Conceptualization of "Southern” in Political Communication (With Special Reference to Simple Majority System)

Abstract

Political Communication has originated with the origin of the world history is the idea of most of Intellectuals. With the origin of the democracy and political parties¸ Political Campaign has become more organized, systematic and a competitive process. Politicians have tried to gain public opinion going beyond advertising or marketing․ Political campaign has become a systematic process with the use of regionalism as an advantage in gaining public opinion. When analyzing election campaigns that have conducted so far, it has been confirmed that regionalism has used in political campaigns. In this research, the use of regionalism concept called “southern” by political members was studied. Further election campaigns of the candidates, which were conducted during 1947 to 1977 as simple majority system¸ were also studied using “Dinamina” and “Lankadeepa” newspapers and 40 interviewers were conducted in order to gather date. In particular, the campaign of Mr. C.P. De Silva was studied. Based on the analysis¸ this study has proven the hypothesis and strongly found that C.P De Silva has used “Southern regionalism concept” with their election campaigns. In addition to that, it has been concluded that this down south cast concept has used by him as a strategy to attract their voters. The opposite candidates have criticized the southern regionalism concept and down south cast concept but those who represented southern province have used those criticisms in a systematic way to win their election campaign․ Therefore¸ these said two concepts have been negatively compacted on opposite candidate election campaigns