Page 94 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 73

THE MEDIA AS POLITICAL ACTORS
Livingstone’s column for the Sun was a reflection of his popularity,
founded on the controversial image of ‘loony leftism’ which the Sun itself
played a major role in creating. It illustrates an important feature of the press
column: it can be a very popular journalistic form. In the tabloids parti-
cularly, to quote Nimmo and Combs, ‘punditry has become a form of enter-
tainment, both shaping and adjusting to popular expectations regarding how
to keep up with and understand “what’s happening”’ (ibid., p. 41). The
credibility of such politician-columnists as Ken Livingstone, Bernard Ingham
or Norman Tebbit is founded on their status as political ‘insiders’. They, as
opposed to other politicians, are employed as columnists because their names
have audience pulling power and because their plain-speaking, extremist
viewpoints are assumed to help circulation figures.

Online punditry

As noted above, the expansion of the internet has seen an explosion of online
punditry, and the rise of what one newspaper has called ‘a new commen-
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tariat’ to challenge the ‘old media pundits’. These pundits, who include the
best of the bloggers, have become influential in breaking political news
stories, and in driving the news agenda. While the majority of the millions
of blogs and online news sites now in existence are peripheral to the main-
stream of political journalism, a few have become ‘must reads’ not just for
the regular web surfers, but for journalists working in the established print
and broadcast media (McNair, 2006, 2008).
In recent times online pundits have grown in importance as political
actors, during and between election campaigns. Bloggers such as Guido
Fawkes in the UK have placed stories in the public sphere which have led to
major political crises and resignations. The most successful have become key
agenda-setters and issue definers, ‘go to’ online sources for journalists
working in print and broadcasting. More and more ‘established’ journalists,
working for ‘old’ media, have moved with their organisations onto the
internet, supplementing their print or broadcast journalism with online
commentary and analysis.
New online-only, commentary-focused publications such as Politico in the
US have been established, and now challenge the traditional primacy of
‘legacy’ print outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post.
In the emerging online political communication environment, further-
more, the networked community of user-participants acquires enhanced
influence through the combined force of their opinions as articulated on
networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Not only do political actors
seek to engage with and influence the users of Twitter, for example; they
monitor closely and respond to what they perceive as the views of those users
on political issues. The internet has democratised and decentralised political

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