The Practice Of Message Development For Political Campaign The 2010 Ethiopian Parliamentary Election In Focus

This research work took the 2010 Ethiopian Parliamentary Election as its context to examine thernprocess of message development during the election campaign. In this study the practice ofrnmessage development for TV by the contending political parties was investigated. Also thernpowers of election messages to motivate, inform, and persuade their audiences and the messagesrnkey contents were issues focused on. Related literature was thoroughly revised and socialrnjudgment, persuasion and social influence theories were used as a theoretical framework.rn‘Election campaign communications strategy’ was adapted from political communication andrncampaigning theories and practices. This was used as conceptual frame work for the study.rnSeven parties were selected using purposive sampling technique out of the 23 parties contendedrnduring the 2010 national election for both primary and secondary sources of data in the study. Inrnthe study content analysis is used (in conjunction with in-depth interviews). There were 7rninterview questions designed in a way they can help to understand the process of messagerndevelopment and use. They were employed to collect information about the process of messagerndevelopment for election and the data was analyzed thematically. Moreover, the massagesrnbroadcasted by these same parties during 2010 election were accessed from EBC archive andrncontent analyzed. The result showed that campaign messages transmitted via TV tend to bernpresented in many paragraphs of long narratives bogged with party policies and programs. Thosernwho prepared the messages also were unable to cater with policy, image, and negatives inrnwriting their scripts. All these attributes made them longer, less attractive, and not appealing tornthe audience. This also showed that their power to persuade, motivate and inform the voters wasrnminimal. Gaps were observed in applying modern political communication and campaignrntheories and practices in the process of election message development such as campaignrncommunications strategy.

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