People, parties and parliaments: Election campaigns, media and their impact

摘要

Election campaigning, voter behaviour and forensic analysis of the results are at the core of the industry of political science. Political communication studies, in particular, place a special emphasis on the contests to determine who will be the people's representatives on the national and international stages. Elections in themselves are short periods of collective political history, and though campaign lengths vary, they are periods of the suspension of politics. Yet, increasingly, they are one of the central performances within our political calendar, the main event perhaps. The centrality of elections thus makes them of key importance for the protagonists - the parties and candidates who seek public mandate; the media, who report on the crests and troughs of the campaign and who should translate the language of politics into common parlance; and the public, who must play the key role of choice-maker, decide whether or not to vote, and if the former, for whom to vote. The quality of a democracy is often measured by its elections (consider perspectives on democracy in Iran for example), therefore understanding the nature and style of the campaign, its mediation and the combined impact are of central importance when trying to understand the legitimacy of representatives, parliaments and governments.