Page 35 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

The media are important in the political process, finally, as
transmitters of messages from citizens to their political leaders. In
their coverage of opinion polls, for example, the media may claim
to represent ‘public opinion’, which takes on the status of a real
thing by which to understand or evaluate the political situation,
often in terms critical of or admonitory to individual politicians. In
this way, the views of the citizen are communicated upwards, often
with observable effects on parties’ behaviour. Newspapers also
publish readers’ letters, providing a forum for public discussion of
political issues. In some newspapers, notably The Times, the letters
page is likely to be read by politicians as indicative of public
opinion (or some significant portion of it), and may be a significant
consideration in policy-making. Broadcasting is now awash with
political debate and public access programmes, in which members
of the public are brought together to discuss the burning issues of
the day, and to express their opinions on these issues (McNair,
2000; McNair et al., 2002). In January 1997, for example, Britain’s
ITV broadcast Monarchy: The Nation Decides. Advertised as the
biggest live debate ever broadcast on British TV, the programme
allowed 3,000 citizens, egged on by a panel of pro- and anti-
monarchy experts, to express their views on the past and present
performance of the British monarchy, and its future role, in
unprecedentedly critical terms, which both the British royal family,
and any government responsible for stewarding the country’s
constitutional development, would have been foolish to ignore. 4
For all these reasons, then, an understanding of the contemporary
political process is inconceivable without an analysis of the media,
and a substantial part of this book will be devoted to that task.

The international stage
We turn, finally, to a category of political actor of growing import-
ance in the study of communication.
The progress of the twentieth century has seen the political arena
become more international, as the media have extended their reach,
geographically and temporally. In the twenty-first century media
audiences are the targets of political communication not only from
domestic sources, but foreign ones. Foreign governments, business
organisations, and terrorist groups such as al-Quaida, all use
the global information system to further their political objectives.
Traditional forms of interpersonal international diplomacy persist,
but modern wars, liberation struggles and territorial disputes are

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