Page 173 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Schlesinger’s phrase refers us back to Stuart Hall et al.’s work on
‘primary definition’ (1978), which asserts a pattern of structured,
differential access to media (and the power to define issues which
such access potentially brings with it), favouring those in elite or
dominant positions and discriminating against marginal or
subordinate groups. For Hall et al. the former, by virtue of their
privileged access to channels of mass communication, acquire the
status of ‘primary definers’ in public debate about current issues.
Their interpretations of events, their explanatory frameworks within
which events are made sense of, become consensual, while alternative
explanations and accounts are excluded or relegated to the margins,
denied legitimacy.
Hall et al.’s work is informed by a Marxist problematic which
seeks to explain the relative invisibility of subordinate and
oppositional accounts of social reality in the mass media, while
avoiding the crude, ‘vulgar’ materialism of some Marxist academics.
For Hall et al. primary definers become so not simply because
journalists and editors are ‘biased’ towards elite groups (although
straightforward ideological bias may be a sufficient explanation in
some cases) but as a result of the media’s structural relationships of
dependence on, and deference to, recognised authority. The
journalist’s need for reliable sources of information; editorial pressures
to meet deadlines; and elite groups’ typically more developed systems
for meeting these needs, gives them an inevitable advantage over the
‘dissident’ or oppositional group.
This organisational factor is reinforced by cultural assumptions
on the part of news-gatherers (which are widely shared in the society
as a whole) about which sources are the most reliable and
authoritative on a given issue (thus the Labour Home Office Minister
is automatically a primary definer on law and order issues, while the
views of the working-class resident of an inner-city housing estate
are not sought, unless on an occasional chat or phone-in show with
a ‘human interest’ angle).
The primary definition thesis is a compelling one, which has
proved useful in predicting and analysing patterns of access in media
debate about a wide range of political issues. Schlesinger and others
have pointed out, however, that it fails to account adequately for
the complexity of mediated political debate, and the many cases
where ‘primary definers’ have failed to impose their primary
definitions on the public debate as a whole. Recent political history
provides many examples of dominant or elite groups being, in effect,
defeated in public debate, often by the activities of relatively

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