Page 47 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN
POLITICAL EFFECTS RESEARCH
The student of the effects of political communication is confronted
with fundamental epistemo-methodological problems familiar to all
effects researchers. Principally, how does one accurately trace the
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cause and effect relationship between a piece of communication and
the behaviour of its audience? How can the effect of a particular
message be identified and measured in isolation from the other
environmental factors influencing an individual?

The communication process

In an earlier age of communication studies such questions were rarely
asked. The message was presumed to act on the individual rather
like a hypodermic syringe or billiard ball, producing a direct effect
which could be predicted and measured. The ‘hypodermic model’ of
media effects was embraced by both European and American
sociologists during the 1930s in response to, on the one hand, the
rise of fascism in Europe and the Nazis’ extensive and apparently
successful use of propaganda techniques and, on the other, the power
of advertising to sell commodities which was then becoming evident.
Both phenomena encouraged support for a relatively simple, ‘strong’
effects model.
Unfortunately, extensive empirical research was unable to ‘prove’
specific media effects, prompting a recognition by the 1950s that
effects were ‘limited’, or more precisely, ‘mediated’ by the range of
social and cultural factors intervening between the message and its
audience. The ‘mediated-limited’ effects model dominated the
communication studies field throughout the 1960s, until it was
developed and refined by the semiological school, in the work of
Umberto Eco and others.
For this tradition, understanding the effects of media messages
required an understanding of the social semiotics of a given
communication situation, acknowledging the potential for differential
decoding of the message which always exists; the plurality of meanings
which it may acquire amongst the diversity of groups and individuals
who make up its audience; and the variety of responses it may
provoke.
These variations in meaning and response will be dependent
firstly on the context of reception of the message, incorporating
such factors as the political affiliation, age, ethnicity, and gender

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