Стоянка Балова

The article examines and theorizes some current techniques and tools for persuasive impact in virtual space during the election campaign of the regular parliamentary elections in April 2021 and the extraordinary ones held in July of the same year. The tools “live stream”, “sponsored publication”, “remarketing function” are theoretically differentiated and practically analyzed. The possibilities and the application in the Bulgarian political sphere of the most up-to-date platform for editing and sharing short videos - Tik Tok are presented. Sustainable argumentative means that dominate the virtual environment are sought. The article is part of the project “Techniques and tools for persuasion in online communication” under the program “Young Scientists and Post-Doctoral Students”, funded by the Research Fund at the Faculty of Philosophy of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia.

This article is the result of a media monitoring conducted in the run-up to the 2019 European elections. Led by the maxim that “dialogue is at the root of democratic governance,” we decided to trace whether Bulgarian politicians used elements of hate speech during the campaign for European elections in 2019 and how was this reflected in the media.The monitoring of keywords and messages reflecting the crisis with the political speech and use of abusive vocabulary in Bulgaria was carried out during the hot phase of the election campaign of the European elections from 26th April to 25th May 2019. For this purpose, we followed the morning blocks of the three national televisions, the main political programs, the evening issues, as well as the deliberately organized debates within the BNT, BTV and Nova TV. The subject of the study was the information published in 22 electronic editions of major national daily newspapers and news agencies.The social networks “Facebook” and “Twitter” were also subject to moni- toring as they are one of the main conductors and distributors of hate speech to different groups of people and are increasingly being used as an information channel by politicians who want their messages to reach as quickly as possible a wide range of people.