Page 49 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 28

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN POLITICAL
EFFECTS RESEARCH

The student of the effects of political communication is confronted with funda-
mental epistemo-methodological problems familiar to all effects researchers. 1
Principally, how does one accurately trace the cause and effect relationship
between a piece of communication and the behaviour of its audience? How can
the effect of a particular message be identified and measured in isolation from
the other environmental factors influencing an individual?

The communication process
In an earlier age of communication studies such questions were rarely asked.
The message was presumed to act on the individual rather like a hypodermic
syringe or billiard ball, producing a direct effect which could be predicted and
measured. The ‘hypodermic model’ of media effects was embraced by both
European and American sociologists during the 1930s in response to, on the
one hand, the rise of fascism in Europe and the Nazis’ extensive and appar-
ently successful use of propaganda techniques and, on the other, the power of
advertising to sell commodities which was then becoming evident. Both
phenomena encouraged support for a relatively simple, ‘strong’ effects model.
Unfortunately, extensive empirical research was unable to ‘prove’ specific
media effects, prompting a recognition by the 1950s that effects were
‘limited’, or more precisely, ‘mediated’ by the range of social and cultural
factors intervening between the message and its audience. The ‘mediated-
limited’ effects model dominated the communication studies field through-
out the 1960s, until it was developed and refined by the semiological school,
in the work of Umberto Eco and others.
For this tradition, understanding the effects of media messages required
an understanding of the social semiotics of a given communication situation,
acknowledging the potential for differential decoding of the message which
always exists; the plurality of meanings which it may acquire across the
diversity of groups and individuals who make up its audience; and the
variety of responses it may provoke.
These variations in meaning and response will be dependent first on the
context of reception of the message, incorporating such factors as the political
affiliation, age, ethnicity, and gender of the receiver, and, second, on the type
of message transmitted. A party election broadcast on British television, for
example, is clearly labelled as a motivated, partisan piece of political
communication: if not ‘propaganda’ in the most negative sense of that term
then undoubtedly a heavily skewed statement of a party’s policies and values.
The viewer knows this, and will interpret the message accordingly.
2
Using Stuart Hall’s list of differential decoding positions (1980), we
might reasonably hypothesise that a Labour Party broadcast will prompt in

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