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Media & Elections: The Relevance of Gathering Insights About Election Campaigns Across Different Media Types

Media & Elections: The Relevance of Gathering Insights About Election Campaigns Across Different Media Types

The outcomes of the US midterm elections 2022 that are still hitting the news once again underline the importance of being able to observe the development of an electoral process in the media. After the elections, many political marketing and communication experts have begun to discuss the impact the political campaigns and their media coverage had on the results. Have campaigns been disseminated in the appropriate channels? Which messages have reached the audience? Was the impact of campaigns positive or negative?

Political marketing and communication experts go to enormous lengths to maximize the impact of their campaigns and messages and their strategies are always well thought out. They utilize multiple dissemination channels depending on the target audience they want to reach as well as their budget frame. From traditional broadcast TV and radio stations to online media and social media platforms; everything counts.

Therefore, when the time comes for these professionals to measure and evaluate their efforts, it is important to be able to answer questions such as: what role has our broadcast strategy played in the candidacy? Or how much media coverage has a candidate reached compared to their opponents on radio or online press?

A good way to answer these questions is to keep an eye on relevant metrics and statistics throughout the whole election campaign such as:

  • Frequency of mentions
  • Average or total airtime for a candidate
  • Polarity of the messages
  • Most relevant type of media and/or channel
  • Audience reach

With this data at hand, political marketing experts and parties can analyze the performance of individual campaigns, compare candidates or even regions. Furthermore, looking at how statistics develop overtime is key to understand when, why and how relevant changes took place in the elections period.

Evaluating Mixed Media Strategies

When it comes to collecting all the data regarding the different media types used to disseminate information before and during elections, the possibilities of tracking information very much depend on each media. For example, tracking mentions on a social media platform such as Facebook is totally different from tracking those on broadcast TV or even a video platform such as YouTube.

Usually, political marketing experts rely on a range of solutions to obtain the relevant data from each media type. However, this can present some problems, such as the need to use different tools or contact multiple data providers to then get data on different dates or with different metrics - making comparisons difficult.

This is where more comprehensive and holistic solutions come into play, particularly automated media monitoring solutions that enable political marketing professionals to track the full range of media types.

Depending on the tool, some of them allow these professionals to track topics of their interest in different media types such as TV, radio, social media platform, online press and more, and get all the statistics via a single platform. That makes it redundant to acquire several subscriptions for different services.

Another benefit of relying on media monitoring during elections is the speed at which information is delivered – sometimes even in real time, depending on the service. Political marketing and communication professionals no longer have to wait to get a periodic report – instead, they can check the data anytime using their media monitoring tool. Some media monitoring providers even offer the possibility to create and download their own reports or share and download content.

Regardless of how the data is obtained and delivered, one thing is clear: Election campaigns do not end when the votes are counted. They are constant work of research to find out what works and what doesn’t, to improve and to make smart decisions. And to perform these tasks, professionals benefit from the best technological solutions available to them.


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