Page 62 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

THE EFFECTS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

system. Also, consultants can’t enforce voter discipline
or the voting behaviour of elected officials. There is no
empirical evidence of a direct causal relationship between
watching a commercial or series of commercials and
voting. Consultants further ague that they make elections
more open and provide access for reporters to candidate
strategy, views, and campaign information.
(1990, p.68)

The masses, it is argued, were hardly part of the political process
before universal suffrage became a reality. Even after the majority of
citizens gained the right to vote they were still relatively ignorant
about political issues. The rise of the mass media, and television in
particular, has brought the masses into the political process to an
historically unprecedented degree. And the masses, such voices insist,
are not so stupid as to be the passive victims of crude manipulation.
In any case, the argument continues, why shouldn’t media
performance be a legitimate criterion of political fitness, in a world
where media are so fundamental to the political process? Critics of
the media’s expanded role, from this point of view, are simply
expressing a modern variant of John Stuart Mill’s argument against
universal suffrage which, as we noted earlier, stated that the masses
should be deprived of the vote because they were inferior
educationally and intellectually.

CONCLUSION

The debate introduced here will recur in subsequent chapters, as
we examine the communication strategies and tactics of political
actors in greater detail. Beyond argument, we may state at this
point, is the notion that political communication is too important
to be ignored by those with a concern for the workings of modern
democracies. The precise nature of its effects—behavioural or
attitudinal, short, medium, or long-term, direct or indirect, social
or psychological— may still elude social scientists and observers of
the political scene, but political actors themselves—those who are
striving to influence society in directions consistent with the
furthering of their interests —act on the assumption that there are
effects sufficient to justify substantial expenditure of time and
resources. As Doris Graber has noted, ‘one cannot deny that people
throughout the world of politics consider the media important and

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