Albanian political parties PR strategies in the mediatization of Mayor Candidates in Local Elections 2015

Abstract

In the contemporary elections’ political world public relations plays a crucial role.

Political Parties Public relations is a method that political parties broadcast messages to their supporters/ voters, specially this activity, intensifies during election periods.

The main purpose of political parties PR is the use of media to communicate to voters the political party policies.

This article will analyze the effective use of online media by political parties in pre-election periods of local elections held in Albania on June 21, 2015, focused on the strategy used by, the announcement of the names of potential candidates for mayor until their final selection, and their coverage by the media.

The article aims to investigate the strategic interplay of responsible communication experts in political parties and the journalists who cover politics in the seven bodies of the media that were scrutinized: Tema Online, Dita Online, Shqiptarja.com, Shekulli, Mapo, Panorama, English, and Standard.

The article also aims to assess the effectivity of PR strategies in providing news coverage produced by PR experts (either in the form of a press release, or press conference, or news, without allowing the identification of the source) in the media and how to reach this.

As a result, it was observed a good cooperative relationship between communication managers in political parties PR units which will be handled by this article as part of the PR machinery (S pindoctor) with Political journalists, but the result of the strategies coverage is determined not only and simply out of this relationship. It is established by the attitude of media entrepreneurs towards political parties, whose stance has been adopted already by the media political reporters.