Citizens or fans? Netnographic analysis about the economy protection action plan as political product
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15170/MM.2021.55.KSZ.01.07Keywords:
political marketing, political product, economic policy, judgment of votersAbstract
THE AIMS OF THE PAPER
The economic policy of the Hungarian government regarding COVID-19 is a political product. It’s not moral judgment, it only means the presence of the marketing approach. The aims of this paper are
- recognition of the attributes of voters judgement,
- create voters roles based on the information processing,
- find heuristics and cognitive biases regarding the voters evaluation.
METHODOLOGY
We conducted a netnographic research about the opinions of voters regarding the economy protection action plan to explore the attributes and dimensions of their judgment. 3300 posts on Facebook page of Hungarian goverment were analyzed and we have been looking for roles, heuristics and the phenomena of trust.
MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS
The concept of political marketing can explain various political phenomena and political actors use marketing approach and tools to achieve their goals. We introduce our theoretical concept about the political product, which is based on the economic theory of democracy. After that we can identify eight roles based on the netnographic analysis. All in all, we show that the citizen of classic democracy theory, who is competent and well-informed become a football fan.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The main suggestion of the paper is policy can’t be successful without the trust of voters, so the incumbent have to control the social persuasion. Political language is able to evoke automatic cognitive responses, which enhance legitimacy of the policy.
