Page 16 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Party, and the Soviet Government (McNair, 1988, 1989, 1991) and
the media coverage received by them. These discussions were
marginal, however, in the context of work concerned chiefly with
how journalists thought and behaved. This study of political com-
munication will concentrate to a much greater extent on the nature
of the interface between politicians and the media, the extent of
their interaction, and the dialectic of their relationship. It will
probe the limits on the actions of politicians on the one hand and
journalists on the other, and the influence of both on what citizens
think and do.
Such an emphasis owed much to those who, over the last two
decades, have developed what has become known in communi-
cation studies as the source-centred approach (Goldenberg, 1984;
Tiffen, 1989; Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994). The term focuses
attention on the active role in shaping media content played by
those who provide the source material, rather than the producers of
journalistic output themselves. The shift is one of emphasis, and this
book does not seek to replace the notion of an all-powerful media
with that of the all-powerful ‘spin doctor’ or media manipulator. It
will, however, add to a growing literature in communication and
political studies concerned with locating the media’s agency and
effectivity in a wider social – in this case political – environment,
characterised by greater levels of uncertainty, risk and arbitrariness
than some perspectives within communication studies have
acknowledged.
Structurally, the book is organised into two parts. In Part I, I
examine what is meant by the term ‘political communication’, and
who precisely are the communicators. I describe the normative
principles of liberal democracy and consider how political communi-
cation relates, in theory, to the democratic process. A complete
chapter is devoted to outlining the contexts in which modern mass
media communicate politically, and another to the ‘effects’ of politi-
cal communication on behaviour, attitudes and social processes.
Part II places this introductory and theoretical material in the
context of the political communication practices of a variety of
actors, including governments and party politicians, both
domestically and in the international arena; business and trade
union leaders; and marginalised political actors such as pressure
groups and terrorist organisations.
A short conclusion makes a tentative effort to answer the
question: is the increasing role of mass communication in the
political process a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing for democracy?

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