Election posters around the globe: Conclusions

Abstract

New ways of communicating during election campaigns have developed throughout the last century; newspaper ads and spots on radio and television have changed the landscape of political propaganda. During the last decade, the Internet has become more and more important in the parties' and candidates' efforts to communicate with the citizens. Nevertheless, election posters have been a part of the political communication toolbox for more than 100 years and they are still there and fulfill an important function of campaigning in many countries around the world, even if pundits and researchers sometimes judge elections posters as a premodern way of campaigning (see Norris 2000, p. 138). The chapters in this volume, describing the history and role of election posters in countries around the globe, have shown that posters still play an important role in political campaigning, even if research on political communication have apparently neglected this form of political communication to a large extent. An explanation for this lack of research might be that election posters no longer play such an important role in the USA and campaign research has to a large extent focused on American experiences of political advertising (i.e., television).