EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF VOTER PERCEPTION AND ETHICAL SENSITIVITIES IN CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL MARKETING PRACTICES
Abstract
The current state in the evolution of political marketing has led to a stage of digital outreach framing of messages and an intensification of message amplification through framing efforts on networked media space. These practices have transformed the relationship between political contestants and citizens by establishing campaign communication in personalized informational spaces that can be open with some degree of transparency. It is in this context that the moral assessment of political marketing has grown to a higher range since the democratic trust and behavioral intention are determined by the interpretation of campaign behavior by the voter. The research aims at making an empirical analysis of voter insights and moral sensibilities of the current state of political marketing among first time voters in the city of Salem. The studies examine the interpretations of youth voters regarding message amplification using digital means and framing used in stories and their impacts on the attitude to ethical forfeiture in terms of transparency and accountability in political communication. The quantitative cross sectional design is assumed with the usage of a structured survey which is implemented among 249 first time voters who are chosen by snowball sampling. The validation of constructs is done by means of reliability analysis and exploration factor analysis whereas the test of hypotheses is done by means of hierarchical multiple regression as well as bootstrapped mediation. The findings revealed increased awareness of political marketing methods increases the thinking of the ethical aspect and whether the perceived ethical breaches are influential in the direction of behavioral intention. The analysis based on a group that is new to the electoral system helps in serving the interests of the study in political marketing by creating a connection between perception based assessment and democratic accountability in the context of a fast changing communication system. The consequences of the findings are that campaign planners, electoral agencies and civic educators engaged in ensuring ethical guidelines of political communication will find these implications.
Downloads
References
2. Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211–236.
3. Barclay, A., Bowler, S., & Evans, E. (2023). The regulatory ecosystem of data-driven campaigning in elections. Frontiers in Political Science, 5, 1146470.
4. Bennett, C. J. (2015). Trends in voter surveillance in western societies: Privacy intrusions and democratic implications. Surveillance & Society, 13(3/4), 370–384.
5. Bär, D., et al. (2024). Systematic discrepancies in the delivery of political ads on social media and their implications for transparency and fairness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
6. Borz, G., et al. (2024). Digital political campaigning: Contemporary challenges for democracy and regulation. Representation.
7. Clemons, E. K., et al. (2025). Managing disinformation on social media platforms: Incentives, governance and democratic harms. Electronic Markets.
8. Dobber, T., Ó Fathaigh, R., & Zuiderveen Borgesius, F. J. (2019). The regulation of online political microtargeting in Europe. Internet Policy Review, 8(4), 1–29.
9. Dommett, K. (2019). Data-driven political campaigns in practice: Understanding and regulating diverse data-driven campaigning. Internet Policy Review, 8(4).
10. Dowling, M. E. (2024). Mitigating microtargeting: Political microtargeting law in comparative perspective. Regulation & Governance.
11. Edelson, L., Sakhuja, S., Dey, R., & McCoy, D. (2019). An analysis of United States online political advertising transparency (arXiv preprint).
12. Enli, G. (2017). Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: Exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. European Journal of Communication, 32(1), 50–61.
13. Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. MIT Press.
14. Howard, P. N. (2018). Algorithms, bots, and political communication in the US 2016 election: The challenge of automated political communication. Political Communication, 35(2).
15. Jain, S., et al. (2024). Facebook political ads and accountability: Outside the archive. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM).
16. Kefford, G., Dommett, K., Kruschinski, S., & Gibson, R. (2023). Data-driven campaigning and democratic disruption: Evidence from six advanced democracies. Political Studies.
17. Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2017). Technology firms shape political communication: The work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google with campaigns during the 2016 US presidential cycle. Political Communication, 35(2), 155–177.
18. Leerssen, P. (2023). News from the ad archive: How journalists use the Facebook Ad Library to hold online advertising accountable. Information, Communication & Society.
19. Medina Serrano, J. C., et al. (2020). Exploring political ad libraries for online advertising transparency: Lessons from Germany and the 2019 European elections. Proceedings of the ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
By submitting a manuscript to IJRDO – Journal of Business Management, the author(s) confirm that the work is original and does not infringe upon any existing copyrights or third-party rights.
Authors retain responsibility for the content of their work. In cases of proven ethical misconduct such as plagiarism or duplicate publication, the journal reserves the right to take appropriate action, which may include correction or retraction, in accordance with publication ethics.
