ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the traditional power of video as a voter persuasion technique – delivered through television signals – to the passing of the torch where video images are delivered through social media platforms. It illustrates why demand for video, in light of exciting new technologies, is stronger than ever. Politicians have been utilizing various persuasion techniques to attract voters’ support for centuries. These skills are sometimes seen as unsavory and some political philosophers have postulated that they should have no place in politics whatsoever. Even the early persuasion techniques used in US political campaigns – leaflets, political cartoons, campaign buttons and town square soapboxes – certainly would have been frowned upon by Plato. Fast forward 60 years to the 2012 presidential election where Democrats’ spending on advertising increased from $77,000 in 1952 to $404 million, while the Republicans increased their spending to $492 million.
