Page 228 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

CONCLUSION

sport, it is nevertheless one in which citizens have real power to
decide outcomes. Politicians employ a wide array of manipulative
communication management techniques but, as we have seen, these
are subject to mediation, comment and interpretation by the
metadiscourse of political journalism, to which voters are relentlessly
exposed. Politics in the age of mediation may have the character of a
complex game, but it is one which media commentators and citizens
alike have become increasingly adept at playing.
There are, however, important qualifications which must be made
to the optimists’ arguments. Most obviously, access to the resources
required for effective political communication is neither universal
nor equitable. The design, production and transmission of political
messages costs money. In a capitalist system, this simple fact inevitably
favours the parties and organisations of big business. Who could
state with confidence that the dramatic electoral success of
Berlusconi’s Forza Italia movement in April 1994 owed nothing to
his control of so much of the Italian media system? Chapter 8 argued
strongly that innovation and skill in the techniques of media
management can partially offset this resource imbalance for marginal
political organisations but, to the extent that good political
communication can influence citizens’ attitudes and behaviour,
economic power translates into political power.
For that reason, it is crucial to the health of the democratic process
that the financing of political communication be monitored and
regulated, just as certain restrictions on the ownership and cross-
ownership of media organisations are insisted upon in most liberal
democracies. It should not be possible, now or in the multi-channel,
relatively unregulated media system of the future, for the political
representatives of big capital to monopolise communication channels
or to bribe their way to communicative advantage. If the optimistic
perspective described above is to have validity, there must be a ‘level
playing field’ for all those competing in the game.
Another weakness of the optimists’ perspective is the continuing
existence of secrecy and manipulation in the sphere of government
communication. We discussed in Chapter 7 how the government
of Margaret Thatcher, like others before and since throughout the
capitalist world, was accused of cynically using the information
apparatus at its disposal to further its own, limited political
objectives. As communication becomes still more important in the
political process, it becomes essential for citizens to have some power
and control over which information their elected representatives
choose to release into the public domain. This is especially true of

211