Page 32 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

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

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
such as Facebook, and Twitter, which allow internet users to share
information rapidly. In democratic political systems the media function both
as transmitters of political communication which originates outside the
media organisation itself, and as senders of political messages constructed by
journalists and other producers such as bloggers. As Figure 1.1 indicates, the
role of the media in both respects is crucial.
First, and most obviously, political actors must use the media in order to
have their messages communicated to the desired audience. Political
programmes, policy statements, electoral appeals, pressure group campaigns,
and acts of terrorism have a political existence – and potential for com-
municative effectiveness – only to the extent that they are reported and
received as messages by the media audience. Consequently, all political
communicators must gain access to the media by some means, whether
legislative, as in the rules of political balance and impartiality which govern
British public service broadcasting, or by an appreciation of the workings of
the media sufficient to ensure that a message is reported.
In Chapter 4 we examine the regulations and conventions which typically
govern access to the media for political actors. We also describe the
organisational features of media production which may work for or against
political communicators in their efforts to obtain coverage. This will lead us
into a discussion of the constraints and pressures within which news is
selected and produced, and the implications of these for the choices routinely
made by media workers.
The media, of course, do not simply report, in a neutral and impartial
way, what is going on in the political arena around them. Despite protesta-
tions to the contrary by some journalists, there are more than enough
analyses of the media in the communication studies literature to show that
their accounts of political events (as of any other category of ‘reality’) are
laden with value judgments, subjectivities and biases. Kaid et al. suggest
that we may view political ‘reality’ as comprising three categories (1991):

• First, we may speak of an objective political reality, comprising political
events as they actually occur
• There is then a subjective reality – the ‘reality’ of political events as they
are perceived by actors and citizens
• Third, and critical to the shaping of the second category of subjective
perceptions, is constructed reality, meaning events as covered by the
media.

While arguments about the precise efficacy of the media’s political output
continue, there is no disagreement about their central role in the political
process, relaying and interpreting objective happenings in the political
sphere, and facilitating subjective perceptions of them in the wider public
sphere. For this reason, media ‘biases’ are of key political importance.

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