November 2015 Vol 54 No 4: Fill & Download for Free

In release/production order below; this includes movies, TV shows, on-line streaming services [Netflix, Hulu, DVD only]). They are included as they provide some context for those speculating on future threats for the MCU heroes to face. Doctor Strange is #29.1. Iron Man (May 2008)2. The Incredible Hulk (June 2008)3. Iron Man 2 (April 2010)4. Thor (April 2011)5. Captain America: The First Avenger (July 2011)6. The Consultant one-shot on the Thor DVD (September 2011)7. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer one-shot on the Captain America: The First Avenger DVD (October 2011)8. The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble) (April 2012)9. Item 47 one-shot on the Avengers Assemble DVD (September 2012)10. Iron Man 3 (April 2013)11. Agent Carter one-shot on Iron Man 3 DVD (September 2013)12. Agents of SHIELD season 1 (September 2013 - May 2014)13. Thor: The Dark World (November 2013)14. All Hail the King one-shot on the Thor: The Dark World DVD (February 2014)15. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (March 2014)16. Guardians of the Galaxy (July 2014)17. Agents of SHIELD season 2 (September 2014 - May 2015)18. Agent Carter season 1 (January 2015 - February 2015)19. Daredevil season 1 (April 2015)20. Avengers: Age of Ultron (April 2015)21. Ant-Man (July 2015)22. Agents of SHIELD season 3 (September 2015 - May 2016)23. Jessica Jones season 1 (November 2015)24. Agent Carter season 2 (January 2016 - February 2016)25. Daredevil season 2 (March 2016)26. Captain America: Civil War (April 2016)27. Agents of SHIELD season 4 (September 2016 - May 2017)28. Luke Cage season 1 (September 2016)29. Doctor Strange (October 2016)30. Iron Fist season 1 (March 2017)31. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (April 2017)32. Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 2017)33. The Defenders season 1 (August 2017)34. Inhumans season 1 (September 2017 - November 2017)35. Thor: Ragnarok (October 2017)36. The Punisher season 1 (November 2017)37. Runaways season 1 (November 2017 - January 2018)38. Agents of SHIELD season 5 (December 2017 - May 2018)39. Black Panther (February 2018)40. Jessica Jones season 2 (March 2018)41. Avengers: Infinity War (April 2018)42. Cloak & Dagger season 1 (June 2018 - August 2018)43. Luke Cage season 2 (June 2018)44. Ant-Man and the Wasp (July 2018)45. Iron Fist season 2 (September 2018)46. Daredevil season 3 (October 2018)47. Runaways season 2 (December 2018)48. The Punisher season 2 (January 2019)49. Captain Marvel (March 2019)50. Cloak & Dagger season 2 (April 2019 - May 2019)51. Avengers: Endgame (April 2019)52. Agents of SHIELD season 6 (May 2019 - )53. Jessica Jones season 3 (June 2019)54. Spider-Man: Far From Home (July 2, 2019)The below list is in my chronological order, to include a couple not in the above list (I am not including Toby McGuire and Andrew Garfield for Spiderman, nor am I including the X-men, Deadpool, The Gifted, nor Legion as Disney-Marvel is re-writing “cannon” of mutants for incorporating into Phase 5+; I am not including the past Punisher movies [Dolph Lundgren, Thomas Jane, Ray Stevenson], and no former Hulks [Eric Bana, Bill Bixby]), and no former Daredevils (tv: Trial of Hulk, and Ben Afflick). I also moved shows that were produced after Avengers: Infinity War started, but if they did not have the “effects of the first snap” included, I moved them backwards to just before Infinity War, the one exception being Spider-Man: Spider-verse, I put at the end since it included cross dimensional aspects that were suggested in Spiderman: Far From Home.Captain America: The First Avenger (July 2011)Agent Carter season 1 (January 2015 - February 2015)Agent Carter one-shot on Iron Man 3 DVD (September 2013)Agent Carter season 2 (January 2016 - February 2016)Iron Man (May 2008)The Incredible Hulk (June 2008)Iron Man 2 (April 2010)Thor (April 2011)The Consultant one-shot on the Thor DVD (September 2011)A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer one-shot on the Captain America: The First Avenger DVD (October 2011)The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble) (April 2012)Item 47 one-shot on the Avengers Assemble DVD (September 2012)Iron Man 3 (April 2013)Agents of SHIELD season 1 (September 2013 - May 2014)Thor: The Dark World (November 2013)All Hail the King one-shot on the Thor: The Dark World DVD (February 2014)Captain America: The Winter Soldier (March 2014)Guardians of the Galaxy (July 2014)Agents of SHIELD season 2 (September 2014 - May 2015)Daredevil season 1 (April 2015)Avengers: Age of Ultron (April 2015)Ant-Man (July 2015)Agents of SHIELD season 3 (September 2015 - May 2016)Jessica Jones season 1 (November 2015)Daredevil season 2 (March 2016)Captain America: Civil War (April 2016)Agents of SHIELD season 4 (September 2016 - May 2017)Luke Cage season 1 (September 2016)Doctor Strange (October 2016)Iron Fist season 1 (March 2017)Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (April 2017)Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 2017)The Defenders season 1 (August 2017)Inhumans season 1 (September 2017 - November 2017)Thor: Ragnarok (October 2017)The Punisher season 1 (November 2017)Runaways season 1 (November 2017 - January 2018)Agents of SHIELD season 5 (December 2017 - May 2018)Black Panther (February 2018)Jessica Jones season 2 (March 2018)Jessica Jones season 3 (June 2019)Cloak & Dagger season 1 (June 2018 - August 2018)Luke Cage season 2 (June 2018)Iron Fist season 2 (September 2018)Daredevil season 3 (October 2018)Runaways season 2 (December 2018)The Punisher season 2 (January 2019)Cloak & Dagger season 2 (April 2019 - May 2019)Agents of SHIELD season 6 (May 2019 – Aug 2019)Runaways season 3 (December 2019)Avengers: Infinity War (April 2018)Ant-Man and the Wasp (July 2018)Captain Marvel (March 2019)Avengers: Endgame (April 2019)Spider-Man: Far From Home (July 2, 2019)Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse (Anime, December 2018)

Many people have a visceral reaction to political attack ads on TV: Not much will prompt a faster change of the channel. But they are difficult to escape during election season and it is doubtful that the 2016 presidential election season will be much different. Political ads became much more negative over the course of the 2012 presidential campaign. Erika Franklin Fowler, an assistant professor of government, noted that 2012 will likely be remembered for its record-setting negativity. Fowler directs The Wesleyan Media Project, which monitors and analyzes televised campaign ads and found that three-quarters of ads aired during the last presidential race “appealed to anger.” A December 2015 report the project released suggests that the 2016 election season had not, at that point, taken an ugly turn — at least not via TV ads. Between Jan. 1, 2015 and Dec. 9, 2015, 84 percent of the 66,203 ads that aired in both parties’ races for presidential nominations focused on promoting a candidate instead of attacking a candidate or comparing one against another.That analysis, however, did not include the negative ads that bombarded Iowa caucus voters in early 2016, or the attack ads targeting Republicans shortly thereafter in New Hampshire. In the days before the 2016 New Hampshire primary, The New York Times described the Republican ads as “downright nasty — as well as expensive.” Journalists writing about the 2016 race can find a searchable and shareable archive of 2016 primary election ads through the Political TV Ad Archive, an initiative funded by a Knight News Challenge grant.The Wesleyan Media Project compiled the following chart to show how political advertising has become distinctly more negative over the past few election cycles:WesleyanMediaProjectIn a May 2013 post for “The Monkey Cage,” a leading political science blog, John Sides of George Washington and Lynn Vavreck of UCLA summarize their research on the 2012 campaign. With regard to advertising, they conclude that ads mattered but only in “very circumscribed ways” and the “effect of ads appeared to decay quickly.” Further, they assert that “back-loading — airing ads close to the election — was actually more effective than front-loading — airing ads early in the campaign — if the goal was to influence voters on Election Day.”Of course, the apparent rising volume and intensity of negative ads may reflect legal changes in how campaigns are funded in a post-Citizens United landscape. A related 2013 study in The Forum by Michael Franz of Bowdoin, “Interest Groups in Electoral Politics: 2012 in Context,” provides additional analysis and data relating to the role of outside groups in the most recent ad wars. In another May 2013 post for “The Monkey Cage,” Franz examines data suggesting that the type and potentially lower quality of ads by outside groups may have played a role in the election. The Romney campaign’s “reliance on outside spending put a significant burden on those groups to produce and air ads that could resonate with voters. They may have done so — we need more research on this — but they may have also produced ads that were far less effective at mobilizing or persuading voters.”From a historical perspective, it is worth considering, too, that increased news media focus on negative advertising itself has helped accelerate this trend, creating a vicious cycle of attack politics driven by political consultants and journalists.With its Flackcheck.org site, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania led an election season effort to scrutinize ads that purvey “political sleaze.” See some of the typical video techniques of political deception and misdirection:Political scientists have long been studying the effects of negative ad campaigns on voter opinion, and many analysts focused on how campaign 2012 was affected. But scholars have complicated the simplistic view that negative ads “work” as a general rule. During the 2012 campaign, the Washington Post wrote about five commonly held “myths” about campaign ads, while the New York Times analyzed the specific circumstances when ads matter and their design and effects. At a deeper level, such ads may work to both “shrink and polarize the electorate,” as the political scientists Shanto Iyengar of Stanford and Stephen Ansolabehere of Harvard have long pointed out.Aggregated below are some of the more recent and/or influential academic studies on the topic:________“Attacks Without Consequence? Candidates, Parties, Groups, and the Changing Face of Negative Advertising”Dowling, Conor M.; Wichowsky, Amber. American Journal of Political Science, 2015, Vol. 59. doi: 10.1111/ajps.12094.Abstract: “Prior work finds that voters punish candidates for sponsoring attack ads. What remains unknown is the extent to which a negative ad is more effective if it is sponsored by a party or an independent group instead. We conducted three experiments in which we randomly assigned participants to view a negative ad that was identical except for its sponsor. We find that candidates can benefit from having a party or group ‘do their dirty work,’ but particularly if a group does, and that the most likely explanation for why this is the case is that many voters simply do not connect candidates to the ads sponsored by parties and groups. We also find that in some circumstances, a group-sponsored attack ad produces less polarization than one sponsored by a party. We conclude by discussing the implications our research has for current debates about the proper role of independent groups in electoral politics.”“Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: How Fact-Checking Influences Citizens’ Reactions to Negative Advertising”Fridkin, Kim; Kenney, Patrick J.; Wintersieck, Amanda. Political Communication, 2015, Vol. 32. doi: 10.1080/10584609.2014.914613.Abstract: “Electoral campaigns are dynamic and an important change in recent elections is the growth of fact-checking; the assessment of the truthfulness of political advertisements by news media organizations and watchdog groups. In this article, we examine the role that fact-checks play in shaping citizens’ views of negative commercials and political candidates. We rely on an Internet survey experiment where we vary people’s exposure to negative advertisements and a follow-up fact-check article (i.e., no fact-check, accurate fact-check, inaccurate fact-check). The results of our experiment show that fact-checks influence people’s assessments of the accuracy, usefulness, and tone of negative political ads. Furthermore, sophisticated citizens and citizens with low tolerance for negative campaigning are most responsive to fact-checks. The fact-checks also sway citizens’ likelihood of accepting the claims made in the advertisements. Finally, negative fact-checks (e.g., fact-checks challenging the truthfulness of the claims of the negative commercial) are more powerful than positive fact-checks.”“Going Positive: The Effects of Negative and Positive Advertising on Candidate Success and Voter Turnout”Malloy, Liam C; Pearson-Merkowitz, Shanna. Research and Politics, January-March 2016. doi: 10.1177/2053168015625078.Abstract: “Given the depth of research on negative advertising in campaigns, scholars have wondered why candidates continue to attack their opponents. We build on this research by considering real-world campaign contexts in which candidates are working in competition with each other and have to react to the decisions of the opposing campaign. Our results suggest that it is never efficacious for candidates to run attack ads, but running positive ads can increase a candidate’s margin of victory. These results are conditioned by two factors: candidates must both stay positive and out-advertise their opponent. Second, the effects of positive advertising are strongest in areas where the candidate is losing or winning by a large margin — areas where they might be tempted to not advertise at all.”“Who’s Afraid of Conflict? The Mobilizing Effect of Conflict Framing in Campaign News”Schuck, Andreas R.T.; Vliegenthart, Rens; De Vreese, Claes H. British Journal of Political Science, January 2016, Vol. 46. doi: 10.1017/S0007123413000525.Abstract: “The ability of the news media to mobilize voters during an election campaign is not well understood. Most extant research has been conducted in single-country studies and has paid little or no attention to the contextual level and the conditions under which such effects are more or less likely to occur. This study tests the mobilizing effect of conflict news framing in the context of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. The unique multi-method and comparative cross-national study design combines a media content analysis (N = 48,982) with data from a two-wave panel survey conducted in twenty-one countries (N = 32,411). Consistent with expectations, conflict framing in campaign news mobilized voters to vote. Since the effect of conflict news was moderated by evaluations of the EU polity in the general information environment, conflict framing more effectively mobilized voters in countries where the EU was evaluated more positively.”“Seeing Spots: An Experimental Examination of Voter Appetite for Partisan and Negative Campaign Ads”Henderson, John A.; Theodoridis, Alexander G. July 2015. SSRN-id2629915.Abstract: “We utilize a novel experimental design to assess voter selectivity to political advertising. We randomly expose respondents to comparable positive or negative ads aired by Democratic or Republican candidates from the 2012 Presidential race and the 2013 Virginia Gubernatorial contest. The experiment closely mirrors real consumption of campaign information by allowing subjects to skip ads after five seconds, re-watch and share ads with friends. Using these measures of ad-seeking behavior, we find little evidence that negativity influences self-exposure to election advertising. We find partisans disproportionately tune out ads aired by their party’s opponents, though this behavior is asymmetric: Republican-identifiers are more consistent screeners of partisan ads than Democrats. The results advance our understanding of selectivity, showing that party source, and not ad tone, interacts with partisanship to mediate campaign exposure. The findings have important implications about the role self-exposure to information plays in campaigns and elections in a post-broadcast era.”“The Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: A Meta-Analytic Reassessment”Lau, Richard R.; Sigelman, Lee; Rovner, Ivy Brown. Journal of Politics, 2007, Vol. 69, Issue 4, 1176-1209. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00618.x.Abstract: “The conventional wisdom about negative political campaigning holds that it works, i.e., it has the consequences its practitioners intend. Many observers also fear that negative campaigning has unintended but detrimental effects on the political system itself. An earlier meta-analytic assessment of the relevant literature found no reliable evidence for these claims, but since then the research literature has more than doubled in size and has greatly improved in quality. We reexamine this literature and find that the major conclusions from the earlier meta-analysis still hold. All told, the research literature does not bear out the idea that negative campaigning is an effective means of winning votes, even though it tends to be more memorable and stimulate knowledge about the campaign. Nor is there any reliable evidence that negative campaigning depresses voter turnout, though it does slightly lower feelings of political efficacy, trust in government and possibly overall public mood.”“A Framework for Dynamic Causal Inference in Political Science”Blackwell, Matthew. American Journal of Political Science, April 2013, Vol. 57. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2012.00626.x.Abstract: “Dynamic strategies are an essential part of politics. In the context of campaigns, for example, candidates continuously recalibrate their campaign strategy in response to polls and opponent actions. Traditional causal inference methods, however, assume that these dynamic decisions are made all at once, an assumption that forces a choice between omitted variable bias and post-treatment bias. Thus, these kinds of ‘single-shot’ causal inference methods are inappropriate for dynamic processes like campaigns. I resolve this dilemma by adapting models from biostatistics to estimate the effectiveness of an inherently dynamic process: a candidate’s decision to ‘go negative.'” To simplify the analysis, the study looked only at Democratic candidates in U.S. Senate and Gubernatorial elections from 2002 to 2006. It found that, in contrast to earlier research, that negative advertising could be an effective strategy for challengers, while incumbents were hurt by going negative.“Messages that Mobilize? Issue Publics and the Content of Campaign Advertising”Sides, John; Karch, Andrew. The Journal of Politics, April 2008, Vol. 70, Issue 2, 466-476.Findings: Targeted campaign ads appear to have only a small measurable effect on groups: “In three election years, we found no consistent evidence that messages related to Social Security and Medicare were associated with higher turnout among seniors or that messages related to veterans were associated with higher turnout among veterans.” Groups such as parents did seem to be mobilized by targeted ads, but the effects may be so small as to be extraordinarily expensive to exploit, with diminishing returns. In one media market, it took more than 4,000 ads to make turnout just 6.4% more likely among parents; in a more lightly advertised market, just 322 spots resulted in a 3.8% increased likelihood in turnout. This means that to achieve a further 2.6 percentage points in likely turnout, the “number of newly mobilized parents yields a cost-per-vote of $282. This is roughly 15 times the average cost-per-vote of door-to-door get-out-the-vote efforts.” Because targeted ads appear to have limited effectiveness, they don’t exacerbate differences in turnout rates between groups. “The participatory tendencies of senior citizens and veterans do not increase when campaigns focus on entitlements and veterans’ benefits, respectively.”“Variability in Citizens’ Reactions to Different Types of Negative Campaigns”Fridkin, Kim L.; Kenney, Patrick. American Journal of Political Science, 2011, Vol. 55, Issue 2, 307-325. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00494.x.Findings: Voters’ tolerance for negative campaigns and political rhetoric depends on individual characteristics: Those with a strong party affiliation and a deep interest in the campaign tend to be more tolerant and their impressions of candidates were not as deeply influenced by negativity. Men are more tolerant than women of negative content, while older respondents are less tolerant. Overall, “people who do not like uncivil and irrelevant discourse in negative communication are more responsive to the variation in the content and tone of negative commercials. These messages directly influence their assessments of incumbents and challengers. This finding stands in stark contrast to those people who are unperturbed by messages presented in an uncivil manner.” Three variables — relevance of message, degree of civility and the tolerance level of the voter — interact in complex ways and determine whether or not negative campaigns “work.” In other words, there is no simple, universal answer: In some cases negative campaigns can have substantial effects on voter impressions; in others, the effect is negligible.“The Implicit and Explicit Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: Is the Source Really Blamed?”Carraro, Luciana; Castelli, Luigi. Political Psychology, August 2010, Vol. 31, Issue 4, 617-645. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00771.x.Abstract: “Despite the widespread use of negative campaigns, research has not yet provided unambiguous conclusions about their effects. So far studies, however, have mainly focused on very explicit measures. The main goal of the present work was to explore the effects of different types of negative campaigns on both implicit and explicit attitudes, as well as in relation to two basic dimensions of social perception, namely competence and warmth. Across a series of three studies, we basically showed that not all negative campaigns lead to the same consequences. Specifically, especially personal attacks toward the opposing candidate may backfire at the explicit level…. Overall, it appeared that negative messages decreased the perceived warmth of the source while simultaneously increasing the perceived competence. Results are discussed by focusing on the importance of implicit measures in political psychology and on the crucial role of perceived competence.”“Do Voters Perceive Negative Campaigns as Informative Campaigns?”Sides, John; Lipsitz, Keena; Grossman, Matthew. American Politics Research, 2010, Vol. 38, No. 3, 502-530. doi: 10.1177/1532673X09336832.Findings: Voters tend to separate a campaign ad’s tone from whether they believe it to be informative: many voters will (correctly) perceive a campaign as negative but will also believe that it is providing truthful information. “These dimensions appear to be separate constructs in citizens’ minds.” Voters can accurately perceive whether a campaign is negative, and such judgment is not just a matter of which candidate they prefer. “Public perceptions of negativity do in fact respond to reality.” The degree of a campaign’s negativity as reflected in advertising has little bearing on whether voters believe it is informative. “There was no relationship between the volume of negative appeals and beliefs about whether the candidates were providing useful information or discussing policy issues.”“Comparing Negative and Positive Campaign Messages: Evidence From Two Field Experiments”Arceneaux, Kevin; Nickerson, David W. American Politics Research, January 2010, Vol. 38, No. 1, 54-83. doi: 10.1177/1532673X09331613.Abstract: “Considerable research indicates that personal contact from political campaigns can mobilize people to vote, but little attention has been given to whether the tone of the message matters. Studies of message tone have mostly been confined to mass media campaigns and ignored the growing role grassroots techniques play in contemporary political campaigns. Two randomized field experiments were conducted to determine the importance of message tone in grassroots contact. We find evidence that personally delivered messages can be effective at influencing voting preferences, but neither experiment uncovered a systematic difference between the effects of negative and positive messages on voter turnout or political attitudes.”“The Role of Candidate Traits in Campaigns”Fridkin, Kim L.; Kenney, Patrick, J. Journal of Politics, January 2011, Vol. 73, Issue 1, 61-73. doi: 10.1017/S0022381610000861.Abstract: “We examine how candidates shape citizens’ impressions of their personal traits during U.S. Senate campaigns. We look at the personality traits emphasized by candidates in their controlled communications and in news coverage of their campaigns. We couple information about campaign messages with a unique survey dataset allowing us to examine voters’ understanding and evaluations of the candidates’ personalities. We find that messages from the news media influence people’s willingness to rate the candidates on trait dimensions. In addition, negative trait messages emanating from challengers and the press shape citizens’ impressions of incumbents. In contrast, voters’ evaluations of challengers are unmoved by campaign messages, irrespective of the source or tone of the communications. Finally, we find citizens rely heavily on traits when evaluating competing candidates in U.S. Senate campaigns, even controlling for voters’ party, ideological and issue preferences.”“The Seeds of Negativity: Knowledge and Money”Lovett, Mitchell J.; Shachar, Ron. Marketing Science, 2011, Vol. 30, No. 3, 430-446. doi: 10.1287/mksc.1110.0638.Abstract: “This paper studies the tendency to use negative ads. For this purpose, we focus on an interesting industry (political campaigns) and an intriguing empirical regularity (the tendency to “go negative” is higher in close races). We present a model of electoral competition in which ads inform voters either of the good traits of the candidate or of the bad traits of his opponent. We find that in equilibrium, the proportion of negative ads depends on both voters’ knowledge and the candidate’s budget. Furthermore, for an interesting subset of the parameter space, negativity increases in both knowledge and budget.”“When Does Negativity Demobilize? Tracing the Conditional Effect of Negative Campaigning on Voter Turnout”Krupnikov, Yanna. American Journal of Political Science, 2011, Vol. 55, Issue 4, 797-813. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00522.x.Abstract: “Do negative campaign advertisements affect voter turnout? Existing literature on this topic has produced conflicting empirical results. Some scholars show that negativity is demobilizing. Others show that negativity is mobilizing. Still others show that negativity has no effect on turnout. Relying on the psychology of decision making, this research argues and shows that this empirical stalemate is due to the fact that existing work ignores a crucial factor: the timing of exposure to negativity. Two independent empirical tests trace the conditional effect of negativity. The first test relies on data from the 2004 presidential campaign. The second test considers the effect of negativity over a broader period of time by considering elections 1976 to 2000. Taken together, both tests reinforce that negativity can only demobilize when two conditions are met: (1) a person is exposed to negativity after selecting a preferred candidate and (2) the negativity is about this selected candidate.”“The Influence of Tone, Target and Issue Ownership on Political Advertising Effects in Primary Versus General Elections”Meirick, Patrick C., et al. Journal of Political Marketing, 2011, Vol. 10, Issue 3. doi: 10.1080/15377857.2011.588111.Abstract: “The conventional wisdom in the literature about political advertising effects — e.g., going negative risks backlash, stick to issues your party owns — has been derived from studies of general elections. Much less attention has been paid to primary elections, in which a partisan audience may be receptive to attacks on the opposing party and may judge most issues to be handled better by their own party. This experiment (N = 223) sets out to investigate the roles of tone (positive versus comparative), target (none, primary opponent, or general election opponent), and issue ownership (party-owned issue or unowned issue) in responses to political advertising during primary versus general elections. As predicted, partisans in primary election conditions had lower ad and sponsoring candidate evaluations for comparative ads attacking a primary opponent than for positive ads or comparative ads attacking the eventual general election opponent, but there were no differences between the latter two. Independents in the general election conditions responded more positively to positive ads than comparative ads. Issue ownership had no main effects.”“A Negativity Gap? Voter Gender, Attack Politics, and Participation in American Elections”Brooks, Deborah Jordan. Politics & Gender, 2010, Vol. 6, Issue 3, 319-341. doi: A Negativity Gap? Voter Gender, Attack Politics, and Participation in American Elections.Findings: Men are more likely to be motivated to vote by a negative campaign message. Highly negative campaigns saw the “biggest gender differences: an 88% probability of voting for men and just a 77% probability of voting for women.” In contests with the least amount of negative campaigning, “women are slightly higher than men in terms of predicted probability of going to the polls.” There is a further distinction between “civil” versus “uncivil” (“inflammatory, gratuitous, and divisive”) negative messaging. Comparing men’s and women’s reactions along these lines reveals further gender gaps: “Men are disproportionately mobilized by uncivil negativity as compared to women [and] women appear to be slightly more likely than men to vote after viewing civil negative messages.” After viewing uncivil negative ads, only 9% of men said they would definitely not vote, while 21% of women said they would not.“The Mass Media and the Public’s Assessments of Presidential Candidates, 1952-2000”Gilens, Martin; Vavreck, Lynn; Cohen, Martin. The Journal of Politics, November 2007, Vol. 69, Issue 4, 1160-1175. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00615.x.Abstract: “Media critics blame contemporary news for increasing levels of apathy and ignorance among the electorate. We agree that the amount of policy-oriented information in news coverage of presidential campaigns has declined and the level of news consumption has fallen. Yet, based on 50 years of data on media content and public attitudes, we find that over this period of time Americans have just as much to say about the major-party presidential candidates, what they have to say is more policy oriented, the association of vote choice with policy considerations has strengthened while the association with character considerations has weakened, and factual knowledge about the presidential candidates’ issue positions has not declined. We assess the role of education, party polarization, and paid advertising in explaining trends in Americans’ political knowledge and engagement. We show that the public’s steady level of information and increased focus on policy in presidential politics reflects the high level of policy content in paid ads, which have compensated for the shift of news coverage toward candidate character, scandal, and the horse race

Funnily enough, this came up in the course of my studies, so here’s the relevant chunk of my answer to this very question… apologies for the dry style, this was for score not for sport (but it did get a good mark)From Adam, P J (2015), “Taking into consideration all other factors, evaluate the extent to which Bletchley Park contributed to victory in Europe, 1939-45”, course essay, Staffordshire University.The Battle of the Atlantic – where Doenitz’s U-boats tried to cut off Britain’s sea trade – is perhaps the campaign where ULTRA is most often claimed to have been decisive. The U-boat historian Jürgen Rohwer[1] assessed it as decisive in preventing the defeat of Britain, and Keegan describes how Bletchley Park’s exclusion from the U-boat’s “Shark” cypher (using the new four-rotor M4 Enigma) from February to December 1942 had a “calamitous effect on sinkings”[2]. However, the truth is inevitably far more complex – Kennedy alludes to the multiple interactions[3], but even there falls into other myths[4].Regarding Figure 1 and 2, it is apparent that a reason – probably the main reason - for the dramatic increase in sinking in 1942 is simply because far more U-boats were available. An additional factor was the move of the U-boat force to the French Atlantic coast, shortening their transit times and allowing longer patrols (hence more time to find and sink targets)Figure 1 -Effect of convoy on sinking rates[5]Figure 2 - U-boat sinking rates[6]Another dramatic contributor to the success of the U-boats was, ironically, the US’s entry into the war. The unconvoyed, unescorted ships along the US east coast – whose towns refused to initially black out their lights, fearing a loss of tourist revenue – were easy prey. Five U-boats sent to start Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat) sank 27 vessels totalling 200,000 tons in just two weeks in January 1942, and many more followed – driving up the sinking rate just as Bletchley were shut out of “Shark”[7].Additionally, the German codebreakers had not been idle. The B-dienst (Beobachtungsdienst, ‘observation service’) broke into the British Naval Cypher No. 3 in December 1941[8], and were reading it until June 1943. This gave Doenitz key information on convoy sailings and locations, which his U-boats made full use of.Doenitz’s peak was 146 ships sunk in each of May and June 1942, after which they fell sharply despite “Shark” still resisting Bletchley’s efforts. Part of this was due to the US belatedly adopting convoy sailings and setting up an equivalent of the Submarine Tracking Room[9] sharing information with London: this common picture became a key part of the anti-submarine battle[10].Other innovations were logistic, tactical and technical: often interrelated. More and better radar sets first denied night surface attack, then made aircraft more capable at finding and attacking submarines. Effective high-frequency direction finding equipment[11] allowed aircraft and ships to quickly detect and attack U-boats making contact reports, however impervious the encryption of their signal. And, crucially, air cover over convoys extended, both as longer-ranged aircraft flew from land, more bases were built on islands like Ascension and the Azores, and the first escort carriers[12] joined convoys.By August 1942, Doenitz – in June confident that his boats were winning the tonnage war – wrote despairingly in his War Diary[13] that the extending air cover – both aircraft over convoys, and increasingly lethal patrols over the transit routes across Biscay – were critically constraining his operations. By November 1942, forecasts of Allied shipbuilding indicated that the U-boats would have to sink a million tons a month merely to keep pace with construction, and 1.3 million tons a month to produce a decisive effect[14]. For perspective, even during the glory days of Operation Paukenschlag, the U-boats had achieved only 400,000 tons a month[15].The battle of the Atlantic had been fought and largely won by the time that “Shark” was broken in late 1942[16]. The final, ferocious struggles as Doenitz threw massed numbers into the campaign – such as the battle of Convoys HX 229/SC 122 in March 1943, where two convoys totalling 90 ships were attacked by thirty-eight U-boats in three ‘wolf packs’, losing twenty-two ships for only one U-boat sunk[17],[18] – were almost independent of ULTRA: so many U-boats were at sea, and their intelligence from the B-Dienst good enough, that they simply could not be avoided or routed around. However, they could be fought very effectively by the improved escort forces: only a month later, Convoy ONS5 fended off attacks by nearly sixty U-boats, sinking seven and crippling five[19], and SC130 sank three U-boats[20] without loss to itself. In May 1943, Doenitz conceded defeat and withdrew his boats from the North Atlantic.[21][1] Howarth S and Law D (eds), “The Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1945: The 50th Anniversary International Naval Conference”, 1994 Naval Institute Press[2] Keegan J, “Intelligence in War”, 2003 Hutchinson[3] The Journal of Military History, Jan 2010 Vol.74 No.1 pp35-51Kennedy P, “History from the Middle: The Case of The Second World War”, Journal of Military History, Jan 2010 Vol.74 No.1[4] Kennedy mentions the importance of the “Hedgehog” forward-throwing weapon, but in fact tactical issues meant “Hedgehog” only became effective in early 1944 by which time the crisis had passed.[5] Preston A, “Submarines Since 1919”, 1974 BPC Publishing[6] Preston A, “Submarines Since 1919”, 1974 BPC Publishing[7] A classic example of correlation not equalling causation.[8] Mallmann-Showell J, “German Naval Codebreakers.”, 2003 Naval Institute Press[9] Captain Roger Winn’s Submarine Tracking Room was what would today be called an “intelligence fusion centre” where all available information was collated to estimate the position of individual U-boats. The loss of access to Doenitz’s Enigma affected its operation, but it remained a vital asset.[10] Hackmann W, “Seek and Strike: Seek and Strike: Sonar, anti-submarine warfare and the Royal Navy 1914-54”, 1984 HMSO[11] Nicknamed ‘Huff-duff’ from the abbreviation HF/DF – the concept was not new, but the capability to quickly and accurately DF a high-frequency signal from a ship or aircraft was a breakthrough.[12] The true ‘escort carrier’ was a utilitarian warship, mass-produced for a number of roles, but for the Battle of the Atlantic the ‘Merchant Aircraft Carrier’ – a tanker fitted with a basic flight deck – proved valuable.[13] BdU KTB war diary, U-boat command, unpublished papers referenced by Padfield[14] Padfield[15] In May 1942 Doenitz had estimated that 700,000 tons a month would be sufficient, even allowing for ‘inflated estimates’ of US production capacity.[16] See Figure 1 for the reduced sinkings, and Figure 2 for the rising loss rate of U-boats.[17] Middlebrook M, “Convoy”, 1976 Viking Press[18] Keegan J, “The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare”, 1990 Penguin[19] Gretton P, “Convoy Escort Commander”, 1971 Corgi[20] Including U-954, , Peter Doenitz[21] Blair C, “Hitler's U-Boat War, The Hunted 1942-1945”, 1998 Random House