The Role of Augmented Reality in Political Campaigning

Abstract

For 20 years, under the thriving climate of the dot-com era, a number of new innovative and technological tools and scenarios came into being. One of these is augmented reality (AR) technology. At the beginning period, the news about AR was frequently seen in computer magazines. New companies were formed, and new magical projects were commenced, with great interest and excitement. In fact, the real-life integration and actual application of AR into everyday areas of life, particularly in the political context, is a topic that needs to be revealed, investigated, and discussed (M. L. Silva et al., 2022).

This exploratory essay aims to contribute to the political science bookshelf, concentrating on AR technology within the political campaigning context (situational use in campaigns, experiment projects in the run up to general elections, exemplifying possible real-life use of AR in campaigning). Addressing this topic is also critical, insofar as more discussions and investigations are needed about the reality and future of AR’s political utility. AR technology has an innovative potential in terms of significant features. It holds that AR presents political contenders and campaigners with a trustworthy, attractive, and popular platform in which they may place their practical and self-advertorial campaigns in a more ‘realistic’ way. Furthermore, it has the advantage of being able to influence voter affection, engagement, and interaction throughout the election process. From the voter’s perspective, AR-endowed mobile tools (with possible digitally interactable features) conduce to a choice-making by visually informing them about the contenders’ or campaigns’ performance, promises, stands and ideational values. AR is believed to have the potential to revolutionize the political engagement process between the voter and contending parties during campaigns. However, AR technology has some challenging implications in terms of political communication during the election process concerning informational deficiency, credibility of the medium and ethical considerations regarding privacy and manipulation. The current analysis is conducted in the above-given context, setting forth the grand expectations as well as the challenges of AR technology in practical terms, with a Turkish case study of recent years. Following the introductory part, the adoption and possible utilization of AR in the context of modern political campaigns are grappled with. Briefly after that, some current experiment projects and cases are exemplified, and finally, the possible reality, future, challenges, and ethical problems of AR political campaigning are handled in the light of Turkish cases at the end.

 Keywords augmented reality, political campaigning, voter engagement, technological innovation, political communication, ethical implications, election process, interactive tools