“No, you cannot”: The counterpropaganda poster and persuasion strategies in the Portuguese legislative and presidential elections from 2001 to 2016

Abstract

This article focuses on the counterpropaganda poster and its persuasive strategy in the Portuguese parliamentary and presidential elections from 2001 to 2016. It aims to ascertain the strategy and specificities of the posters and to perceive their persuasive potential on the electorate. The methodological approach is mixed, consisting of the content analysis, the semiotic analysis, and the online survey applied to the Lisbon residents. The results indicate that the counterpropaganda poster tends to use political opponents as protagonists, the excess of governmental period of the adversary as subject and the rule “reference to political measures of the adversaries”. Respondents evaluate the rule “placing adversarial propaganda against the facts” as the most effective. There are four statistically significant relationships.