LU 4 - Political Communication Flashcards
Explain political communication.
What is political communication? Scholars have advanced a number of helpful definitions, and the present view builds on contemporary perspectives. Political communication is the process by which language and symbols, employed by leaders, media, or citizens, exert intended or unintended effects on the political cognitions, attitudes, or behaviors of individuals or on outcomes that bear on the public policy of a nation, state, or community. There are several aspects of the definition.
First, the definition emphasizes that political communication is a process. It does not occur with the flick of a wrist, or flipping of a lever. A president can propose a particular initiative, but to turn an idea into a credible bill and a bill into a law, the chief executive must persuade Congress, which involves multiple influence attempts on legislators, mediated by countless communiqués with the public. A journalistic expose of corporate malfeasance that produces a policy change does not magically exert an impact. Instead, it unleashes a variety of forces, including changes in public opinion, which, through poll results, inducnce policymakers, who, themselves, must consider the most effective and politically advantageous ways of altering policy.
Second, political communication calls centrally on words and symbols. Political communication can be viewed as “the practice of using language to move people to think and act in ways that they might not otherwise think and act”. Leaders harness the power of language-colorful phrases, apt metaphors, syntax, and rhythm-to mold attitudes and move citizens. Presidents, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have aroused the imagination of Americans, using speech to captivate, language to mobilize, and metaphors to galvanize support for their policies. FDR’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” words heard as families huddled together listening to radio sets during the cold, despairing days of the 1930s Depression, offered up hope and Optimism, activating the collective confidence of a country. Ronald Reagan spoke tender words to the nation’s school children after they watched, in tearful disbelief, as the space shuttle Challenger exploded during take-off in January, 1986. “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted. It belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them,” Reagan said, harnessing the best of presidential rhetoric to help a grieving nation cope with tragedy, using words to soothe and language to transform grief into hope for the future.
Barack Obama aroused passions with his eloquent rhetoric. Speaking at the 2004 Democratic convention, four years before he ran for president, Obama used a series of verbal parallelisms as he called on a benevolent rhetoric of unification, wamin g “those who are preparing to divide us” that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a Black America and White America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”
The language of political communication is laden with symbols. A symbol is a form of language in which one entity represents an idea or concept, conveying rich psychological and cultural meaning. Symbols include words like justice, freedom, and equality and non-verbal signs like the flag or a religious cross. In America, elected officials frequently invoke the American flag, the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, Jefferson, freedom, liberty, and equality. (And let’s not forget the Tea Party, the colonial protest-inspired name for a conservative political party.)
Political communication involves the transfer of symbolic meanings, the communication of highly charged emotional words that can arouse, agitate, and disgust. Words convey different meanings to different groups. To conservatives, freedom conjures up immigrants’ dreams of owning a business in the USA or practicing religion as they see fit To liberals and minorities, freedom calls to mind the opportunity to display one’s own creed publicly without fear of prejudice. It also conveys empowerment, the way a previously victimized group can throw off the shackles of oppression, openly expressing its own cherished values. Political messages inevitably call up different meanings to different groups, an inevitable source of friction and conflict in democratic societies.
Third, there are three main players in political communication. The first is the broad group of leaders and influence agents. These are the “elites” of politics, who include elected officials, as well as the plethora of Washington, DC. opinion leaders spanning members of the president’s Cabinet, policy experts, and Chieftains in the vast government bureaucracy.
The next player or players are the media. This increasingly diverse group includes the conventional news media, bloggers, people armed with a cell phone camera and an attitude who call themselves citizen-j ournalists, partisan promulgators of websites, and the gaggle of political entertainment hosts and comedians.
The centerpiece of political communication is the citizenry. Citizens are a cacophonous combination of the politically engaged and opinionated, along with the indifferent and woefully ignorant. The citizenry includes those who actively partake in civic groupsfor example, pro-Life and pro-Choice; evangelical Christian and unabashedly atheist; Wall Street investors and blue collar unions, as well as proand anti-fur, vegan, and virulently pro-red-meat.
Fourth, political communication effects can be intended or unintended. A presidential speech is intended to influence, and a flurry of favorable emails and text messages received at the White House after the speech are examples of intended effects. A negative political advertisement is designed to cause voters to evaluate the targeted candidate more unfavorably, and declines in the attacked candidate’s poll ratings illustrate an intended communication effect. But not all political communication effects are intended by the communicator.
In some instances, communicators do not deliberately set out to change an individual ’3 attitudes. When a sexual scandal breathlessly discussed in the news media stirs people up and leads them to tell pollsters they believe the offending politician should resign, the news has exerted an impact, but not one that the news media intended. Journalists are not interested in changing people’s attitudes toward the political figure so much as they are hoping to expose an aspect of a politician’s behavior that the public official would rather you not see. Reporters believe that it is their professional responsibility to offer a critical perspective on the men and women who wield great power. Their other motives are more personal and self-interested: to grab the big headline, gain the byline or on-air credit, or, in the case of network executives, broadcast a story that attracts viewers and boosts ratings. But their goal is not to persuade the public to change its attitude in a partisan direction.
In still other cases, a story covered on television or streamed across the Internet can exert. an impact that was neither intended nor anticipated. During the height of the 2012 campaign, a secretly recorded video of remarks Mitt Romney made at a fundraiser surfaced. Romney’s comments that 47 percent of Americans do not pay income taxes, “believe that they are victims,” and do not take “personal responsibility” for their lives sparked controversy and reduced his credibility with voters. Neither the mainstream media that covered the story (nor Romney, of course) intended to transmit a message that would taint Romney’s image. But in the 24/7, no-holds-barred media environment, communications like these can exert a slew of effects that few anticipated.
In America, political communication casts a wide net. Political communication includes messages to influence, such as presidential speeches, campaign debates, and public campaigns designed to iniiuence attitudes on topics ranging from health care to partialbirth abortion. This includes stealth campaigns, designed to influence attitudes by calling on the armamentarium of contemporary political marketing research (Manheim, 201 l). A variety of political action committees, funded by billionaires, developed attack ads in the 2012 presidential campaign that eluded a paper trail. Donations were passed through tax-exempt advocacy groups that could legally shield the names of the donors Who signed the checks. The public did not know who funded the campaign, violating an ethos of transparency.
Political communication also encompasses news, relayed on television and via the Internet. It also includes Rush Limbaugh, Homer Simpson, Family Guy’s Peter Griffin, South Park’s Stan Marsh, Michael Moore, political talk radio, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and other media content that touches on what people think and feel about P01itics (e. g., Davis & Owen, 1998). Political communication Involves more than media. It includes old-fashioned dinner table political arguments, trymg to persuade a friend to join a campus protest, and knocking on doors on wintry mornings to gather Signatures for a state-wide petition.
A fifth aspect of political communication is that effects occur on a variety of levels. What makes political communication so significant is its breadth. Political media exert influence on the micro level, affecting individuals’ thoughts, candidate assessments, feelings, attitudes, and behavior. The first 2012 presidential debate, in which Obama seemed lethargic, exerted a microlevel impact if it led an undecided voter to rethink her support for Obama. Political communication also works on the macro level, exerting broad-based effects on public opinion, institutional change or retrenchment, political activism, and public policy. For example, The Washington Post’s groundbreaking coverage of President Nixon’s unethical actions during the Watergate scandal of the early 19705 led to macro-level institutional changes, such as the appointment of a special prosecutor and a series of Senate hearings, which ultimately paved the way for Nixon’s reagnation.
Even broader macro-level effects occur on the cultural level. Scholar Michael Schudson (1995) notes that “the news constructs a symbolic world that has a kind of priority, a certification of legitimate importance . . . When the media offer the public an item of news, they confer upon it public legitimacy. They bring it into a common public forum where it can be discussed by a general audience”.
Name the 5 core features of contemporary political communication.
> Political communication involves 3 key players: leaders, media and the public
> Politics is played on a media platform.
> Technology is a centerpiece of political communication.
> Political communication has gone global
> Political communication can be a force of good and evil.
Explain contemporary political communication feature political communication has three key players: leaders, media and the public.
There are different perspectives on which of these groups exerts the greatest impact. Scholars argue that under different circumstances, leaders, media, and the public have the strongest influence.
One View is that elite leaders exert a preeminent impact on opinions and policy. After the tragedy of September 11, the nation looked to the president, as it often does in national crises. Addressing a joint session of Congress and the nation on September 20, 2001, George W. Bush gave a moving speech, in which he spoke of “a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom” and articulated the threats the nation faced from terrorist groups, while taking pains to show respect for Muslims in America and throughout the world Through his rhetoric and actions, Bush rallied the country around a new and unsettling war on terror.
More than a year later, the same president was under siege, accused of using the communicative powers of his office to launch an unnecessary war on Iraq. As two scholars noted, critics advanced “the serious and plausible suggestion that the Bush administration ‘manipulated’ the country into war [with Iraq] through a variety of techniques: controlled leaks to the press, exploitation of j ingoistic sentiment, cherry-picking of vital intelligence, persecution or ostracism of war critics, and a campaign of image management and stagecraft designed to reinforce the government’s daily message at the expense of a full public dialogue on the question of war”.
Not. all political observers would agree with this evaluation of Bush’s actions. But there is little doubt that he aggressively used political language, news management, and public appearances to advance his View that the Iraq war was essential to protect us. security. In this way, Bush showed how a political leader can use communicative powers to dominate the national agenda.
A second View places the onus on media. It emphasizes that the media-~both news and entertainment-exert a preeminent effect on the conduct of politics. This viewpoint notes that the news media’s choice of issues, and the way they frame the news, caninfluence leaders and the public. For example, some observers argue that the news media-frequently called the press-paved the way for Barack Obama’s nomination back in 2008. Obama was attractive and charismatic, qualities that can captivate a television audience. He was initially an underdog. The press likes to push underdogs who challenge the status quo. As he started to gain in the polls and win primaries, he gained political ground, creating a bandwagon effect, producing even more favorable press coverage. Obama also received substantially more positive press coverage than his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. Some scholars maintained that the press gave Obama better coverage because he powered together an unstoppable political juggernaut that captivated so many young voters, while others pointed to suggestive evidence of press bias on the part of j ournalists. In either case, the favorable press coverage netted him momentum, a key commodity in primary campaigns that helps to propel candidates to victory.
A third viewpoint argues that the public calls the shots. In order to get elected and reelected, leaders have to be responsive to their constituents, implementing polices that the average voter supports. For example, in the 2012 election, the state of the economy, with the unrelentingly high unemployment rate, was the most important issue to the public. The media made this a preeminent part of its coverage. It formed the centerpiece of Republican attacks against Obama and provided the backdmp of Obama’s strategy of blaming Republicans for blocking his legislative proposals to improve the nation’s economy. The electorate-or voting public-helped push the issue to the front-and-center for both candidates and media.
In most political contexts, all three influence agents-elites, media, and public-interact in complex ways. The drama of political communication involves a trifecta: leaders, media, and citizens symbolically jousting among themselves and framing problems in different ways. The key, of course, is power: Leaders invoke language, symbols, and the trappings of their offices to gain and maintain power. Media relay, interpret, challenge, or reinforce the use of power. Citizens, some more than others, the richer and better-connected more than the poorer and less-educated, become involved in the political process, wielding modem communications to advocate for causes and candidates, sometimes wisely, other times foolishly.
Explain contemporary political communication feature politics is played on a media platform.
“American politics is almost exclusively a mediated experience,” political communication scholar Shanto Iyengar notes. “The role of the citizen has evolved from occasional foot soldier and activist to spectator”.
Jesper Strombéick and Lynda L. Kaid take a complementary View, noting that the mass media mediate between citizens on the one hand and the institutions of government on the other. But the media are not neutral, bland mediators. They apply their own judgments and rules, in this way transforming politics. In the United States, as well as other western democracies, media have become such a centerpiece of governing that politicians adapt their behavior to the media’s criteria of newsworthiness. Journalists and a gaggle of political media entertainers determine who gains access to the electorate. As a result, candidates are exquisitelyconscious of styles and messages that make for good television and fiamboyantYouTube videos.
But even this view understates the role communication plays in contemporary politics. Not only do media intercede between politicians and public; they are the playing field on which politics occurs. Jeffrey P. Jones thoughtfully points out that:
Media are our primary points of access to politics . . . and the place for political encounters that precede, shape, and at times determine further bodily participation (if it is to happen at all). Furthermore, those encounters occur through a panoply of media forms (books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, billboards and advertisements, direct mail, radio, film, emails, websites, blogs, social networking sites, and, of course, cable and network television) and across numerous fictional and nonfictional genres . . . Such encounters do much more than provide “information” about political ideas, issues, events, or players. They constitute our mental maps of the political and social world outside our direct experience.
Notice that Jones refers to a variety of media in discussing political communication effects. The media are plural. Pundits typically refer to the media as an all-powerful singular term, invoking the powerful aura of other monolithic entities like the Vatican or the Establishment. They utter the phrase in a dry, stentorian tone: The Media; or they speak it derisively, as when they talk about The Liberal (or Capitalist) Media. In fact, there are many media-for example, national print media, local newspapers, talk radio, television networks, and an array of politically diverse blogs.
Genres like blogs, websites, and political television talk shows on cable TV are full of opinion. They are not designed to offer an impartial rendition of the day’s events. Some blogs and opinionated commentaries are really insightful, offering thoughtful opinions about politics. In other cases, online writers are ideological provocateurs, hurling invectives, revealing salacious information to discredit opponents, and combining “a relatively new form of weaponized journalism, politicking and public policy into a potent mix”.
In today’s day and age, it can be difficult to differentiate between opinionated news outlets and genres that transmit straight news. Yet many television, radio, and newspaper news organizations, while imperfect, typically attempt to offer a reasonable facsimile of the world. Joumalists and news media gatekeepers select and transmit news stories; their decisions are guided by a host of professional, organizational, and economic factors. To paraphrase the late publisher of The New York Times.
you’re not buying news when you buy a newspaper. “You’re buying judgment”. This is an important point. When you get political information from Facebook posts, blogs, or snippets from Yahoo! News, you can’t be sure about the objectivity or fairness of what you have read. The information is up-to-date, but it may be partisan or untrue. News that is gathered by a reputable news organization is filtered through the lenses of professional journalists; the best political reporting is not only accurate, but also provides a broader perspective that illuminates the political world.
Explain contemporary political communication feature technology is a centerpiece of political communication.
Although technology has always played a role in politics, it wields more influence today than ever before. There is a greater volume of political information, more instant communication between leaders and followers, and more opportunities for voters to exert control over the message.
The technological revolution has had two major intiuences. It has vastly increased the supply of information, with conventional media, websites galore, blogs, and politically oriented social media posts offering a plethora of facts. and opinions about politics. Technology has also greatly expanded choices, with a wealth of sources and channels available to people.
The days when television networks dominated the political campaign are gone-they’re history. Nowadays, candidates have a major presence on social networking sites. During the 2012 campaign, Obama turned to the social news site Reddit to shore up support among young voters. “Hi, I’m Barack Obama, president of the ”United States. Ask me anything,” he said, using the informal argot of social media.
Campaign attack ads are immediately posted on YouTube, attracting millions of hits. Twitter has fast become the province of both the political intelligentsia and the populace. During the 2011 crisis over the raising of the national debt ceiling, Obama asked citizens to tweet their representatives to encourage legislators to support a bipartisan compromise. Palin says she regularly tweets; it’s the way she rolls, she boasts. Within about the first seven minutes of the first 2012 presidential debate, negative reviews of President Obamas performance from political professionais and journalists flooded onto Twitter, causing an Obama campaign manager to declare “We are getting bombed on Twitter”.
In. the same fashion, contemporary technologies have made it easier for citizens to communicate with leaders. With close to 50 percent of Americans reporting they get most of their news from the Internet, there is little question that the Internet has increased opportunities for access between voters and their elected representatives.
Political information that would be formerly kept inside the recesses of government is now pub-lie, porous, and (for better and sometimes for worse) out there for citizens to peruse. Thus, WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization dedicated to releasing classified documents, revealed classified information on the conduct of war and foreign diplo~ macy, obtained from news leaks and whistleblowers. Did this enhance the public ’3 right to know or impede the ability of diplomats to conduct sensitive conversations in private? These are complicated issues, to be discussed later in this book.
There are other cases in which information that years ago would have been kept behind closed doors slips into public view As mentioned earlier, the secretly recorded video of Romney’s remarks that 47 percent of Americans do not take “personal responsibility” for their lives surfaced during the campaign, sparking controversy. Years ago, these remarks would never have been publicized. But today anything said anywhere can be used against a candidate, a development that raises important issues for political communication.
Politics, for better or worse, is played out on a mediated, technological stage. But what are media? Media are technologies that intercede between the communicator and message recipient, filtering the message through the selection of words, images, and formats. Newspapers, magazines, and television make up conventional, sometimes called mainstream, media. They convey a message to the audience, ignoring, selecting, shaping, and framing information based on a host of factors. Is the Internet media? It is a question frequently asked, but one that is difficult to crisply answer.
The Internet is not a medium per se, but a series of interlocking digital networks that convey information that has been interpreted and mediated by traditional media like newspapers and television, as well as other outlets, like blogs and websites. The Internet is a technological platform that facilitates direct interaction between the communicator and message receivers. It includes sites maintained by the mainstream media, as well as online news organizations, blogs and partisan fare. And then there are social media-“for example, the ubiquitous Twitter and Facebook. Some observers say that all these new technologies constitute the new middlemen. Rather than simply facilitating mediation, whereby media come between sources and receivers, they produce “disintennediation”, whereby people circumvent media and communicate directly with leaders.
The Internet (and social media) yanked power from the news media and gave it to people, enabling ordinary people to participate more actively in public dialogue. This is all to the good when it connects citizens with leaders in civilized dialogues or allows people to communicate about politics with others via Facebook and Twitter. The lntemet’s role in communication is more freighted and controversial when partisans launch vicious, prejudiced invectives against public officials or other users with whom they disagree, shielded by the privacy of a PC in a living room or a cell phone in a coffeehouse.
Explain contemporary political communication feature that the political communication has gone global.
To be sure, peeple communicate about politics in all societies, whether democratic of autocratic, technologically primitive or advanced. What is noteworthy is the ways that the growth of infermatien teehnolegies and acceptance of U S ~sty1e marketing strategies have diffused across the globe They have led to remarkable similaxities m political campaign strategies and the public 3 experience of elections 111 different countries. Western democracies new share an emphasis be personalized, candidate-focused campaigns, reliance. on political consultants, and tailoring 0f everyday activities to m the requirements of news media and social networking technologies, For example, Europe’s politicians include a cadre of stylish, physically attractive communicators who make pleasant impressions on teievision. This contrasts with the more oafish (though commanding) leaders of the past. (One wonders how the verbally gifted, but physically rotund, Winston Churchill, would have fared if he had delivered his World War II “we Will never surrender” speech on television.)
Yet even in countries where democratic tendencies are overshadowed by state-sponsored coercion, mediated politics exerts an outsized impact. In Russia, opinion polling plays an integral role in governing. So does television. Vladimir Putin shored up his campaign for the Russian presidency by appearing on television in scuba gear, diving for ancient artifacts, looking very much the macho leader.
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the globalization of political communication technology is that any individual with the technical knowledge to create a Facebook page or distribute an image on YouTube can influence politics. The most dramatic example occurred in 2011 in Cairo, Egypt, or, more precisely, in cyberspace, when a Google executive, Wael Ghonim, became frustrated with his country’s abusive autocracy. Harnessing his marketing skills, he created a Facebook group that attracted hundreds of thousands of Facebook users, helping them to channel their frustration into a series of protests that toppled the Egyptian government in the winter of 2011. “If you want to free a society, just give people Internet access,” Ghonim said.
But let’s be carelirl here. Technology has always been heralded as the second coming, but its effects are laced with complexity. Social networking undoubtedly played a role in the 2011 Egyptian rebellion, but whether it created new dissidents, simply preached to the choir, or primarily reacted to, rather than precipitated, the protests remains unclear. Moreover, the technology-driven rebellion failed to uproot the powerful elite networks that dominated Egypt for decades. More than a year after the revolt, Egypt’s new rulers reinstituted martial law, its Supreme Court dissolved Parliament, and the Egyptian president assumed sweeping new powers, precipitating a revolt in 2013. Technology, harnessed by governments in Iran and China, can be used to repress, as well as create, political protest.
Technology can also facilitate global conversations that never could have occurred in earlier times. This can be beneficial when the conversations bring people together or catalyze ideas. But when the two parties that converse are at loggerheads or at war, technology reinforces and exacerbates tensions. In November, 2012, after Israel killed the military leader of its enemy, Hamas, the extremist Islamic group that rules the Gaza strip (an action that provoked Hamas’s launching of missiles into the heart of Israel), an Israeli Twitter feed transmitted vivid rhetorical arguments to defend its action. The posts displayed images of missiles falling in the direction of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, with the caption: “What would you do? Share this if you agree that Israel has the right to self-defense.” Israel ’8 military postings reached Hamas’s military division, which aggressively responded that, “Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are,” adding that “you opened hell gates on yourselves”. Alas, social networking cannot solve intractable problems; it only offers a new place where arguments and biased perceptions occur.
Explain contemporary political communication feature political communication can be a force of good and evil
Like all weapons of influence, political communication can be harnessed for positive and negative purposes.. Charisma can move people to compassion and hope, as those who heard speeches by Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Nelson Mandela would readily attest. It can also malevolently access the spectral figments of human prejudice, playing on dark fantasies of gloom. Speeches of Hitler in the 19308 and Osama bin Laden in our own century exemplify the hideous uses of charisma.
Issues get murky. Manipulation can be morally odious when it exploits citizens’ emotions, but a positive force when it moves individuals to band together for the collective good. Favor-giving and quid pro quos raise eyebrows when used by wealthy lobbyists currying influence with legislators. But they may be morally justiiied when implemented by political leaders seeking sweeping ethical changes, as when Lincoln openly traded favors with Congressmen to pass the iconic Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery. In a similar fashion, negative advertising can dispirit citizens, yet offerr challengers opportunities to unseat incumbents.
The Internet can be empowering and offer mechanisms for ordinary people to make their voices known. For example, in January, 2012, social media Hexed its viral muscle as people deluged Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook to protest a decision by America’s leading breast cancer advocacy group to end most of its financing of Planned Parenthood. A day after the protest was widely reported, the organization reversed its decision and restored its partnership with Planned Parenthood. At the same time, social media and the Internet have their down sides, offering an outlet for vicious sexist posts against female candidates like Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, and racist drivel directed at the nation’s iirst Black president.
Explain the expanding field of political communication in the era of continuous connectivity
In less than the working lifetime of most individuals, in just a few decades, political communication as practiced and as a iield of scholarly investigation has been transformed by a new era of continuous connectivity. The transformation began with broadcasting in the last decades of the 20th century, when advances in cable and satellite technology brought forth more choices for information and entertainment from around the world than ever before. New global 24/7 news channels. such as Al-Jazeera, built new transnational audiences. By the turn of the 21st century, with the explosive growth of the Internet and the widespread use of mobile phones and texting, the information environment had transformed into a global and local marketplace rich with opportunity.
In the first decade of the let century, many stories became world news because citizens were empowered by new social media such as Facebook and Twitter or their local variants. Even in closed societies where access to information is routinely controlled and denied by authorities, connectivity means that many local protests and crackdowns can become global news. Today, individuals, organizations, campaigns and social movements, and governments around the world are all affected by the opportunities and issues presented by the new media environment.
Although everything appears to have been profoundly changed by the new norm of ubiquitous Wireless connectivity, the questions and concerns that lie at the heart of the interdisciplinary field of political communication remain the same. Questions about access and control, choice and contents, and impacts on learning, opinions and behavior have been addressed in a number of national and international contexts. Today’s scholars and practitioners are as just driven by an interest in understanding the mechanisms of power and influence as their predecessors.
Precisely these issues were at the heart of the phone hacking scandal in the UK in early 2011 that rocked the empire of the world’s most powerful media magnate, Rupert Murdoch. The scandal raised internationally resonant and profoundly important ethical questions for journalists, criminal investigators, politicians and governments about their work and relationships. Professor Richard Tait, Director of the Center for Journalism at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, whose experience includes serving as a BBC governor and trustee, and an editor, producer and editor-in-chief at ITN, Channel 4 news, and BBC television, provides the latest insights on the implications of this scandal for journalism and politics and the field of political communication research in this volume.
The SAGE Handbook of Political Communication is a timely resource for students, scholars and practitioners around the world. Leading experts from more than a dozen countries have contributed to this volume. The volume stands apart from most handbooks in which summaries of the literature are the main focus. The 41 chapters in this volume go beyond that to advance innovative arguments about timely issues and present new data, and many offer new approaches and methods for doing political communication research.
In what follows, we discuss the expanding field of political communication, beginning with its’ multidisciplinary past and present. Over the past decade there has been the beginning of convergence across theories and approaches that marks the development of the field. We discuss what the future holds for this vibrant and growing field before outhning the contents of the five sections of the Handbook.
Explain the expanding field of political communication in the era of continuous connectivity - a multidisciplinary past and present.
The roots of the field of political communication are deep and mold-disciplinary. The comments of a number of leading scholars acknowledge the historic influence of an array of disciplines in the arts and social sciences. Indeed, in universities around the world today, many different academic departments, schools and programs provide the institutional bases for what we would describe as research and teaching in political communication including: communication, journalism and media studies, political science and history, international relations, public and international affairs, cultural studies, sociology, psychology, anthmpology, marketing, advertising, public relations and eco~ nomics. Generations of graduates from these programs have gone on to become practitioners and many have become scholars.
Innovative political communication research can be found in a wide array of journals. Around the world a large number of journals include articles with a political communication focus, such as the Asian Journal of Communication. Communication Research, the European Journal of Political Research, the European Journal of Communication, Journal of Communication, Media Culture & Society, and the Journal of Political Marketing among others. There are two longstanding and widely recognized dedicated journals in this interdisciplinary field Political Communication and Intemational Journal of Press
Politics and the editorship of the former is shared between representatives of the political communication sections of the International Communication Association (ICA) and the American Political Science Association (APSA). The University of Southern California’s (USC) E~Gove1nance Lab at the School of Policy, Planning and DeveloPment also home to the Journal of E-Govemment that focuses on e-governance and how state and local governments can improve their use of information technology and enhance the delivery of public services and information. Another example of a new journal that provides a dedicated channel for research on political communication is the cnline Journal of Information Technology & Politics launched in 2009. These last two journals are connected with the APSA’s Information, Technology and Politics (ITP) organized section. There is also the International Journal of Communication, an Open-source, online journal launched in 2006 at USC’s Annenberg School, edited by Manuel Castells and Larry Gross, which has published more than 40 political communication related articles in its first four years. Judging from this brief overview, we can expect that political communication research will continue grow in a wide range of publication outlets.
Political communication research also appears to be well and thriving in many of the traditional discipline-based journals in political science and economics. Our review of a number of journals archived in JSTOR in political science and economics, for example, found that 194 articles focusing directly on political communication tOpics were published between 2000 and 2009. The number of articles increased over time, with 43% of the 194 articles published between 2000 and 2004 and 57% published between 2005 and 2009. This review included: American Economics Review, American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Politics, Political Behavior and The Quarterly Journal ofEconomics.
Most political scientists and communication scholars do not read academic journals in economics and would be surprised to learn that research on political communication can be found in these outlets. The Quarterly Joumal of Economics, for example, published several articles that directly address compelling political communication research questions, based on an analysis of keywords and abstracts, as the following article titles suggest: ‘Radio’s Impact on Public Spending’ (2004), ‘A Measure of Media Bias’ (2005), ‘Television and Voter ‘llurnout’ and ‘The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Votiniz’. The American Economics Review published six articles relevant to political communication in this time period on such topics as the market for news, the randomness of social networks, and The New York Times and the market for local newspapers.
The expansion of the field is evidenced by the growth of publications in these various outlets in the social sciences. The structure of the academic disciplines and their often similarly named top journals has no doubt limited general awareness of some of these findings that help us to recognize the growth of political communication research in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Many scholars in political communication based in departments of political science or communications may not even be aware of some of the pioneering work published by economists in economics journals, yet some of this work directly addresses major questions facing scholars in the field of political communication around the world. One such question, for example, is whether media bias effects voting.
Most will recall that it was only after a highly charged debate and contested 2000 US presidential election result that President George W. Bush entered what became the first of two terms in office. News around the world on Election Day in November 2000 reported on the problems with US voting booths and the fact that some citizens were prevented from voting in battleground states. such as Ohio and Florida. The hotly disputed firstterm presidency began only after a 5-4 Supreme Court vote and a highly charged public debate. Much innovative research has been published on the 2000 US election by scholars in political science and communication around the world, but it was research published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics that established how the Republicans’ path to the presidency began four years earlier in October 1996 when the conservative Fox News Channel was rolled out in the cable systems of 20% of US towns. Drawing on presidential and congressional voting data from more than 9000 towns where Fox News was introduced between 1996 and 2000, economists Stefano Dellavigna and Ethan Kaplan establish significant effects on the vote and conclude that Fox News ‘convinced 3 to 28 percent of its viewers to vote Republican, depending on the audience measure’. Xinshu Zhao’s careful analysis of the vote revealed that the 2000 US presidential election result was invalid and his study on the Plight of elections in democracies around the world became a best-selling book in China,
In this new information era, research in the traditional disciplines of political science, sociology, journalism, psychology and anthropology. each of which has contributed in different ways to the development of the field called political communication, has been impacted dramatically as scholars seek new ways to conceptualize me expanding field, adapt old methodologies and create new ones. Our research on publications in just some of the social science journals Shows research in the field is growing. The multidisciplinary roots of the field remain visrble in a number of journals that we describe as dedicated to political communication research. In addition, we find that fundamental research questions in the field are being addressed in publications from other disciplines such as economics. As the substantive research in the field is expanding across more disciplines, over the past decade there also has been the beginning of convergence across of theories and approaches that marks the doveIOpment of the field. This convergence gives primacy to the perspective of the citizen as a consumer and producer of contents, and draws upon research in marketing, branding, public relations. public affairs and public diplomacy.
Explain the expanding field of political communication in the era of continuous connectivity - citizens as Content Consumers and Creators: Branding, Public Relations and Public Diplomacy.
As the mass media systems moved from a ‘one to many’ model to a ‘many to many’ model, the field of political communication shifted from a mass media model to what Margaret Scammell has called ‘a consumer model of political communication’. The concept of the brand subsumcs all, she argues. Branding has moved from products to politicians, with the same methods and practices in politics that are common in marketing and public relations. Scammell’s case study of me branding of Prime Minister Tony Blair in the UK 2005 general election is an early example of what observers of global political marketing find are growing similarities in the marketing practices of political parties around the world.
Research and theory concerning elections and campaign effects, marketing, public relations, public affairs and public diplomacy all can be described as falling within concept of a process that Jesper Stromback and Spiro Kiousis call ‘political public relations’. Their definition of the process clearly falls under the umbrella of political communication: ‘Political public relations is the management process by which an organization or individual actor for political purposes, through purposeful communication and action, seeks to influence and to establish, build, and maintain beneficial relationships and reputations with its key publics to help support its mission and achieve its goals’. In addition to the usual work of political parties, governments and politicians, this process also describes public affairs and public diplomacy activities that involve state as well as non-state actors ranging from artists and producers of culture to non-governmental organizations.
The held of political communication incorporates the new public diplomacy that involves corporate and non-state actors, grassroots and transnational organizations and citizens whose activities, though not controlled by the state, may nevertheless foster knowledge building, learning and, potentially, impacts on opinions and behavior.
Explain the expanding field of political communication in the era of continuous connectivity- future innovation
Today’s scholars aim to identify new approaches and methods for studying the process of political communication under media hyper conditions, alongside flourishing activity among citizens as consumers and creators of content. Entertainment and the arts are more visible and varied than ever before in this new information age. Individual content creators upload hundreds of thousands of new videos daily to sites such as You’Iube. In 2009, just four years after its launch, YouTube was seen by more than 1 billion viewers each day. Facebook, founded in 2004, had more than 500 million users in early 2010.
Individuals and organizations are also more vulnerable than ever before because of the security issues that go along with reliance on technology and social networks. Cyber attacks are a daily cost for companies in doing business while governments aim to tind ways to prevent cyber war. Cyber attacks are a coordinated form of millions of requests, known as distributed-denial-ofservice or DDOS attacks, to overload and shut down servers. These have been common practice in war and conflict between nations recent years, such as the cyber attacks on the Georgian government’s servers just prior to Russia’s 2008 invasion of the country.
The familiar phrase ‘the only constant is change’, has a special meaning for scholars and practitioners in the field of political communication. Failure to innovate is not an option. Under these rapidly changing conditions, scholars and practitioners have to constantly reassess their research priorities.
Explain the expanding field of political communication in the era of continuous connectivity - organisation of the Handbook.
Evidence of the transformational impact of the Internet in societies around the world can be round throughout this volume. The Handbook is organized into five parts.
Part I discusses the developments in technology and the media that have broadened the terrain for political communications especially over the past decade. Trends in the media industry, entertainment media and popular culture are discussed, as well as the still unfolding impact of the lntemet on citizens, journalism and the news business, political parties and campaigning, and govemment approaches to communications. As normative conclusions are often part of political communication research, Part I concludes with an innovative agenda that sets forth standards for normative evaluations of media and citizen performance.
Part II addresses how individuals and groups are engaging with one another, learning and communicating in the new media environment, and discusses potential future scenarios. The first four chapters each take different perspectives on traditional media, new media and social media to discuss the transformational impacts on civil society and civic learning. The last four chapters focus on specific sites for studying citizens and civic engagement including women as political communicators, negative campaigning and its impacts, commercialization and public service broadcasting in the European context, and the value of social networks.
Part III focuses on the latest developments in research designs and methods for studying political communication in the varying contexts of traditional, old and new media. New perspectives on how to measure effects and content are presented in this section, drawing on new data provided by the chapter authors.
Part IV concerns the conceptual importance of power in political communication research. The chapters in this section draw upon various contexts including foreign policy, war and combat, political rhetoric, everyday conversations and social media.
Part V focuses on the various geographic contexts for political communication practice and research. From China and Korea to Latin America, from Russia and the new EU states to transnational Al-Jazeera, the local, national, regional and transnational contexts are discussed in the chapters in this final section. In the penultimate chapter in the volume, Paolo Mancini and Daniel Hallin offer their comments on comparative political communication research. In the last chapter of this section, which is also the last chapter in the volume, leading broadcaster and professor of journalism Richard Tait discusses the impact of the Britain’s phone hacking scandal and the implications for the future of journalism.
Explain political communication in a changing media environment.
The central socrat processes or political communication are particularly susceptible to changes in the media environment. At each stage of their development, the modern news media have altered the nature of the public sphere. From the printing press and the emergence of daily newspapers, news services, electronic media and the subsequent dominance of television, and now digital media, each new form of communication has changed the nature of the public discourse that supports modern liberal democracies. In this chapter, we examine the implications of recent trends in global and national media systems for political communication, with particular attention to how they play out in different national contexts.
The comparative study of political communication requires close attention to the role of journalism and the media, however funded and delivered, in the development and functioning of the various forms of liberal democracy. The newspaper has often been seen as an essential element in promoting not only electoral democracy and responsive governance but also the development of a deliberative public sphere. Even those who are committed to a deeper form of democracy regard journalism as ‘arguably the most important form of public knowledge in contemporary society’. Henry Milner has demonstrated that newspaper reading is related to political knowledge and civic engagement in North America and Europe. The decline of the daily newspaper is thus a cause for concern.
While traditional sources of political joumalism in established democracies are facing major challenges, many theorists or emerging democracies believe that a free and independent media is essential to post-conflict governance, fair elections and promotion of civil society. Because the USA, though often the source of media innovations, is frequently exceptional -with a weak public media sector, for example it is important to view developments in global terms.
The media‘s public sector functions generally include a number of elements that support politi~ cal communication, such as providing channels for persuasive messages from political parties and civil society advocacy groups, governance-related messages from state institutions informing citizens of services and rights, policy-related information that promotes engagement in public life through deliberation, debate, advocacy and conversations about ‘problem solving’, as well as investigative journalism and political commentary. Journalism, public communication about public matters and scrutiny of those holding social power, is in this view crucial to democracy.
When we examine the future of the media in the digital age, it is journalism itself, not a particular genre or delivery system, which should be the focus. As McQuail et a1. put it, there is ‘sufiicient evidence to justify the view that the health of democratic politics depends on the general quality of journalism and the effective working of the press as an institution of public life’. Accepting this viewpoint should not, of course, deflect attention from the limitations of both statecontrolled and commercial media and the potential of new and alternative media to increase diversity and challenge established perspectives.To begin our review of the relationship between democracy and journalism in the global media system we examine the economics of the media. Economic and democratic elements are inextricably linked and closely related to contemporary challenges to effective journalism and the tension between private mterests and public service. It is important to consrder the extent to which the challenges to the business models of the mainstream media in the industrial democracies play out globally and what alternative models can contribute to the development of democratic public spheres.
Explain media economics and its relationship to citizenship
For most of its recent history, political communication researcb globally has devoted a great deal of attention to the relationship between the news media and various sources of power. Much has been written on the relative autonomy of journalism, whether publicly or privately funded, from govenunents, economic elites and other powerful insntutions (like the church or the military). There has also been concern about concentration of media ownership, the commercialization of news services and the impact of the profit motive on the independence of news organizations and on quality joumalism. PropOnents of deeper forms of democracy have rejoiced in the new opportunities afforded by the Internet, but few imagined the severe erosion in North America and parts of Europe of the daily newspaper, long the backbone of newsgathering systems, both locally and internationally. Political economists worried more about the effects of corporate ownership on democracy than the viability of the enterprises involved.
Increased instability because of global compc~ tition, loss of advertising and the uncertain market for ‘serious’ journalism has forced some newspaper closures in North America and ‘rationalization’ of the industry in Europe. Broadcasters too are concerned about shifts in audiences and advertising, European media organizations have in many respects taken the lead in consolidating newsrooms. forming news partnerships, while North American media have tried to converge with limited success. shrinking their newsrooms, jour~ nahsm ambitions and staff, These experiments, multi-media newsrooms, outsourcing of editorial functions, among others, almost all involve fewer journalists and less attention to politics. Nevertheless. privately owned media continue to play an important role 11’) democratic discourse.
The modest but increasing movement of advertising and audiences from newspapers and television broadcasters to the Internet has produced an outpouring of worried commentary not only from business analysts and journalists, but also among media and democracy theorists, some of whom are predicting dire consequences for democracy. including: (1) a reduction in effective scrutiny of government, especially at the local level, and a consequent increase in corruption; (2) erosion of both interest in and capacity to undertake serious investigative jour~ nalism; (3) the threat to the communication of shared values and the vocabulary of precedents necessary for effective democratic participation] deliberation, as a result of the growing personalization of communication; (4) an increase in state power over a weakened private media system. Historically, the democratic functions of the news media have been linked to ownership patterns and structures, editorial investment in journalism content and the nature and extent of media competition, which is linked to diversity of voice and opinion.
The 20th century business model for the media was based on the role of the press as an inter~ mediary, connecting content, consumers and advertisers. The media flourished for much of the century because they benefited from the existence of a limited number of players, a result of high capital costs. and the limited Spectrum available to broadcasters. These limits and the barriers placed on media flows by public policy that favored domestic content created zones of ‘protectable scarcity’ that made media operations highly profitable. These zones have become highly permeable as a result of globalizing delivery systems such as satellite transmission and the Internet. Even more important, perhaps, is the advent of menu-driven, customizable content delivery and the content sharing applications that have become a major feature of the onlinc world, These developments are unbundling media content. Whether in their roles as consumers or citizens, people with Internet access no longer need to sit through a television newscast or look through a newspaper to get the information they want.
In industrialized democracies, these developments are creating concern not only for the economic viability of the journalistic enterprise but also for the community-building capacity of the new forms that are emerging. The decline in news paper circulation has gone furthest in North America, with total daily newspaper circulation at barely 40% of households in the USA and Canada. The reduction in newspaper readership -offset somewhat by online readership has not been as sharp in Eur0pe and. as we will see, circulation is still growing in many parts of the global south. For example, according to the World Association of Newspapers World Press Trends the five countries with the highest number of paid-for daily newspapers were India (2337 titles), the USA (1422), China (984), Brazil (555) and Russia (510).
The largest growth in the number of paid-for daily newspaper titles globally over the period 2003-7 occurred in Africa and Asia, both up 19%. The number of paid-for daily newspapers during that same period declined in North America (down 1.06%), as did circulation (down 6.39%). Paid-for daily circulation also rose in both Asia (17%) and South America (16%). Nevertheless, newspapers share of the global advertising market declined from 36% in 1995 to 29% in 2006, with the forecast for 2010 at 25%. Not surprisingly, Internet advertising as a proportion of overall advertising is rising globally.
Some analysts view the apparent erosion of the predominance of mainstream media as an opportunity for serious debate about alternatives such as increased government financial support and encouragement for not-for-profit and noncommercial journalism (Nichols and McChesney, 2010). The political economy critique of the established media, for example, has long viewed the media as an impediment to democratic discourse. This perspective is based on research that indicates that: (l) a limited number of major corporations control the media in most democratic countries; (2) commercial imperatives restrict the capacity of profit-oriented media to challenge the social and political status quo; (3) coverage and commentary in the mainstream media offer only limited diversity of opinion.
This analysis focuses on structural and systemic constraints and pays less attention to the agency available to individual journalists. From a democratic perspective, these analysts see more potential in public broadcasting and alternative media, both of which seem more willing to challenge conventional wisdom and add diversity to public discourse. Prescriptions include increased support for public and alternative media and the argument that quality journalism should be seen as a ‘merit good’, having social value similar to public educa~ tion and public libraries and as an essential resource for citizenship. The Internet provides an Opportunity for a wide range of journalistic options but, as will be seen, there remain problems of access.
Explain global media ownership
Beginning in the 1980s, a global media system emerged, challenging domestically owned media systems. According to McChesney and Schiller, media systems leading up to the 19803 were largely national with at least limited publicservice functions. By the end of the 20th century, however, a new transnational media system had emerged, with a few major corporations dominating global media flows. Political economists identified approximately 100 major firms, often interconnected in various ways, which controlled the production and distribution of popular culture. In the larger Latin American countries (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela), a single corporation achieved dominant status in the national and regional media markets. These corporations are dominant in news and pepular culture and tend to have ties with transnational corporations and the governing elite. With respect to news, the big three Western news services Reuters, Agence FrancePresse (AFP) and the Associated Press (AP) and the major international broadcasters had disproportionate influence in shaping the news agenda.
The first decade of the let century saw even greater changes in the global media environment. Satellite-enabled broadcasting continued to extend its reach, bringing CNN and BBC World to the industrial democracies and the middle classes in most countries. More recently, the Internet brought new forms of news, information and networking to the same populations. At the same time, economic growth and deregulation stimulated rapid expansion of domestic media, especially broadcasting, in many countries in the global south.
These developments in the world‘s media systems were accompanied by some important changes in global news flows. Although there is a growing interest in international news, fueled in part by diaspora communities in many countries, the Western media have been cutting foreign correspondents. These cuts reflect increasing costs and the growing level of risk faced by foreign reporters. Nevertheless, the big three Western news agencies, along with CNN and the BBC, still dominate the news flow and perpetuate basic patterns of coverage: conflict, crisis, focus on ‘elite‘ nations and episodic coverage of the global south.
In the long run, however, the growth of ‘contra flows’ may be more important. Taking advantage of satellite access, regional services reporting in local languages have grown significantly in the last decade but to date have had only minimal influence on global flows. Their presence, however, has created a competitive situation in which international services such as Rupert Murdoch’s Star-TV -have moved toward hybrid content, featuring languages and the specific interests and cultural sensitivities of target audiences. In his analysis, Straubhaar concluded that news cannot be detached from national and cultural specificities.
In this new context, the extent of Western dominance may be disputed. Tunstall argues that the majority of total world audience time is spent with domestically produced media and that this share has been increasing as local and regional services have come online and governments invested in media ‘as an expression of national culture’. The extent to which more recent developments, including lntemet downloading sites and hybrid media forms and content, reinforce or undermine cultural dominance remains an open question. We need to look not only at the programming that audiences pay attention to and download, but also what they post and how they interpret what they consume.
The biggest impact, perhaps, has come from the increasingly global reach of Al Jazeera. Like a number of more local Arab services, Al Jazeera was founded in response to CNN to provide an Arab perspective on regional and world events and to influence pan-Arab public. Al Jazeera began full service from Qatar in Arabic in 1996 and from its inception stood out among Arab networks for its professionalism (in western terms) and its independence from the state. Its unusual access to Arab dissidents and Al-Qaeda made it an important resource for western news services as well as a counterweight to them in the Middle East. According to Straubhaar, ‘Al Jazeera beats CNN so completely in the Arab World’ because of ‘the cultural specificity or proximity of its news approach, framed within a more specific set of commonly held values and traditions’.
The network became a major player in the global news flow with the advent of its English service in 2006, unlike some other regional services. With an international news staff drawn from more than 40 countries, under the direction of Western-trained professionals like Tony Burman, the former head of news at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Al Jazeera offers a highly professional international news service that is now available in more than 130 countries by satellite and cable. Its reporters have access to many parts of the world where there is little coverage by other services. Its presence has arguably influenced other global broadcasters that aspire to reach international audiences to provide more nuanced coverage of world issues.
This review underscores the fact that there are contradictory global political and cultural proc~ esses restructuring the media environment: (1) new transnational players, such as Al Jazeera, which are challenging historic news ilows and the global north’s cultural dominance and (2) the ‘gradual deterritorialization’ of the public sphere with national media separated from their state environments, with new internal and external sources affecting the formation of public opinion. For some analytic purposes, audiences can be divided into a cosmopolitan seg~ ment that has access to global news, mostly in English, and an often fragmented regional/local segment that prefers local media.
Comparative research focusing on issues of ownership and cultural imperialism is beginning to stimulate new theoretical perspectives. For example, Zhao’s (2000) work on China suggests that state ownership or party control of media can coexist with commercialization and create some journalism innovations at the margins, such as regional newspapers. Elsewhere in Asia, Bannerjee (2002) argues that new satellite technology and cable television along with some market liberalization has destabilized broadcasting monOpolies with emerging regional carriers taking advantage of the opening and strengthening local television production and programming. ‘The spread and migration of Asian pepulations during and after the colonial period have constituted strong diasporic p0pulations in many of these countries’. As a result there are now several ‘geolinguistlc markets’ in Asia served by regional production centers, as there are in the Spanish-speaking world, and increasingly connected to diaspora communities elsewhere. These developments. according to Bannexjee are ‘not a death knell for American domination of the global media landscape’ but rather represent new hybrid forms of news and public affairs programming that reflect elements of both the traditionally dominant western forms and local cultural and political concerns.
Arab countries in the Middle East have seen new forms of liberal commercial television media and/or government-funded broadcast outlets promote ‘more professional and pluralistic approaches to news’. In China, the ‘regulated marketization’ of the press has ‘helped to liberate the press from the state’. Yet both Ayish and Zhao are quick to point out the limitations of current media systems, such that for Ayish: ‘no matter how professional and independent television is, it cannot replace true political transformations that would ensure participatory governance’.
Some of the most interesting research on emerging democracies in the global south indicates that the media play an important role not only in establishing a healthy public Sphere but also in promoting economic and social development. As the GDP increases and the middle class grows, advertising for the domestic market becomes more important, spurring growth in advertising~supported media, which in turn can add diversity to the media environment. It is not surprising that countries recently experiencing significant economic growth concurrent with market liberalization, such as India, have seen increases in the number of mass communications products. In India, with its long history of relative press freedom, newspaper circulation and television audiences have been growing rapidly. Unlike industrial democracies, the appetite for news, both print and electronic, appears to be growing.
An active press, with a degree of press freedom, appears to be a necessary condition for democratic development. Although the causal relationship is not always clear, the indications that an active media has played an important role can be found in case studies of the former Soviet states, Asia and Africa. The international media also play a role in democratization by drawing attention to human rights issues and through what Rawnsley calls a demonstration effect, which was particularly important in Eastern Europe. While the media are important for democratization and global coverage can boost the morale of activists and increase their public support, on the ground work by pro-democracy groups is the critical element in promoting democracy.
The best evidence available suggests that, as Sachs puts it, ‘freedom of the press is a crucial element of democratization and itself a catalyst of democratic transition’. Based on an analysis of measures of press freedom in 1993 and degree of democracy in 2003, Sachs coneludes that a free press predicts a democratic future, but only if there is already a degree of liberalization, an opening for pluralistic political discourse. In general, the literature suggests that when state control of information is weakened and media liberalization has begun to take hold, the proliferation of information options reinforces democracy and good governance. Alternatives to state-controlled media take on the watchdog function of journalism, exposing corruption and human rights violations and create a forum for diverse voices to participate in public debate and promote government responsiveness.
India, which has long had a democratic politi~ cal culture, has experienced a signiticant growth in media options since the late 1990s. For more than a century, newspapers in India have fostered diversity, public debate, early warning of public unrest and acted as a watchdog on government power, but with a framework that ‘supported the role of the state as an instrument of modernity”. Deregulation and economic growth contributed to a substantial increase in private media, both local and transnational. Since the 1990s, broadcasting in India has “grown from a state-controlled mon0poly to a multiplicity of private television channels in what used to be one of the world’s most protected broadcasting environments’. Combined with the expansion and consolidation of the mainly western~based transnational media corporations, India’s media landscape has been transformed. The national television news sector has created eight large network news Operations, mainly in Hindi but English is also well represented. ‘The deregulation of the Indian newscape has created, that is crucially enlarged, a democratic and journalistic space for debate, accountability and critical investigation almost non-existent on television prior to 1996’.
In assessing the democratic nature of India’s expanded public sphere, Thussu notes both the benefits and limitations of market-based media pluralism. ‘There is no doubt that market-led broadcasting has created a more open and wider public sphere in India’ , but its focus is on the urban middle class. Although the audience for Indian television has expanded rapidly through cable and satellite penetration, the total audience of about 400 million still falls short of a majority of the pepulation. As noted above, neWSpaper circulation has been growing rapidly, but still reaches fewer citizens than television. Content analysis demonstrates a strong urban bias in the news, from which “the rural poor are remarkably absent’. Although India TV, launched in 2004, has pledged to fill this gap, it is clear that marketbased media pluralism does not engage the majority of the Indian population.
In the case of China, with no history of democ~ racy, state control over the media remains strong; employing a battery of direct (censorship) and indirect (licensing) methods of control. Nevertheless, the proliferation of commercial media has increased diversity and, on some levels scrutiny of government abuses, but only in a limited way. However, as noted above, there are some cracks in state control and. if our interpretation of the literature is correct, these cracks will widen as civil society becomes more powerful and journalists continue to push the envelope.
