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Erika Franklin Fowler

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Professor of Government, Wesleyan University

At a 2024 MIT Museum exhibit, visitors were asked to guess which videos were deepfakes. Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

October 5, 2026

We’ve tracked $80M of spending on almost 170 AI‑generated political ads this year – it’s weird

Travis N. Ridout, Washington State University; Erika Franklin Fowler, Wesleyan University, and Michael Franz, Bowdoin College

Almost 170 ads and $80 million in spending and only 31% with a disclaimer: Here’s what researchers found when they tracked AI in this year’s campaign ads.

Screen shot of Beto O'Rourke’s Facebook ad, 2018. Facebook

December 3, 2018

The big lessons of political advertising in 2018

Erika Franklin Fowler, Wesleyan University; Michael Franz, Bowdoin College, and Travis N. Ridout, Washington State University

Health care dominated 2018’s political ads. Digital advertising grew, but hasn’t yet killed TV’s share. And dark money favored Democrats, say scholars studying the volume and content of campaign ads.

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Location: Middletown, Connecticut, U.S.
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BlueSky: @efranklinfowler.bsky.social
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Joined November 26, 2018