The Effects of Viral Marketing, Including Fake News, in Elections Campaigns

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present how viral marketing works in politics, especially in election campaigns. At present, viral techniques are intensively used to promote candidates in elections, through new methods and new channels of communication. Although the phenomenon of viral marketing is intensely used in the electoral communication strategy, there are no concrete techniques specifically dedicated to this type of marketing. From the beginning this type of the concept, has been intensively used and applied in the communication strategy especially for the business sector, therefore concrete application techniques exist for other types of levels individually. The campaigns of the last decade in Romania and in the world, in general, through the presence of the new social networks, demonstrated the importance of this type of communication in promoting the brand image of a candidate. The presence of viral information and news, whether true or false, demonstrates how voters are extremely sensitive to this type of information. Therefore, our article tries to emphasize that in modern politics, viral marketing creates the image of the political leader, an aspect that becomes decisive for voters, although it is not yet a regulated field and there are various problems, including the most serious one being that of fake news, which directly affects society and democracy.

Keywords

• viral marketing
• elections
• candidate
• fake news