Effects of Wartime Crisis Perceptions on the Effectiveness of Political Advertising: The Moderating Role of Political Involvement

Abstract

This research examines how political advertising is operated in a volatile context, such as a state of war or instability. The study employed a self-completing cross-sectional survey to gather the data in the period of the 2016 Syrian elections for members of parliament. The research tested the hypothetical model and its equivalency related to political involvement by structural equation modelling. The outcomes of the tests revealed the structure of belief as a four-dimensional variate. The four dimensions encapsulate information, veracity, sarcasm, and cynicism. In addition, perceptions during conflicts had a negative effect on attitude through sarcasm displayed by voters with low political involvement. The results also found that negative attitude had a link with lower degrees of veracity with regards to voters who are less involved but to greater degrees of cynicism highly politically active individuals. We found that less favourable attitudes to political advertising lowered the likelihoods for voters to watch political ads or announcements, support a runner, and be willing to go to the poll. We found no relation between the fact of paying attention to political advertising and intention of voters to use their ballot.