Election Campaign Period Research Articles

Social media and the rise of radical right populism in Portugal: the communicative strategies of André Ventura on X in the 2022 elections

In the context of media studies, the theme of populism in its relation to digital media has gained a great prominence in the last decade. The emergence of new populist political actors that use direct communication to appeal to the people without intermediaries, as well as the consolidation of digital social networks, involve interfaces between media and political processes that we intend to observe, having as object the scenario of the Portuguese Legislative Elections of 2022. Indeed, in this article we address how the populist communication of André Ventura, leader of the Portuguese radical right party, Chega, is constructed during the election campaign period. To analyze the discursive mechanisms of populism in the digital realm, we conducted a study of the corpus derived from André Ventura’s posts on the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, during the month of January 2022, coinciding with the electoral campaign period. We sought to describe the discursive strategies present in the construction of the representation of “people”, considering the polarization “us versus them”, and examine the meanings of the world mobilized by populist communication in opposition to out-groups identified as “enemies” of the pure or authentic people. The results of our content analysis, focusing on the 143 tweets constituting Ventura’s narrative during the election period, indicate parallels with the discursive tactics of radical right populism. These include a narrative emphasizing conflict between “us and them,” a spotlight on the dysfunctions within the democratic system, the glorification of integrity in the face of political corruption, nativist discourse, and a prevailing tendency towards negative communication.

선거운동에 관한 국회 입법의 평가와 과제

The freedom of election campaigning serves as a means for free elections, represents the freedom of political expression, and signifies the realization of the right to participate in politics. In this paper, amid the inauguration of the 22nd National Assembly, we evaluate the amendments to the “Public Official Election Act” by the 21st National Assembly, focusing on election campaigning, and propose legislative tasks for the 22nd National Assembly. The evaluation is based on the decisions of the Constitutional Court during the term of the 21st National Assembly, which ruled on multiple occasions that certain regulations related to election campaigning in the “Public Official Election Act” were unconstitutional or incompatible with the constitution. The content of the amended “Public Official Election Act” by the 21st National Assembly was analyzed based on these decisions. The decisions of the Constitutional Court appear to clarify the intended constitutional significance of the freedom of election campaigning, aiming to grant a broader scope of freedom to the citizens. Despite this intent expressed by the Constitutional Court, the “Public Official Election Act” revised by the 21st National Assembly does not properly reflect the spirit of the Court's decisions. The 22nd National Assembly has a duty to pay more attention and properly amend the “Public Official Election Act.” Evaluating the amendments related to election campaigning in the “Public Official Election Act” by the 21st National Assembly, despite the Constitutional Court's decisions specifying legislative deadlines to address unconstitutional discrepancies in regulations such as campaign restrictions using armbands and installation bans, the passed deadlines led to a one-month legislative gap. The regulations on installation bans and the distribution and posting of documents and paintings through illegal methods were only minimally revised by shortening the restriction periods, failing to eliminate the unconstitutional nature of broad and extensive restrictions as pointed out by the Constitutional Court. The limits on various gatherings were only slightly adjusted by introducing personnel restrictions, not reflecting the decisions' intent at all. Thus, the 22nd National Assembly should initially amend the “Public Official Election Act” in detail, in line with the decisions of the Constitutional Court. More fundamentally, considering the constitutional significance of election campaigning, it is necessary to redefine the need for and standards of regulation, significantly expand the freedom of election campaigning on the principle of 'permissive by default, restrictive by exception,' and boldly eliminate unnecessary regulations. Additionally, the “Public's Elections Act” should clarify the contents that the general public needs to know and adopt as norms for their actions, consider transitioning from limiting the election campaign period to regulating election campaign costs, and also critically review and adjust any conflicting or contradictory legal interpretations, as well as consider simplifying the legal structure through the categorical classification of the “Public Official Election Act.”

Political Revenge? Downgrading Indonesia’s KPK From Hero to Villain

The importance of Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi [KPK]), has once again been brought into focus during the 2024 presidential election campaign period when politics and corruption collide. This article suggests that legislative and political actions since 2019 to the KPK’s purpose and structure severely limit its capacity and independence making it susceptible to greater political interference and coercion. The KPK was established by Law 30/2002, as a response to and recognition of rampant corruption throughout the governmental, political and public sectors, business communities, and society in general, which became common practice during President Suharto’s New Order Regime. The KPK’s commission encompasses conducting investigations, indictments, and prosecutions. However, in late 2019, the People’s Representative Council enacted amending legislation to weaken its authority and ability to operate independently. Crucial legislative changes included creating a government-appointed supervisory body overseeing the KPK’s internal operations and changing KPK employee status from independent agents to public servants. These two provisions alone seriously weaken the KPK’s autonomy and create the risk of turning it into a politically controlled auxiliary state agency. In some respects, KPK has become a victim of its own successes, having achieved convictions of senior ministers, politicians, government officials, and business leaders, which in turn has produced enemies. Without political protection, the KPK faces the prospect of not only becoming, in essence, a nonentity but also facing further deterioration of its credibility and authority.

Migrants’ Political Participation and Representation in Poland: What Do Political Parties Have to Offer?

Since 2018, Poland has been a net migration country, yet public debates on migrants and migration remain scarce and have been defined by a reactionary nature. This article, adopting a political opportunity structure perspective, focuses on political parties as the main actors shaping opportunities and constraints for migrant political participation and representation in Polish society. Based on a qualitative content analysis of party manifestos and parliamentary debates, and using the deductive thematic analysis framework, this study analysed three types of arguments parties have adopted regarding the admission of migrants. The findings revealed that Polish political parties, failing to see non-voting migrants as promising electoral targets, have weaponised the migrant issue and used it as an element of the partisan battle to attack opponents, especially during the election campaign period, instead of stimulating migrants’ political participation and offering them channels for representation.

ПАРЛАМЕНТЫН СОНГУУЛИЙН СУРТАЛЧИЛГААНЫ ХУГАЦААНЫ АСУУДАЛД

Researchers have different opinions about the duration of election campaigns. Some scholars believe that the campaign period should be long enough because of the importance of voters' right to know, to make their choice, and for candidates to introduce themselves to voters. However, some researchers believe that too long campaign period has negative aspects such as annoying the voters, demanding more financial expenses from the candidates, and reducing government activities. According to the document research, countries around the world have implemented election campaign periods in different ways in the 20th century. Majority countries have a lead time of 30-50 days. It is common for the law to prohibit any advertising from 24 to 48 hours before election day.

Emergency Power in Hungary and the COVID-19

We live in an era of overlapping states of exceptions: the climate and ecological emergency, the permanent crisis of global capitalism, the migration crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on the Hungarian political regime, this paper investigates how and why exceptional measures restructure our life. It can be argued that the main outcome of the exceptional measures is the rise of a new executive power, and it is demonstrated how heavily authoritarian regimes rely on the state of exception. It has been argued here that behind the strengthening of the emergency power there is the new rise of unlimited executive power, which is nothing more than the legal and political fulfilment of two-thirds majority power. Upon the case of the permanent state of exception of the Orbán regime, it can be said that the COVID-19 as an epidemiological crisis cannot be traced back to the Orbán administration, but the executive power has found a way to create a new political crisis based on the epidemic. The paper briefly discusses the impact of the 2022 Hungarian national election campaign period and the Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 on the Hungarian emergency powers.

Measuring partisan media bias in US newscasts from 2001 to 2012

This paper investigates the positioning in political news coverage of the big four US newscasts, ABC News, CBS News, FOX News and NBC News, as well as how they alter their positions when president Barack Obama took over from George W. Bush. Our empirical analysis is based on the tonality of their political coverage using more than 815,000 news items on Democrats and Republicans from 2001 through 2012. Using the Political Coverage Index (PCI), we find evidence for partisan and biased news coverage across all of the newscasts, with a general tendency of ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News to be slightly more critical of the Republicans, and of FOX News with a clear tendency to be more critical of Democrats. Moreover, and even more interesting, two of the newscasts – CBS News and NBC News – changed their political coverage such that it became more conservative when Democrat Barack Obama became president. This effect becomes even more pronounced when observations from election campaign periods are dropped. We interpret these results as evidence for a watchdog-like anti-government bias on the part of the observed newscasts. In contrast, FOX News remains Democrat-critical independent of who is in office and can be seen as partisan from this perspective. The results are confirmed when controlling for differences in reporting rates between the parties and the administrations using interaction terms.

Storytelling through images: how leaders managed their visual communication on Facebook during the 2019 European election campaign

ABSTRACT In contemporary democracies, the image that political leaders project is of central importance to their electoral appeal, however, studies of image projection have mainly been based on textual messages, undermining often visual content such as photos, memes and postcards. This study explores populist leaders image projection through visuals on Facebook in a cross-national context, with the aim of verifying if politicians use images to promote their political action or if they instead implement more complex strategies of self-branding and personalisation. The analysis focuses on the election campaign period for the 2019 European elections and proposes a comparison between four leaders that joined the European Parliament’s Group of Identity and Democracy, namely Matteo Salvini for Italy, Heinz-Christian Strache for Austria, Marine Le Pen for France and Alice Weidel for Germany. According to our analysis, important differences emerge in the use that leaders make of the images disseminated on Facebook. Some of them, in fact, disseminate almost exclusively images that are strictly related to their electoral campaign, while others seek a true identification with their voters, following the pattern of intimization.

KONSTYTUCJONALIZACJA CYBERZAGROŻEŃ WYBORÓW POWSZECHNYCH

Universal suffrage by means of technology can in some cases become essential. Voting by e-mail, text message or information system raises many ethical and legal challenges. Add to this the intensified wave of disinformation during the election campaign period, and a problem of a systemic nature may arise with respect to the question of the necessity of regulating elections by technical means at the constitutional level. Such a need arises from the obligation to maintain statehood both from the perspective of the implementation of elections and the impact on society of harmful disinformation, ending with cyber threats related to vote rigging, identity theft or hacking of election servers. The aim of this paper is to show the legality of disinformation during general elections at the constitutional level. An explanation of disinformation activities and an analysis of cyber attacks in selected countries around the world shows that disinformation and cyber attacks have a significant impact on the final outcome of general elections. In this state of affairs, the key question arises as to whether the good protected directly by the Constitution of the Republic of Poland should be attributed stronger protection of the freedom of speech, which is an individual right expressed in Article 54 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, or the assurance of security of the State and its citizens in the form of ensuring democratic elections in a state governed by the rule of law with the help of the criminalization at the constitutional level of disinformation and influence on general elections by technical means. Ensuring security of the State and its citizens is one of the cardinal duties of the Polish State enshrined in Article 5 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland.

Ekonomi Haberleri ve İspanya Genel Seçimlerinin İçerik Analizi

One of the newspaper strategies during the election periods is related to how newspapers coverage on economic policies may affect voters’ behavior. This study analyzes how two main Spanish newspaper articles position the economy issue in all the news before the last three general elections of Spain through the content analysis. The objectives are the following: how the news that includes the theme of economy and politics differentiates through content analysis and how these newspapers reported the news to the public. To find an answer, the economic news during the official election campaign periods are evaluated and subjected to content analysis. As a result, these two newspapers reveal the good sides of the parties that they are ideologically compatible with, by this way, they may interpret especially the economic news to influence the voting behavior of citizens.

PENYIDIKAN TINDAK PIDANA PEMILU PADA MASA KAMPANYE PEMILU TAHUN 2019 OLEH PENYIDIK SATRESKRIM POLRES SOLOK KOTA

Investigation of Election Crime During the 2019 Election Campaign Period By Investigators of the Solok Kota Police Satreskrim begins with the activities of Investigators accompanying Bawaslu to receive findings / reports of alleged election crimes, then no later than 14 (fourteen) days the investigator will assist Bawaslu in conducting clarifications and studies, after it is concluded that the finding / report is an election criminal act, then the report is forwarded to the Police by making a Police Report, furthermore that no later than 14 (fourteen) days the Investigator will carry out the investigation and no later than 14 (fourteen) days the case files resulting from the investigation have been submitted to Penunutut. General. Within a maximum period of 6 (six) days from the date of receipt of case files, the investigator delegates the responsibility of the case to the public prosecutor without or after going through the process of returning the case files. The obstacles faced by Solok Kota Police's Satreskrim Investigators in Investigating Election Crime during the 2019 Election Campaign Period include, external constraints, namely a) the handling of reports on election crimes cannot be followed up if one of the Gakkumdu elements (Bawaslu, investigators, prosecutors) does not agree to follow up on their own normative reasons; (b) the limitation of the time period for handling election crimes is not followed by the legal consequences that will occur if the handling of the crime committed exceeds the predetermined time period; (c) time limitation for handling election crimes greatly hinders Election Crime Investigators from working optimally in gathering evidence. internal constraints, namely a) limited facilities and infrastructure required for investigation and investigation activities; b) Election Crime Investigators are still weak in their mastery of laws or regulations relating to the 2019 Election.

‘Ethnic’ media and election campaigns: Chinese and Indian media in New Zealand’s 2017 election

ABSTRACT This article provides the first systematic study of the political content of New Zealand’s Chinese and Indian print and online news media during an election campaign period. We assess the comprehensiveness and political balance of election coverage provided by a sample of high-circulation New Zealand-based Chinese and Indian news publications during New Zealand’s 2017 campaign. Overall, we find all the publications in our sample under-reported minor parties and, in some cases, the quantity and tone of their reporting demonstrated strong bias towards the National Party. These findings are significant in a context where such media play an important role in informing ethnic and immigrant minorities during campaigns, and where such minorities form a growing proportion of the New Zealand electorate.

Marketing digital um estudo sob a perspectiva da rede de fast food Burger King brasil

On November 22, 2019, political propagation through Twitter takes a turning point, establishing a ban on all types of political promotional content. Despite that, currently, Twitter does still assume a central role in the construction of public opinion, in which the dissemination of the principles and ideals of the parties persists, as well as for the diffusion of their electoral promises and commitments. This article investigates the use of Twitter by two of the emerging Portuguese political parties: The Party Iniciativa Liberal and the Party Livre - the two new parties with the most followers on the social platform. It is intended to understand how the use of this network has boosted, in these elections, the conquest of the parliamentary seat. In this way, the Twitter profiles of the parties were analysed in two different periods: in the first two weeks after the creation of the accounts and in the two weeks of the election campaign period.

Opini Pemilih Pemula Surabaya terhadap Iklan Politik Para Kandidat di Pilkada

Election Campaign Period is a period in political events where candidates have the opportunity to introduce themselves to the public. Through various forms and channels of communication, candidates endeavor to convey their ideas and profile. One form of communication channel is political advertising. The target group that is always interesting to be targeted by advertisements is the beginner voter group. With a very significant number of them, the beginner voter is a potential "market" to work on so that a candidate's campaign message can be conveyed. This study wants to see how the opinions of the beginner voters, especially in the city of Surabaya about the ads of candidates for Cagub Cawagub in the East Java Regional Election 2018. Using a quantitative approach with survey methods, the results show that both candidate pairs' ads, namely Khofifah-Emil and Gus Ipul- Puti are positively opinion by beginner voters. However, when viewed from each opinion component, namely Trust, Values, and Expectations, the Gus Ipul-Puti advertisement has a higher component in Values and Expectations while the Khofifah advertisement pair is high in the Trust component.

Twitter Discourse on the Pre-Presidential Election Campaign in Nigeria

<em><span>Citizens’ political participation and engagement on various social media handles have made it necessary for scholars to investigate and understand the potentials inherent in the political engagement and discourse of individual citizens. Hence, the study examined Twitter discourse on the 2019 pre-presidential election campaign in Nigeria. Purposive sampling technique with thematic textual research method was used to thematically analyse tweets based on the research questions. Findings from the study showed that the kind of engagement made or done by Nigerians regarding the 2019 pre-presidential election campaigns was based on the topic, with most topics being met with sarcasm. The sarcasm found in the tweets pointed to the way Nigerians react in a situation that they have no way of rectifying. Also, findings from the study showed that celebrity tweet gets more engagement compared to tweets made by unpopular tweeps. Conclusively, the study found that the level of discourse on Twitter regarding Nigeria’s 2019 pre-presidential elections was very rich and participatory this implies that Nigerians have a high propensity to relate on social media as their rate of responses as well as their frequency of responses remained high throughout the election campaign period which to a large extent predicts real-life events.</span></em>

Dynamics of Campaign Reporting and Press-Party Parallelism: Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism and the Media System in Turkey

ABSTRACT How do press-party parallelism dynamics unfold in media systems that experience competitive authoritarianism? We analyze the content of news coverage of political parties across four consecutive national election campaigns in Turkey (2002, 2007, 2011, and 2015) to track changes in press-party parallelism. We explore three dimensions of press-party parallelism in order to study its dynamics: visibility of political parties, the effective number of parties represented in newspapers, and lastly, favorability toward political parties. First, within each campaign cycle, as election day approaches, visibility of the incumbent party increases while the visibility of other parties tends to decline. Likewise, the incumbent party’s visibility increases across the four elections we study. Second, for all newspaper groups, the number of parties that receive favorable or unfavorable coverage declines over consecutive election terms. Third, the incumbent party is the only that gains in terms of positive coverage within and across each election campaign period. Taken together, we show evidence for press-party parallelism dynamics in a competitive authoritarian country.

RULE OF LAW, STATELESS INDIANS AND EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS

This paper focuses on the Rule of Law and it’s reach in terms of the stateless Indian in Malaysia. The term rule of law has been a term used by politicians to secure political mileage during election campaign periods and continues to be used upon formation of a new government. Regardless of its transcendent nature and noble assurance of a government of laws and not men, there would be gaps in the usage of the term rule of law as it does not reach all levels of community. As beneficent as the concept maybe, it does not serve to assist the stateless Indian community in securing employment in the state. Hence the significance of the research is to identify the gaps in the application of Rule of Law in Malaysia towards the stateless Indian. This study is a purely conceptual one which evaluates the constitutional concept of rule of law and its limitations in providing employment rights for Stateless Indians. The predominant research question is whether the Rule of Law as understood by constitutional philosophers helps mitigate the plight of the stateless Indian. It investigates that notion that perhaps stateless Indians are not stateless after all but have been given that categorisation so as to allow for their plight to be catapulted into the international sphere where customary international law and treaty law could in ideal circumstances apply to the stateless Indian. It proposes a thesis that regardless of how closely a State like Malaysia follows and upholds the rule of law, the stateless Indian Community in Malaysia will not necessarily enjoy second generation rights that ought to be made available to all human beings. The second generation right specifically referred to in this research is the right to employment for the stateless Indian.

Problematizing the presentation and reception of political brands

PurposeThere are explicit calls for research devoted to how political actors present their brand to the electorate and how this is interpreted. Responding to this, the purpose of this paper is to build an understanding of how political brand messages and values are received and aligned with voter expectations, which in turn shapes the consistency of a political brand.Design/methodology/approachUsing an interpretivist perspective, this two-stage approach first focuses on semi-structured interviews with internal stakeholders of the UK Conservative Party and second uses focus group discussions with external stakeholders (voters) of age 18-24 years. Data was collected between 1 December 2014 and 6 May 2015.FindingsThe findings suggest that the UK Conservative brand had recovered from the “nasty party” reputation. Further, the Conservative brand was perceived as credible, trustworthy and responsible, with positive associations of “economic competence”. However, while the nasty party imagery has declined, the UK Conservative brand continues to face challenges particularly in terms of longstanding negative associations perceived by both internal and external markets.Research limitations/implicationsIt must be acknowledged that all research methods have their own limitations, and acknowledging these will strengthen the ability to draw conclusions. In this study, for example, due to time constraints during the election campaign period, 7 participants supported stage one of the study and 25 participants supported stage two of the study. However, participants from stage one of the study represented all three elements of the UK Conservative Party (Parliamentary, Professional and Voluntary). In addition, the elite interviews were longer in duration and this provided a greater opportunity to capture detailed stories of their life experiences and how this affected their brand relationship. Similarly, participants for stage two focussed on young voters of age 18-24 years, a segment actively targeted by the UK Conservative Party.Practical implicationsThe brand alignment framework can help practitioners illuminate components of the political brand and how it is interpreted by the electorate. The increasing polarisation in politics has made this a vital area for study, as we see need to understand if, how or why citizens are persuaded by a more polarised brand message. There are also social media issues for the political brand which can distort the carefully constructed brand. There are opportunities to evaluate and operationalize this framework in other political contexts.Originality/valueThe brand alignment model extends current branding theory first by building on an understanding of the complexities of creating brand meaning, second, by operationalizing differences between the brand and how it is interpreted by the electorate, finally, by identifying if internal divisions within the political party pose a threat to the consistency of the brand.

How Effectively did Parliamentary Candidates Use Social Media During the 2015 UK General Election Campaign

Many academics and political commentators have speculated that the rise of the internet, and in particular social media, could transform political communications. In the run up to the 2015 UK general election we saw an emphasis on the potential impact of social media campaigning, with many headlines suggesting that this could be the first social media election. The purpose of this paper is to determine how effectively parliamentary candidates used social media during the 2015 UK general election campaign period, by creating a typology of the ways in which candidates behaved on social media. The primary research conducted, which included analysis of the Twitter and Facebook posts (n = 616) made by a sample of candidates (n = 10), focused on 4 main post functions: broadcasting, posters/infographics, organising, and interacting. The results show that overall UK politicians mainly used social media as a unidirectional method of communication, as opposed to interacting. However, this research also found key differences between Twitter and Facebook, the former used much more interactively.

ФЕНОМЕН ЕЛЕКТОРАЛЬНОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ У ТРАНЗИТИВНИХ СУСПІЛЬСТВАХ

The purpose of the paper is to show in a holistic form the scientific category «electoral culture» and its place in the scientific apparatus of political science. Applied a complex of general scientific and specific methods of scientific research, which are inherent in political science: system analysis, induction, behaviouristic method. The phenomenon of electoral culture as an important indicator of the development of transitive societies is considered. The definition of the term «electoral culture» is presented, the mechanism of formation of the electoral culture of the individual is revealed. Electoral culture is a stable system of knowledge, assessments and norms of electoral behavior and electoral relations, the electoral process as a whole, collective memory of people about electoral processes. Electoral culture has long been latent and is manifested and updated only during election campaign periods. In transitive societies, the real political functions of most citizens are limited to their participation in elections. It is shown that the indicators of the development of the electoral culture of a particular nation are electoral legislation, advertising campaigns aimed at supporting the political forces and their candidates for elected positions, as well as the final results of the elections. On the other hand, the mentioned factors are procedural periods, the characteristic features of which are determined by the national political and cultural factor. Political systems and institutions function properly only when implemented in an adequate cultural context, and actors operating in these systems have the appropriate characteristics. In transitive societies, the mechanism of electoral choice most adequately reflects the voting model for a positive image. It is concluded that the model of national-cultural identification is the most urgent for the entirely unformed Ukrainian nation.