Televised Political Advertising in Egypt: The Case of 2012 Parliamentary Elections

The research results support the Functional Theory of political campaign discourse. All three functions are capable of persuading voters that a candidate is preferable to one’s opponent. Acclaims have no disadvantages but it seems that voters dislike mudslinging (Merritt, 1984). This discourages candidates from attacking too heavily. Defenses have three potential drawbacks. First, opponents are likely to attack where the opponent is weak, which means that defending against an attack will usually take a candidate “off-message”. Second, defenses are likely to sound reactive rather than proactive and candidates may not wish to encourage this impression. Third, a candidate must identify an attack in order to refute it. This means that when a candidate mentions an attack in preparation for the defense he or she may remind or inform voters of a potential weakness. So, it is reasonable to expect that acclaims would be more frequent than attacks and attacks more common than defenses.
Public opinion poll data (in the US) reveals that, in multiple campaigns, more voters reported that policy was a more important determinant of their vote than character (Benoit, 2003; Brazeal and Benoit, 2001). Thus, if voters believe policy is more important, this could encourage candidates to emphasize policy more than character in their ads.
On the other hand, the theory argues that the voter is “rational”, taking his/her decision on an informal form of cost-benefit analysis. The economic status of the voters has been neglected, in the Egyptian case the phenomena of “buying” votes has been observed. Some political parties offered money to voters to make them vote for these parties exploiting their poverty and need for money. This research proposes additions to the theory. First, the cultural variable (collective versus individual cultures) should be considered as influencing the functions of political advertising. In collective cultures, it is immoral to attack others or even talk about them especially when they are not attendants. The author can use this cultural value to explain why Egyptian candidates did not use attacking function in their ads. Second, the religious variable should be included in studying political advertising in Islamic countries because religion is an essential factor in affecting attitudes and behaviors. Third, the author suggests adding another function to political advertising which is “education” especially when it comes to societies new to democracy and with high rate of literacy. The last addition, the political and electoral systems should be tested as independent variables that influence the topic of political advertising, as party-list proportional representation makes “policy” more important than “character”.
Political advertising in Egypt is still in the childhood stage. Although Egypt witnessed real democratic experiences and free elections before 1952, these practices have stopped since 1952. It is obvious that the present political parties do not have sufficient resources neither experience to use political TV advertising; only 13 parties (out of 60 political parties in Egypt at the time of conducting the research-Guide of Egyptian Political Parties,2011) used political TV advertising with total of 50 spots. 58% of these ads have been done by only three parties, which indicate the necessity for using political TV advertising especially in a country with high rate of literacy, poverty, and suffering from weak political movement for almost 60 years.
One of the interesting results is the appearance of what could be called “educational” function of political advertising. In this type of content, the function of the ad was to educate the voters about the election and voting processes, which should inspire the politicians, especially in newly established democracies, about the importance of educating people the culture of modern democracy.
The political parties with religious background relied more than parties with nonreligious background on emotional appeals especially religious ones. The insertion of religion in politics hurts the democracy and the whole political life since these practices give theocracy to the religious parties and put them over their rivals who do not use the same appeals. The religious appeals used in the campaign discourse of religious parties were crucial in their win in these elections.