Online Communication Expert: The Internet Will Become More Influential Than Television in the Next Election Campaign

The online communication expert believes that this potential jump in the growth of the Internet’s influence will be due to the change of electoral legislation after transition to the mixed election system. Gurau argues that future candidates will be able to gain greater visibility only in the online space, because it is less expensive and allows you to build an election campaign in a single constituency.

“In the upcoming election campaign the Internet will play the most important role, more important than television. First, because there is some sort of liberalization of the market of attention: it will no longer be focused on Chisinau, but it will be distributed throughout Moldova. I find it interesting to see how debates will be taking place in the next election campaign, as I don’t think it reasonable to do debates that are intended only for Causeni on public television (which are a country district and a television with national coverage). On the other hand, such candidates need to be offered broadcasting time,” Artur Gurau explained.

He also mentioned another advantage of the Internet over television – lower cost for using this technology: “The share of the Internet is growing in relation to television, and here another question arises, about investment in television vs. the Internet. Now, even if this difference is not very big, the difference of budgets is huge. A lot of people are trying to get on television, which is very expensive, while online you can with a relatively small budget obtain much better results than through television,” the expert said.

According to the last Public Opinion Barometer (POB), produced by the Institute of Public Policies, television remains the most important source of information for the citizens of Moldova. The data of the POB show that 65% of citizens currently turn to television for information and only 24% use the Internet for this.