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Strategic Importance Of Voters

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Strategical importance of voters who receive direct candidate information
Voters with a direct link have three important traits that candidates need to know in the mechanism of political campaigns. First, they are politically motivated. Studies found the more interest in politics SNS users have, the more likely they are to have a tie to candidates on SNSs (Karlsen, 2015; Macafee, 2013). Duggan and Smith (2006) showed that, in the U.S., while 53% of politically engaged users are likely to follow candidates, only 21% of those with lower levels of political engagement are likely to do so. In addition, those with higher political interest are more likely to engage in real world politics such as voting (Bode, Vraga, Borah, & Shah, 2014; Gil de Zúñiga, …show more content…

Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet (1968) posited that political campaigns could activate latent partisanship (activation), mobilize core party supporters (reinforcement), and persuade non-supporters (conversion). However, scholars have shown that political campaigns mainly serve activation and reinforcement rather than convert non-supporters (Finkel, 1993; Gelman & King, 1993; Iyengar & Petrocik, 2001; Kramer, 1970). This suggests it is strategically more viable to activate and reinforce voters’ (latent) existing attitudes toward parties and candidates by giving information congenial to their political and social preferences through a direct conduit between …show more content…

At this attribute level, studies have shown the news media can transfer attribute salience of an object (i.e., issue and candidate) as well as object salience to the public (Coleman & Banning, 2006; Hester & Gibson, 2003; Kim, Han, Choi, & Kim, 2012; Kim & McCombs, 2007; Lopez-Escobar, Llamas, McCombs, & Lennon, 1998; McCombs, Llamas, Lopez-Escobar, & Rey, 1997; McCombs, Lopez-Escobar, & Llamas, 2000; Golan & Wanta, 2001). The issue level of agenda-setting is about “attention to an object,” while this level is about “comprehension of its attributes” (McCombs, 2004, p. 78). By stressing aspects of an issue or a candidate, the news media can affect the ways in which people think about the issue or the candidate (Ghanem, 1997). The news media have the power to inform people not only what issues are important but also “how to think about” issues/candidates (McCombs, 2004, p.

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