Scherbina Y. Symbolic component of visual political advertising.

The role of symbols in visual political advertising is determined in the thesis. Based on the analysis of existing approaches to understanding the essence of political advertising, proposed author's definition of notion "political advertising". As a result of consideration of the main symbols that make up the image of the political actor justified the importance of the visual component to it. By the analysis of the concepts of "sign" and "symbol" and the genesis of scientific views on their interpretation it is specified that in the context of political advertising, the term "symbol" is more appropriate to use than the term "sign". The thesis shows the importance of symbolic function of values for the forming and successful functioning of political advertising. Determined the role of gesture "smile" as part of the visual image of politician and as element of political communication. During analyzing color as symbolic component of political communication and as a component of the visual image of the political actor demonstrated the effect of symbols's color of Ukraine's most influential political parties on the political preferences of the electorate. Through the comparative analysis of visual political advertising of parliamentary election campaigns in 2012 and 2014 in Ukraine and the presidential campaign of 2014 in Ukraine in the thesis described application features of visual symbols in political advertising and the degree of their impact on the election results. The above analysis allowed to distinguish features of political advertising in Ukraine.