Page 78 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

THE POLITICAL MEDIA

dispute and generally hostile to News International, could ‘boycott’
journalists on the Murdoch titles, are over for good.
Opponents of the ‘it’s the Sun wot won it’ effects model in political
communication argue that, like other categories of media output, as
was noted in Chapter 3, information about politics can only have
effects in specific contexts, which structure and shape the audience’s
response. As noted by Ericson et al., ‘the effects of [news] content
vary substantially…according to whether the consumer is directly
involved in the story… [or] whether the events are local or distant.
There is substantial variation in how people attend to particular news
communications, and what they recall’ (1991, p. 19).
A further objection to the ‘hypodermic’ effect of tabloid political
journalism would be the fact that if, as has been indicated, the Labour
Party in 1997 enjoyed the support of around 70 per cent of national
press circulation, why did that output not secure for it 70 per cent of
the popular vote? Why do so many Tory-tabloid readers insist on
voting for other parties?
This is a long-standing debate which has thus far evaded
resolution, and will probably continue to do so. The evidence
assembled by Miller and others suggesting a link between readership
of the press and voting behaviour is ambiguous and difficult to
interpret, as it is in all aspects of media effects research. To reach
firm conclusions, researchers would have to establish with much
greater certainty the extent to which working-class readers are
attracted to the political content of their newspapers, as opposed
to the football and racing results, and the extent to which they
believe the often ridiculous propaganda of some tabloids, or read
it with tongue firmly in cheek.

THE MEDIA AND HEGEMONY

The ‘political effects’ of the media may be viewed in broader terms
than simply short- or medium-term behavioural or attitudinal
change. As we noted in Chapter 2, democratic politics are founded
on the existence of agreed rules and procedures for running the
political process. There must be consent from the governed, and
political power must have authority in the eyes of those over whom
it is wielded. An influential strand in twentieth-century political
sociology, originating with Italian Marxist intellectual Antonio
Gramsci in the 1920s, has been concerned with how this consent
and authority can be mobilised, in the conditions of social inequality

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