Page 78 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Persuasion in the Political Context 71

A mediated (indirect) campaign is a second information channel for the
candidate. Instead of the person-to-person channel used with the direct
marketing approach, this channel makes use of electronic and printed me-
dia outlets, such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, direct mail,
the Internet (e.g., e-mail, websites, blogs), campaign literature (e.g., fliers,
brochures, fact sheets), billboards, and any other available forms of pro-
motion. Political marketing also adopts new ways of communicating with
the voter, mainly related to the development of new technologies, such as
social networking and mobile marketing.
The third element of the political marketing process and the goal of any
political party or candidate is to establish, maintain, and enhance relation-
ships with voters and other political power brokers (e.g., media, party or-
ganizations, sponsors, lobbyists, interest groups) to meet the objectives of
the parties involved. This is achieved by a mutual exchange, both during
the election campaign and after it, when the candidate is either ruling or
in opposition to the winner. An integral element of this relationship build-
ing is the “promise concept.” The key functions related to this concept are
giving promises, fulfilling promises, and enabling promises. Therefore, an
important element of building stable relationships is trust, which is a will-
ingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence. To
achieve trust, one also needs to establish communications channels that
function on a constant basis.
According to Harris (2001), political campaigns are conducted prima-
rily through mass media, with citizens participating in them as a media
audience. Politicians compete for the voters’ attention, not only against
their political opponents but also against news coverage, talk shows, and
other media events.

Priming in Political Persuasion

The notion of priming begins by acknowledging evidence from psychologi-
cal research indicating that when people make judgments or decisions, they
rarely take into consideration the entire array of available relevant evidence.
Rather, because of the cognitive burdens imposed by a complete and com-
prehensive information search and integration process, people tend to “sat-
isfice” rather than “optimize.” That is, they often derive their decisions from
limited subsets of the available information pool so as to make satisfactory
judgments without expending a great deal of effort (Krosnick & Brannon,
1993). From a social cognition perspective, priming describes “the effects of
prior context on the interpretation of new information” (Fiske & Taylor,
2008, p.60). Priming can influence cognition, affect, and behavior.