adminelection is well and truly in the air.
In 2009, during Iraq’s provincial elections, a radio reporter stated, “posters are everywhere, layers of them, sometimes three or four deep, fixed on every vertical surface in Baghdad; the faces of one politician or another, asking for or demanding votes, some are down or defaced, a new kind of conflict in Iraq”
Political posters act as clear and constant reminders of a candidate’s well-known position in a constituency, and any other related information such as party name or affiliations are widely considered to be secondary.
Political posters are a form of communication instrument designed to capture attention by using simple visuals and language to transmit a message that is easily understandable by viewers and easily associated with the party sponsoring the poster.
Political parties strive for designs that ensure maximal visibility, while minimising the effort required of viewers to process the poster message.
Images and textual references are made so clear on political posters that the public, or the potential voter easily links the massage to the political party.
Posters market the personality of a candidate and though the information highway has seen several digital-related changes in recent times, they have retained their relevance because they are community-based and almost impossible for anyone to miss.
Political posters fall under the broad definition of political advertisements but crucially, four properties distinguish them from the rest.
Firstly political posters are seen as having spatial dimension, meaning that they are individual advertisements specially intended for public display.
If, in the unlikeliest of events they are displayed in private, the space has to be publicly observable.
Secondly, political posters have a physical support dimension.
There should be other print material elsewhere playing a complementary or supplementary role for them to be more effective.
When Zanu-PF ran an election campaign under the theme, “The Land is the Economy and the Economy is Land”, the theme, message and design concept were not limited to posters only but got support from radio and television jingles, newspaper adverts, billboards, t-shirts and other forms of media.
Thirdly, political posters have static visuals content dimension.
Their content is made up entirely by static visuals.
Political posters’ history can be traced back to times well before the newspaper was in existence and the one property that it has retained through centuries has been the use of static visuals in combination with text.
Nowadays, the web tends to give the definition, “poster” to anything graphically put together to form meaning but in the strictest sense, motion graphics, animation or other video products are not part of political posters.
Lastly, political posters occupy a temporal dimension – the public display of individual advertisements is intended to last for at least some time in that space.
The last point has lasting consequences for property owners everywhere.
The euphoria that accompanies the political campaign period is so overwhelming that in some cases ethical, moral and legal issues are ignored.
Marketing one’s party or candidature may sometimes pose environmental risks, given that all sorts of adhesive material and some spray paint is used to force the message home.
Property owners sometimes have to wake up to find their walls and other physical structures ‘‘decorated’’ with political paraphernalia.
In some instances, rival party members may deface the walls by tearing down the posters, then replace them with their own.
That process may go on for some months and though picking a winner from the ‘‘poster competition’’ may be difficult, it is quite easy to see that the biggest loser would be the property owner.
Though the clustering of posters in the streets, commonly called postering, acquires more meaning than just the sum of the messages contained in the individual posters, it is essential that an environment that both the political actors and members of the public is in place.
During campaigning, initiating and maintaining a presence in a constituency is every party’s goal.
It pays to ensure that the public is at least aware of a political party’s proposition and posters have for centuries retained their status as the most preferred and effective way of passing a message from the organisation to the electorate.
However, where it is clear that adding more posters with exactly the same message does not add any more value, it should be the political party’s obligation to act responsibly by minimizing dangers to the environment and respecting property rights.
Political posters are very effective when displayed parsimoniously but they can be a nuisance if they are plastered on every vertical space available.
It is important to note that political activists appear willing and happy to spend days, even weeks or months sticking posters to walls but the same overzealous youths never return to clean up once a winner is proclaimed after the poll.
Online Reporter