Page 51 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

party’s campaign and its eventual vote may not be apparent. Despite
the famous ‘Kinnock—the Movie’ party election broadcast (PEB) 5
shown during the 1987 campaign, and a communication strategy
widely viewed as superior to that of the Conservatives, the latter’s
actual vote on polling day was virtually identical as a percentage of
the national electorate to figures generated by opinion polls taken at
the beginning of the campaign (43 per cent). Labour’s support rose
by only 3 per cent from the beginning to the end of the campaign, to
give them a net gain of twenty seats on the 1983 result (Butler and
Kavanagh, 1988).
This could be interpreted in several ways. Perhaps the campaign
had no significant impact on the electorate (as opposed to the
commentators who almost universally praised it). Perhaps Labour’s
vote would have been even worse without the softening impact of
a good campaign. Perhaps voters recognised the quality of Labour’s
campaigning but regarded policies as more important than image,
and preferred those of the Tories. Any or all of these assertions
could be true, highlighting the deeper truth that even ‘objective’,
empirically verifiable measures of voting behaviour (this is how
people actually voted) are subject to wide variations of
interpretation.

Experimental research
The third method of assessing the effects of political communication
shares with the first the fact that it relies on asking questions of
people. Numerous experiments have been conducted in which a
particular element of the political message is isolated before a subject
group. Their responses are then noted, and conclusions drawn.
This laboratory-based approach is a much-used tool of behavioural
effects research, frequently employed, for example, in the study of
sexually explicit or violent material. The methodological objections
to it are, once again, those of interpretation and contextualisation.
Can a laboratory experiment, no matter how sensitively prepared,
really reproduce the complex political environment in which
individuals make their decisions? Can it compensate for the weight
of cultural and social resonances that will accompany a political
message in the real world?
To make these points is not to dispute the value of sensitively
designed empirical audience research in the study of political or any
other type of communication, but simply to highlight its limitations.

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