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Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 56

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
the ‘chicken and egg’ problem, of course – which came first, press support
or electoral popularity? But it does mean that British political parties will
continue to pay attention to wooing the press. The days (not long gone)
when the Labour Party, angered by the 1986 Wapping industrial dispute and
generally hostile to News International, could ‘boycott’ journalists on the
Murdoch titles are over for good.
Opponents of the ‘it’s the Sun wot won it’ effects model in political
communication argue that, like other categories of media output, infor-
mation about politics can have effects only in specific contexts, which
structure and shape the audience’s response. As noted by Ericson et al., ‘the
effects of [news] content vary substantially . . . according to whether the
consumer is directly involved in the story . . . [or] whether the events are
local or distant. There is substantial variation in how people attend to
particular news communications, and what they recall’ (1991, p. 19).
A further objection to the ‘hypodermic’ effect of tabloid political
journalism would be the fact that if, as has been indicated, the Labour
Party in 1997 enjoyed the support of around 70 per cent of national press
circulation, why did that output not secure for it 70 per cent of the popular
vote? Why did so many Tory-tabloid readers insist on voting for other
parties?
This is a long-standing debate which has thus far evaded resolution and
will probably continue to do so. The evidence assembled by Miller and others
suggesting a link between readership of the press and voting behaviour is
ambiguous and difficult to interpret, as it is in all aspects of media effects
research.

THE MEDIA AND HEGEMONY

The ‘political effects’ of the media may be viewed in broader terms than
simply short- or medium-term behavioural or attitudinal change. As we
noted in Chapter 2, democratic politics are founded on the existence of
agreed rules and procedures for running the political process. There must be
consent from the governed, and political power must have authority in the
eyes of those over whom it is wielded. An influential strand in twentieth-century
political sociology, originating with Italian Marxist intellectual Antonio
Gramsci in the 1920s, has been concerned with how this consent and
authority can be mobilised, in the conditions of social inequality and
imperfect democracy typical of even the most advanced capitalist societies.
When society is stratified along class, gender, ethnic, and age lines (to name
but four status criteria); when, as Bobbio notes, levels of education and rates
of democratic participation are substantially lower than the theory of liberal
democracy would seem to demand; and when, as many argue, political
pluralism is limited to deciding how best to administer free markets, popular

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