Campaigning Negativity in Political Marketing Evaluating Facebook Propagation to Youth from the Perspective of General Election 2018 in Pakistan

Abstract

During the General Elections 2018, Pakistan witnessed that political parties launched negativity campaigns against their political opponents through the mechanism of political marketing, Facebook was the potential medium used as an instrument for targeting youth. This study examined the variables of political information acquiring, hate speech, political agenda and incitement of violence and sees how these variables use in political marketing campaigns through Facebook. For this purpose, a quantitative study is designed through using survey research and data is collected from 500 male and female respondents using Facebook available on socio-political forums and groups through convenience sampling technique. The findings of the study reveal that youth of Pakistan significantly use Facebook for political information acquiring that is also use by politicians for maligning their opponents. However, negative campaigns raised skepticism among potential voters but it significantly distorts the image and causes the decrease of the popularity of political opponent. The negative political marketing campaigns create political polarization and provocation of violent behavior in youth. The study also affirms that there is significant relationship among the variables of political information acquiring of youth, hate speech as an instrument of negative campaigns, political agenda of politicians and incitement of violent behavior among youth of Pakistan.