Tag Archives: election campaigns

The Future of Election Campaigning: The Virtual Battleground

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As the saying goes, power corrupts. But the corruption starts or at least tends to start long before the power has been assumed, namely in the election campaigns. Probably, there is no country with a really level playing field for elections in this world. The spoils of power are attractive in the rich countries, where they can be massive, and likewise in the poorest countries, where they might matter even more. The social status and nimbus of a leader is already a perk of sorts, the ability to make decisions for others and to expect their respect and obeisance can create anything between drug-like effects and aphrodisiacs.  When Winston Churchill was asked what he was missing the most after being voted out of his premiership in 1945 despite his towering role during WWII, was the sarcasm “transportation”. But everybody who has travelled with top officials will remember this special feeling of privileged transportation.

As a logical consequence, election campaigns can be, and often are, extremely competitive, while seducing many of the players to forget about normal civil fairness. The political cultures, of course, differ from country to country, which means that very different levels of unfairness are possible, often enough ranging from defamation and character assassination to physical assaults like stabbing, poisoning, and shooting.

In Southeast Asia, so far, relatively traditional forms and techniques of election campaigning may be prevailing. Incredible amounts of campaign posters are still in widespread use. Popular leaders and candidates are pulling huge crowds and not so popular ones can hire cheering fake supporters from skilled campaign entrepreneurs. But the traditional media are increasingly losing attraction among the voting masses, newspapers and state-controlled TV stations are no longer the transmitters between the campaigning politicians and their target groups. With the Internet and smart phone penetration reaching even remote areas, more and more voters, especially the younger ones, are getting their political information from social media. And, no surprise, this is exactly the entry point for new trends in marketing, including political campaigning. But at the same time, as the technical opportunities have opened the floodgates for criminal online scams of all sorts and shapes, they attract election campaigners, fair and unfair alike. Why should skilled campaigners not generate thousands of votes if criminals can cheat unsuspecting internet surfers of millions of dollars.

Here are some examples of campaign trends around the world which may give a preview of what Southeast Asia can expect in the next few years, if the tech savvy region should not be even more advanced already.

The newest development first: In the American presidential primaries, deep fake campaigns have already arrived. In the recent New Hampshire primaries, a fake version of President Joe Biden’s voice has been used automatically generated robocalls to discourage Democrats from taking part. As unusual it may sound that the president makes phone call to single voters, the message might influence a sizeable number of voters, nevertheless. As CNN reports, while the audio appears to be fake, it sounds just like the president and even uses his trademark “malarkey” catchphrase. 
NB: You can listen to this fake call here: Fake Joe Biden robocall urges New Hampshire voters not to vote in Tuesday’s Democratic primary | CNN Politics
Local candidates in municipal and state elections will probably not resist the temptation of using robocalls. Campaign propaganda in the form of E-mails is common enough for a long time already. For the U.S. presidential campaign, Donie O’Sullivan, CNN’s correspondent covering both politics and technology, predicts an explosion of AI-generated disinformation. Artificial Intelligence has made the upgrading from fake to deepfake so easy that practically anybody can download the necessary program from the Internet and create videos which look authentic for most recipients.
The trend is especially dangerous for the U.S. because the legitimacy of elections and the orderly and peaceful transfer of power has been undermined by Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen. According to recent polls, nearly 70 per cent of Republicans question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. The assumption that Russia had influenced or manipulated this election has never been proven but was popular enough for the media to be repeated for many months.
Another related incident is brand-new and all over the media, especially with the war In Ukraine being discussed controversially in Germany. End of January, a news magazine reported that Internet experts of the Foreign Office have detected no less than 50.000 fake accounts on social media platform X, trying to stir anger at Berlin’s support for Ukraine.

In Southeast Asia, the election triumph of President Marcos in June 2022 was reportedly facilitated, among others, by thousands of occasional volunteers who could make a few bucks with their smart phones during the campaign.
The social media scene, however, is changing very fast. This is evident in the number of followers of the candidates in the ongoing presidential campaign in Indonesia. While front-runner Prabowo has 10 million followers on Facebook, 6.7 Million on Instagram and none on TikTok, his much younger vice-presidential candidate Gibran has only 173.000 on “old-fashioned Facebook, 1.4 million on Instagram and 446,900 on TikTok. It looks like a mirror of the generation gap with Facebook something for the older generation. But middle-aged PDI-P candidate Ganjar Pranowo, born in 1968, is the champion on TikTok with remarkable 7.1 million followers in December last year. They are all fighting on the virtual battleground, though posters and rallies are still an important and expensive part of the campaign.   

The Ever-Increasing Commercialization of Election Campaigns and Party Politics

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In an article published by the Straits Times on 18 December, Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja, the Indonesia Correspondent of Singapore’s flagship daily, describes in detail his observations during the ongoing presidential election campaign. (LINK: Hired crowds in demand for Indonesia political rallies | The Straits Times). These observations are so interesting because the phenomenon of more and more professional and commercialized election campaigning and party politics is spreading to many places and continents. What is especially exciting here is the fabulous Indonesian creativity in this field.
 
The article describes how Mr Lukman, a 45-year-old parking attendant, runs his “rent-a-crowd” service. Once hired by a candidate or party, Lukman gathers at least 200 persons and brings them by bus to the event. He charges 100.000 rupiah (6,5 USD) per “supporter” plus food and bus transport.  

Great care must be taken to pick people who look like real and enthusiastic supporters. Lukman selects the ones “who wear tidy clothes, those who look like college students, the 18-year-olds, the zillennials.” Obviously, many of the 200 million voters are already suspicious of the fake supporters, so the hired ones must act up real enthusiasm, cheer and dance. Since the salary is paid only after the event, not sufficiently convincing supporters risk a part of their pay.

Often enough, the hired troops don’t know who they are supposed to cheer until they arrive at the venue. For them, of course, it does not matter, they are like the extras in mass scenes film shootings. So, the “industry” is facing an increasing demand for sincere and convincing cheering support. A spokesman for the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), told The Straits Times that the party does not use and has never tolerated such services. True or not, it is a basic fact, that money is a decisive requirement of election campaigning, of course not only in Indonesia. But the democratic development of the country has seen several creative solutions to candidacy and electoral success, up to the phenomenon that rich candidates can choose among competing parties for a promising slot.

In Europe with a century-long history of political parties and the corresponding political theory, the developments are comparable to the ones in Southeast Asia, except for the fake cheering crowds, hired for the occasion. Campaign events, even with prominent speakers, ministers and prime ministers, risk looking bad on pictures and TV videos because, often enough, the expected crowds are not materializing. And most of the traditional campaign features are provided by PR agencies anyway. The party members sacrificing evenings and nights for hanging campaign posters are practically history. That is being accompanied by shrinking party membership in most European countries. The once dominating Christian Democrats of Italy have disappeared, once struggling right-wing parties are growing and booming in many countries, like recently in the Netherlands, mainly because voters are frightened by uncontrolled immigration. In Germany, the 160-years-old Social Democratic Party, is continuously shrinking in membership and polling results, though still in an uneasy coalition with Greens and Liberals under a social-democratic chancellor. A workers’ party for most of its life, the SPD is no longer seen as fighting for the working class or the little man on the street. Consequently, during the last few decades, the internal social coherence of the party has changed dramatically. Still some fifty or seventy years ago, the small local branches offered a sort of family bonding, the members knowing each other, and the local treasurer visiting the members at home to collect the monthly membership fees. All that is history, of course, and that has direct repercussions for the ideological and programmatic consistency of the SPD and many similar parties. Probably, the changing party landscapes are less based on values, programs, and group-interest but more dependent on professional management, financial resources, political psychology, and the real or media-hyped charisma of the leaders.
For Southeast Asia see: