With the US primaries currently underway, political campaigns are as important as ever. Alexandra Manoliu from the University of Montreal discusses the recent involvement of entertainment shows in political campaigns.
Campaigns are highly important in election timelines, offering the candidates the best opportunity to make themselves more visible and can bring them what they truly want- more votes.
There is an entire literature on campaigns, how to organise them, how to implement political marketing principles, and which rules need to be followed.
Campaigns have to keep pace with technology and rapid shifts in public opinion. The pressure is felt to always come up with something new – innovation and surprise are the rules of the game.
In recent decades, it became usual to see politicians not only in their campaign ads and official debates, but also “hitting the talk-show circuit” – where they present themselves as normal people, trying to show their sense of humor, or letting the audiences take a peek inside their private lives.
While Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns are relatively recent, they already seem like old stories. Using social media to engage voters online and mobilize them, moving the battle ground of the campaign into the Facebook arena, using online games to insert campaign ads are now all old weapons. There are some “new kids on the block” and they might be the new elements of surprise in the nearby future.
The current American presidential campaigns introduce some new elements which might prove to be valuable assets in the campaign game.
Some of them are intentional, a clearly well-thought campaign strategy to increase the visibility of the candidate and target a new segment of voters. One of the best examples is the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where Hillary Clinton has starred in little sketches, opposing an impersonated Donald Trump and impersonating him directly. Her appearances can be seen as killing two birds with one stone: firstly she shows people her playful, funny, humorous side and then she “mocks” her opponent and touches upon some of his flaws. Is this the new way of making negative campaigns?
Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons
Another example comes from the Saturday Night Live sketches where Hillary Clinton appears as playing the role of a bartender who makes fun of Trump whilst having a dialogue with the “fake” Hillary were also very popular. It is still yet to be determined if the funny, more human side of Hillary convinced the audiences of these infotainment shows and will bring her new votes.
On the other side, there are also situations where candidates win free exposure in ways they can’t control or request. In one of the last episodes of the TV series “The Good Wife”, we see the struggle of the fictional candidate Peter Florrick to win the number of votes required to stay in the game. Unfortunately he isn’t able to succeed, even with considerable effort, but that particular episode is full of mentions of Hillary Clinton, and scenes of “her” supporters, and at the end of the episode the fact that she’s first in the game is promoted to the public.
For people who are watching these kind of shows, interested in politics or not, these kind of mentions and insertions of real-politics and politicians might act as a trigger or a cue; information they could use when the time comes to vote. It might act as an “unconscious primer”, something that could stick in their memory, without them even realizing it, and influence their political opinions and decisions.
All in all, it might seem that campaigns nowadays are receiving a little bit of help from the entertainment camp, with talk-shows providing a good place for a boost of image. It remains to be seen, however, if people be influenced by their favorite TV show or series when the time comes for them to vote.
Biography
Alexandra Manoliu is a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at the University of Montreal. Her thesis is focused on political TV series and their potential impact on their audiences. She is a member of GRCP (Groupe de Recherché en Communication Politique) and CECD-CSDC (Centre pour l’Étude de la Citoyenneté Démocratique- Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship).
Note: this article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Crick Centre, or the Understanding Politics blog series. To write for the Understanding Politics blog, email us at [email protected]
