Qualitative exploration of political parties addressing salient issues utilising YouTube during 2019 general elections

Abstract

Given the importance of issue salience and the growing use of social media, this study integrated media framing theory with salient theory to create a better understanding of how issues relating to political parties play out on the audio-visuals carried by YouTube. Salience plays a large role in the interest group literature. Despite the prominence of issue salience theory, there has not been much empirical implications of the saliency theory in terms of utilising YouTube as a facilitator to claim and address issues during electoral campaigns. It has been found and stated that during election campaigns the media such as YouTube, through “media framing”, play a significant role in determining what audiences should think about campaign issues or agendas. In this study, Media framing theory focused on qualitatively exploring how audio-visual media carried by YouTube were used as a political communication tool by the African National Congress (ANC), Democratic Alliances (DA) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to claim and address salient issues for the 2019 National Election Campaign. This study argues that audio-visual media carried by YouTube as a distribution channel, is a relevant medium used for electoral campaigns to facilitate claimed and addressed salient issues by the political parties. The methodology of data collection incorporate the content analysis of 24 YouTube based audio-visuals (8 audio-visuals per party) facilitating claimed and addressed salient issues, associating the message characteristics (nature, types and appeals) with message reach (number of views) and viewer engagement (types of comments). The DA and EFF notably utilised audio-visuals carried by YouTube to facilitate their intense messaging of negative campaign against the ANC, while the EFF simultaneously promoted electoral messages around its own salient issues and party’s self-presentation.