Alternative Political Campaigns: An Analysis of Humor as a Means of Communication

Abstract

This thesis examines the communication of the Danish political party Liberal Alliance (LA) based on their political campaigns. The thesis focuses on the party’s use of humor as a means of communication as well as how this supports the political messages of LA.

The thesis uses discourse analysis to analyze the political campaigns of LA. To do this, it draws on a combination of document analysis, an observational study, and several interviews including two focus groups consisting of a total of eight voters. The thesis takes its theoretical departure in the discourse analysis as developed by Ernesto Laclau & Chantal Mouffe thereby including theoretical concepts such as ‘equivalence chains’ and ‘antagonism’. In addition, the paper includes the theoretical framework of Sara Ahmed (2010) and her concepts of ‘happy objects’ and ‘killjoys’ as well as Nick Butler’s (2015) distinction between three approaches to humor in communication.

The analysis is divided into three parts. First, the paper seeks to identify various discourses within the political campaigns of LA throughout the past year. For that purpose, it analyses the ‘empty signifiers’ and ‘signifiers’ within the ‘equivalence chains’ to inform the reader about the regularity of the discourses. The analysis identifies two discourses: ‘responsibility’ and ‘freedom’. These discourses gain their meaning from the party’s antagonistic relationship to the political party in government, Socialdemokratiet. The second part of the analysis concerns the use of humor in LA’s political campaigns as well as how this gives meaning to and creates a link between the two discourses identified in the first part of the analysis. Moreover, it illustrates how the party uses humor in their campaigns to ridicule and mock political opponents, although such humor demands a great deal of political knowledge among potential voters due to the use of many political references. Finally, the third part of the analysis investigates how potential voters interpret the use of humor in LAs’ political campaigns. It was found that the political orientation and knowledge of potential voters played an important role in establishing what they thought to be funny including why they thought so.

The thesis concludes that the use of humor has played a big role in the political campaigns of LA within the past year, including in supporting the discourses expressed in these campaigns. However, potential voters are affected differently due to their political knowledge and orientation.