Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5559/di.20.2.04
"Americanization" of Pre-Election Campaign in Croatian Daily Papers: 2007 Elections
Ivan BALABANIĆ
; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Marko MUSTAPIĆ
; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Stanko RIHTAR
; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Abstract
According to numerous literature, the main features of
today's political communication are alienation of political
parties, scientification, autonomous structure of
communication and transformation of the citizens into the
public. These features are in advertising, as a part of political
communication in general, concretized as personalization by
emphasizing leaders and other party members, by reduction
of complex messages to slogans, by emphasizing symbols of
power and status, as well as negative campaign. The
described communication style is often labeled as
"Americanized". In this article, by using the Croatian 2007
parliamentary elections as an example, the measure of
"Americanization" of the campaign in daily newspapers is
empirically verified by content analysis of the population of
advertisements in six main papers during the official
campaign. The results showed that HDZ (Hrvatska
demokratska zajednica, Croatian Democratic Union), which
invested in newspaper advertising more than other parties,
adopted all elements of the "Americanized" campaign style.
The finding that other parties, more or less, used the same
communication elements as well, leads to the conclusion that
"Americanized" style of political advertising in Croatian daily
papers has been adopted to a considerable extent.
Keywords
pre-election campaign; political advertising; daily papers; "Americanization"
Hrčak ID:
69561
URI
Publication date:
15.6.2011.
Visits: 3.714 *