Page 51 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

of and commentators on it. They are, therefore, as we noted in
Chapter 1, political actors in their own right. Chapter 4 considers
the effects of media coverage of politics, as discussed in the vast
volume of research which has been conducted into the subject over
many years.
Before considering any of these different types of effect, a few
words on the difficulties associated with the ‘effects issue’ in general
are appropriate.

METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN
POLITICAL EFFECTS RESEARCH

The student of the effects of political communication is confronted
with fundamental epistemo-methodological problems familiar to all
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effects researchers. Principally, how does one accurately trace the
cause and effect relationship between a piece of communication and
the behaviour of its audience? How can the effect of a particular
message be identified and measured in isolation from the other
environmental factors influencing an individual?

The communication process
In an earlier age of communication studies such questions were
rarely asked. The message was presumed to act on the individual
rather like a hypodermic syringe or billiard ball, producing a direct
effect which could be predicted and measured. The ‘hypodermic
model’ of media effects was embraced by both European and
American sociologists during the 1930s in response to, on the one
hand, the rise of fascism in Europe and the Nazis’ extensive and
apparently successful use of propaganda techniques and, on the
other, the power of advertising to sell commodities which was
then becoming evident. Both phenomena encouraged support for a
relatively simple, ‘strong’ effects model.
Unfortunately, extensive empirical research was unable to ‘prove’
specific media effects, prompting a recognition by the 1950s that
effects were ‘limited’, or more precisely, ‘mediated’ by the range of
social and cultural factors intervening between the message and
its audience. The ‘mediated-limited’ effects model dominated the
communication studies field throughout the 1960s, until it was
developed and refined by the semiological school, in the work of
Umberto Eco and others.

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