Uganda's Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in 2021: Media Campaigns and Political Candidate Performance
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Date
2022
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Social Sciences & Humanities Open
Abstract
This article investigates the link between media political campaigns and candidate performance. The study's primary purpose was to determine whether there was a link between political candidates' media-political campaigns and their overall performance. The paper used a survey method in which respondents were given questionnaires to fill out in order to attain this goal. A purposive sample strategy was used to select 75 participants from various political parties. The data was analyzed and presented using descriptive statistics and basic regression correlation. Simple linear regression was used to test if mass media significantly predicted the political efficacy of voters. The overall regression was statistically significant (R2 = .309, F=34.120; p= <0.01). It was found that mass media campaigns significantly predicted voters' political efficacy β = .564, p=<0.01. This shows that the media had an influence on political efficacy. Furthermore, it was revealed that mass media significantly predicted performance of candidates (R2 = .391; F=48.603; p<0.01), which proposes the mass media had influence on candidates’ performance (β = .632; p < 0.01). The study also discovered that social media significantly predicted candidates’ performance (R2 = 0.554; F= 51.015; p<0.01). This shows that candidates' performance was influenced by social media. The conclusion is that media political campaigns have an important role in influencing a candidate's election performance. The government should invest more resources in ensuring that all voters and political candidates have equal access to the media and social media platforms in order to deepen democratic processes in which candidates advertise their views and pledges to the public and encourage them to vote for them in elections.
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Keywords
Media political campaigns, political efficacy, performance of candidates in elections
Citation
Kakuba, S. J., & Mpawenimana, A. S. Uganda's Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in 2021: Media Campaigns and Political Candidate Performance. Available at SSRN 4065489.https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4065489