Page 50 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 29

THE EFFECTS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
a Labour supporter a dominant decoding, in which the receiver shares the
world-view underlying the construction of the broadcast, its interpretation
of the ‘facts’ behind current political and economic debates, and its preferred
solutions. The ‘floating voter’, lacking in strong commitment to any
particular party, might well adopt a negotiated decoding, agreeing with some
aspects of the message and rejecting others. Such a response would include
one in which the need for a more equitable distribution of income was
accepted, but specific proposals for tax increases were rejected as being too
draconian. The Conservative supporter, on the other hand, will adopt an
oppositional decoding position, rejecting both the values and the specific
policy proposals contained in Labour’s PPB.
The broadcasts of the other parties will meet with similar diversity of
response. In short, one’s knowledge that a piece of communication is partisan
will to a large extent predetermine one’s ‘reading’ of it. If, on the other hand, a
political message is communicated through a news report, a chat show
interview, or a live debate in a US presidential campaign (all contexts in which
editorial control of the message is seen to reside beyond the politician him or
herself) the audience may take the opportunity to judge abilities and policies
from a more detached perspective. There will be less interference in the
communication process, and the audience may be more open.
As a general rule, the effects of political communications of whatever kind
are determined not by the content of the message alone, or even primarily, but
by the historical context in which they appear, and especially the political
environment prevailing at any given time. The ‘quality’ of a message, the skill
and sophistication of its construction, count for nothing if the audience is not
receptive. President Clinton’s media adviser in the 1996 re-election campaign,
Dick Morris, writes in his memoir that ‘if the public won’t buy your basic
premise, it doesn’t matter how much you spend or how well your ads are
produced; they won’t work’ (1997, p. 152) (see Chapter 6).
The aforementioned are conceptual difficulties, arising from the com-
plexity of the communication process itself. They remind us that successful
communication of a message (political or otherwise) cannot be taken for
granted, but must be worked for by the sender.

The evidence
A further problem for political communication research concerns the nature
and quality of the evidence used to measure effects. There are, in the final
analysis, only three ways to assess the effects of political communication on
attitudes and behaviour. The first is to ask people how they have responded
to specific messages, and then collate their responses into statistically
significant aggregates, usually in the form of public opinion polls. Second,
one may observe voting behaviour, relating this to the communication
strategies of the contestants in a political campaign. Third, one may conduct

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