This UD professor is helping to monitor political ads on TV

The Internet Archive is partnering with the Sunlight Foundation on a project to track campaign advertising on TV in Philadelphia — and a University of Delaware professor is interested in the effort.

Danilo Yanich is an associate professor at the University of Delaware interested in how political ad buys influence and inform news coverage in local television (and, ultimately, policy). In his past work, he and his students have watched and coded over 30,000 hours of local television. His most extensive work thus far has been in Honolulu, where Yanich and his team recorded 100 news stories and 600 political ads during the 2012 general election. Not one of those news stories, Yanich says, addressed issues and claims made in the political advertisements. Now, with access to the Internet Archive’s data out of Philadelphia, the amount of information Yanich and his team have access to has doubled.