This thesis marks the first attempt to systematically study Canadian minor parties. Minor parties, as distinct from third parties, are those that acquire less than 5 percent of the national vote (usually much less than one percent) and have never sent an MP to Ottawa. We know little about parties as a group except that their numbers have steadily proliferated over the last 20 years and that this growth shows no signs of abating. The goal of this paper is fill the knowledge gap surrounding minor parties and to assess the health of electoral democracy in Canada. Specifically, nine minor parties are studied through the experiences of their candidates during the 1993 federal election. The findings presented are based on data collected from government sources and on surveys and interviews administered to a sample of minor party candidates who ran in the greater Vancouver area. The dissemination of political beliefs not represented in mainstream politics was the dominant reason candidates gave for participating in elections. Winning is a long term ambition, but not expected in the short run for the majority of parties. Despite their modest aims, minor parties and candidates are unduly fettered in their ability to effectively compete in elections and communicate with the public. Minor party campaigns typically have scant political resources, including money, time and workers; electoral laws — concerning registration thresholds, broadcasting time allotments and campaign reimbursements — designed to promote fairness, disadvantage the system's weakest players; and subtle biases on the part of the press, debate organizers and potential donors close important channels of communication. Of these factors, money emerged as the most important, with media exposure — or the lack of it — a close second in terms of determining a party's competitiveness. The National Party, with superior resources, was often an exception to the above characterization, but ultimately, media neglect sealed its fate as a marginal party. Notwithstanding the great odds facing minor parties, winning is not impossible given the right alignment of factors. The Reform Party did it in 1993, providing other small parties with hope and an example to follow. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

It is well recognized that the 1993 election campaign catapulted the Reform party into the national political scene, but our understanding of how this was possible is quite limited. Drawing on the work in cognitive psychology on attitude change, the work on the news media coverage of elections, and the political science work on election campaigns, this thesis locates the impetus for Reform's success in the dynamic flow of information about the party that was available in television news broadcasts and voters' likelihood of being persuaded by that information. This link is developed by an analysis that makes use of a content analysis of the 1993 campaign, the 1993 Canadian Election Study, and a merged analysis of the election and news data. The Reform party began the campaign as a minor component of the news coverage of the election, but the news media coverage changed dramatically. Reform was provided with more news access than its support indicated it deserved and that coverage focused on what became a major theme of the election; the welfare state and the role of government. Coverage of Reform underwent a further change as it both decreased and focused on cultural issues during the last two weeks of the campaign. Using a two-mediator model of attitude change, the analysis shows that people who were predisposed to agree with Reform's anti-welfare state message and who were likely to be aware of the news information, changed both their perceptions of the party and increased their support for the party. Further support for the impact of the media is derived from the analysis of voter response to the second change in news coverage. The analysis suggests that campaigns do matter, but that the size of the impact is dependent upon the underlying uncertainty associated with the parties and candidates, and on the degree to which the information flow of the campaign changes. The information flow contributes to both learning and priming among people who receive and accept new information. While voters respond reasonably to new information, the outcome will depend on what information voters are given and what information actually reaches the habitually unaware segments of the population. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

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The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether the drop in voter turnout between the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament elections, as well as the general apathy toward the politics of the European Union, in the Czech Republic was contributed to by the mass media. Specifically, this thesis will examine the two most read daily newspapers of both 2009 and 2014, Blesk and Mladá Fronta Dnes, and analyze its articles with the use of search words in order to assess whether any change occurred in the way the European Union, its policies and institutions, were presented immediately prior to the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament elections. This will be achieved through the use of content analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, while evaluating the articles in comparative fashion. The thesis will argue that, given the essential role of the media as intermediary between the world of politics and the electorate, the portrayal, or lack thereof, of the European Union is a factor in explaining the electoral dynamics of the country. Key Words: voter turnout; European Parliament elections; mass media; electoral apathy Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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This study explores the range and variance of interest group activity in constituency campaigns in the 1988 federal election as reported in the Constituency Party Association dataset created in 1991 for the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing. SPSSPC+ was used to analyze the relationships between variables in four main areas: political party affiliation, geographic variables, constituency association characteristics, and the specific issues the interest groups were promoting or opposing. The most significant finding was that interest groups were actively involved in half of the riding association election campaigns, either supporting or opposing local candidates. The cursory treatment of electoral involvement in the interest group literature provides an inadequate explanation for this widespread phenomena. This study provides an initial profile of interest group involvement in constituency campaigns. The exploration of the data revealed that interest groups were more likely to be involved in the local campaigns of candidates associated with the governing party. They were less likely to be involved in Quebec constituency campaigns, and more likely in wealthy competitive riding campaigns. The most frequently mentioned issues that motivated interest groups locally were abortion, followed by free trade.

During Zimbabwe’s 2008 harmonised elections the country’s media laws had a direct impact on the way editorial cartoonists expressed themselves. Although the online newspapers were unregulated and the print media published under Zimbabwe’s media laws, Public Order and Security Act and Access to Information and Protection of Privacy act - the editorial cartoons from both sources show deliberate bias towards one candidate and contempt towards the main rival. The study contextualises the understanding of the editorial cartoon, as practised in an environment of freedom of speech and defined by the four categories identified by Press (1981) and Manning and Phiddian (2004), and delineates the effect of media laws on the newspaper industry in Zimbabwe. The four categories of editorial cartoons identified are descriptive editorial cartoons, laughing satirical editorial cartoons, destructive satirical editorial cartoons, and savage indignation editorial cartoons. The study reviews eight editorial cartoons, read using a semiotic framework investigating non-verbal communication, as defined and suggested by Du Plooy (1996), and a text and language grid, as suggested by Leech (1974), according to the criteria of symbols/metaphors, exaggeration/distortion, stereotypes, caricature, irony, captions, and background knowledge, as developed by Fetsko (2001). A comparative analysis of the cartoons reveals that objectives and functions of the unregulated zimonline.co.za and the regulated the Herald newspapers are the same. They constitute propagandistic representations of Zimbabwean politics that are more an extension of political ideology than they are a reflection of the country’s sociopolitical landscape.