Page 24 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 3

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POLITICS IN THE AGE OF
MEDIATION

This chapter:

• Introduces the concept of political communication
• Identifies the range of political actors involved in communication.

Any book about political communication should begin by acknowledging
that the term has proved to be notoriously difficult to define with any
precision, simply because both components of the phrase are themselves
open to a variety of definitions, more or less broad. Denton and Woodward,
for example, provide one definition of political communication as

pure discussion about the allocation of public resources (revenues),
official authority (who is given the power to make legal, legislative
and executive decision), and official sanctions (what the state
rewards or punishes).
(1990, p. 14)

This definition includes verbal and written political rhetoric, but not
symbolic communication acts which, as we shall see in this book, are of
growing significance for an understanding of the political process as a whole.
The American writer Doris Graber advances a more all-encompassing
definition of what she terms ‘political language’, suggesting that it comprises
not only rhetoric but paralinguistic signs such as body language, and political
acts such as boycotts and protests (1981).
Elsewhere in the work cited above, Denton and Woodward characterise
political communication in terms of the intentions of its senders to influence
the political environment. As they put it:
the crucial factor that makes communication ‘political’ is not the
source of a message [or, we might add, referring back to their earlier

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