Political Communication, Television Advertising and Elections in Brazil: A Longitudinal Analysis of Two Major Parties’ Use of Free Electoral Advertising Time

Abstract

Political Communication, Television Advertising and Elections in Brazil: A Longitudinal Analysis of Two Major Parties' Use of Free Electoral Advertising Time (2021) 15 (3) e0003 -2/33 his article performs a longitudinal analysis of the uses of free electoral advertising time (HGPE) in Brazilian presidential elections from 2002 to 2018 with reference specifically to the uses made of it by the Workers' Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). These two parties accounted for the lion's share of the HGPE in the five elections held in the period and were the key players in four of them. The HGPE is the principal advertising space available to Brazilian political parties during election campaigns and has therefore been a popular subject for communications and political science research.Even with the growth of such other platforms as the Internet and social media, television remains the medium that reaches the greatest number of Brazilians (BRASIL, 2016). Whereas common sense suggests that the public largely ignores political campaign advertising -although this is contested by Dias ( 2013) -and there are some studies that suggest its influence depends on context (ALBUQUERQUE; STEIBEL, and CARNEIRO, 2008), other research has shown that in contemporary democracies HGPE provides public visibility to parties, proposes certain themes for debate, draws attention to certain specific causes and delimits electoral coalitions. In the case of first-past-the-post presidential elections, a mediatized campaign becomes necessary to build a candidate's image, given the difficulties of carrying out a large-scale door-to-door campaign. Furthermore, HGPE is a way of setting aside specific time for politics , divulging an agenda-setting image and expressing the interests of the political elite -an elite that totally controls this type of electoral