Lindsay Gelman

4/23/21

STC

Rawls Grant

Explanation of project advancement since last university funding or project approval.

This project adopts Facebook as the context to compare the communication

strategies used in the campaign ads of Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. election.

The 2020 Presidential Election set the new record for social media ad spending (Goldmacher,

2020). In these campaigns, Facebook has been playing important roles in facilitating political

participation and encouraging connections between voters and candidates, and thus served as a

targeted platform for both candidates to reach voters (Bode et al., 2014). Despite the increased

use of social media for political campaign purposes, different communication strategies adopted

by presidential candidates in social media ads are yet to be further studied. Therefore, this project

aims to compare 1) how different campaign discourse functions (i.e., acclaim, attack, and

defense) were used in Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s Facebook campaign ads; 2) how two

specific types of persuasion strategies -- creative expression (e.g., camera use, symbols, posture

of candidate, and emotional appeal) and narrative (e.g., autobiography, voter story, testimonial,

etc.), were adopted by the two candidates to fulfill different campaign discourse functions; and 3)

how these communication strategies varied across different phases of campaign. To address these

research aims, a content analysis will be conducted on the campaign ads placed on Facebook by

the advertisers of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and Biden for President, Inc., the two

official campaign organizations for the two candidates. The findings of this project will inform

communication professionals to develop more effective campaign messages on social media.

Project Update & Advancement
After being recently notified of my acceptance into the SURE 2021 program, Dr. Xu and I have

started working on additional literature review and exploring the ad sample since the start of

Spring 2021. We have collected more literature on imagery and symbolism in political ads and

are currently looking into different programs to help narrow down the dataset for sample. After

searching through the Facebook Ad Library, we quickly realized that there were a lot more ads

placed by the two candidates than we initially expected. We had decided that the sampling period

for the Facebook ads from these two organizations would be between June 5th, 2020 and

November 2nd, 2020. June 5th, 2020 is chosen as the starting time because it was the date when

Joe Biden had secured the number of delegates needed to win the Democratic Party’s

presidential nomination (NPR), after which his campaign strategy shifted from showcasing the

qualification to secure the Democratic nomination to showcasing him as the right candidate to be

the president. November 2nd, 2020 was chosen as the ending date because it was the day before

Election Day 2020, marking the end of election campaign. Based on some further exploration,

we discovered that there were more than 40,009 ads placed by the two identified advertisers in

total within that time period. (Facebook Ad Library). Therefore, we realized that it will be

impossible for us to finish all the coding for the period proposed in the original SURE proposal.

Based on that, we decided to narrow down the period to be coded during the 8 weeks of SURE

and extend this project as STC 499s in Fall 2021 and Spring 2022. Through additional literature

review, we have also learned that it is important to break down the political campaign into

phases based on critical events (e.g., civil rights riots, spread of COVID-19, and announcement

of running mates) to examine how communication strategies evolve over time. We intend to add

this as a new variable to this project, which requires additional time for research as well.
Use of Past Funding
SURE 2021 has not started. Therefore, we have not accessed any part of the funding yet.

Purpose of This New Grant

This grant will help us extend our research and the project’s longevity. Given the additional ads

and variables to be coded, we would like to use part of the grant to purchase an external hard

drive to store the data (i.e., both the ads, including multimedia components, and the coding data).

In addition, we would like to use the grant to support some conference travel that will increase

the reach of this project. Specifically, paper writing will be part of the activities to be achieved in

Fall 2021 and Spring 2022. We intend to submit to and present (upon acceptance) at the

Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC) Midwinter

Conference in March 2022. Part of this grant will be used to cover the registration fee and the

travel cost (i.e., flight, lodging, and food) if research travel will be resumed when the pandemic

is over.

● References

Bode, L., Vraga, E. K., Borah, P., & Shah, D. V. (2014). New Space for Political Behavior:

Political Social Networking and its Democratic Consequences. Journal of Computer- Mediated

Communications, 19(3), 414–429.

Facebook Ad Library. (2020). Advertising data by date range: Spending by advertiser

May 7, 2018-December 2, 2020. Facebook Ad Library Report.

https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/?country=US&source=archive-

landingpage&campaign_tracker_active_toggle=bar_graph
Goldmacher, S. (2020, October 28). The 2020 Campaign is the most expensive ever (by a lot.

The New York Times. The 2020 Campaign Is the Most Expensive Ever (By a Lot) - The New

York Times (nytimes.com)

D. Description of the specific responsibilities of the student

The activities proposed in this application will be a continuation of Lindsay’s SURE project. As

mentioned in Section C, we figured that there are a lot more presidential ads archived in

Facebook Ad Library than expected, which means that the coding and analyses of the ads will

need to extend beyond SURE 2021. Lindsay’s specific responsibilities in Fall 2021 and Spring

2022 will involve the following activities.

Fall 2021:
● Expand the sample size to code additional ads beyond what will be accomplished during

SURE 2021

● Identify critical events that further segment the campaign process. One example would

be before versus after the announcement of running mate. Lindsay will identify

additional ones with me.

● Run additional analyses to compare communication strategies adopted in ads during

different campaign phases

● Start paper writing

Spring 2022:

● Finish paper writing

● Prepare for conference submission & presentation (upon acceptance)

 ● Submit the paper to Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications or

another journal

E. Description of the educational benefits for the student

Growing up in Washington D.C., I have seen and participated in many elections and

had witnessed campaign strategies firsthand. While working on this project, I have become

more aware of political candidates adopt different communication strategies in ads to affect the

progress of campaigns and even their candidacies. I could have never expected this year’s

election to lead to a siege of The Capitol only weeks before Biden was supposed to take office.

After witnessing that event firsthand, I realized how much media and the way in which a

candidate implements the campaign can affect everyday citizens. It also made me notice more

about how Donald Trump’s  and Joe Biden’s campaigns had evolved since the beginning of the

year of 2020. From Coronavirus, to the Washington Riot, 2020’s election brought new issues to

light and thus new methods to campaign on. Therefore, integrating the comparison of

communication strategies of campaign ads across different phases as part of the follow-up

project will allow me to further understand the evolvement of Facebook campaign strategies

during this election.

As a Political Science and Strategic Communications double major, I have always been

interested in the communication aspect of political campaigns. This semester, I am taking the

courses of Public Relations and Civic Responsibility that teaches me how different campaign

media functions and Introduction to Political Thought which covers the different political

groundwork in all constitutions. This project will provide me a dedicated time to delve deeply

into the intersection of my two areas of interests. It will also extend my deadline so that I can
include additional measures of interests (e.g., the evolution of campaign strategies) into my

project. After graduating from Elon University, I plan to pursue a career in the political

campaign world and dream of someday running the first woman president’s campaign. This

undergraduate research experience is not a resume filler for me. I am genuinely interested in the

concepts to be examined in this project and believe this project has profound implications for my

future professional career. The research process and the findings that I will learn through this

project could also inform my future professional practices in political communication. 

F. Description of the planned mentoring relationship (e.g., planned contacts etc.)

During the first four weeks of Fall 2021, Lindsay and I plan to have one meeting each

week to go over the coding. More individual work time will be intentionally built into this

phase to get additional coding completed, given that the codebook will have already been

established by then. If Lindsay will encounter any issue during the coding process, we will

have additional meetings whenever needed. Once the coding is finished, we will meet more

frequently – twice a week, in the following 6 weeks to go over analysis strategies and

implications of findings. Once the analysis is completed, more individual working time will

be set aside for Lindsay to work on the paper writing and conference submission during the

rest of Fall 2021. At this stage, we will be meeting once a week to go over the different

sections of the paper. Whenever a section of paper is finished, Lindsay will send it to me for

editing and make relevant changes based on recommendation before moving on to the next

one. The weekly meeting will be mainly used to discuss the needed changes and edits.

During the first month of Spring 2021, Lindsay and I will continue with the paper draft and

have a weekly meeting. We will then use the next weeks (also before the conference) to

prepare for conference presentations. It is likely that we will meet more frequently (twice a
week) during these two weeks to nail the details to be included in the presentation and carry

out rehearsals. Once she is back from the conference, we will use the rest of the semester to

further edit the paper and get it ready for submission to Elon Journal of Undergraduate

Research in Communications or another disciplinary journal. More individual work time will

be built into this last stage with us meeting once a week. Qian will also be on call at this stage

if additional meetings will be needed.

G. Description of any special circumstances with details

We do not anticipate any special circumstance to happen. Lindsay plans to register for 1 credit of

STC 499 in Fall 2021 and 1 credit of STC 499 in Spring 2022 for this project.

H. Budget
The grant will be mainly used to purchase an external hard drive for storing the sampled ads (and

the related multiple media components) and the coding data. The rest of the grant will be used to

cover the registration & travel-related cost to attend Association for Education in Journalism &

Mass Communication (AEJMC) Midwinter Conference 2022. The conference will take place in

Oklahoma around March 2022. Below is the budget breakdown.

External hard drive (2TB) $100

Conference Registration $50
Flight $380
Lodging $370
Food $100
Total $1,000

I. Biographical sketch of the mentor

 See next page.

Qian Xu
Associate Professor of Strategic Communications
School of Communications
ELON UNIVERSITY

Appointments
8/2017 – present: Associate Director of Undergraduate Research Program, Elon University
8/2016 – present: Associate Professor (tenured), School of Communications, Elon University
8/2010 – 7/2016: Assistant Professor, School of Communications, Elon University

Education
2010 Pennsylvania State University, Ph.D. in Mass Communications
2005 Nanjing University (China), M.A. in Journalism
2004 Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese & American Studies,
Graduate Certificate in International Studies
2002 Nanjing University (China), B.A. in Journalism

Main Research Areas

● Social and psychological impact of media technology
● Persuasion through social media and interactive media
● Online information processing

Recent Experience with Mentoring Undergraduate Research (UR)

Primary Mentor
Student Project Topic Type of Outcome
Name UR
Brianna Representation of women in Honors NCUR presentation (accepted)
Edwards hip-hop lyrics before and Thesis
(’20) during the #MeToo movement
 Bryan Effects of live tweeting on user SURE NCUR presentation; BEA Research
Anderson engagement: Symposium (regular session)
(’18) A content analysis of premium presentation; 1 article publication in
sporting events Elon Journal of Undergraduate
Research in Communications; 1 book
chapter published in The golden age of
data: Media analytics in study and
practices; Provost Scholar
Rachyl Self-management and peer COM499 2nd place in Student Paper Competition
Jackson support in Type 1 and Type 2 at the BEA Research Symposium; 1
(’18) diabetes online communities article publication in Elon Journal of
Undergraduate Research in
Communications; 1 book chapter
published in The golden age of data:
Media analytics in study and practices
Kimberly User experience of All That COM499 20-page report for the client
Temlak JAS website: An eye-tracking (This is a client-based applied research
(’16) usability test project.)
Secondary Mentor
Ashleigh A semantic network analysis of COM499 NCUR submission (under review)
Afromsk media analytics job postings
y (’22)

Course-Based UR
COM495 Great Ideas: Issues and Research (Fall 2016). Two out of 14 students’ research papers
(Jordan Fusco ’17 & Elizabeth Bohjalian ’17) were selected to publish in the Elon Journal of
Undergraduate Research in Communications.

Honors Thesis Committee Member

McKenzie Miller (’20), Erasure and representation of bisexuality in Fall 2019 scripted comedies
on ABC
Anna Cosentino (’19), Using geolocated Twitter sentiment to advise municipal decision making
Anna Zwingelberg’s (’18), Perceiving the black box: Understanding trust in algorithms
Gabrielle Corner (’17), How complexity-induced construal affects the perception of advertising
messages
Cameron Jackson (’17), The natural hair journey: Social media communities on YouTube and
the promotion of natural hair acceptance among black, female college students

Recent Publications (After 2016)

Journal Articles
Safarnejad, L., Xu, Q., Ge, Y., & Chen, S. (in press). A multiple feature category data mining
and machine learning approach to characterize and detect health misinformation on social media.
IEEE Internet Computing.
Xu, Q., Song, Y., Yu, N., & Chen, S. (in press). Are you passing along something true or false?
Dissemination of social media messages about genetically modified organisms. Public
Understanding of Science.

Safarnejad, L., Xu, Q., Ge, Y., Krishnan, S., Bagarvathi, A., & Chen, S. (in press). Contrasting
health misinformation and relevant information on social media during a health emergency: A
dynamic information dissemination perspective. American Journal of Public Health.

Xu, Q., Chen, S., & Safarnejad, L. (in press). Effects of information veracity and message frames
on information dissemination: A case study of 2016 Zika epidemic discussion on Twitter. Health
Communication.

Cui, X., & Xu, Q. (in press). Television vs. social media: Examining the effects of media
platforms on audience’s emotion and sense of social solidarity during a media event. Western
Journal of Communication.

Overman, A., Xu, Q., & Little, D. (in press). What do students actually pay attention to and
remember from a syllabus?: An eye tracking study of visually-rich and text-based syllabi.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology.

Safarnejad, L., Xu, Q., Ge, Y., Bagavathi, A., Krishnan, S., & Chen, S. (2020). Identifying
influential factors on discussion dynamics of emerging health issues on social media: A
computational study. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 6(3), e17175.

Cui, X., & Xu, Q. (2020). The roles of identity and emotion in media events’ social integration
mechanism: A case study of the 2017 U.S. Presidential Inauguration. Atlantic Journal of
Communication, 28(2), 138-152.

Yu, F., Ruel, L., Tyler, R., Xu, Q., Cui, H., Karanasios, S., Keilbach, A., Nguyen, B. X., &
Mostafa, J. (2020). Innovative UX methods for information access based on interdisciplinary
approaches: Practical lessons from academia and industry data and information management.
Data and Information Management, 4(1), 74-80.

Rui, J. R., Yu, N., Xu, Q., & Cui, X. (2019). Getting connected while aging: The effects of
WeChat network characteristics on the well-being of mature Chinese adults. Chinese Journal of
Communication, 12(1), 25-43.

Xu, Q., Yu, N., & Song, Y. (2018). User engagement in public discourse on genetically modified
organisms: The role of opinion leaders on social media. Science Communication, 40(6), 691-717.

Chen, S., Xu, Q., Buchenberger, J., Bagavathi, A., Fair., G., Shaikh, S., & Krishnan, S. (2018).
Dynamics of health agency response and public engagement during public health emergency: A
case study of CDC tweeting pattern during 2016 Zika epidemic. JMIR Public Health and
Surveillance, 4(4): e10827.
Xu, Q., & Sundar, S. S. (2016). Interactivity and memory: Information processing of interactive
versus non-interactive content. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 620-629.

Miller, B., Xu, Q., & Barnett, B. (2016). Commenter anonymity affects reader perceptions.
Newspaper Research Journal, 37(2), 138-152.

Book Chapters
Anderson, B., & Xu, Q. (2020). Winning over fans: How sports teams use live-tweeting to
maximize engagement. In D. A. Grady, A. Hollifield, & A. Sturgill (Eds.). The golden age of
data: Media analytics in study and practices (pp. 182-193). New York, NY: Routledge.

Yu, N., & Xu, Q. (2016). Public discourse on genetically modified foods in mobile sphere:
Framing risks, opportunities, and responsibilities on mobile social media in China. In R. Wei
(Ed.), Mobile media, political participation, and civic activism in Asia: Private chat to public
sphere (pp.81-102). Singapore: Springer.

Encyclopedia Entry
Xu, Q. (2017). Dual process models of persuasion (ELM/Heuristic-Systematic Model). In P.
Roessler (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of media effects. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.

Refereed Conference Proceedings

Jiang, Ke., & Xu, Q. (2021). Building images of “President Trump”: Comparing co-evolutions of
the Trade War discourse between influencers and regular users on Twitter. Proceedings of the
54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).

Recently Funded Research Projects (After 2016)

External Grant
Comparing the Transmission Dynamics of Real News vs. Fake News: A Network Analysis of
Zika Epidemic on Twitter, 2018-2019. [Role: Principal Investigator]. Page and Johnson Legacy
Scholar Grant ($3100, Grant #2018FN003). The Arthur W. Page Center.

Internal Grants
Protection of Users’ Privacy in Immunization Apps: A Content Analysis of Their Privacy
Policies, Summer 2020. [Role: Principal Investigator]. FR&D Summer Fellowship ($8,750).
Elon University.

Tweeting Health Crisis: Investigating the Role of CDC and Public Engagement during the 2016
Zika Epidemic, Spring 2019. [Role: Principal Investigator]. Half-Year Full-Pay Sabbatical. Elon
University.

Effects of Infographic Syllabus on Cognitive Processing and Course Perceptions: An Eye

Tracking Experiment, Fall 2017. [Role: Principal Investigator]. Faculty Research and
Development Reassigned-Time Fellowship & Financial Assistance ($284.38). Elon University.
Debating the Myth of Genetically Modified Foods in Chinese Social Media: The Effect of
Influential Sources on Their Followers, Fall 2016. [Role: Principal Investigator]. Faculty
Research and Development Reassigned-Time Fellowship. Elon University.

Recent Invited Talks

Panelist, “Innovative UI/UX Methods for Information Access Based on Interdisciplinary
Approaches”, Workshop at the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T)
82nd Annual Conference (October, 2019), Melbourne, Australia.

Guest Speaking, “User Engagement in Public Discourse about GMOs on Chinese Social Media”,
Colloquium of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center (GES) at North Carolina State
University (January, 2019).

Editorial Work
Editor Board Member, Asian Journal of Communication (2020-present)
Editor-in-Chief, Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring, Elon University
(2017-present)

Accolade & Award

Featured as one of the eight highlighted faculty in President’s Report of Elon University 2016
Excellence in Scholarship Award, School of Communications, Elon University 2016