Page 116 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

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PARTY POLITICAL

COMMUNICATION I

Advertising

This chapter presents:

• An outline of how advertisements work
• A brief history of the development of political
advertising
• An account of the various approaches adopted in both
the US and Britain since the Second World War, up to and
including the 2001 general election.

Robert Denton argues that in America, thanks to the growth in the
role of television in political campaigning, the pre-eminent form
of political oratory has become the advertisement. The political ad,
he writes, is ‘now the major means by which candidates for the
presidency communicate their messages to voters’ (1988, p. 5).
Nimmo and Felsberg suggest that ‘paid political advertising via
television now constitutes the mainstream of modern electoral
politics’ (1986, p. 248). In Britain and other comparable countries
too, although regulatory and stylistic conventions differ from
those of the US, political advertising is central to political
communication.
Advertising’s power – if power it has (by no means an uncon-
tentious assertion, as Chapter 3 suggested) – is exercised on two
levels. First, the political advertisement disseminates information
about the candidate’s or party’s programme to a degree of detail
which television journalists can rarely match. As Chapter 4 argued,
television news has developed generic conventions and narrative
practices which inhibit in-depth analysis of political parties’ policies.
Instead, the broadcasters fasten pack-like onto the day’s soundbites

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