Proceedings of the 3rd Arts & Humanities Conference, Barcelona

HOW MUCH INFLUENCE DOES MEDIA ON VOTING FOR POLITICAL CANDIDATES IN KOSOVO?

ARBENITA SYLEJMANI NIMANI

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to identify how much media generally influences the voting process of political candidates during the election campaign. Also, this paper aims to see what other causes might exist that fewer women compete in politics, and why these women are not getting elected? This paper has utilizes used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative method includes the analysis of the content of the newspaper’s front page, and the realization of 20 in depth interviews with journalists. While as a quantitative method a survey with questionnaires was used which were filled by 200 citizens of Pristina, Kosovo. In the last local elections held on October 22, 2017 in Kosovo, for 38 Kosovo municipalities, there were 196 men and 8 women candidates running for the local elections. But no woman managed to win the local elections. Even in the previous elections we had a woman who was voted as a mayor, but now we have none. It turns out that on the front page of newspapers men are mentioned much more than women during the election campaign. For example, the daily newspaper Koha Ditore, as the most widely read newspaper, during the election campaign; men politicians who run for mayor were quoted what they said 32 times in front page, while women who also run for mayor quoted only 2 times. Also, the other daily newspaper Zëri had cited men politicians what they promised during the election campaign 27 times while women only twice.

Keywords: women, men, media, newspaper, election, campaign, voted.

DOI: 10.20472/AHC.2018.003.004

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