郭贤华,王宏一,变异箭神
| 简介 近几年来，政治性广告已经进化到能与我们这急剧变化的社会现象保持一致，与其他一样,社会的巨变是为了迎合并与急速发展的科学技术相一致，这些技术已经决定了我们对生活方式的看法，甚至是受众群体和消费者。 就像是一些商业性企业的品牌和产品,政治家们开始寻找所有可能的途径,而不仅仅局限于一些主流或传统的广告方法，而是通过一些不断上升的替代品，它们通常十分的具有创新意识也非常的巧妙。他们所做的这一切只有一个目的，那就是达到他们的受众,群体，获取他们的信得到他们的批准和信任后，能够影响到个人和公众舆论，来达成他们的政治原因和优势。 在当今时代，种族政治的竞争对手已经开始利用各种形式的多媒体，从传统媒体:印刷、广播和电视,，到如今的万维网，他们通过电子邮件,网页,在线讨论组和聊天小组等社交媒体，推动了信息的传播和政治运动，赖特和欣森援引Marchese(2007)提出的差异“不是媒体本身,而是系统的自我发现和分布、消费和对话周围的媒体”。虽然社交媒体的另一个重要方面是与传统媒体相比它的相对成本很少或根本没有成本。 Political advertisements Introduction In recent years, political advertisements have evolved to keep up with the drastic changes that shape our society. As with the rest, the changes kept up to match and to conform with the rapid technological advancement that for now almost dictates the lifestyle and even the perception of the target audience and consumers. Just like commercial businesses' brands and products, politicians sought all the possible avenues, not just the mainstream or the conventional advertising methods but also the up and rising alternatives which are often innovative and ingenious. All these with only one goal in mind - to reach out to their target audience, get their message across and gain approval and trust to be able to sway individual and public opinion to their political causes and to their advantages. In this age and generation, the race of the political competitors has progressed in utilizing all forms of multimedia - from the traditional media: print, radio and TV, they have moved the information dissemination and the political campaign to the World Wide Web through emails, webpages, online discussion groups and chatgroups or the social media. Marchese (2007) as quoted by Wright and Hinson put forward that the differences are “not the media itself, but the system of discovery, distribution, consumption and conversation surrounding the media”. Although another significant aspect of social media is its relative little or no cost compared with traditional media even if both could reach any desired market And last year during the US presidential elections, they broke through the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and the rest armed with the message that they want to convey to their citizens and target electorate. Many analysts and experts had accepted that the success of the campaign was the successful integration of social media with the traditional media With the evolution of the political advertising methods, some politicians also recognized the need to alter their images to conform to the generation that utilizes these technological innovations. Physical looks as well as political fashion sense have also been revamped to capture the attention and the imagination of the audience. The changes have become imperative for those who want to be noticed in a crowd of expected drabness and rise above the competition. I. Harnessing New Technology As business recognize the potential and reap the benefits of the internet as an additional medium in communicating to the audience and dissemination information to the target consumers, the World Wide Web became the haven of advertisements of anything and everything under the sun that could be sold or offered to the vast market which suddenly became global or worldwide. As compared with the tri-media or print, TV and radio, the tools of communication in the internet are numerous and varied. Others set up websites to showcase their products or services while others carried the same concept of direct mailing, this time through the email service. Some joined online discussion groups and chatgroups while other posted banners on high traffic websites. Up until this time, more and more ways of advertising in the internet are discovered or produced by innovative and ingenious individuals. As politics is the same with business except that in commerce, a product or service is marketed while with the politician, it is the image of the candidate that is being upheld and ‘sold' to the voters through proper public relations of the groups behind the politicians campaign, it was not before long when the politicians took to the internet for their political and campaign advertisements. As proof to this rising usage of new technology by the politicians in their campaigns, the UK Tories scored a first in the United Kingdom as they launched their 40-seconder advertisement in Spotify, a rapidly growing peer-to-peer music sharing service. The ad will run only for a week but there are speculations and assumptions that as the general elections scheduled for next year, UK's conservative party will increase its usage of the service of the said site. This move was said to target the techie-savvy youth segment of its citizens. As UK prohibits running political ad campaign in TV and radio, airing this advertisement is legitimate and does not break any rules as it does not fit into any category of the prohibited category Last year during the US presidential elections, one of the intriguing but innovative move by US president Barack Obama was the use of the social networking site Facebook to reach out to what it termed its captive audience, the youth. The report stated that as the team of Obama started their Facebook account early in the campaign, they were able to generate 2 million supporters. His political adversary for the highest seat in the United States, John McCain followed suit and was able to build for himself about 600,000 supporters. Facebook, for its part has prepared the stage for these politicians by incorporating them in their services and providing a forum for their need, for a fee. Politicians, seeing the advantage jumped in and the people behind Facebook found themselves overwhelmed with demand for the said service. “Politicians who purchase advertising space on the site will be able to send mass messages to supporters” However as early as 2006, some politicians in the US have realized the power of this social networking site as an integral cog in their political campaign. US Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts even made it a point to visit Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto in his bid to harness the new technology on political campaigning or cyber campaigning and hoping to reach out to the youth, who composes the majority subscribers of the service. A supposedly presidential hopeful for the 2008 US presidential elections, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana also jumped in this up and coming campaigning avenue and projected himself an image in Facebook that would have been acceptable to the many subscribers of the social networking site who he hoped would eventually support his political ambition and see him through the peak of his political career. But then, the advantages of harnessing this medium are without its counterpart disadvantages. As one's image of his/her persona is one of the focuses of Facebook, care must be exercised in building one's image that will be projected. Michael Grynbaum (2006), in this column in Boston Globe stated that, “To reach a young audience, however, candidates may have to shed their middle-aged milieu and communicate in the proper Facebook manner. That means listing turn-ons and turnoffs, posting candid photos, and ‘friending' college students across the country by listing them on the site.”However, the possibility that someone within the site could destroy this image which could eventually lead to the damage to the political career of the candidate is also high. In the same manner that reaching out to the mass audience is easy and message communications is fast, negative publicity or revelations of the flaws in the image built could be communicated as easy and as fast. Over time, as more and more politicians would harness other avenues to their campaigning ease and advantage, other pros and cons will still surface and will be recognized which will dictate the future of these new methods - whether they are worthwhile or not. In the UK, the ban on TV and radio might be extended to accommodate other media such as the internet if the same objective for banning TV and radio has been crossed by the ever expanding cyberspace. On the other hand, the threat of the concept of the politician's invading the social networking service is their burgeoning number which could be looked at as a nuisance or an irritation to the subscribers. This could lead to audience's selectivity towards the communication efforts or information or information overload or even invasion to their privacy. When this group of politicians became too many, it would not become novelty and would cease to be intriguing to the members. The message that they continue to send and distribute to the subscribers may be treated as the annoying spam, the same way in the email or could be blocked by specific software the same as blocking pop ups and the others. |
