Page 56 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

THE EFFECTS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

in the study of sexually explicit or violent material. The method-
ological objections to it are, once again, those of interpretation
and contextualisation. Can a laboratory experiment, no matter
how sensitively prepared, really reproduce the complex political
environment in which individuals make their decisions? Can it
compensate for the weight of cultural and social resonances that
will accompany a political message in the real world?
To make these points is not to dispute the value of sensitively
designed empirical audience research in the study of political or any
other type of communication, but simply to highlight its limitations.

DOES POLITICAL COMMUNICATION WORK?
MICRO-EFFECTS

According to a MORI poll conducted during the British general
election of June 1987, the determinants of voting behaviour,
particularly for the crucial section of ‘floating’ or undecided voters
who will ultimately decide the outcome, are threefold. They are,
first (and still, apparently, most importantly), the image of party
policy (44 per cent); second, the voters’ image of the party leader-
ship (35 per cent of choices in 1987 were attributed by respondents
to this factor); and finally, the ‘corporate’ image of the party itself
(21 per cent) (Worcester, 1991, p. 111).
Each of these aspects of a party’s identity have to be communi-
cated, suggesting at the very least that the ability and skill to
communicate can be important in influencing political behaviour
and electoral outcomes.
Among the experiments conducted into the efficacy of political
communication at this level is Rosenberg and McCafferty’s study of
the extent to which ‘public relations experts [can] manipulate the
public’s impression of a political candidate’ (1987, p. 31). Their
concern in this research was with non-verbal aspects of communi-
cation, or the candidate’s ‘image’ defined in narrow, physical terms.
As they put it, ‘we are interested in exploring whether or not it is
possible to manipulate an individual’s appearance in a way that
affects both voters’ judgments of the candidate and the choice they
make at the ballot box’ (ibid.).
To test the hypothesis that image does matter in shaping political
behaviour, Rosenberg and McCafferty selected a group of American
university students, whom they exposed to multiple photographs
of a series of fictional election candidates. The pictures differed in

35