Page 63 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

behave accordingly. This importance…is reflected in efforts by
governments everywhere, in authoritarian as well as democratic
regimes, to control the flow of information produced by the media
lest it subvert the prevailing political system’ (1984a, p.19). Arterton
suggests of the United States that ‘those who manage presidential
campaigns uniformly believe that interpretations placed upon
campaign events are frequently more important than the events
themselves. In other words, the political content is shaped primarily
by the perceptual environment within which campaigns operate’
(1984, p.155). Molotch et al. agree that, without regard to the
empirical measurability of effects, ‘elected politicians, other political
activists, and agency policy makers usually “perceive” that media
are critical to both public attitude formation and to the policy
process’ (1987, p.27) [their emphasis]. Baudrillard, with typical
mischievousness, put it well when he observed that ‘we will never
know if an advertisement or opinion poll has had a real influence
on individual or collective will, but we will never know either what
would have happened if there had been no opinion poll or
advertisement’ (1988, p.210).

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