Crafting effective messages and delivering them to the precise target audience is the main criterion of successful politics. We can state this assertion everywhere without hesitation. Sometimes, a message can even become the only means of achieving a specific political goal. A message can be transmitted for the purpose of warning, announcement, threat, creating confusion, expressing a position, delivering an encrypted message, or simply creating a certain excitement on the opposing side. Therefore, in an era of information overload, crafting a professional message and delivering it effectively to the necessary address is a great art. Here, one cannot simply rely on the sociability and agility of “Aunt Valida” living in the neighborhood.
These thoughts are included in the article titled “The Reign of Messages” by political scientist Asif Adil.
“Elchi” presents the article.
In the Middle Ages, people always waited with excitement for the mounted heralds who delivered any important information to the public. Hundreds of free interpretations of every message delivered to the society would later circulate among the stalls in the markets. In the modern era, every political message transmitted can also create different emotions in the public consciousness. Therefore, despite the passing of centuries, in management and politics where simple and unprofessional approaches prevail, nothing will change in a major sense regarding the current issue.
Unfortunately, in the modern era, the heads of many government agencies, and even entire sectors, still equate the content of organizing work with the public with the content of the work done by those mounted heralds in the Middle Ages. Undoubtedly, it is essential for changes to occur in terms of content in the existing field. A message is not just a communication tool. If we approach the topic a bit philosophically, we can even say that the “message” is management and politics itself.
If we pay attention to the main factors underlying the processes taking place in the world, we can say that it is no longer “ideas” but “messages” that determine the content of people’s lives, including political choices. Agree that the current trend, to put it mildly, cannot be a manifestation of development. In our recent history, we have witnessed many times that even a small message transmitted by the leader of a state like the USA through social networks can influence the course of important processes.
We also know well from history that a message publicly transmitted by a leader of a specific nation can even change the fate of that nation. The Azerbaijani people are also among those rare nations whose Leader’s message has been a cause for both living with joy and looking to the future with hope. President Ilham Aliyev’s words “Dear Shusha, you are free!” are a Victory message addressed to our national memory. This message, which awakens national pride, must also determine the rhythm and essence of our national ideology. The expression “Victory” should become the main leitmotif of the ideological activity of all fields. No biased manipulation can erase this Victory message from our national memory.
In the development of the context of messages, it should not be overlooked that as the share of the virtual world in our real life increases, the number of cases where false information is objectively evaluated as a bad deed will decrease. Thus, in virtual reality, the concept of “lie” is very easily replaced by the word “information”. As a result, the public’s reaction to the heard lie first becomes dull, then the lie becomes normalized, and gradually “lie” is removed from the list of factors that violate accepted moral norms.
Here we must consider another “interesting” socio-psychological regularity. Thus, as fields like “education” and “science” become shallower, as the content of public consciousness becomes simpler, and as books turn into mere decor adorning a room, communication between people degrades. Communication begins to be limited to the transmission of only small messages. It is no coincidence that our posts on social networks are increasingly being replaced by various emojis. For example, according to social network psychology, if relationships have moved from “thank you” to “thx”, know that you are no longer relevant. Therefore, where an education model focused on the hunt for information rather than the hunt for different thinking is preferred, the role of messages will increase even more from now on. The current situation is neither bad nor good. But we are truly living in an era where messages reign.