Dr. George Farha - Messages & Promises

Most of the campaigns this year are very straightforward, with easy memorables punchlines... Do you find it to be an effective strategy that can have an impact on how voters vote?

It is no secret that the Lebanese political scene has been branded by intensely polarized opinions, with a high percentage of citizens having already made up their minds regarding their vote.

The entire set of political campaigns of all political parties aim to bring together the crucial undecided swing votes and stimulate partisan voters, with each camp soliciting the citizen to vote for its candidates.

Straightforward political advertising educates voters because of the powerful way it transmits its issue content. This strategy makes political campaign advertisement effective due to its simplicity, repetition, and sight-sound coordination. The value of this combined

Dr. George Najib Farha, Dean of Communication Arts School at the American University of Science & Technology admits being confused by an over-saturated media landscape with most of the campaigns lacking substance. He explains why.

April 2018 strategy should not be dismissed, because when a political commercial takes an outdoor network or social platform or television ad to state clearly and directly how a candidate feels about a major campaign issue, the electorate is being helped to make a more informed choice on Election Day.

Unfortunately, nature does not always fill this vacuum in a good way, as most of the political campaigns of all candidates have just took off, they have already left the Lebanese people with unpleasant aftertaste of a void filled by creative yet unsubstantiated slogans and counterproductive arguments. In other words, spending a lot of money to saturate the media with a candidate’s message is no guarantee of success. The communication messages of these election campaigns seem to have become an end in themselves, rather than a means to an end.

This simply indicates that the strategies applied may not formulate the expected impact on how voters will perform.

How do you assess a good and effective political campaign?

The best way for a candidate to increase favorability among voters is to run a positive campaign. Negative campaigning reduces the total number of citizens involve, thus undermining the power of the people to voice their opinions.

Voters’ knowledge about the candidates and their issues, liking for candidates, and interest in the campaign should increase after exposure to a good political campaign. For this reason, we notice a reinforced and positive relationship is predicted in most of the