College Dem chapters, which is a good thing. That's how you get noticed. More chapters should be as active within the blogosphere.
• This is funny. A Republican candidate is crying foul over her loss in a recent primary. The crime? Her opponent registered and GOTV'd too many College Republicans. I'm sure there's a joke about eating your young in there . . .

In keeping with my post earlier this week about the need for more investment in communications work within youth organizing, I want to point you all to a 1170 word profile of Television producer/major donor Norman Lear and his youth vote organization Declare Yourself.

Here are the main messages coming out of the piece:

Declare Yourself, which Mr. Lear founded in 2003 to spur 18- to 29-year-olds to vote, strives to register more than two million people by Election Day. A nonprofit organization, it registered about a million voters in the months leading up to the 2004 election, most of them that October, said Aviva Rosenthal, the organization’s director of partnerships.

...

Four years ago Declare Yourself was simply one of many voter-registration efforts, admirable but probably without huge impact.

Message: 1 million voters is "not a significant impact" and by implication, youth in general did not have a huge impact in 2004.

Young people could be more crucial in the presidential race this time around — they played a bigger role than normal in many primary contests, and the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has the trappings of a youth crusade. Thus organizations like Declare Yourself are taking on extra weight.

Message: Youth organizations weren't important until Barack Obama showed up. We didn't make him, he made us.

Rival registration efforts abound, but Declare Yourself is perhaps alone in using big media (anything controlled by the five largest media conglomerates) as its primary sales tool. Rock the Vote, which rose to prominence in the 1992 election by teaming up with MTV, comes close with its emphasis on musicians, but it has started relying more heavily on Internet outreach than on television.

This is bizarrely wrong. I would say that Rock the Vote and Declare Yourself are equally partnering with major media corporations. Both organization's biggest program this year involves online voter registration. If anything, Rock the Vote is the more innovative of the two organizations with new ways to using it's corporate and celebrity partnerships to increase registration. In reading the piece, however, the implication is that Declare Yourself's strategy is in some way superior.

Message: Corporate partnerships and Media are more important than internet outreach.

Mr. Lear toils to line up celebrities who have cachet among young adults. Through his wide-ranging contacts, he has corralled a roster of stars popular with young people to plug the cause, including America Ferrera (“Ugly Betty”), Hayden Panettiere (“Heroes”) and Tyra Banks (“America’s Next Top Model”). He said that he was trying to sign up the Jonas Brothers.

One of Declare Yourself’s biggest coups involved the MTV reality series “The Hills.” Mr. Lear and Ms. Rosenthal arranged for a star of that show to mention the registration effort during filming. As it turned out, producers liked the story line so much that they devoted the bulk of an episode to registering to vote.
...
Citing internal research, Marc Morgenstern, executive director of Declare Yourself, said 83 percent of the people the organization registered in 2004 voted. “Yes, young people are assaulted with messages,” Mr. Morgenstern said. “That is why we have an overlapping approach. The cumulative impact gets them to the tipping point.”

Message: Celebrities and media campaigns are the best way to reach young voters.

At the moment, though, he is most focused on Declare Yourself. Whether registration efforts reap votes is a question that the organization cannot answer with precision. And as excited as registration groups, campaigns and others get about supposedly surging interest among younger voters every four years, the gains rarely prove to be substantial. The turnout rate in the last presidential election among voters 18 to 25 was 47 percent, according to the Pew Research Center, compared with 64 percent for the overall population.

Message: Young people don't vote and we have no idea how to make them vote in bigger numbers.

This piece is a disaster. It flies in the face of everything we know:

• Young Voters have turned out in larger and larger numbers for the past 3 election cycles, and we were the only age demographic to vote in favor of John Kerry.
• Peer to peer outreach is the gold standard for moving young voters to the polls and it's effectiveness has been proven.
• Celebrity campaigns in and of themselves do not increase youth turnout.
• The internet is a huge and important tool for reaching out and engaging young voters.
• Youth organizations engaged in peer to peer outreach pioneered the tactics and laid the groundwork for Obama's successful youth operation.

This New York Times profile may serve the purpose of raising the profile of Declare Yourself and Norman Lear, but it does very little to advance the goals of the growing progressive youth movement. In fact, it is actively working at cross-purposes to that movement and teaching journalists and anyone who reads it precisely the wrong lessons about youth vote outreach.

I'm happy to announce that starting next weekend, Craig Berger (aka bergerc84) will be joining us as the weekend blogger at Future Majority. Craig has consistently produced top-notch stuff on his user blog and it just seemed ridiculous that everything he wrote got promoted to the front. So welcome, Craig, to the FM team. Those interested can read a bit about Craig on the About page.

• Another FM community member, Maria Arettines, is blogging from the National Hip Hop Political Convention in Las Vegas this weekend. We'll hear more from Maria once the convention gets started.
• Meanwhile, Jeff Chang has a few thoughts about Ludacris's new song about Barack Obama, as well as the opening day of the Hip Hop Convention.
• Over at his personal blog, Bondelli has 34 +1 indispensible tips for those looking to organize and promote their work online.
• The jobless rate is at a four year high, putting a whole lot of young people looking for summer work in a pinch.
• NBS has hired Luke Russert, son of the late Tim Russert, to be one of their youth correspondents during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Luke, if you're out there, get in touch with us for the low-down on all the youth organizing at the Democratic Convention in Denver and in the general election.
• Washington Post blog The Sleuth thinks that the voter registration group HeadCount is going to have the most rocking party at the DNC.
• Advancing the Story has an interesting and useful critique of MTV's Street Team '08 citizen journalism program.
• Youth vote hero Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle pens a piece about the proxy battle for the youth vote that MoveOn and Let Freedom Ring are waging on the airwaves of MTV.
• The bloggers at Pushback continue to have an interesting discussion about the proper role of celebrities in engaging young voters.
• Fox News less successfully attempts to tackle that same topic.
• Rock the Vote notes that voting rights are human rights.
• ThePolitico tracks an emerging trend: growing interest among young people in becoming "green lobbyists."
• A young Republican pens an open letter to John McCain asking him to up his game in reaching young voters.