Formation and functioning of public authorities and their reflection in various ideologies, feelings, values, symbols, doctrines, rules and official estimates and opinions constitute a special political process. Its essence lies in the fact that due to the transfer and messaging, political subjects demonstrate their existence to various counterparties and provide them with the necessary contacts and connections that allow them to play a variety of political roles. In turn, due to targeted contacts, people can communicate, share a variety of information and knowledge, connect different levels of the political system, enable government institutions to perform their specific functions for managing the state and society. The book Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices represents a clear and structured analysis of the basic principles of communication process in politics. Besides, it gives an argumentative and well-supported system that works the best for this or that political campaign and describes in detail specific stages and levels of political campaign communications.

When analyzing the book, it is essential to mention that it has a number of central concepts. Among the most evident are: importance of political campaign communications and special features of communication strategies during different stages of political campaigns. The main idea of the book is to show the readers in an easy and understandable way that the basis of every political campaign is speech and communication.

The authors of the book clearly define its central concepts, emphasizing the importance of communication between different participants of political campaigns. Moreover, the book has structured information that is not only given in an easy understandable language, but also systematized for better acceptation of it by the readers. It is important to point that the concepts are given in a well-supported manner. Also, the book has a number of examples when the concepts and main principles of communication were successfully applied during real political campaigns. In the process of reading, a reader is able to not only critically assess all the aspects of communication in this sphere, but also find all the answers to possible questions. That is why it is possible to say that the concepts given for the readers’ attention are clearly presented in this book, but, at the same time, they make the readers critically think.

As it was mentioned earlier, all concepts that are presented in this book have rather strong arguments. Thus, communication and speech communication in particular have a powerful influence in the whole process of political campaign communication. Speech becomes the most influential arms and source of goals achievement in the sphere of political communication. For example, each election program has specific goals and principles that have to be achieved as its major task. The final stage of every program can be determined at the very beginning of the whole process. Choosing the right strategy of communication can be decisive, and the book offers a specific way of making the right choices and forecasting their results. The book also gives a number of suggestions, as well as advice, on how to manage the communication process at the beginning of the election program, at its specific stages and offers a number of special hints about how to correct and rule the political communication process. The hypothesis offered in this book suggests usage of different communication strategies and techniques during various steps of political campaigns.

Besides, all the theories and communication strategies, as well as hypotheses, are tested. The results of the testing are rendered in the part of the book that describes practical use and real life examples of applying of the effective communication technologies in the flow of political campaigns of real candidates. The authors used data analysis and statistical methods to test the hypotheses. Thus, a reader can see that all the suggestions and theories are proved and tested in real situations, and the results are described in the part of the book that has practical and evidenced information.

The results of various communication techniques in political sphere are presented on the basis of the real election situations that took place in 2008, 2010 and even in the early 2012. Answering the question about the level of adequacy of these results, it is important to mention that all the information and the conclusions of these election programs were thoroughly edited and depicted in the chapters of the given book. Besides, a reader can monitor the changes that different techniques can make in the same real life situations and election programs in particular. The authors tried to maximize the usefulness of the information by giving it in a structured and chronological way. Thus, a reader can see the techniques that were used by the candidates as well as the corresponding results of it at the end of the election program.

Moreover, if to speak about the general value of the information given in the book, it is essential to point that all thoughts and points of view on specific situations and development of actions are provided with the thorough support of evidence. They are described as real-life examples and have a strong argumentative basis to set the readers’ minds for critical thinking. That is why it is evident that some values and factors are clear, and a reader gets to know about them in the course of reading. However, others are given in an implicit way and support the reader’s ability to critically think and make some personal suggestions. Besides, the book is written very clearly with the use of easy language that lets a reader see the real situations and become acknowledged about the things that really matter. Easy manner of rendering of the information in the book lets the reader examine the election and communication programs, detecting the methods and analyzing their results. The book Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices can also be used as a guide for planning and organizing elections and political communication programs as it touches all spheres of political communication, involving voters, the candidate, mass media, political communication behavior in general and many other important factors.

The book Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices fits into the wider literature as a universal guide. This is determined by several important factors. Firstly, the book has a clear structure and all the material is clearly structured, which makes it a suitable source during the process of study of political communication in higher educational establishments. Secondly, it can also be used as a manual for professionals that have to deal with political communication at work, and for them, this book can be very helpful. Besides, the book includes principles and practices based on real life examples, election campaigns and can be a rather interesting reading for those who are interested in the sphere of political communication. The most influential factor of this book is its practical direction and real life examples that make the basis for it. It is not a response to other author’s ideas, but it gives a very clear point of view on the problem of concepts and principles that people use in practice.

The book under analysis has a number of the most important concepts that are clearly presented and well supported in the text. Furthermore, all hypotheses have proofs in examples of real life situations and election campaigns. The material of the book is clearly and easily presented, which makes it an example of easy reading and understanding, but, at the same time, the ideas presented in it give much material for discussion and thinking. The book can be used as an interesting reading material, as well as guide or manual for political communication professionals and students.

About the author: Amanda Hall is a freelance writer at Essay Editing Service. Her hobbies are reading and traveling. Amanda tries to spend her free time with the benefit. 

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