Related Studies on Voter Construction and Political Media
Significance of Media in Campaigning
Voters see dwelling with matters of elections translating to less leisure time; so, they absent themselves from such political discourse because they believe that their single vote could only do so much anyway (Stanley, 1962). If campaigns are aired in mass media, Stanley argues that the media “dramatize elections, emphasizing [the people’s] elements of conflict, their uncertainties, [and] the personal fortunes that ride on their outcomes” (Stanley, 1962) to let the audiences hold on to their seats while watching TV instead of jumping to another channel.
Cundy (1993, as quoted by Encabo, 2010) argues how “politicians and advertisement producers believe that advertising allows candidates to reach even the uninterested and unmotivated citizens like those who are not paying attention in news reports, debates, and other campaign events”. Encabo (2010) argues that “Since the presidentiables are people who are respected in the country and perceived as very formal people, a wall between them and the voters is present.” Through advertising strategies, the wall is broken. The advertiser will create another image of the candidate to make them appreciated and accepted by the target audience. Both Encabo and Cundy further considered the interest and culture of the target audience/voter like the social class of the people in the ad, the language, the songs used, the clothes of the people, the symbolic colors, the location, and the issues to discuss. The representation of people’s age, gender, profession and religion are very useful for the ads’ recall as well.
McCombs (2004) mentioned that not only does media enable people to know the basics about current events but they dictate as well the valuing society should put on particular issues. A concrete example is the layout of the newspaper. Which news make it to the front page, which gets the banner headline, and which articles occupy the littlest space in the paper and also in the minds of readers? Clearly, media influence society.
According to Levy and Kotler (1969), in addition to economic products and services, the concept of marketing is applicable to the marketing of persons, organizations and ideas. This was affirmed by Reeve (2010) in his study on political marketing strategies which asserts that since the world is marketing dominated, the electorate has come to expect politics to be conducted from a marketing perspective. Society is brand-driven. This means people’s choices about their commercial consumption behavior may replicate itself subconsciously into their political choices. Campaigns are ideologically-driven and sales-oriented. (Reeves, 2009)
According to Ashram (1975), there is a clear link between consumer behavior and voter behavior and how each is influenced similarly by various concepts. (See: Table 1)
What may seem as just a general plan to please everybody is actually a product of careful market research and analysis, from the preparations down to the slogans, speeches and even attire. Marketing concepts are just as necessary in elections as in business.
In 2012, Dan Schill published his study on visual communication in political communication, with emphasis on how visual symbols and images function in political contexts. In the context of politics, Schill elaborates that "a single photograph can have a clear impact on voters' judgments regarding a candidate's congressional demeanor, competence, integrity, etc."
According to Schill, there are ten functions of visuals in politics, one of which is the image-building function, wherein "the visual image can construct the political image". These visual images provide "heuristic cues" about a candidate's background and personality which directly shapes that candidate's image. For example, politicians may want to portray themselves as "ordinary" by appearing in casual clothes and interacting with regular citizens and disadvantaged sectors of society, or perhaps they may want people to perceive them as "compassionate" by appearing with families, children, or even religious symbols. Another function mentioned by Schill is the identification function, where "pictures are uniquely equipped to create identification, or perceived similarity, between politicians and audiences." The effect of this is quite strong because "the more a person identifies with a source, the more power that source has to influence the person."
On the other hand, Lipsitz, Trost, Grossmann and Sides say that people "prefer campaign communication that is informative, comprehensive, and focused on the issues that matter most to the voters." They also tackle the various factors (aside from political involvement) that matter with regards to public opinion in campaigns. These factors include gender, ethnicity, and age. Lipsitz, et.al, also write that the respondents in their survey prefer stands on issues, character, experience, and intelligence with regards to the content of campaign communication.
Based on a study conducted by John Kingdon, voters choose their politicians based on their specific stands on issues and their personality. And as such, the voters seem to be less concerned with the party affiliations of the candidates. This finding of Kingdon was in support of surveys which state that a smaller number of people are engaged and interested in extensive political discussions and rely more on matters that are easily seen. Thus, their votes are highly based on their image of the candidates and who among them focus on the most relevant and immediate issues for the voters. This specificity in focusing on specific issues as a basis for the voter's’ choice is supported by Druckman and Miller.
In Druckman and Miller’s Political Psychology of Electoral Campaigns, “priming” on specific issues instead of tackling all issues is a more strategic campaign approach because it significantly influences the decisions of the voters. As such, learning how to frame issues is very essential in political campaigns.
This claim was supported further by Petrocik, Benoit, and Hansen in their study of Issue Ownership and Presidential Campaigning. In this study, their theoretical framework was based on the Issue Ownership Theory wherein they argue that politicians focus and prime on issues that are of high concern for their electorate to gather their support and votes. Petrocik et.al argued that what voters want is to have candidates who can “fix” their problems. And as such, these politicians focus their campaigns on issues that can directly affect the voters. With this, it is seen that “performance-driven reputations” are less persuasive to voters than “constituency-based issues” that are inclusive of the necessities of the people rather than merely emphasizing on the politician’s capabilities.
Hart and Johnson (1999) provided ideas on how to approach the analysis of the construction of the voters during electoral campaigns. This was done through the examination of how the political campaigners during the American Presidential elections between the years 1948 to 1996 constructed their target electorate in their campaign materials. The importance of the analysis of the construction of the voters and its centrality to any political project is that the survival of any society depends on the affirmation of “we” and for a community to articulate itself as a community and for a community to assemble a political will, there is a need for these kind of rhetorical constructions.
Rational Expectations Equilibrium
Granato and Wong in Political Campaign Advertising Dynamics affirms the claim of Druckman et al. on how political campaigns influence voters’ decision-making although through other units of analysis namely voter expectations and the voters ability to discern the true policy view and personal traits of a candidate and the candidate’s campaign strategy. A quantitative method of analysis was used in this research paper. The findings was that political campaigns do give significant influences on voters but it diminishes as time passes by because the voters acquire sufficient information through time and help them achieve crystallization where voters reach the “rational expectations equilibrium.