Campanhas eleitorais em sociedades midiáticas: articulando e revisando conceitos

through a process of revision and articulation of concepts, this article seeks to elucidate the motives and meanings assumed in electoral campaigns as decisive moments of contemporary public democracies. the intensive use of research and marketing, centrality of mass media, professionalization of participants, and the personalization and usage of seductive and emotional publicity appeals emerge as the main characteristics of modern electoral campaigns; such aspects can only be correctly apprehended in their attributes and causal factors if special attention is given to the deep and significant changes that preceded them and brought about what we refer to here as "media societies". in such societies, sartorian video-politics take on a central role, even in the sense of the operationalization of the new form of representative government that prevails within them, in other words, that of public democracy. we conclude - thus going against the grain of those who see modernized campaigns as the work of apolitical politicians and opportunistic advertising specialists - that these new modes of political action represent just the tip of the iceberg: one that has as its basis societal, political and technological changes that run much deeper.