FUNCTION OF THE POLITICAL ELECTORAL ADVERTISING DURING THE 2015 LOCAL ELECTIONS IN ALBANIA

Abstract

The paper is divided into two main areas. First, it analyzes the communication strategies and tactics of the Albanian political actors in the local elections of 2015 in details. Also, it identifies the elements that confirm the combination of commercial marketing with that of political marketing. Through the content analysis of the election advertisement of both the main candidates for the municipality of Tirana, we will be able to identify the functions carried out by the political advertising towards the voter and the modern political actors. The aim of this paper is to identify the techniques, styles, and formats of the political advertising used during the electoral campaign in 2015 local election in Tirana. It aims to achieve this objective through the content analysis of political advertising in qualitative terms, and by identifying the keywords used by both political candidates. The manner and forms of expression of each candidate, the themes, and the content of political discourse in the election advertisement will be analyzed in this study. Through this analysis, the identification of the marketing strategies used by the staffs of both candidates was realized. The paper aims to verify the hypothesis that the content of the electoral advertisement during the campaign for the local elections in 2015 has dominated the image of the candidate and is shading the real electoral proposals.