Political Advertising and Propaganda Within Spiral of Silence-Agenda Setting Theory

Political communication is an interactive process by which politicians transmit information and political discourse to voters and receive feedback through media. This communication process is a two way process of communication between politicians and voters by which, on the one hand, politicians transmit their thoughts and wills to voters, and on the other hand voters communicate their opinions to politicians, after interpreting, in different ways, the messages that they received. The key objective of political communication is to persuade or influence and cause voters, who are the target audience, to vote for a particular party by convincing them. In order to ensure the smooth operation of political communication processes it is essential that the parliament, government, political parties, non-governmental organizations, environmentalist groups and pressure groups also actually take part in this process The decisive and transformative power of mass media and advertising phenomenon on the political systems has grown to become more and more influential in the recent years. The use of information considerably increases in line with the increase in the use of propaganda. No doubL this information age has turned the world into ＂a universal village＂. On the one hand, the concentration in media and on the other hand rapid developments in Internet technologies expose societies to the bombardment of messages. Being exposed to or bombarded by numerous varieties of messages in their daily lives lead to the creation of variabilities and instabilities in individual＇s behaviors. Accordingly, political organizations while trying to convey messages to masses through political communication and advertising have to deliver systematic, comprehensible and influential messages by taking the advantage of visualization as much as possible.

Social bots and mass media manipulated public opinion through dual opinion climate

Opinion dynamics models based on the multi-agent method commonly assume that interactions between individuals in a social network result in changes in their opinions.However,formation of public opinion in a social network is a macroscopic statistical result of opinions of all expressive individuals(corresponding to silent individuals).Therefore,public opinion can be manipulated not only by changing individuals'opinions,but also by changing their states of expression(or silence)which can be interpreted as the phenomenon"spiral of silence"in social psychology.Based on this theory,we establish a"dual opinion climate"model,involving social bots and mass media through a multi-agent method,to describe mechanism for manipulation of public opinion in social networks.We find that both social bots(as local variables)and mass media(as a global variable)can interfere with the formation of public opinion,cause a significant superposition effect when they act in the same direction,and inhibit each other when they act in opposite directions.

The straitjacket at workplace： Mobbing

Mobbing has been defined as a chronic asymmetric pattern of power relations and a consequent conflict transformed into a systematic discrimination or mistreatment at workplace which is expressed through unethical or aggressive communication （Leynman, 1996）. Mobbing occurs when an employee in the workplace is steadily subjected to aggressive behavior from more than one colleague or supervisor over a period of time, in a situation where the target finds it difficult to defend him/herself to escape this dire situation. Such a long term incivility tends to stigmatize the mobbed victim and may cause severe psychological trauma since （s）he is metaphorically in a straitjacket. In this double-bind and double-squeeze condition where （s）he can neither get out of the situation nor endure the ordeal, a positive outcome is unlikely. How do we differentiate mobbing from conflict in organizations and how are disputes converted into mobbing behavior, and if one may even do research on mobbing in a culture of＂organizational silence＂ and ＂obedience/submission＂ in a developing country will be the first theoretical research question. Whether systemic silence as a collective level phenomenon is not only an obstacle to healthy organizational communication and relationships, but also a serious barrier to development, participation and learning from malpractices is another relevant question. Most researches investigating the background of mobbing are based on either experiences of targets as victims or the critical cases including the perpetrators as mobber; Therefore, the findings are often at individual level and subjective. They are often ＂ex post facto＂ analysis of psychological dimensions （e.g., personality characteristics of mostly of mobbed victims and rarely of mobbers） or legal dimensions. There are few ＂ex ante＂ analyses of organizational culture dimensions so that preventive measures may be taken prior to any serious mobbing case is reported. This paper＇s objective is to approach mobbing as a function of group conflict and rumor that is uncontrolled for a long time. By exploring the background of mobbing in ten companies from service sector in IstanbuI-Turkey, this view is assessed. The findings confirmed that mobbing is a function of relational conflict and gossip particularly in companies with high positional power distance and highly centralized decision-making where high power imbalance between supervisors and subordinates are salient. Such organizations seem to be more conducive to concealed mobbing and survival than to development and participation of employees as ＂modus operandi＂.