3 Types Of Tactics Used In Political Advertising

Although the concept of political advertising has fallen out of favor in recent decades, its use and its effects are still valid today. What happens is that, currently, we describe it using other terms such as persuasion and publicity, due to the predominance of image and media in today’s society.

Political advertising is a type of communication that is part of contemporary social and political systems. Its study was carried out across several disciplines and has had many definitions throughout history. Now, to understand the concept of political advertising, we have to resort to three fundamental criteria:

• Content: The content of the advertisement must be political, directly or indirectly. The message may not seem politicized when we look at it superficially, but if we look at it in depth, we will find its political association.

• Control of messages: an important aspect is that the sender has 100% control of the message, both in the production phase and in the diffusion phase.
• Purpose: the purpose of the message is to promote the sender’s interests and ideas, as well as the intention to produce responses in the recipients according to certain pre-determined purposes.

In this article we are going to talk about some techniques that are used in political advertising. The categories we show below are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, which means that certain techniques can be in multiple categories at the same time.

Labeling techniques in political advertising

These techniques use labeling as the main feature. They involve using emotionally or conceptually charged terms to associate the message with positive or negative aspects, as appropriate. There are several ways to apply the labeling technique:

• Use of negative labels:  condemning an idea by putting a negative label on it, even if there are no arguments to support it. For example, the use of the label “the axis of evil” to refer to another group of people who do not share the same ideas.
• Asymmetric definition: takes advantage of the ambiguity of certain words so that they evoke in the recipients a message that is different from what actually occurs. For example, saying that the objective of war is “peace”. Peace does not mean the same for a ruler and for an ordinary citizen.

• Resonant generalization: use of impressive and vague phrases, with little message but with great emotional charge. For example, candidate X represents a “major shift” for the country.

association techniques

These strategies use membership as their primary resource. Its way of influencing the recipient of the message is to make the recipients associate the characteristics of a concept (positive or negative) with another, which at the beginning is neutral for the public. Among them we can find:

• Juxtaposition: association of independent ideas, putting them side by side. There is no need to establish any explicit relationship between them. For example, this message, “Leader X is authoritative; leader Y plays golf on Thursdays with leader X”. In this way, the sender of the message tries to attribute authoritarian qualities or simply the negativity of leader X to leader Y, because they share activities together.

• Virtuous words : Use certain words in the message that produce positive feelings or emotions in the audience. In this way, we can associate the positivity of these words with the message or sender who issued them. An example of this is the use in a speech of the words “freedom”, “security”, “truth”, etc.
• Ordinary people: using everyday images of people and their customs, manners and language. In this way, a feeling of belonging is created in a large part of the audience in relation to the idea or message. For example, the use of photographs of young middle-class couples in party advertising.

Techniques based on the authority of the source

The main method of this technique is to resort to the authority of the source. This way, the message arguments can be left out and the idea will be validated by the sender. Some examples of this type of technique are as follows:

• Constructing meanings through secret sources: using sources whose identity or origin is not revealed and talking about them in generic terms. This way, people cannot verify the veracity of the message due to its “anonymity”. An example of this might be a message such as “close and well-informed sources claim that party X is illegally financed”.
• The sages cannot be wrong: quoting people with great prestige to reproduce their ideas according to their interests. For example, “like X said… and if X said no one can depreciate him”. This is known as an authority argument.

• Condemning the origin: discrediting an idea without resorting to the arguments that support it, just disqualifying the source from which it comes. An example of this could be calling a leader a liar to disqualify their message. In philosophical circles it is known as an ad hominem argument.

In this article, we mention and explain three types of political propaganda tactics that are widely used today. But there are many others. It would be illusory to think that we cannot be influenced by them, so it is necessary to know their characteristics in order to face them and react to the persuasion of political powers.