Advancement of information and telecommunication is leading to information sharing. Even congressmen increasingly need to get out of past authoritarian behaviors and inform the local residents and the people of his assembly activities. This is necessa...
Advancement of information and telecommunication is leading to information sharing. Even congressmen increasingly need to get out of past authoritarian behaviors and inform the local residents and the people of his assembly activities. This is necessary for the next election by the nature of elected congressman, and at the same time, it is his duty to get the local residents to be informed of his assembly activities.
This study was intended to identify the actual state of publicity of congressmen's assembly activities and to suggest improvement options. In the study, congressmen's aides were surveyed with the 24 question questionnaire, from October 1 to 15, 2004.
A total of 109 aides were responded in the survey, among which 8 responses incomplete were excluded md so 101 responses in total were finally analyzed. Among the respondents, more than a half were males in their 30's and graduated from 4 yew university. The respondents had less than 1 year of working experience on the average and mostly Yeolrinwooridang-belonged congressmen's aides. The congressmen whom the respondents were assisting were mostly belonged to Yeolrinwooridang, first elected congressmen based on their local district, and in their 50's.
For medium, the respondents contacted newspaper, internet, local residents, and TV in that order, and thought mass media such as TV and newspapers as the most important communication means.
By publicity medium, to a question about the usefulness of publicity method of assembly activities, the aides responded that the press media and internet were more useful than local residents relations activities in informing of policies and political inclination, and in making a slander or an incitement against a certain politician. While, local residents relations activities were useful in enhancing communication with voters and gathering political promotion funds, the aides responded.
Almost half of congressmen were doing publicity depending on the situation, not in a systematic and regular way, and the reason was the lack of publicity-specialized human resources and financial resources.
Congressmen's assembly activities were mostly taken care by aides or secretaries, and publicity by publicist staff accounted for just 2% of the entire, which demonstrates that publicity of congressman's assembly activities is still in the toddling phase.
Budget for assembly activities publicity was on the average 10,960,000 won a year, and the content congressmen wanted to advertise included inquiries and inspection into state affairs, collection of residents' opinions, enactment and amendment of laws, budget deliberation, and improvement efforts in administrational service.
Problems in assembly activities publicity were short budget and poor organization and specialized human resources, as the most decisive factors.
As improvement measures for assembly activities publicity, active and fair reporting attitude of the press was pointed out as the most needed thing, and the next, expansion of budget and recruitment of specialized human resources were also addressed to be necessary.
To make the publicity of congressmen's assembly activities efficient, the following things were suggested: 1) Congressmen themselves change their recognition on publicity and have a public relations mind. Time and cost of publicity are different to very wide range, depending on how much importance the congressmen put to publicity.
2) Low cost high efficiency publicity are to be used maximally. Internet is a very good medium to reform the past political structure of high cost low efficiency. It is quite more economical than the existing press publicity or residents contact publicity methods. Internet is very useful in routine fund raising through ARS on the homepages and internet banking on cellular phone, especially in election as the window of recruiting volunteers, plus as the room to open the election expenses to the public, all which are contributable to political development.
3) Desirable relations with the press is to be settled, With the press, it needs to stick to "not close, nor distant" relationship and break away the close relationship between politic진 and press circle. Rather than publicity through secret deal with news men or human network, congressmen should do assembly activities to make their ability fully recognized and stately distribute press release, so that such a custom that the press objectively do collection of news materials can be settled.