Page 28 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

such as public meetings and rallies, aided by newspaper coverage,
to reach their constituencies. But in an age of universal suffrage and
a mass electorate parties must use mass media. Chapters 6 and 7
examine the many communication strategies and tactics which have
been developed by political parties in recognition of this fact. These
include techniques which originated in the world of corporate and
business affairs, such as marketing – the science of ‘influencing mass
behaviour in competitive situations’ (Mauser, 1983, p. 5). Political
marketing is analogous to commercial marketing in so far as
political organisations, like those in the commercial sector, must
target audiences from whom (electoral) support is sought, using
channels of mass communication, in a competitive environment
where the citizen/consumer has a wide choice between more than
one ‘brand’ of product. While there are obvious differences in the
nature of the political and commercial marketplaces, and political
parties measure success not in terms of profit but in voting share
and effective power, political marketing employs many of the
principles applied by the manufacturers of goods and services as
they strive for commercial success.
Political advertising, the subject of Chapter 6, is also founded on
principles originally worked out by the business sector to exploit
the presumed persuasive potential of mass media. This form of
political communication uses mass media to ‘differentiate’ political
products (i.e. parties and candidates) and give them meaning for
the ‘consumer’, just as the soap manufacturer seeks to distinguish
a functionally similar brand of washing powder from another in a
crowded marketplace.
A third commercially influenced category of political communi-
cation activity is that of public relations – media and information
management tactics designed to ensure that a party receives
maximum favourable publicity, and the minimum of negative.
Activities covered by the rubric of ‘public relations’ include pro-
active devices such as party conferences which, as we shall see, are
in contemporary politics designed principally to attract positive
media coverage of an organisation; news conferences, which permit
parties to (attempt to) set political agendas, particularly during
election campaigns; and the employment of image managers to
design a party’s (and its public leaders’) ‘look’.
Reactive political public relations techniques, in which parties
strive for damage-limitation, include the lobbying of journalists and
the ‘spinning’ of potentially damaging stories; the suppressing of
potentially damaging information, such as was attempted by the

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