Editorial Board

A Refereed Monthly International Journal of Management

Peoples’ Perception towards Political Advertisement in India

Dr. Ravindra

Associate Professor

Department of Commerce

Indira Gandhi University, Meerpur, Rewari

ravinder.mdu@gmail.com

Sunita Yadav

Assistant Professor

Department of Commerce

Indira Gandhi University, Meerpur, Rewari

sybmdu5@gmail.com

Abstract

Communication is playing the most crucial part in the success of any political party in the election. Political parties used many communication tools to spread the messages to the public i.e. nuked sabha, pamphlets, hording, organized rally, social media advertising, political advertising etc. and trying to convince the public in the favor of political party. Political advertising is one of the important tools which is using by the every political party to make their political campaign effective. A heavy budget is spending on the advertising by the political party to create good image among the public. India is a big country and having 130 crore population with different age, cast, religion and region. In India election are contested mainly on cast, religion, region basis.

The advertisement is playing most crucial role during election time and political leader reach to the target audience through political advertisement with different appeal and types of Ads. This paper is attempts to measure the people perception towards political Ads. For this a questionnaire was design to collect the desire information and distributed among the 550 respondents through postal and online mode in Haryana State and 515 filled up questionnaire were received. The results were then analyzed with the help of Chi-Square test. It is found that, negative Ads are more effective; apart from these political Ads are informative, help to convince the people to cast their vote in favor of the political party etc.

Keywords: Political Advertising, Negative Ads, Perception, Rational, Emotional Appeal

Introduction

Political communication is one of the key differentiating tools of any democratic system and political campaigning during election time is one of the widely experienced political communications. Political campaigning involves the use of varied modes of communication to reach out to the voters to inform, as well as to persuade them for their favorable voting behavior towards the party and the candidate concerned. As a collection of campaigning tools, political communication has grown from simple form of one-to-one communication for political candidate or the party to sophisticated technology driven strategic decision making involving the use of mix of campaigning tools.

As in many other democratic nations, use of advertising as political campaigning tool has grown in its significance in India also over the past few years. Enlargement of voters‟ size, availability of technologically advanced communication opportunities, and also the rising complexities and competitiveness in political scenario are considered as major reasons for the growing usage of advertising in political context. There has been a fundamental shift in the balance of political communication from news to advertising, and people are now exposed to huge amount of political advertising in every election cycle. As a result, the commercial use of various forms of mass media including television, radio, newspaper etc., has increased dramatically, thus bringing a significant increase in campaign expenditure.

There are numerous researches which subscribe to the potentials of political advertising. On the basis of empirical investigations into the effects of political advertising, it is considered as:

• A valid source of information about the candidates during a political campaign.
• A mode for retaining of knowledge and information about the candidates, such as their name, stance on issues, or image attributes and influencing viewers‟ evaluations of the candidates.
• A basis for influencing voters‟ perceptions of the political process in general and their political behavior.
• A source of issue based learning and agenda-setting effect, i.e., resulting in changes in the issues that respondent’s judge as most important.
• A basis to effect attitude towards the candidate, to stimulate the interest in the campaign, to influence vote choice and finally the voter turnout.
• Previous researches used experimental design to find the influence of political advertising on voting decisions, which is viewed as occurring at two levels: (1) as a direct stimulus/response type of situation, where regardless of content, exposure is tantamount to influence and quantity of exposure determines candidate choice; or (2) as a vehicle through which information about the actual‟ determinants of voting behaviour – issues, candidate image, and party affiliation - are disseminated.

Review of Literature

Kumar Alok and Pathak Parmod, (2012), in his study “Political Advertising in India: A Perspective” found that, political advertising is new in India, the soft sell appeal is more effective in Indian political scenario and political Ad campaigns had little role in Indian politics despite of high levels of creativity involved. Ge Wage, (2013), in his study “Election and the third-person Effect: Voters’ Perception of the 2012 first Presidential Debate’s Effects” found that, no significant difference of third party-person effect between the two genders across all variables like gender, age, education and occupation etc, where as estimation of others people’s voting change with the estimation of their own voting change, about 77% of the respondents perceived that other people were more likely to change their final voting choice. Mariam Ayad M., (2013) in his study “The Effect of Political Advertising on Perceived Bias and Credibility of Online News Stories”, this study found that, political ads could serve as a prime for readers in evaluating the bias, credibility, and news value of an online news article and its source. The findings of this study suggest that political advertising does not serve as prime for news readers in making decisions about the political bias, credibility, and news value of an article or news source. Participants in different conditions did not vary significantly on their perceptions of the article and source. Further, the study sought to understand if political affiliation of participants affected their evaluation of new article. The findings of this study indicate no such effect. Participants’ political affiliation and the political ad condition they were placed in did not interact to affect their perceptions on the news article’s bias, credibility and news value. Janne Dermody and Rechard Scullion (2005) in his study “Young People Attitude towards British Political Advertising: Nurturing or Impeding Voter Engagement”, the researchers found that, level of awareness is high in voters, having unfavorable attitude towards most of print advertisement used in the election; most young people considered the advertising to be at least as persuasive as its commercial cousins and evidence provides a mixed picture in terms of role political advertising plays in the political dispositions of young peoples.  Won Ho Chang, Jae Jin Park and Sung Wook Shim (1998), in his study “Effectiveness of Negative Political Advertising”, revealed that, there were no significant gender differences in evaluating informativeness and believability of negative political advertising. But, interestingly, in terms of attitudes toward candidates, women were more negative toward both the sponsor and the target than were men.

The findings suggested that although both younger and older people agreed that negative political advertising is not informative, older people consider negative political advertising as less believable and have more negative attitudes toward the sponsor than younger people.

Negative political advertising would be effective with lower income level people. They perceived negative political advertising as more informative and more believable and had more positive attitudes toward the sponsor than higher income level people.

Objectives

To study the effective medium of political advertisement with reference to demographic characteristics of respondent.

To study the peoples’ perception towards political advertisement in respect of type of appeal, medium, effectiveness and informative and credibility of advertisement.

Hypothesis

Ho1: No significance difference among the respondent about effective medium of advertisement with reference to their demographic characteristics.

Ho2: Perception towards political advertisement is same in respect of type of appeal, medium, effectiveness and informative of ads and credibility of ads with reference to demographic characteristic of respondents.

Research Methodology

The exploratory and Descriptive research design were used for this study and a structured questionnaire was design to collect the primary data, total 550 questionnaire were distributed among the respondents in the state of Haryana through postal and online mode, out of these 515 filled up valid questionnaire were received from the respondents according to different age group, residential status and cast/religion etc.. The results presented here are on the basis of these 515 responses received from the respondents according to their demographic characteristics. The χ² test used to analyze the data. Accordingly the results are presented here.

Results

Ho1: No significance difference among the respondent about effective medium of advertisement with reference to their demographic characteristics.

Table 1: Effective medium of advertisement according to demographic characteristics

(Source: Primary data collected through questionnaire during October to December, 2020)

Table 1 revealed that, print, print & video and print, audio and video medium of political advertisement are effective across the different age group, different residential status, different educational group, according to marital status and different cast group. The combination of print  & video and print, audio and video are more effective 18-30 age group, married group, among urban population, among General & OBC category and among the post graduate and higher education qualification. No single medium of political advertisement is effective to convince the voters in their favor. Therefore the null hypothesis is rejected at 5% level of significance.

Ho2: Perception towards political advertisement is same in respect of type of appeal, medium, effectiveness and informative of ads and credibility of ads with reference to demographic characteristic of respondents.

Table 2: Peoples’ perception towards types of political ads and types of ads appeal with reference to different age group

(Source: Primary data collected through questionnaire during October to December, 2020)

Table 2 revealed that, negative political Ads are more effective, different from the product Ads, but   negative Ads invoke negative feeling among the voters and its harm the image of sponsor and the candidate himself at 95% level of significance i.e. there is significance different among the respondents as far as different age is concern. Young respondents between age group of 18-30 and 31-45 are agreed that, the type of Ads have significant impact on receiver.

Further, type of appeal i.e. rational appeal, fear appeal, moral appeal, Informative and soft sale appeal have positive impact on the receiver, whereas, humor appeal has no significant impact on the receiver  as far as different age is concern at 95% level of significance.

Table 3: Peoples’ perception towards in formativeness of political ads and credibility of ads with reference to different age group

(Source: Primary data collected through questionnaire during October to December, 2020)

Table 3 revealed that, respondents are having different opinion regarding informative of political Ads i.e. inject awareness, spread message to the masses, grab attention of electorates, display development agenda of the political party and helpful to convince the people to cast their vote in favors of political party i.e. there is significance difference among the respondent as far as different age is concerned at 95% level of significance. Young age respondent i.e. between age group 18-30 and 31-45 are having positive opinion towards the political Ads i.e. they are informative.

Further, as far as effectiveness and credibility of Political Ads i.e. pervasive, helpful to create positive image of the candidate and the political party, Ads are credible, celebrity in Ads are more effective, political Ads are helpful to raise many controversial social issue is concerned people are having different opinion i.e. there is significance difference among the respondent as far as different age is concerned at 95% level of significance except trustworthiness of the Ads. Mostly people are having negative opinion toward the political Ads toward the effectiveness and trustworthiness of Ads.

Table 4: Peoples’ perception towards types of political ads and types of ads appeal with reference to different residential status

(Source: Primary data collected through questionnaire during October to December, 2020)

Table 4 revealed that type of political Ads i.e. negative Ads are effective, they invoke negative feeling among the voters about target candidate and political party, attacking the opponent personality, reputation etc. and harm the image of the sponsor and the candidate himself are effective according to respondent residence, but there is significance difference in the opinion as far as rural and urban respondent at 95% level of significance. Mostly urban respondents are in favors of these attributes of political Ads.

Further, in case of type of political Ads appeal i.e. rational appeal, emotional appeal, fear appeal and soft sell appeal is concern there is positive impact on the respondents, but there is significance different according to residence i.e. significance difference at 95% level of significance.

Table5: Peoples’ perception towards in formativeness of political ads and credibility of ads with reference to different age residential status.

(Source: Primary data collected through questionnaire during October to December, 2020)

Table 5 reveals that, respondents are having different opinion towards political Ads i.e. political Ads are informative, spread awareness among the people, bring political messages to masses, helpful to grab the attention of electorates i.e. there is significance difference among the respondents at 95% level of significance according to residential status. But there is no significance difference regarding displaying development agenda of political party and convince the people to cast their vote in favor of political party at 95% level of significance according to residential status.

Further, with regards to effectiveness and credibility of political Ads, respondents are having different opinion in case of persuasiveness, create positive image of the candidates and political party, Ads are credible and helpful to raise many controversial social issues i.e. there is significance difference at 95% level of significance as far as residential status is concerned. People who are leaving in urban areas are having positive opinion towards effectiveness and credibility of political Ads, but in case of trustworthiness, carrying moral values and celebrity in political Ads is concerned there is no significance difference among the people at 95% level of significance. People are having negative opinion toward these attributes of political Ads.

Table 6: Peoples’ perception towards types of political ads and types of ads appeal with reference to different cast group

(Source: Primary data collected through questionnaire during October to December, 2020)

Table 6 reveals that, with regards to types of political Ads i.e. negative Ads are more effective than positive Ads, its invoke negative feelings among the voters about the target candidate and political party, political Ads different from products Ads, attack the opponent personality and harm the image of the sponsor and the candidate himself there is a different opinion among the respondent at 95% level of significance i.e. there is significance difference among the respondents across the cast/religion.

Further, as far as types of political Ads is concern there is significance difference among the people at 95% level of significance i.e. with regard to emotional appeal, fear appeal, moral appeal, informational appeal and rational appeal. All types of appeals are using by the political party.    

Table7: Peoples’ perception towards in formativeness of political ads and credibility of ads with reference to different cast group.

(Source: Primary data collected through questionnaire during October to December, 2020)

Table 7 reveals that, with regards to political Ads are informative i.e. political Ads are not effective to inject of awareness among the people ( no significant at 95% level of significance), but helpful to bring political messages to the masses, helpful to grab the attention of electorate towards political party, helpful to display development agenda of the political party and helpful to cast the votes in favor of political party is concerned there is significant different across the casts/religion at 95% level of significance.

Further, with regards to effectiveness and credibility is concerned i.e. political Ads are always persuasive (no significance difference at 95% level of significance across the cast/religion), but there is a significance difference with regards to helpful to create positive image of the candidate and political party, trustworthiness of political Ads, credibility, celebrity makes Ads more effective, having moral implication, political Ads are not truthful among the people at 95% level of significance as far as across the casts/religion is concerned.   

In a nut shell the overall null hypothesis Ho2 is rejected i.e. there is significance difference among the respondent towards the perception of political advertisement in respect of type of appeal, medium, effectiveness and informative of Ads and credibility of Ads with reference to demographic characteristic of respondents.

Discussion

Combination of print & video and print, audio and video are more effective for political advertisement. Negative political Ads are more effective than positive Ads, political Ads invoke negative feeling among the voter about the target candidate and political party as well, in political ads specially attack on the opponent personality, reputation and spread prejudicial information about the opponent or his/her political party; political Ads also harm the image of the sponsor and the candidate himself/herself. People are having this opinion about the political Ads irrespective of their age, residence and cast/religion.

Political parties mostly using rational and emotional/feeling appeal to convince the voters in favor of party this fact is equally considered by the respondents irrespective of their age, residence and cast/religion and they are also believe that political Ads bring the political messages in to the masses, helpful to grab the attention of the electorates, helpful to display the political development agenda of the political party and convince the people to cast their vote in favor of the political party. Whereas, political Ads helpful to create positive image of the candidate and the political party, helpful to raise many controversial social issues in front of the people and some time political party use celebrity to convince the electorates in favor of the candidate and political party.

Fear and emotional appeals are having negative effects on the public. Further, Political Ads are less trustworthy and credible and not having moral implication on the receivers. Peoples believe these facts irrespective of age, residence and cast/religion. But they have mix opinion regarding moral appeal, informational appeal and political Ads are always persuasive and truthful. 

Conclusion

After detail examination of the information collected through structure questionnaire distributed among the respondents of Haryana State, it is concluded that, combination of print & video and print, audio and video medium are more effective as far as political advertising is concern, the negative political Ads are mostly used by the political party and these Ads are having convincing power to electorate and helpful to cast the vote in favor of the political party, apart from these, rational appeal, emotional/feeling (soft sell) appeal are also effective. Some time celebrity is also effective when he/she are having effect on the voter. In last loksbha election and Assembly election of the State this is evident that both leading political party i.e. BJP and Congress use celebrity to attract the public towards candidates and political party. Apart from these, the political Ads are generally informative and helpful to present controversial social issues in front of the public and able to create the good public image of the candidate and political party among the public and having the ability to convert the electorates in favor of the political party which are using these types of Ads and appeals. The negative and rational appeals are effective for political parties and these appeals can work for the political parties to attract the electorates in favor of political party apart from this results also suggest that combination of different media i.e. print & video and print, audio and audio will be useful to advertise the Ads.

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