What is the level of importance of analyzing current public sentiment and shaping citizens' awareness through political marketing and government-controlled media in the context of economic policy pursued?
Can an economic policy conducted mainly on the basis of analyzing current public sentiment and shaping citizens' awareness through information campaigns implemented by government-controlled meanstream media and through activities carried out as part of political marketing be realistically pro-social in strategic, multi-year terms?
According to the saying "the glass is half full or half empty", the description of certain economic processes in the government-controlled media as part of the pro-government information policy is presented in a certain way according to the needs arising from the goals of political marketing. Besides, according to the proverb and the question at the same time: "what comes first the egg or the chicken?" then the following research question can be formulated: Is it first the sluggish economic growth, the downturn in the economy within the framework of business cycles that generates the demand for the development of new strategies for the country's socio-economic development, within which certain interventionist anti-crisis instruments for stimulating economic growth are applied, including, first and foremost, the instruments of soft fiscal policy and dovish monetary policy? Or is it rather the reverse order, i.e., first a specific anti-crisis and/or pro-development, expansionary, pro-investment economic policy is applied and then a recovery in the economy occurs and sometimes an economic crisis also occurs, triggered by a misapplied, specific socio-economic development strategy of the country? Or do one and the other formula of the aforementioned causal sequences also work only alternately, i.e. usually in other periods, other consecutive years, phases of business cycles? In conducting discussions and debates on this issue, there may be different opinions, different theses and claims formulated by economists representing different camps of views on specific areas of economic policy and the legitimacy of the application and effectiveness of specific, individual instruments of fiscal, sectoral, social, etc. policies conducted by the government, as well as monetary policy conducted by the central bank. An election cycle of several years may be correlated with the country's socio-economic development strategy, anti-crisis and pro-development policies planned for several years, and perhaps also with the business cycle of several years of changes in the rate of economic growth, etc. The issue of the interventionist application of anti-crisis and pro-development economic policy instruments based on the Keynsian model of stimulating the economy through new state-funded investment and/or Milton Friedman's monetarist model proved particularly relevant during the various economic crises that occurred in the past. However, when, instead of new investments, most of the funds within the state's public finances are used for current purposes, social programs with increasing levels of debt in the system of state finances then this kind of economic policy in a few years' perspective can, after a short period of recovery of economic processes, lead to an even deeper crisis. In addition, when many new government programs of subsidies, benefits, subsidies, pensions, etc. are financed with printed money without coverage the result can be an increase in inflation and then a recession in the economy. Such a situation is currently occurring in some countries resulting in a significant decline in economic growth and an increase in unemployment in 2023. The change in public sentiment, levels of spending, consumption and labor force participation may also be influenced by citizens' awareness of the situation in the economy shaped by economic news reported in the meanstream media, which may be controlled by the government pursuing a specific economic policy and a specific information policy through political marketing and pro-government propaganda in the media. The psychology of citizens' consumer behavior influencing the decisions of entrepreneurs to change the scale of their business activities may change under the influence of government information policy shaped in the media. Analysis of current public sentiment is carried out on behalf of government agencies and the Prime Minister's Office usually through surveys and analysis of the sentiment of citizens' opinions expressed on various topics on social media websites and various discussion forums, and analyzed using analytics based on ICT information technology and Big Data Analytcs.
In view of the above, I address the following question to the esteemed community of researchers and scientists:
Can economic policy conducted mainly on the basis of analysis of current public sentiment and the formation of citizens' awareness through information campaigns implemented by government-controlled meanstream media and through activities carried out as part of political marketing be realistically pro-social in strategic, long-term terms?
What is the level of importance of analyzing current public sentiment and shaping citizen awareness through political marketing and government-controlled media in the context of economic policy?
And what is your opinion on this subject?
What do you think about this topic?
Please answer,
I invite everyone to join the discussion,
Thank you very much,
Warm regards,
Dariusz Prokopowicz