Analysis activity: campaign advertisements

In order to practice your analytic skills, and especially your ability to recognize ethos-based arguments, you will perform a close reading of two campaign television ads.

Begin by going to the website The Living Room Candidate (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/), which is an archive of historical television political ads. For this activity, you will analyze two ads. One should be from before 1980; the other from 1980 or later. In your analysis, you should address the following prompts for each ad, using specific examples from the advertisement:

• Who is the ad in support of? Did this person end up winning the election?
• What messages or narratives does this article convey? What "story" does the candidate want to get across?
• How does the ad rely on persuasive strategy of ethos in order to make its message? Support your response with specific terms or ideas from chapters 5-8 of Thank You For Arguing.
• Does the ad make use of pathos or logos? How so?
• Is there anything else interesting or noteworthy about this ad?

Write your responses on a Google document and share the final product with me.