Audiences in Context. Electoral audiences as a citizen experience during electoral process

CALZADO, MERCEDES CELINA

Eugene

Congreso; 2018 International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR); 2018

IAMCR/Oregon University

During electoral campaigns, candidates decided to develop some issues that have persuasive effects in citizens. ?Public opinion? is token to define the electoral agenda and to summarize the topics that the parties will discuss. For example, urban violence is one of this principal?s issues in Argentina and during presidential campaign in 2015 candidates put it as a principal issue of discussion. According to candidates it was the principal problem for ?public opinion?, but this work tries to analyze that they didn?t take the complexity of the citizen interpretation around the topic. To introduce some density to this problem, this paper develops the concept of ?electoral audience?, that it means to study the audiences in a specific moment (elections) with a detailed type of experience (discuss political propaganda). As a result, we understand for ?electoral audience? citizens that see, hear and read political material during electoral periods. Through the media, audiences are addressed by candidates as potentials voters. In addition, audiences debate these issues with pairs in the places they usually frequent and they discuss and interpret the political information in a way that we want to explore. The relation between people and political propaganda is complex. Just think of the multiplicity of channels available for citizens to be informed about political issues. The traditional spaces for political propaganda to be spread are the streets and the press. Nevertheless, nowadays ?electoral audiences? have the possibility to find political material in Internet and to discuss through social media. The radio, the press, the television, social networks, are all spaces where this kind of material circulates. That?s why this paper try to understand the convergence of digital and traditional media and the ecology where the audience decide for a candidate. To organize the presentation, first the paper systematizes the literature around the audiences to configurate the concept of electoral audiences. Then it analyze the concept of ?electoral audiences? as a category for examining contemporary democracies. The paper follows the objective with the result of six focus group that were made in Buenos Aires city during the Argentinian presidential election in October 2015 and 400 quantitative interviews in the same moment.