Political Advertising and Propaganda Within Spiral of Silence-Agenda Setting Theory

Abstract

Political communication is an interactive process by which politicians transmit information and political discourse to voters and receive feedback through media. This communication process is a two way process of communication between politicians and voters by which, on the one hand, politicians transmit their thoughts and wills to voters, and on the other hand voters communicate their opinions to politicians, after interpreting, in different ways, the messages that they received. The key objective of political communication is to persuade or influence and cause voters, who are the target audience, to vote for a particular party by convincing them. In order to ensure the smooth operation of political communication processes it is essential that the parliament, government, political parties, non-governmental organizations, environmentalist groups and pressure groups also actually take part in this process. The decisive and transformative power of mass media and advertising phenomenon on the political systems has grown to become more and more influential in the recent years. The use of information considerably increases in line with the increase in the use of propaganda. No doubt, this information age has turned the world into “a universal village”. On the one hand, the concentration in media and on the other hand rapid developments in Internet technologies expose societies to the bombardment of messages. Being exposed to or bombarded by numerous varieties of messages in their daily lives lead to the creation of variabilities and instabilities in individual’s behaviors. Accordingly, political organizations while trying to convey messages to masses through political communication and advertising have to deliver systematic, comprehensible and influential messages by taking the advantage of visualization as much as possible.