bq. Transparency and government responsiveness depend critically on real-time publicly available information disclosing efforts to influence elections. The Wesleyan Media Project tracks and analyzes all broadcast advertisements aired by or on behalf of federal and state election candidates in every media market in the country. Throughout the course of the 2010 election cycle, we will provide real-time information on the extent of corporate and union spending in federal election campaigns across the country, who specifically is doing that spending and which candidates are benefiting.
bq. Our goals are to develop a definitive database that tracks all advertising by source (corporation, union, interest group, party, or candidate), and to enhance the ability of scholars, citizens, and journalists to hold government accountable by providing public information on how special interests are attempting to influence American democracy in general and political campaigns in particular.
That’s the mission statement of the new “Wesleyan Media Project” (the heir to the “Wisconsin Advertising Project”:http://wiscadproject.wisc.edu/), which is “helmed by”:http://election-ad.research.wesleyan.edu/team/ political scientists Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael Franz, and Travis Ridout. The project should prove an invaluable source of data, especially on independent expenditures in the wake of _Citizens United v. FEC_. Here’s a “press release”:http://election-ad.research.wesleyan.edu/2010/09/23/wesleyan-media-project-launched/ on the project’s launch.