"Americanization" of Pre-Election Campaign in Croatian Daily Papers: 2007 Elections Cover Image

"Amerikanizacija" kampanje u hrvatskom dnevnom tisku: izbori 2007.
"Americanization" of Pre-Election Campaign in Croatian Daily Papers: 2007 Elections

Author(s): Stanko Rihtar, Ivan Balabanić, Marko Mustapić
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar
Keywords: pre-election campaign; political advertising; daily papers; "Americanization"

Summary/Abstract: According to numerous literature, the main features of today's political communication are alienation of political parties, scientification, autonomous structure of communication and transformation of the citizens into the public. These features are in advertising, as a part of political communication in general, concretized as personalization by emphasizing leaders and other party members, by reduction of complex messages to slogans, by emphasizing symbols of power and status, as well as negative campaign. The described communication style is often labeled as "Americanized". In this article, by using the Croatian 2007 parliamentary elections as an example, the measure of "Americanization" of the campaign in daily newspapers is empirically verified by content analysis of the population of advertisements in six main papers during the official campaign. The results showed that HDZ (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, Croatian Democratic Union), which invested in newspaper advertising more than other parties, adopted all elements of the "Americanized" campaign style. The finding that other parties, more or less, used the same communication elements as well, leads to the conclusion that "Americanized" style of political advertising in Croatian daily papers has been adopted to a considerable extent.

  • Issue Year: 20/2011
  • Issue No: 112
  • Page Range: 359-378
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: Croatian