A campanha presidencial de 2006 e as estratégias utilizadas por eleitores para o processamento das informações políticas

Abstract

This is a dissertation centered in the strategies used by voters to process political information during 2006 Brazilian presidential campaign. We seek to show a statistical model for processing information about politics built upon studies in the fields of social science, economy in the study of vote, cognitive science, communication and learning, and evidences of our field research. Our research designed combined qualitative and quantitative methods and also focus on the campaigning strategy of rhetoric employed by political parties and candidates in their propagandas exhibited in the Horário Gratuito de Propaganda Eleitoral (HGPE) (Brazilian electoral legislation gives to parties and candidates during 45 days before elections free time on television and radio. It is the aforementioned HGPE). Half of this free time distribution depends on competing parties representation in Congress.) This political propaganda was the dynamic element of our study. It synthetizes the information flows of campaigning environment. All together these methodological approaches were necessary to analyze a case study: voters from Belo Horizonte (Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais, second Brazilian economy and third state in population.). With incomplete information, knowing that campaigns rhetorics were meant to persuade, uncertain about the elections output and also uncertain about the behavior of future elected, voters needed to choose who to believe. In our study, we tried to answer some concerns in this field of knowledge: 1) How and why voters from Belo Horizonte chose to pay attention to certain issues in 2006 Brazilian presidential campaign and ignore others? 2) What variables mediated voters interactions with new information? How much did these variables could explain voters decision? 3) Were voters political priorities agenda changed during the presidential political campaign? 4) Did voters learn about politics during the presidential political campaign? 5) Did voters evaluation about government and voters parties identification change during the presidential political campaign?