Page 52 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

THE EFFECTS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

DOES POLITICAL COMMUNICATION WORK?
MICRO-EFFECTS
According to a MORI poll conducted during the British general
election of June 1987, the determinants of voting behaviour,
particularly for the crucial section of ‘floating’ or undecided voters
who will ultimately decide the outcome, are threefold. They are,
firstly (and still, apparently, most importantly), the image of party
policy (44 per cent); secondly, the voters’ image of the party leadership
(35 per cent of choices in 1987 were attributed by respondents to
this factor); and finally, the ‘corporate’ image of the party itself (21
per cent) (Worcester, 1991, p.111).
Each of these aspects of a party’s identity have to be communicated,
suggesting at the very least that the ability and skill to communicate
can be important in influencing political behaviour and electoral
outcomes.
Among the experiments conducted into the efficacy of political
communication at this level is Rosenberg and McCafferty’s study of
the extent to which ‘public relations experts [can] manipulate the
public’s impression of a political candidate’ (1987, p.31). Their
concern in this research was with non-verbal aspects of
communication, or the candidate’s ‘image’ defined in narrow, physical
terms. As they put it, ‘we are interested in exploring whether or not
it is possible to manipulate an individual’s appearance in a way that
affects both voters’ judgments of the candidate and the choice they
make at the ballot box’ (Ibid.).
To test the hypothesis that image does matter in shaping political
behaviour, Rosenberg and McCafferty selected a group of American
university students, whom they exposed to multiple photographs of
a series of fictional election candidates. The pictures differed in ways
intended to generate negative and positive responses, such as the
inclusion or omission of a smile. It was found that such changes
affected ‘both the degree to which an individual is perceived to be fit
for public office and the degree to which he is perceived to possess
those qualities (competence, integrity, and likableness) that other
research has shown to be relevant to voters’ evaluations of political
candidates’ (Ibid., p.37). Furthermore, even when subjects were made
aware of the respective candidates’ policies on important issues, image
as constructed by the photograph continued to exert an influence on
voting intentions.
The researchers acknowledged the methodological limitations of
their research, in so far as it was an artificial election with artificial

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