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This video featuring Barack Obama hails from a 2008 McCain-Palin campaign spot, and you may notice something different about Obama’s skin. He doesn’t look exactly like himself, and this video stands as one of many examples gathered by Stanford University’s Public Opinion Quarterly. The journal scrutinized more than a hundred political ads and found that some GOP spots tweaked the tone of Obama’s skin. Their full study delivers a lengthy rundown of digital manipulations in the relevant ads.
The study aimed to prove how some campaigns target voters’ preexisting “racial biases,” and the McCain-Palin ticket appears to be the most avid manipulator. The above clip (published by The Independent) not only darkens Obama’s skin, but also zeroes in on his alleged terrorist connections. Ads such as these provided Stanford with this main goal throughout the study:
We outline a method to quantify skin complexion in ads and utilize it to document how skin complexion varies with content, consistent with negative Black stereotypes suggested in the literature above, most notably content related to criminality. We also examine how skin complexion varies over the course of the campaign to interrogate whether stereotype-consistent depictions increase as the campaign develops and grows increasingly negative.
If all of this seems like a coincidence, here’s some more evidence from another McCain ad. Stanford’s Political Communication Lab whipped up this digital analysis of how Obama’s skin tone was manipulated:
Altogether, the study found that 86% of McCain’s ads manipulated Obama’s skin tone, and the process heightened gradually throughout the campaign (while McCain’s own skin tone grew progressively lighter). The study’s findings came down to this bleak summary:
These findings suggest that ads that portray Black candidates with a darker complexion might prime negative stereotypes about Blacks, damaging the candidate’s election prospects in a way that has nothing to do with political fitness for office and is difficult to detect.
Did the McCain campaign conduct these manipulations as part of a strategy? The Washington Post reached out for answers, and they’re still waiting.