Online Political Party Engagement

Consumer brand engagement enhances consumer loyalty and consumer satisfaction, empowerment, connection and emotional bonds, trust, and commitment. Given the consequences of consumer brand engagement, this chapter explores consumers' online engagement with a political party, its online content creators, and other community members. The findings reveal that the developed strategies engage consumers differently with regard to the affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of consumer brand engagement, creating different forms of consumer communities.

Bernays, Horkheimer, and Adorno

Social media and 21st century mass communication have changed the technological landscape of marketing and advertising, enabling instant content creation, content curation, and audience feedback. The thought of Edward Bernays can be useful in examining and interrogating today's media, especially through the lens of Frankfurt School social theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Further, the works Crystalizing Public Opinion and Propaganda are critiqued through ideas found in Dialectic of Enlightenment to give business and PR professionals ethical concepts that may be applied to modern trends in communications.

Political Communication, Freedom of Expression, and Ethics

The chapter addresses the implementation of “binding group decision” problematically. According to the study, this implementation is a restrictive issue for the discourses and actions of the members of the parliament who are assigned with the duty of representation of the nation and entitled with privileges within the context of freedom of expression. In this context, the legal legislation and bylaws of the political parties with groups in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) and internal regulations are analyzed within the context of restrictive provisions. Moreover, sample cases from 22nd and 24th legislative terms of the TBMM are examined within the context of political communication, freedom of expression, and ethics. This chapter grounds on a descriptive method based on historical events and legal texts. As a result of the study, it should be stressed that the implementation of “binding group decision” needs to be examined in terms of political ethics as a restrictive element for the freedom of expression and communication, despite being legal.

Understanding Indian Political Parties Through the Lens of Marketing Management

This chapter identifies and develops an understanding of various nuances and the synchrony between the concepts of marketing management and usage by political parties while electioneering. The chapter also evaluates various political marketing models and has developed a comprehensive model to better understand its applicability in an Indian context. It is based on substantial literature review to develop a holistic understanding of Political Marketing and Models of Political Marketing. A Case study of the Bharatiya Janata Party is used to evaluate the proposed model. This chapter adds insight from the Indian viewpoint on existing literature concerning political marketing models.

Electoral Umpires and the Task of Tracking Political Campaign Funds

In some climes, the electoral law places a limit on the amount political parties and candidates can spend during campaigns. But very often, contestants and their parties flout the law on campaign funds limit especially in evolving democracies where the implementation of the law is weak. And this has prompted stakeholders in the political process to urgently canvass for the tracking of campaign funds by Election Management Bodies (EMBs). In Nigeria, despite the existence of a law which requires political parties to make public their campaign spending and submit same to the Independent National Electoral Commission for scrutiny, there appears to be a zero compliance with the Electoral Act. Political parties' non-compliance with the provisions of the law has placed INEC in a precarious situation as far as the tracking of campaign funds is concerned. It is against this backdrop that this chapter proffers solutions and recommends ways to make the electoral umpire live up to its responsibilities.

March 31, 2019 Local Elections and the Media

Voters in a democracy contribute to the governance process and mediate the legitimacy of equality and pluralism. This is of great importance in terms of understanding and legitimizing the true meaning of democracy. In the last decade, Turkey has experienced many elections. Local elections on March 31, 2019 were very important. They were quite different in terms of the presentation of political parties and their candidates in the media because both politicians and the public ascribed a lot of meaning to these elections. Therefore, the media showed great interest in the March 31, 2019 local elections, frequently featuring public opinion polls, election campaigns, and political statements that informed voters in real time. This chapter examines the media content of the March 31, 2019 elections.

The Biased Media and Their Utilization of Propaganda

Propaganda is a widely controversial issue, especially when it collides with the media and politicians. This complex system creates a tension between those who have a personal agenda to disseminate false statements to advance their plan to manipulate the minds of the public. Based upon 24/7 cable news and social media, there seems to be a miscommunication and disconnect from the truth regarding how the media reports world events, politics, environment, and how politicians were elected to help their constituents, not their own personal agendas. This chapter will address the concern for a better system of reporting the facts and not personal agendas of propaganda-styled broadcasts and non-fact stories that lack truth. In addition, the history of the utilization of propaganda, the definition of this term, the theoretical framework for the theory of propaganda will be revealed, and how this ties in with media and political actors. Furthermore, various techniques, media, politics, and how to rectify these situations with open, trusting, and straightforward communications will be debated.

The Narratives of Neuroscience in Fiction as Propaganda Warfare

Raising questions about ethics, transhumanism, national security, and the spread of Nazi science internationally following World War II, this qualitative study considers the possibility that the narratives of the biologically based study of the mind known as neuroscience in fiction—conceptualized as a medium of propaganda warfare embedded with socio-political and religious assumptions—have functioned to veil the development and promote the normalization and social acceptance of neuroscience since the dawn of the Scientific Revolution. With a focus on the intertwined relationship between the literary genre and technological innovations in the contest of “killer robots,” “ray guns,” “Skynet,” and now “brain implants,” this chapter examines how the narratives of an internet-connected-and-neural-electrode-dominated future world driven by artificial intelligence has inspired billionaire investors in Silicon Valley to bring to market the neurotechnology that potentially could enslave and wipe out the human race.