Page 27 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Terrorist organisations
The third category of non-party political actor to which we shall
refer in Chapter 8 is the terrorist organisation. Although the term
‘terrorist’ is value-laden, and may be rejected by groups whose
members may prefer to see themselves as ‘freedom fighters’ in
‘national liberation’ or ‘resistance’ movements, we shall use the term
here to refer to groups which use terror tactics—urban bombing, hi-
jacking, assassination, and kidnapping, to list the most common—
to achieve their political objectives. In this sense, many of the world’s
governments, including those of South Africa, Israel, France, and
the United States, have at one time or another committed acts of
(state) terrorism.
More commonly associated with terrorism, however, are such
organisations as the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland (until
the 1998 peace agreement ended ‘the war’, at any rate), Hamas and
Hezbollah in the Middle East, and ETA in the Spanish Basque country.
All share a readiness to work for their goals outside of the
constitutional process, which they regard as illegitimate, and to use
violence as a means of ‘persuasion’. Unlike state-sponsored terrorists,
who seek to avoid identification and publicity, these organisations
actively court media attention, striving to make their ‘target publics’
aware of their existence and their objectives, often by illegal or violent
means.
As Chapter 8 argues, therefore, even acts of random violence
directed against civilians may be viewed as a form of political
communication, intended to send a message to a particular
constituency, and capable of being decoded as such. Modern terrorist
organisations also use the public relations and media management
techniques of more mainstream political actors, such as news
conferences, press releases and leaks, to the oft-expressed chagrin of
the latter.

The audience
The purpose of all this communication is, as has been noted, to
persuade. And the target of this persuasion—the audience—is the
second key element in the political communication process, without
which no political message can have any relevance.
The audience for a particular political communication may be
broad, as in a British party political broadcast (PPB) or a US election
‘spot’, where the objective is to persuade an entire nation of voters.

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