THE INFLUENCE OF ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN ON VOTING DECISION

📁 Format: MS WORD | 🗂️ Chapters: 1-5 | 📄 Pages: 65

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

For any democratic system to thrive, it is vital that political parties and candidates provide the electorates with adequate information on party policies, clear cut vision as well as their political agendas to enables the electorates to actively choose their candidates based on full information. To achieve this, political parties use the media in campaigns. Curran (2005:129) adds the media assists the voters to make an informed choice at election time. This is done in form of paid political advertising, social media campaigns, commentaries and new stories. In fact, for an election to be considered free and fair, electorates must have adequate knowledge of the candidates, political parties and election policies.

Recently, political parties and their candidate are becoming increasingly aware of the effectiveness of advertising and its role in getting the electorates to choose a particular candidate or party over the other by the way of informing them. The use of political ad campaigns has become increasingly popular and is very important to the electoral process and voting behaviour because it bridges the communication gap between political parties, political candidates and electorates. Hence, Political parties and candidates all around the world devote a lot of financial resources to political ad campaigns to sell themselves as the preferred brand to the electorates. Interestingly, the most questions raised in elections are concerned with voting behavior i.e why the electorates voted for a candidate over the other and the implication of their choice.

Scholars and communication experts argue that, when the politician crafts his campaign messages as being the fight to improve voter’s lives, or something similar and come with some good measures of integrity, the voters are more likely to believe him (Feyipitan 2015). In other words, the electorates are most likely to trust candidates whose political ad campaign offer to satisfy their basic needs as opposed to those who dwell on their personal achievements. However, these some experts also argue that appearance, personality and language used play crucial roles in political ad campaign. Still many political experts question the efficacy of political ad campaigns in getting the electorates to vote in candidate’s favour.

The recently concluded 2019 gubernatorial elections in Ogun state, witnessed political parties and candidates flooding various forms of social media with ad campaigns all struggling to win electorates votes. At the end, Prince Dapo Abiodun who was the candidate for the All Progressive Congress (APC) emerged as governor of Ogun state. Before the elections, his ad campaigns filled media airwaves. Social media and billboards with messages for every class of people who made up the electorates. His pervasive jingles dominated radio and television stations, social media sites which his messages streamed the print and outdoor media with the pro to deliver. However, the extent to which his media campaigns fostered his win remains unknown.

This chapter gives the detailed background study of advertising and therefore able to predict advertising and election connections. The chapter gives different views and definition of advertising and its history.

The relationship that exists between advertising and election was attained in this chapter. The essence of this chapter is to give an insight view or perceptions of advertising, looking at how advertising campaign started its history, benefits.

Proper research was done at this point to get the uses of advertising campaign and processes. Different research was conducted to give in the full background.

• STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Akeke and Awolusi (2015) observed that the purpose of the media is for political communication. Propaganda in politics was the problem that drew the researchers’ attention to this study, on how wrong or false information is disseminated by the media to make or mar a presidential candidate from attaining a leadership position. Irrespective of the fact that the media creates awareness, majority of the populace and even voters lack basic knowledge about the entire political process, and may take unreasonable decisions on election matters particularly. Slant, language, frequency, interest and bias of reportage which the media chooses may have negative or positive influence on voting behaviour and consequently on leadership ascendancy which in the negative leads to electoral violence. About 1000 people lost their lives in the 2011 Presidential elections (Olukotun 2014). Also Prior to the election, there were a lot of trepidation about the elections turning violent because of previous experiences of some politicians seeing the election as a do-or-die issue, fighting dirty with half-truths, outright lies and bitter words.

According to Towolawi (2015), ‘nothing fuels electoral violence as base, sentimental campaign dimensioned on primitive and primordial inclinations with no bearing on agenda, ideology, peoples’ welfare, governance, and development. Our politicians must shun puerile mudslinging and needless character assassination to further political agenda’. The influence of media on Nigerians especially during the 2011 and 2015 governeorship elections sequel to voting behaviour is worthy of study. Political advertisements are the important source of information about the conduct of politicians, clearly indicating how important it is to study media advertisement  influence.

Most electorate have viewed the political advertising is manipulative and takes the pattern of propaganda. This chapter further explained, listed and indicated the gains or losses formed from advertising campaign messages. It also indicates the problems associated to advertising campaign and its strength in the gubernatorial election.

This part of chapter explained the challenges of Ogun gubernatorial election in growing awareness and concern during the election.

• OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

This research gives full insight on the ways and strategies that advertising campaign adopted in influencing voting decision during the gubernatorial election in Ogun state. It also unveiled its impact on the voters for decision making, cognitive (behaviour) and attitude towards the gubernatorial election in the state.

The objectives of the study focused on the following:

Got information on how advertising campaign influenced decision making during the gubernatorial election in Ogun state

Investigate the influence of advertising campaign in election

Know whether the gubernatorial election exposed to the people through advertising campaign

Know how advertising campaign impacted on decision making of voters

• RESEARCH QUESTION

The following research question was analyzed from the research objective thereby making the question to be obvious for understanding of the complexity of the project. The research question includes;

Was there any relationship between advertising campaign and decision making of voters?

Did advertising campaign change people’s perception concerning voting election?

To what extent did advertising campaign influenced voters’ perception towards gubernatorial election?

• RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

This unit structured itself base on the research question. The hypothesis is a subsection of the research question which brought all its question using the below as Non hypothesis and alternative.

Hi: There is a relationship between advertising campaign and decision making of voters

Ho: There is no relationship between advertising campaign and decision making of voters

Hi: Advert campaign changes people’s perception concerning voting election

Ho: Advertising campaign does not change people’s perception concerning voting election

Hi: Advertising campaign influence’s voters’ perception toward the gubernatorial election

Ho: Advertising campaign does not influence voters’ perception towards the gubernatorial election

• SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY

This study was motivated by the curiosity to find out how advertising campaign influenced the decision making of voters during the gubernatorial election in Ogun state.

The research helped in analyzing how advertising campaign provided information about the candidate for gubernatorial election.

This research serves as a partial fulfilment in the award of HND in mass communication. It also helps in analyzing advertising campaign influence on the decision making of voters. It contributed to the body of knowledge.

 

• LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

This research was limited to the decision making of voters been influenced by advertising campaign in Abeokuta the capital of Ogun state alone. Also due to the available time for the project, it was limited only to the people of Abeokuta metropolis.

• SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This research project was a study focused on some metropolis of Abeokuta Southern part of Ogun State. Full attention was given during this study at both advertising campaign influences and decision making of voters.

• DEFINITION OF TERMS

Advertising campaign

Communication

Decision making

Voters

Gubernatorial

Election

Candidates

Definition of Advertising Campaign: This is a series  of advertisement messages that share a single idea which make up an Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)(en.m.wikipedia.org)

Definition of Communication: Jane N. and Joam Carter-Wells ( authors of the Language of learning (1985) say, it is ‘the giving and receiving of messages’.

Definition of Decision Making: According to the Oxford advanced learning dictionary, the term “decision making” means the process of deciding about something important especially in a group of people or in an organization.

Definition of voter: A person who has a legal right to vote especially in an election

Definition of Gubernatorial: Relating to a governor, particularly that of a state. The official leader of a state

Definition of Election: this is a formal group decision making process by which a population choses an individual to hold public offices.

Definition of Candidate: Someone who aspire to or is nominated or qualifies for a post.