POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: Internet's Role and Challenges in Campaigns

This essay delves into the multifaceted realm of political communication, focusing on the profound implications of the internet. It begins by defining political communication and its evolution in the digital age, highlighting the shift from traditional methods to the widespread use of the World Wide Web. The essay explores key issues, such as the benefits of efficient political public relations strategies, transparency, and cost-effectiveness, while also addressing the disadvantages, including the need for skilled digital marketing professionals, the vulnerability to harmful content, the challenges of identifying target audiences, and the limitations of online polling. The essay emphasizes the importance of online reputation management and the need for strategic approaches to navigate the complexities of digital political communication. It underscores the significance of swift action, understanding the nuances of digital communication versus political communication, and recognizing confirmation bias. The conclusion stresses the importance of maintaining absolute care and adapting strategies to ensure effective and positive communication.

Running head: POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
Political communication is a subfield of communication and political science that is concerned
with how information is spread and how that influences politics and policy makers, the media
and the general population. Robert E. Denton and Gary c. Woodward in their book ‘Political
Communication in America’ states that political communication is the ways and intentions of the
senders of the message to influence the political environment. The ways include direct
communication with the public through speeches, discussions, media coverage and talks.
Swanson and Dan Nimmo (1990) also define political communication as the strategic use of
communicative methods to influence the knowledge, beliefs and actions of the public on political
matters. In its essence, political communication is not focussed upon engaging in conversations
with the public randomly but is more concerned with how the public will view a particular stance
in the political regime as proposed. The acceptance of a politician’s discourse is highly
influenced by the way the content of his/her political communication is tailored. In the present
context, with the advancements made in the World Wide Web, political communication has seen
major strides in its development as a practice. Traditional communication means do exist but the
extent to which political communication has been digitised is phenomenal. This essay will focus
on the implications of using the internet for political communication, highlight certain key
factors that influence the way political communication through the internet faces hurdles and
point out some ways to overcome those problems and what strategies can be used to achieve
success in that field.

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Issues in political communication
One key issue that most political practitioners face nowadays with their political
communication, originates from the current trends in communication that has also made most of
communication feasible around the globe. Digital marketing, or the use of internet, specifically
the WEB 2.0 has had tremendous advantages, as well as severe disadvantages over the years.
While it has made political communication more efficient by ensuring a faster, smarter and more
tailored delivery of content around the globe, it has also garnered an immense amount of
concerns regarding the viability and the authenticity of whatever communicative content is being
transmitted to the world outside.
The internet serves as both a hub for accessing information as well as a marketplace for
sharing them. In relation to political communication, the most important role that the internet
plays is that of generating viewership of the content and ensuring a popular online presence. In
relation to using the internet for political communication, there are certain set benefits. First of
all, in a political campaign, the most valuable aspect of promotion is the use of efficient Political
Public relations strategies (L’Etang 2013). Modern techniques and strategies for political public
relations campaigns have made the use of effective social media platforms thereby incorporating
the traditional styles into the present more technologically advanced context (Cutlip 2013). For
instance , barack Obama’s campaign for 2008 US president was marked by significant use of
digital communication methods and social media to generate awareness as well as revenue and
online support groups and volunteer communities, resulting in his victory (Doorley & Garcia
2015). A study of his political campaign has shown that there has been extensive use of the SMS
service to generate information and reach out to interested parties around the country. At the
same time, his PR practitioners have also referred to the use of emerging and established social

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media sites like Facebook and Linkedin in order to make his opinions and vision for the future,
publicly accessible and open to criticism (Miller 2013). In a more current context, it has become
easier for political public relations as well as political communication to reach out to more
people given that the user base of almost all social media sites have increased drastically
(Woodruff 2014). The most notable advantage of online political communication is the level of
transparency that the stakeholders establish and experience. Every concerned party that has
access to the information can comment their feelings about the stances made through the
communication as well as provide critical afterthought. Secondly, the transmission of
information to the public is done quickly and covers more ground than the traditional political
communication strategies, thereby making it a more effective tool for political communication.
Finally, the cost of promotion through digital political communication is also significantly lower
than what the traditional communicative means are used to.
Despite the advantages identified above, one cannot overlook the disadvantages and
drawbacks that come with using the internet as the primary medium for political communication.
This section of the essay is dedicated towards identifying those issues in political communication
in relation to digital communication, use of the internet for promotions as resorting to social
media sites for generating and transmitting important content.
First of all, the content that is being generated for the purpose of political communication
that is to be released through digital media has to be done with the objective of reaching out to as
many people as possible in a short span of time. This would entail tailoring the content to fit the
requirements of the digital communicative space. In order to reach maximum visibility on the
internet, the content should match the trending keywords and have correlation to the content that
is the most popular on a daily basis. Internet contents keep changing every day, thereby making

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the task of accomplishing high visibility more difficult, unless the proper channels and methods
are used. In order to effectively manoeuvre this issue, there is an urgent need for experienced
digital marketing professionals who have expertise in social media marketing and search engine
optimisation who can intricately modify the content in a manner that it accommodates the
necessary content and keywords required for a successful communication of political ideas and
thoughts.
Secondly, the most vital issue with digital political marketing is the content itself that is
being generated. Political affiliations are rife with hostilities and challenges and the use of digital
communication techniques for political marketing has made the strategies vulnerable to harmful
content. Owing to the fact that the information on the particular campaign is publicly accessible
to all, they can be used in order to generate hatred and provoke community riots through
negative marketing. This is where Online Reputation Management plays a crucial role. The
content generated on the internet for the purpose of political communication is curated to
highlight the positive aspects of the communicative needs and filter out the negative aspects
(Vergeer 2013). However, the procedure mostly manual and the sorting algorithms are not as
strong as the ones that generate and transmit information, making the process more vulnerable to
counter attacks from oppositions. For instance, in response to a post about a certain politician’s
vision for protecting endangered animals, a fake content can be generated in minutes that shows
how the politician has been connected with previous allegations of animal rights violation and
disregard for global laws regarding endangered animals. Even though that content is untrue, by
the time that content is identified at the source, flagged as inappropriate and false and take down
from the internet, there is a high possibility that it has already been seen by a large number of
people who are already following the politician’s name in the trending list of internet articles and

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content. Therefore, that minute incident has already caused a cascade of eventual failures that
needs to be taken care of with the highest order of priority (Smith and Place 2013). Content
generated on the internet does not have any credible source most of the time. However the level
of awareness of the general public does not allow them for a critical consultation of every
content in the internet. Therefore, the generated faulty content easily manipulates the way the
political communication is received by the public.
Another important aspect of political communication is the target of audience base.
Usually a political campaign is targeted towards a particular set of individuals and the content is
catered for those individuals, not only because they are the stakeholders in the campaign process
but also because they are the ones who are most likely to affect as well as be affected by the
outcome. However, in digital political communication, identification of a target audience base id
next to impossible as the physical, geographical and socio-cultural demarcations do not exist.
Therefore, even if someone is not a stakeholder in the process can exploit the internet to generate
information and content that can be potentially harmful for the candidate. Therefore Online
Reputation Management becomes an important toolkit for the resource management as well as
Political Public Relations experts to curate the online content of communication. Through
selective filtering of harmful and derogatory content as well as restricting the search results and
adding positive keywords in the content, a feasible positive communication can be ensured.
One last key issue in digital Political Communication is the use of online polling through
social media and generation of sentimental content in regards with the context of the political
agenda. Online polling through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has been
influential in generating information about public stances on particular incidents, ideas, visions
as well as events (Pang, Pollalis & Saluti 2013). Through those poll records, present day political

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campaigners have a better knowledge of the public sentiments, their needs and demands as well
as their leanings towards particular political stand points can be identified. However, online polls
do not call for the same regulatory measures that come with government mandated polling,
meaning that most of the poll results obtained from the online sources can only be used for
sentiment analysis but cannot be used as a perfectly credible source for amendments to be made
in the political agenda.
A successful political campaign entails an efficient political communication between the
politicians, the campaign stakeholders as well as the general public. On the whole, digitization of
political communication has seen many advantages but the disadvantages and the issues that
come with it can be critical for the sustenance of the effectiveness of the communication.
Therefore, maintaining absolute care becomes important for the communication to be smooth
and efficient and free from potentially negative context. The internet serves as a huge pool of
information storage and access. Online Reputation Management is one of the most vital elements
that determine the success or the failure of a particular campaign while at the same time also
predicts whether or not the politician would be a success within the community or not. The
issues that entail digital political communication come with their respective solutions and all it
requires is an understanding of the subject matter and how to deal with it. Strategic progression
towards the solution can ensure that minimum collateral damage is encountered as a part of the
process. Digital space being vast and the flow of information being unpredictable, swift action is
a must. Therefore, a content that is generated with the negative aspects highlighted, should be
removed with the highest order of priority otherwise, the risk of the content being accessed by a
larger public increases.

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We also need to understand that the concept of political communication is very specific
however digital communication is abstract as anyone on the internet has access and right to say
anything they like. Therefore while combining the digital aspects of communication together
with political communication, the differences and the nuances need to be identified. While the
content with respect to political agendas may or may not be in their favour, the aspect of
confirmation bias cannot be overlooked. Confirmation bias occurs when a target audience is
biased towards particular stance or outcome and rejects alternate possibilities. This is where
political digital communication can be effective. Social media posts like blogs, photos, videos
and tweets can tell the people exactly what the campaign is doing and in the process ensure that
the people can at least have a change of thought which would benefit the political
communication and outcome. At the same time, every bit of information on the internet should
not be outright rejected or approved but should be taken with a grain of salt.
Conclusion
To conclude, political communication can be seen as a blessing in some cases. But there
are obvious issues which come along with it. The main issues which could be identified in
political communication is visibility of a certain content, the content of the message being
delivered, the kind of target audience being reached out to, and the trend of online poling. The
first issue pertains to the effort that is put into making political content relevant to the trends of
digital media such as social media sites, making most content irrelevant within a few days or
weeks. The second problem pertains to the content that is being delivered through the modes of
communication and the possibility of fake news and unnecessary information being spread. The
third would be the problem of targeting the right part of the population to spread a certain kind of
political message. If the right audience is not reached, it could mean new hostilities might be

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created. The last would be the trend of holding unofficial political polls via online platforms.
This gives rise to unnecessary problems through the sentimental attack that is brought on certain
groups in society. Therefore, the most viable solution to this problem would be to employ
strategies by concerned individuals and organizations which would prevent such problems from
taking place. Communication strategies and proper trained political strategists should be
employed and digital marketing professionals should be made responsible for such matter. This
is one plausible way of curbing some of the issues discussed here.
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References
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Doorley, J. and Garcia, H.F., 2015. Reputation management: The key to successful public
relations and corporate communication. Routledge.
Doorley, J., and Garcia, H. (2015). Reputation
L'Etang, J., 2013. Public relations: A discipline in transformation. Sociology Compass, 7(10),
pp.799-817
management (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge
McNair, B., 2017. An introduction to political communication. Routledge.
Smith, B.G. and Place, K.R., 2013. Integrating power? Evaluating public relations influence in
an integrated communication structure. Journal of Public Relations Research, 25(2),
pp.168-187.
Vergeer, M., 2013. Politics, elections and online campaigning: Past, present and a peek into the
future. New Media & Society, 15(1), pp.9-17.
Woodruff, A. (2014). Necessary, unpleasant, and disempowering. Proceedings of the 32nd
annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '14.
Miller, W.J., 2013. We Can't All Be Obama: The Use of New Media in Modern Political
Campaigns. Journal of Political Marketing, 12(4), pp.326-347.
Pang, Z.J., Pollalis, C. and Saluti, A. 2013. Binders full of voters: how information gathered
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