Emotional political advertising

The real possibility exists that the overemphasis of a party’s image in advertisements could lead to the neglect of important political information for voters. Emotional and negative advertisements could therefore be detrimental to any young democracy. Against this background this article investiga...

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Main Authors: Lynnette Fourie, Johannes Froneman
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Johannesburg 2022-10-01
Series:Communicare
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/jcsa/article/view/1804
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author Lynnette Fourie
Johannes Froneman
author_facet Lynnette Fourie
Johannes Froneman
author_sort Lynnette Fourie
collection DOAJ
description The real possibility exists that the overemphasis of a party’s image in advertisements could lead to the neglect of important political information for voters. Emotional and negative advertisements could therefore be detrimental to any young democracy. Against this background this article investigates the use of emotional persuasive appeals and negative messages in political newspaper advertisements in the North-West Province during South Africa's general elections in 1999. The results indicate that although all the parties in the study used emotional appeals, they mostly connected them to a policy issue. However, these policy issues were not elaborated on. The opposition parties mostly used appeals of uncertainty, fear and rage. The ruling party in the province (the ANC) concentrated on appeals of hope and achievement. The ANC virtually abstained from using negative messages, while the DP, the NNP and the FF "attacked" one another in order to emphasise their differences. They did not harm the sustainability of the South African democracy as such, but they also did very little to promote it actively through their media advertisements.
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spelling doaj-art-c40208e007384a9c911a79e98a4dd07a2025-01-20T08:50:41ZengUniversity of JohannesburgCommunicare0259-00692957-79502022-10-0122110.36615/jcsa.v22i1.1804Emotional political advertisingLynnette Fourie0Johannes Froneman1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1680-4313Northwest UniversityNorthwest University The real possibility exists that the overemphasis of a party’s image in advertisements could lead to the neglect of important political information for voters. Emotional and negative advertisements could therefore be detrimental to any young democracy. Against this background this article investigates the use of emotional persuasive appeals and negative messages in political newspaper advertisements in the North-West Province during South Africa's general elections in 1999. The results indicate that although all the parties in the study used emotional appeals, they mostly connected them to a policy issue. However, these policy issues were not elaborated on. The opposition parties mostly used appeals of uncertainty, fear and rage. The ruling party in the province (the ANC) concentrated on appeals of hope and achievement. The ANC virtually abstained from using negative messages, while the DP, the NNP and the FF "attacked" one another in order to emphasise their differences. They did not harm the sustainability of the South African democracy as such, but they also did very little to promote it actively through their media advertisements. https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/jcsa/article/view/1804advertisementsneglectpolitical informationpersuasive appealspolitical newspaperelections
spellingShingle Lynnette Fourie
Johannes Froneman
Emotional political advertising
Communicare
advertisements
neglect
political information
persuasive appeals
political newspaper
elections
title Emotional political advertising
title_full Emotional political advertising
title_fullStr Emotional political advertising
title_full_unstemmed Emotional political advertising
title_short Emotional political advertising
title_sort emotional political advertising
topic advertisements
neglect
political information
persuasive appeals
political newspaper
elections
url https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/jcsa/article/view/1804
work_keys_str_mv AT lynnettefourie emotionalpoliticaladvertising
AT johannesfroneman emotionalpoliticaladvertising