Poliitilise debati kultuurist Eestis: peaministrikandidaatide debattide diskursuse funktsionalistlik analüüs

Lühikokkuvõte

The article analyses the televised debates between prime ministerial candidates in order to understand, what kind of information do such debates offer to Estonian voters and how to characterise Estonian political debate culture and electoral campaign culture more generally. In order to do so, the authors apply the functional theory of political campaign discourse, with some advanced modifications incorporated that enable to answer research questions about whether televised debates focus more on policy or character, how confrontational the debates are and how much attention is devoted to governance challenges ahead in comparison to issues of the day and past deeds. The results indicate that as in other countries where the functional theory has been applied before, the debates are dominated by the policy focus and positive messages, but that character and confrontational discourse have become more used over the past 10 years. Thus, the electoral competition has become more aggressive on the discursive level – a trait characteristic to americanisation of political campaigning. Yet, the analysis also unveiled some specific characteristics of Estonian debate culture which may possibly also serve future development of the functional theory.