The Role of Mass Communication in the Parliamentary Elections’ Campaigns in the Kingdom of Bahrain in 2014: A Field Study

Abstract

This study aimed at identifying the nature of the communication methods used in the election campaigns by the members of the Bahraini parliament who won the membership of the 2014 election. It also explored to what extent these members had adopted various types of communication in their campaigns and had taken into account cultural, social, and political diversity of the public in choosing the means of communication methods. It also investigates how parliamentary members used to measure public reaction to their media messages during their election campaigns and how they measured the effectiveness of these communication methods as the basis for their success of their campaigns. The qualitative descriptive approach was followed using a structured questionnaire consisting of 29 items of which the validity and reliability were assured. This instrument was administered to 39 out of the 40 Bahraini parliament members during an individual meeting. The Statistical Package of the Social Sciences SPSS was used for data analysis. The results of the data analysis revealed that the Instagram and WhatsApp were the most effective means of social communication used by the members in their campaigns. It was found that the radio and TV were the least used means by the members. In addition, in terms of demographic age groups, it was revealed that adolescents received the most attention from the members as a target audience. This is in contrast to children who, as an audience, received the least attention.