Political Campaigns

Sean Dillon

Sarah Lawson

English 1301

03 July 3, 2008

Political campaigns

Political campaigns refer to the effort to reach a certain political goal, done by involving mass participation. Political campaigns are the effort people use to influence government or other important social bodies, within the constitutional system (Strent and Friedenberg, 3). Currently, political campaigns use mass communication methods, the media, face-to-face contact, and public protests, to attain the desired goal (Strent and Friedenberg, 3). Political campaigns are a paramount part of the human society to ensure human welfare and affect change. Political campaigns are beneficial to man and the society for they offer platforms for social debate to affect change and must therefore be ran appropriately, guarding to present the ideals of the society. The political campaigns offer democratic societies electoral freedom, where people are able to choose their own representatives. They also offer the society organized efforts to alter policy within any institution or organization.

Despite these obvious social and democratic benefits, noticeably political campaigns at time have questionable processes such as in advertising costs and vulnerabilities to corruption (Scher, 3). Modern political campaigns are highly dependent on mass communication for advertising, which include broadcast media, print media, visual media, and outdoor advertising. Most political campaigns in an effort to meet a limitless number of audiences launch into expensive media campaigns that run into very high costs. To facilitate this, many campaign executives, consultants, and volunteers raise money to pay for the costs (Scher, 112). The funding comes from the supporting/mother party, political funding committees, and other groups. Irrefutably, political campaigns are an essential part of any democratic society in order to allow free and fair electorate for any position that needs a people's referendum; however, the high costs ran in advertising raises the question of whether the prize is worth the cost (Scher, 4). To this question, with momentous laws to guide spending and regulate the amount campaigners spend and regulating funding, then the prize is worth the cost; however, a free reign may overshadow the benefit and lead to political corruption.

Political corruption refers to the use of government powers for illegitimate private gains or for other purposes such as regression of a political opponent. In political campaigns, people use their might to win and to suppress their opponents; this is especially visible in mass media campaigns where they spread propaganda about the opponents (Pilips, 41). Any form of political corruption during campaigns undermines the process of democracy, distorting accountability