As the negative political advertisement is objected to target the weakness of opponent

candidate, a research to investigate its influence to individual preferences needs to be

conducted. People’s belief can increase the likability of people come to vote their choice Min
(2004). Believability regards to the advertisement content and the issuer of the message. The
concept of ad believability is the extent to which an ad evokes sufficient confidence in its
truthfulness making it acceptable to consumers (Beltramini, 1982 cited in Griffin and
O’Cass, 2003). A research by Min (2004) used policy and personality content type as
variables. Min (2004) found that voters appear to prefer a policy-appealing candidate over a
personality-appealing one. Another research by Dardis et al (2008) found that different
content in the ads can produce different effects. His research divided the negative political
advertisement in two categories, issue-based attack and character-based attack.

Research about the believability of advertisement by O’Cass (2002) suggests that the
negative campaign run by the opposition was believed as much as the positive campaign runs
by the incumbent government. It is interesting to be researched in Indonesia. The reason is
that in 2014 presidential election, there are no incumbent and opposition candidates.
Furthermore, in Indonesia presidential election 2014, negative political advertisement most
likely conducted by interest group or sponsors. It is appealing to understand whether the third
parties or interest group which issue the negative political advertisement is the most
believable by voters.

This research will focus on negative political advertisement in Indonesia and its
influences on individual candidate preferences. Believability will be the mediator variable
between advertisement content & issuer and individual preferences.