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Due to the significant rise in the use of social media in recent years, the purpose of this paper is to investigate who, how and why participates in creating content at political social networking websites utilising a content analysis of posts and comments published on Facebook during the 2015 general election campaign in Croatia. It shows consequences of a transition from traditional to social media campaigns and the effectiveness of social media at activating and moving public opinion during the general election campaign.

This study uses a data collection through a social media website, a classification of data set items by content attributes and a statistical analysis of the classified data.

Building on an empirical data set from Croatia, this study reveals that different political parties implement different election campaign strategies on social media to influence citizens who, consequently, respond differently to each of them. The results indicate that political messages with positive emotions evocate positive response from citizens, while neutral content is more likely to invoke negative comments and criticism, and support to the opponent. Another implication of the results is that two-way and tolerant communication of political actors increases citizen engagement, whereas unidirectional communication decreases it.

This paper provides an original insight into qualitative content analysis of posts and user comments published on Facebook during the 2015 general election campaign in Croatia.

Political parties are continuously interested to gain knowledge about the factors that influence the voter to select political candidate of his/her choice. The purpose of this paper is to examine cumulative impact of sources of associations on voters’ preference of the political party and to investigate the type of causal relationship that exists among those sources.

The authors have proposed five key sources of associations of the overall political party, namely, campaign effectiveness, image of its leaders, intensity of anti-incumbency effect, meaning and trust attached with the party. Here the authors have considered four important political parties relevant to the voters of West Bengal. Those are Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and All India Trinamool Congress. The authors have used SEM method for estimating the model as the same is widely used for estimating a system of equations with latent variables.

Out of the eight path coefficients six are found to be statistically significant. Political campaign impacts brand trust positively and brand trust in turn impacts party preference positively. Again political campaign’s direct impact on political party preference is found to be positive. However, the impact of political campaign on party preference also runs through brand meaning. Both the path coefficients are significantly negative showing that more the voters develop understanding about political parties through different independent sources lesser are the impact of political campaigns as they highlight positive aspects of the party and the candidate only, ignoring facts. Interestingly leadership is impacting party preference negatively. Thus individual leadership traits have negatively impacted party preference in the sample.

In the paper, the authors have identified factors impacting political brand choice in an emerging country like India. This research explores the factors that need to be considered by the political parties to influence preference of voters for political brand. As far as the authors’ knowledge goes no such studies have been carried out in the Indian context and certainly not in the context of a regime change after three decades. Additionally, the theoretical model proposed is firmly grounded in theory and its estimation is based on well-developed scales. The approach is thus unique in this area of enquiry. Finally, application of SEM in political branding context is a significant contribution of this work.

This selective annotated bibliography presents a snapshot of research published between 1990 and 1999 that has studied negative political advertising, primarily in the USA. Political scientists, psychologists, communication theorists and marketing scholars have used experiments, surveys, and case studies to examine the impact of this type of advertising on voter beliefs and behavior. The author categorizes the literature by broad themes such as typologies, effects of negative ads, media coverage of political campaigns, and actual candidate behavior, and provides descriptive annotations of representative articles in each category. In addition, several scholarly books that discuss negative political advertising are annotated. Since the focus of this bibliography is on social science research, articles from the popular literature are not included.

While morality is ever-present in elections, scholars have yet to merge political public relations and Moral Foundations Theory. It is crucial to assess the complex morality present not only in social deduction, but also in political strategic communication. The current work aims to analyze the issue agendas and their relationships in the 2020 presidential campaign and assesses their moral strategy.

This study used a computer-assisted content analysis (N = 7,888) with each moral intuition coded from the Moral Foundations Dictionary. Datapoints included campaign tweets, Facebook posts, debate performances, remarks, news releases and nomination acceptance speeches. Coverage included articles from including The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News to assess both liberal and conservative media.

Candidates' issue and moral agendas were correlated with each other and with the media's agenda. Comparatively, the Biden campaign has stronger correlations when it came to connecting with issues, stakeholders and moral intuitions in the media agenda than the Trump campaign. For issues, the Biden campaign prioritized COVID-19 and the economy, while the Trump campaign prioritized the economy and crime. The candidates also had similar moral strategies.

This study suggests effectively leveraging organizational communications in democracies can support the transfer of object salience, moral attributes and networks to media coverage, public discourse and opponent messaging. It can also help achieve organizational goals by managing public image, reputation and expectations.

This work expands the literature by taking a pluralist moral psychology approach in assessing the salience and correlation of five moral intuitions: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. This study serves as a springboard for examining morality's impact on political public relations.

Revelation of controversial fundraising practices by the Clinton‐Gore reelection campaign in 1996 and continuing controversy over proposed campaign finance reform legislation has brought this subject into public focus and discussion. This article provides an overview of key recent developments in campaign finance accompanied by coverage of literature and Web sites produced by scholars, government agencies, and participants in the ongoing debate over campaign finance and its role in the American political process.

This study sets out to make in‐depth comparisons between major political campaigns in the UK and Taiwan, and generate contemporary insights into the creative development process, the working relationships between campaign managers and professional agencies, and the “spin doctor” phenomenon, all through the eyes of very senior professionals.

Material gathered in “élite interviews” was subjected to interpretive analysis and synthesised with secondary data and the findings of an extensive literature review.

The putative Americanization of political marketing has not been as complete as some authors suggest, but one of its features was an important element in campaign development in both countries: the centrality of the party leader's persona in an image‐building strategy. The culture and history of the party were an important determinant of the style of the campaigns examined. It was generally agreed that political marketing and advertising have been strongly influenced by commercial branding, though important differences remain.

Despite the richness of the data and the authority of the respondents, the small number of willing participants in the study limits the scope for generalisation.

The findings offer usable insights into the creative development process and the nature of client‐agency relationships, in political campaign planning.

The paper contributes the first expert‐insider perspective in published studies and commentaries concerning political marketing literature. It cuts across disciplines of political science, communication, management, marketing and advertising, and may contain lessons for marketing planners in other non‐commercial contexts.

The existing debate in the political science literature on the transfer of US campaign expertise to Western Europe is largely based on observations of campaign evolution and, to a limited degree, on surveys of US political consultants. This article attempts to provide a deeper understanding of some of the problems associated with the practical application of US political marketing expertise in European political markets, focussing primarily on the UK. The paper investigates this transfer of US campaign expertise using both a political science‐diffusion perspective and an international marketing‐market entry perspective, suggesting that the two perspectives are mutually reinforcing. Qualitative data were collected from interviews with US political consultants who had consulted to British political parties at the 1997 British general election and with three academics who are renowned researchers in this field. The paper argues that, because of the very different contextual environments and their implications for campaign conduct, the potential for “Americanisation” is limited through indirect export methods. The paper further argues that US political consultants could penetrate the European market for political consulting services through a more customised offering using indirect export methods or a more standardised offering using direct export methods.

A marketing planning framework to aid political parties in improving their image and co‐ordinating election campaigns has been developed to reflect the changing nature of electoral campaigning in the developed world towards the need for more long‐term planning; together with the development and implementation of marketing models in a wider sphere of social situations. The planning model has been developed using both a hypothetico‐deductive and an inductive approach, incorporating recent developments in US and UK political campaign management and depth interviews with political strategists in the UK. Suggests that national political parties need to co‐ordinate their election campaigns more effectively in order to strengthen their image among key citizen and voter groups by determining which target areas are most in need of resources. Further research is needed to determine how to position the party and to select and place advertising in the relevant media. Concludes that local election campaigns are becoming more co‐ordinated by national parties but that such co‐ordination neglects to provide local area research and telemarketing campaigns, and post‐election analysis exercises to monitor strengths and weaknesses in party strategy and campaign plan implementation.

In brand activism, a brand promotes contested sociopolitical causes to highlight its values. Brand activism also alienates those consumers who disagree with the cause, who might, consequently, target the brand with critical, negative or even aggressive actions. This paper aims to study the triggers and strategies of consumers’ antibrand actions given in response to brand activism.

Qualitative content analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used to study consumer responses directed at a chocolate brand’s campaign that advocated civilized online conversions and opposed hate speech, a politically heated topic. In total, 1,615 messages were collected from social media platforms.

Field infringement, political accusations and questioned impact of the campaign triggered consumers to turn against the campaign. Strategies to undermine it included boycotting, discrediting the brand and trapping. Trapping – creatively using technological affordances to create harm to the brand – was typically triggered by political associations.

Findings relate to the critical responses regarding one campaign only.

By understanding the political discussion around the chosen cause, including the opponents’ typical triggers and strategies, brand activism can more credibly advocate for contested social causes and communicate brand values.

Political antibrand actions are distinct from the previously identified functional and ethical antibrand actions, and they are noninstrumental by nature. Practices that are native to social media are central to political antibrand actions, and social media platforms contribute to how such disappointment is articulated and acted upon.

This paper seeks to investigate the communication strategy of the two main candidates in the 2007 French presidential elections, deconstructing the process of communication in its main elements: context, message, media‐mix, and communication strategy.

Secondary data were collected from a variety of secondary sources, such as texts, articles, statistics and interviews on the subject of the 2007 French presidential elections, published in various journals or web sites, and then re‐interpreted from the perspective of two researchers, who were direct participants and observers of these political events.

The findings present an analytical discussion of the central political message used during the presidential campaign, complemented by an analysis of the media‐mix and the level of media exposure of the two main candidates.

The limited focus of the paper on the communication campaign implemented by the two main candidates in the 2007 French presidential elections does not permit a general evaluation of the political marketing strategy.

The conclusions of this study can provide a useful insight for political communication specialists.

The main contribution of the paper lies in the presentation and discussion of the main communication methods and tools used in a political system different from the Anglo‐American context, which is analysed in most empirical and theoretical studies on the subject of political marketing.