Concepts of application of media priming and trigger in political life

Abstract

The article is aimed at consideration and study of such media tools as priming and trigger. There are many questions about the patterns of influence of the information array on society, on political life. The analysis of the researches presented in the literature reveals that the theoretical scientific interest is not active enough in Ukraine.
Direct attention is paid to the use of these tools in political life, in political advertising and so on. At the present stage, the model of priming is actively used in cognitive research, which makes it possible to track the effect of prime on cognitive reality. It is interesting and promising to study the local effects of the influence of unconscious information on the effects of awareness in political life. However, so far political science has not reached definitive conclusions about the dependence of the priming effect on political consciousness, political choice, and so on.
The article presents the definition of political priming and trigger, discusses problematic issues and settings. Special attention is paid to the distinction between the concepts of "priming" and "priming effect". It is determined that the effect of priming is active in political life, in particular, in political advertising. Virtually every political actor wants to influence the process of activating the voter's memory. The theory of political media priming focuses on how an individual perceives political information received from the media.
An important additional element of the priming process is the use of triggers. The need for triggers is due to the need to analyze events that are not directly related to politics, but can be interpreted in a political way.