Ethical Communication in Political Organizations. A Theoretical Perspective

In both electoral campaigns and outside, the parties use political communication to send messages to members, sympathizers and voters so that they can ultimately attract as much confidence and win as many votes as possible, and to gain in power, the primary goal of the political parties. Political parties in electoral campaigns make a multitude of promises, using different techniques and practices in the field of political communication, both offline and online. Through this research, we aim to find answers to some research questions: How does ethical communication take place in political organizations? Can ethical communication be the basis of a party exclusion? Moreover, a possible validation hypothesis would be the following: Ethical communication contributes to better communication of the message, mission, vision and goals of political parties and to building a campaign based on ethical principles. Even though more parties use ethical principles in their communication as part of organizational culture, part of political organizations still uses unethical practices, especially in communicating with other stakeholders. By doing a prior literature review, we have noticed that for better ethical communication, political parties have begun to use ethical principles in their political and electoral programs, and some have even developed ethical watchdogs: codes, committees or counsellors, all helping political parties to transform communication into an ethical one. The research is based on concepts and theories in the field of political ethics, political and ethical communication, and political science. Finally, ethical communication is an essential part of organizational culture.