多様化するメディア環境と政治広告(<特集>現代のメディアとネットワークにおける政治参加)

抄録

Political advertising plays a significant role in conveying campaign information and constructing images of parties and candidates more directly than the news, the contents of which they have little or no control over. Political parties have prioritized traditional political communication, such as personal contact campaigning and wayside speeches. However, parties have come to rely more on political advertising as a result of the termination of the long-standing dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the early 1990s. This paper outlines the historical development of political advertising from the emergence of political parties and their campaigning in the 1880s to the online campaigning during the 2013 House of Councilors election, focusing both on the change in the media environment and in election law. The current research also compares the contents and appeal of LDP and non-LDP political advertising in terms of issue presentation and image construction by analyzing political ads in newspapers and on television from 1960 to 2012. Overall, parties have placed emphasis on images over issues in their ads, and election campaigns have been dominated by governing parties. This tendency did not change at all in the online campaigns of the 2013 House of Councilors election. This paper also investigates issues in relation to online political campaigning, including concerns over targeted and tailored online political advertising and selective searches for information by voters that confirm their pre-existing political views, which in turn might decrease political tolerance.