Application of Critical Discourse Analysis in Studying Political Advertising Communications in the Digital Environment

In focus of the paper – elective communications in the digital environment. Purpose: to disclose influence of digital political communications on the elective process by means of an example of K. A. Sobchak’s electioneering in 2018. Research methodology – critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough. The empiric base is built from the content posted by the candidate in Instagram in the course of electioneering. Predicted results: systematization of theoretical approaches to investigating political advertising in the digital environment; disclosing specific digital discursive practices of the candidate K. A. Sobchak and their influence on elective processes.

I. Introduction

Before starting the main part of the paper we are going to provide a backbone definition that we hold to: political advertising communications (PAC) are a process of passing along the advertising information by the political actor to other participants of the political market that carries facts about him, his programme and activity, with applying rhetorical, stylistic and other kinds of speech devices. The purpose of this process of passing along information is impact on chosen electoral groups’ behavior and moving them to certain action [17]. Grounding for introduction of this term was explained in a separate paper. A related term is a traditional and established one – "political advertising" (by which we mean, first of all, information of an advertising character, not "a process of transferring advertising information").