Propaganda Instruments in Contemporary Campaigns: Comparison of Estonian Political Television Advertisements and Modern Television Commercials

Propaganda Instruments in Contemporary Campaigns: Comparison of Estonian Political Television Advertisements and Modern Television Commercials

The author argues in the present article that although propaganda is considered mostly a tool of ideological communication suitable for use during wars or in totalitarian states, it is still used in contemporary democratic societies at peacetime and there are no major differences between employing instruments of propaganda in the public or the private sectors. The present analysis is based on the similarities and differences between Estonian political television advertisements and modern television commercials with an emphasis on the application of propaganda instruments. The author employed content analysis when studying the sample in which were 100 non-political and 84 political advertisements. This research shows that Estonian political television advertisements and international non-political television advertisements share some significant similarities: cognitive propaganda instruments are more widely employed than social ortechnological ones. The role oftechnological propaganda instruments is diminishing and such instruments are replaced by structural ones. A major difference is that, on average, there are more propaganda instruments per advertisement in political television advertisements than in non-political television advertisements, and technological propaganda instruments are not employed in non-political television advertisements.
Full text available: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v3i1.182

Uudelepp, Agu

Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies; 2007: RERA V3:1 Spring 2007 (backfile abstracts)

2562-8429

10.22215/cjers.v3i1

Centre for European Studies, Carleton University

2007-04-01

info:eu-repo/semantics/article

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Peer-reviewed Article