Politics-media-youth nexus: Analysis of Pakistan’s general elections 2013

• Main Authors: Sajid Hussain, A.R. Sajid, Shafiq Jullandhry
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2018-01-01
• Series: Cogent Social Sciences
• Subjects: general elections 2013; print media, political advertisements, youth; political parties; pakistan
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2018.1446688

This study investigated the nexus of politics, youth and media, drawing on the example of General Elections 2013 of Pakistan. It analysed the youth oriented advertisements (YOAs) of three major political parties, e.g. Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML (N)), Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarian and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), published in national Urdu Dailies before the elections. Findings revealed that PTI published the highest (41%), and PML (N) published the smallest proportion of their advertisements for young voters. The contents used by political parties in their YOAs were classified into five main categories, e.g. emotional words, personal appeals, endorsement, play-on-words and statistics. All three political parties predominantly used ‘endorsement’ to attract the attention of the youth. This study also found that the main reasons for paying high attention to the youth were their high influence within families, the importance in door-to-door political campaigns, active participation during polling process, their potential and future role in party flourishing, role and energy in protests, strikes and rallies, and importance in party fund raising. Based on the findings, this study suggested for making realistic promises in the advertisements, and avoiding over-promising that may lead to high frustration among the youth on non-fulfillment in future.