Haaslava valla infoleht 2009. aasta valimiste ajal

Date

2011

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Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the local newsletter, it’s content and local peoples thoughts about this, during the local government elections of 2009. The outcome of this analysis brigns our problems what arise in a little municipality with the free movement of information and the newsletter’s role during the campaign. The object under analysis is the newletter Teataja in Haaslava municipality. The theoretical part gives an overview of campaing and media effect theories, introduction to the municipality of Haaslava and it’s newsletter, what is the only local media that is available the same way for alllocal people. The thesis analyses the both parts of the campaing, therefore several analysis intruments are used. Content analysis is used to analyse the newsletter’s articles between January and September on year 2009; the author’s, who was the newsletter’s editor on that time, work on gathering the material during the elections is analysed through the results of participatory observation; discourse analysis is used on the election candidates campaigns published in the newsletter, and local residents were interviewed in-depth. Analysing the research results the author can conclude that the newspaper has an important role in informing the community during and between elections. Analysing the newsletters content one can say that the newspaper has a wide variety of subjects and co-authors, what indicates versatile recognition of local life. The analysis also brings out the fact that not every candidate gets equally reflected in the newsletter. For some, the newsletter access was prevented by local administration. Newsletter’s content analysis points out the tendency how the coverage of the elections of a small sized municipality is actually the refelection of the ruling party. Local residents’ analysis showed that the newsletter, as a source of the local information, is important. Depending on the reader’s age, life and work experience the subjects and articles of interest are different. The conflict for the author is how the readers see newsletter versus the editors i.e. the local administration. The interviews showed that the readers would like to read stories about successful local people and entrepreneurs. The local administration on the other hand sees that the newsletter’s function is to share the information about local administration, its units and the council’s work. Also, the municipality's management treat the newsletter as a part of the municipality’s website. Above mentioned understanding and the reasoning of the municipality’s management points out that the use of the newsletter is important for campaigns. The author refers in the theoretical part that the party’s capability to use the most widely spread media channels will play the vital role. In this case this means the access to the local newsletter, which is available for all local residents. The municipality managent’s will to let others into the newsletter will be the testing ground for democracy.

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