Blendi Kajsiu
Apprehension is part and parcel of every electoral campaign. It eminates from the inability to foresee the results of these elections prior to their taking place. From this viewpoint, electoral apprehension is one of the fundamental features of democracy. Prior to all elections, there is a moment of tension-filled consternation which eminates from abandonment of or the question mark placed on the government in office. Irrespective of this, the current campaign appears to have elevated the levels of pre-election-day angst to unprecedented levels. This is also due to an unprecedented intensity of surveys dealing with election forecasts or predictions. What is strange though is that this anxiety is at its highest levels in media circles which produce forecasts of election results through the surveys and which should be the more informed circles as regards the electoral reality. What is the story behind this?
The explanation of this paradox lies in the fact that we have never witnessed a virtual campaign before in this country. First of all, the two main parties have established total control over the image and news regarding the campaign, to the point where all filming of campaign related activities is done by the two parties themselves and are then released to the television outlets. Second, the main media outlets in the country have been almost entirely transformed from agencies that cover a campaign to the actual manufacturers of the campaign; from observers to partners. The principle players in this campaign, apart from the respective party leaders are also the media -the media company owners and the hosts of the country’s main political programs. For both the main parties, the cooperation and coordination of the campaign with their respectuive media outlets, “Top Channel” (Left) and “Klan,”(Right), has assumed a far greater importance than even the lists of candidates for MP. In other words, the main television outlets in the country are not only positioned abreast the one or the other party, but they also actively participate in the production of the electoral campaign. This is why, the production of a virtual reality has almost completely wiped out the current reality, in as much as the two can be divided.
The advertising, analysis and public promotion of the surveys is one of the basic methods which indicates how the media can actively participate in manufacturing a virtual campaign. The media outlets closer to the Left, with the surveys they have run, claim that the elections will be won by the Left. The media outlets close to the Right claim that the elections will be won by the Right. It is not accidental that the entire analysis of the surveys is reduced to who will win these elections. Behind the debate on surveys lies a debate on the winners of the elections. And this is an important debate because a cardinal component of the election campaign of each party is to convince the electorate that they will win. In this context, the surveys too are designed more to produce rather than to mirror the reality.
This is precisely teh source of the uncertainity and lack of clarity, of the apprehension of the campaign. The media outlets have become the manufacturers of the virtual electoral reality to such an extent that even they find it difficult to fully believe in the credibnility of the surveys or analyses that they put out there in the public arena.
Even less so do they believe in the media coverage of the enthusiastic rallies fed to them by the parties themxselves. Teh problem is that when all media outlets are involvd in the campaign, not as observers and information outlets, but as players, as factors, then no outlet has anything to refer to to comprehend what is really going on in the election campaign. In the final account, the best the media outlets can do is to refer to a virtual reality they themselves created. Therefore, today, the media outlets are victims of the virtual reality which they produced and fron which they cannot detatch themselves. The irony of all this lies in the fact that the media outlets which are churning out explanations all day, every day, to the public, are, for their own part, entirely unclear about what is really happening with the electorate.This produces a vagueness and uncertainty, a distinct feeling of apprehension because of the enormous interests of the owners of the media companies which are also at stake.
