Page 19 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

the US, UK, France, and the Netherlands. Low voter turnouts in
many countries produced unease about the health of democratic
polities in early twenty-first century Europe, and led in the cases of
France and Holland to unexpected electoral outcomes (the success
of Jean Marie Le Pen in the French presidential election; the rise of
Pym Fortyn’s radical populist party, eclipsed only by his assassin-
ation in 2002). Many commentators drew connections between the
excesses of political communication, the failures of the political
media (as some saw them) and the apparent disillusionment and
apathy of growing numbers of citizens.
Away from the sphere of electoral politics, and for many an
indicator of its failure to satisfy popular concerns about the
practices of international capital throughout the world, recent years
have seen the growth of an international anti-globalisation
movement which, like anti-nuclear, environmentalist and other
lobbies before it, has used street demonstrations and other forms
of the ‘spectacular’ in efforts to command the media agenda and
influence public opinion. On some occasions, such as the May Day
2000 riots in London, anti-globalisation protest has taken a
confrontational, violent form. On others, the aim of protesters
has been to deploy the rules of non-violent direct action in ways
which make it more likely that journalists will acknowledge their
existence, and report their arguments.
In the US the Clinton administration gave way to that of George
W. Bush, amidst allegations of electoral irregularity and, in the state
of Florida (governed by George W.’s brother Jeb), straightforward
fraud and vote-rigging. Less than a year later, doubts about
‘Dubya’s’ legitimacy as president were forgotten as he and his
administration grappled with the challenges produced by the
al-Quaida attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As
his father had been required to do before the first Gulf war of 1991,
George W. Bush and his colleagues embarked on a global campaign
of political communication and public opinion management
designed to secure an international coalition around the ‘war on
terror’, and behind the US desire to secure ‘regime change’ in Iraq.
As this book went to press that war was still unfolding, amidst a
blizzard of propaganda and counter-propaganda, misinformation
and disinformation, through which few outside the most senior
echelons of the Western political elite could see what was really
going on. From the first tragic moments of the September 11
attacks, the war on terror was a media war, fought for hearts and
minds more than territory. Through media organisations such as

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