Understanding the Public Relation Strategies in Political Agendas

Abstract

This paper reviews research and study to understand the Public Relation strategy in political agendas and campaigns. The overarching strategy of image building also shows the expanded management role in public relation practices in modern political campaign. From the research it has been described that any positive news or negative news broadcasted or publicized by media could either make or break your image within a fraction of seconds. Negative campaign is also carried out by the PRO team to make propagandas to derail the image of the counterparts. In the contemporary campaign of the elections the success rate is mainly depended upon the digital marketing especially social media.

To enhance the electoral performances social media plays an essential role. Strategic planning of nominating a powerful leader by a particular political party also increases the success rate. Thus PRO also works in creating a product out of the brand and promote in such a way that you cannot miss it wherever you go, just like a short film was created using the tagline ‘Acche din aane wale hai’ and launced it on Youtube during the 2014s elections which basically created a storm in the social media platform.

Talking about how public relation strategy works to maintain brand image of a personality could be seen in the form of growth and development agenda created by the leader. Main aim is to focus on the present opportunities, possibility and erasing the past events if happened any. In the case of Modi ji, the main past event was the Gujarat riots which took lifes of more than 1000 people, mostly Muslims. So in order to cover his past, Modi PR team created a environment of openness, where Modi would publicly admit to his mistakes. Interacted with youth using social media and also gave impacting speeches at various events.

Keywords: public relation strategy, political agendas, personality, contemporary campaign, social media.

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a significant rise in the use of personal communication tools by marketers due to the high reach of communication through technology and its rapid penetration. But the fact remains that mass media, when used correctly, can be used to generate higher public involvement and brand recall. Public relation is one of those basic tool of mass communication Public Relation is an important and integrated component of building public policy and services. The main aim of Public Relation is to persuade the public, investors, stakeholders and employees to maintain a certain point of view about their leadership, image of any leader and or political decisions. The fundamental technique used in PR is to identify the target audience and mould every message to appeal to that audience. Especially in politics, where a spokesperson say something to one audience that creates dissonance with other audience and this way message is transferred. Lobby groups are established to influence government policy, corporate policy and public opinions. When a lobby group hides its true purpose and support base, it is known as a front group.

Negative public relation also called dark public relation is a method of sabotaging a counterpart’s reputation, personality and image. Main idea is to find any dirty secret or embarrassment of your target and reveal it publicly. Negative PR also includes twisting and producing misleading facts. This could be understood by the way ruling government party always target Mr. Rahul Gandhi on his knowledge of politics and tries to defame his image on the public platform. During the formation of agendas and policies, opponents are also kept in mind. Main idea is positioning and branding your party at favourable position & condition and opponent at unfavourable position.

For every agenda there is always a propaganda to spread negative PR image of any leader or personality. Opposition in order to attract maximum public on their side can have a rally, public speaking campaigns and press conferences where they talk about goodwill of their party and badmouth about their competition. It always happen in case of BJP and Congress where both the political parties counter attack each other by releasing statements of allegations on other and transparency of themselves. Social Media plays a pivotal role in forming a relationship with masses, for instance if we talk about the public relation strategy of Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton and analyse their campaign then it leads to various surprising conclusion. Though it’s a well known fact that Donald Trump won the election but the PRO team of Hilary Clinton gave him a tough completion while implementing the public relation strategy and setting political agendas.

During their election cycle, Clinton bought more ad space than Trump on various medium. Even then Trump defeated Clinton majorly in two sectors: media relations and social media. He dominated the media’s overall attention through his facebook and twitter account and able to get far more reach than Clinton by linking them with news article.

Election campaigns are simply the strategic communication of political parties to establish the bond between the groups having the similar interest and opinions, for this communication is required between leaders and volunteers, donors, activists and supporters. In the contemporary political world of elections public relations serve a key role in campaigns. “Public Relations is a combination of philosophy, sociology, economics, language, psychology, journalism, communication and other knowledges into a system of human understanding." - Herbert M. Baus

Literature Review

Political PR Agendas

Government-Oriented Corporate Public Relation Strategies in Transitional China (Yuanqiong He, 2015)

This study talks about model custom made for government policies, PR strategies inculcated by China government are manifestation, philanthropy, publicity, involvement of others and political propaganda. These help them to manage and implement their programmes. Implementation requires four step process : managing PR activities with economic, social and political importance

Negative PR Campaign

Accentuate the Negative: Contemporary Congressional Campaigns (Elving, 1996)

After reading the polls, Weideng took an active campaign posture, showing that multiple voters are more concerned about the negative attitude of campaigning activities than other issues. This negative attitude was mainly determined by Wyden himself (Wells, 1996).

Wyden's campaign - whether it was attack or defense, repentance, and victory - all provided an epitome of the election campaign in the mid-1990s.

Wyden, an eighth grader from Portland, won the Senate nomination in November, while another House Democrat from more rural areas was unable to raise a comparable amount of cash. His Republican rival, State Senate Chairman Gordon Smith, has made himself rich in food packaging and has been nominated for the huge number of public officials in the state (Gruenwald 1995).

Contemporary Campaign

Politics of Campaigns: The Cultural Revolution (Zheng, 2009)

This chapter focuses on institutional destruction and reconstruction during the Cultural Revolution. It discusses an unprecedented attack on China's state institutions in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong's attempt to establish alternative ways to reorganize China, and the role of military and mass movements

Media and Political Campaign

Politics, Media and Campaign Language (Brookes, 2017)

Political, media, and campaign language "is a groundbreaking analysis of Australian identity stories of Australian election languages. Stephanie Brooks believes that Australian identity stories are characterized by repeated anxiety and appease cycles, betraying profound insecurity. This book introduces the concept of "identity security", focuses on the language of elections, and shows that election campaigns provide a valuable window to the neglected parts of Australian political and cultural history. "Politics, media, and campaign languages" have been recycled. Australian campaign speeches and election history tell the story of changing national values ​​and priorities, and follow the outline of collective talk about national identity.

Public Relation

Influence, Ideology, and Public Relations (Ridings, 2009)

Most business interests in Brazil in the 19th century enjoyed significant influence. It relies on the relative scarcity of other interest groups and the continuation of Iberian corporate corporatist consulting and regulatory privilege. Strengthening it is personal contact between the head of the Brazilian government and the leaders of Brazil. Group members have the economic and commercial expertise required by the government and have overseas contacts so that they can acquire technology and modernize their overseas influence. Finally, if the conditions allow, the central position of overseas businessmen in the Brazilian economy even enables business associations to force the government. Although business associations and factor groups enjoy the highest levels of government policy makers, industrial organizations do not. Despite influential leaders, the governments they face are basically not accepting the idea of ​​industrialization. They are forced to attract more business associations and factor groups than the educated public. All commercial interest groups also broadcast images and themes intended for legitimate businesses, and work with the public to enhance the image of business elites.

Social Media

Public Sociology in the Age of Social Media (Healy, 2017)

Researchers have studied how the rise of social media influences the idea of ​​public sociology. New social media platforms can intervene in communication to make people more visible and encourage public life to be measured. They tend to shift the subject from the situation in which some people consciously do “public sociology” to the situation in which more sociologists unconsciously open up sociology. He discussed the nature of this "potentially open" job, the opportunities and difficulties it creates for individuals, and its tendency to associate with the academic fields that believe what they are doing.

Research Methodology

After identifying a gap in these existing studies, it was decided to explore the gap, and a study about ‘how exactly audiences perceive the brand image of a personality through public relation and how effectively social media has helped the political party to gain trust by their supporters’ will help in doing the same and developing a better understanding of public relation strategy. Further, it will add value to other researches through the finding and give better understanding about the public relation strategy in Indian politics.

Objectives

1. To understand how Personality of a political party/ leader of political party is perceived by the audiences
2. To figure out and understand the propaganda of PRO team in building positive image
3. To determine the use of Social Media as an effective PR tool

Research Design

The research has tried to measure the perceived value of political party/leader of political party and opinion of the audience depending upon the various parameters thus the research proposes to use quantitative research design using descriptive research techniques for this study.

Sample

The selection of sample within a population is done to yield knowledge, especially for the purpose of making predictions based on statistics. Thus non-probability sampling method has been taken into consideration. Under which convenience sampling of sample size of 200 has been proposed. Out of which only 127 has responded. The target audience are those people who comes under the age group of below 20-40 above , since they all use one or the other medium to get political news.

Research Techniques

To carry out this study the researcher is required to collect primary data through conducting survey. For this an elaborative questionnaire has been designed. Keeping in mind the parameters to be measured which were derived from the survey, few techniques has been proposed. Likewise to understand the study in more detail frequency distribution, Chi-square test and cross tabulations and has been performed.

Chi-square test is used to analyse that whether the values in the data have significant associations or not. Cross tab is used in the study to determine the categorical data. These categorical data can be mutually exclusive from one another.

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Formula of Chi-square Test.

Data Analysis

1. Interpretation of personality of political party/leader of political party perceived by the audience

1.1 Believing to the opinion leader

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Interpretation: p value is less than 0.05. Thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Hence audiences perceive the personality of leader/political party by believing to the opinion leader. Null hypothesis is rejected

1.2 Public image of a party

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Interpretation: p value is .030 which is less than 0.05, thus variables are significantly associated with each other. 78 out of 127 audiences follow BJP party who majorly perceive the personality of the political leader/ political party by the public image of the party. Null hypothesis is rejected.

1.3 Media Coverage

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Interpretation: p value is less than 0.05, thus the variables are significantly associated with each other. Audiences perceive the personality of the political leader/ political party through media coverage. Null hypothesis is rejected.

2. Interpretation of propaganda of PRO team in building positive image

2.1 Opinions mentioned by a leader in a public speech is done for publicity

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Interpretation: p value is 0.000 thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Hence opinions mentioned by a leader in a public speech is done for publicity. Null hypothesis is rejected

2.2 Media coverage is biased for a political party/leader of political party

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Interpretation: p value is 0.001 which is less than 0.05. Thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Null hypothesis is rejected

2.3 Media coverage largely depended upon popularity of political campaign

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Interpretation: p value is less than 0.05. Thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Null hypothesis is rejected

3. Interpretation to determine use of social media as an effective PR tool

3.1 Social media had greatly impacted the public opinion

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Interpretation: p value is less than 0.05. Thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Hence preference of media vehicle by audiences is associated with social media had greatly impacted the public opinion. Null hypothesis is rejected

3.2 Social media makes political party looks trendy and updated

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Interpretation: p value is less than 0.05. Thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Null hypothesis is rejected

3.3 Social media is strongly connected political campaign/political leaders to the youth

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Interpretation:: p value is less than 0.05. Thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Null hypothesis is rejected

3.4 Social media has a greater impact on success of political party/leader

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Interpretation:: p value is less than 0.05. Thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Null hypothesis is rejected

3.5 Social media have a greater coverage and awareness of social issues

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Interpretation:: p value is less than 0.05. Thus variables are significantly associated with each other. Null hypothesis is rejected.

- Most of the audiences are aware of public relations and campaigns carried out by various political parties during the election.
- Rallys, nukkad natak, press conference, press release and public speaking of a powerful political party/leader of political party effects the opinions and decision of the audiences.
- Public tends to get influenced by the leader of political party if they have a good connectivity and reach through digital media and internet.
- Electronic media (Television and radio), Print media and Social media has an upper hand over all other medium in carrying out the political campaign.
- Through data it has been observed that audiences from different demographics have different choice of getting the political news.
- Free flow of communication is there between the sender of the message and receiver of the message using the various platform
- Facebook and Twitter is most likely preferred social media tool for carrying out public relation strategies.
- Social media has a transparency where people are quick in giving their feedback

Owning to the policy of ‘for the people, by the people and of the people’, one could easily gain popularity among the mass. As engaging people, involving them and ask them to actively participate in ongoing campaign will always give required outcomes. Clear message was conveyed using digital marketing and various social network platforms.

Good communication helps any political leader or personality to earn the respect through their wisdom and strong holding of their point of view whether economical, political or environmental.

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