Page 58 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

THE EFFECTS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

in shaping behaviour. Such evidence is, however, conspicuously
lacking.
Research cited by Diamond and Bates supports the ‘uses and
gratifications’ thesis that the effects of political advertising (in
which category we include British party political broadcasts) are
heavily conditioned by the existing political attitudes of the
audience. They note that ‘some supporters of a particular candidate
tend to project their views on to the candidate’s advertising – they
will hear what they want to hear, almost regardless of what the
favoured candidate says. A number of studies have concluded that
few people actually change votes due to political advertising’ (1984,
p. 351). Advertising, these authors suggest, may reinforce existing
political attitudes and behaviour patterns, but will rarely change
them. Cundy discusses research suggesting that the effects of
political advertising are in inverse proportion to the audience’s
knowledge of the party or candidate being advertised, and that
‘once a candidate’s image has been developed, new information is
unlikely to generate any appreciable change’ (1986, p. 232).
This is true regardless of the aesthetic qualities of the advert.
Advertising may receive praise from commentators and analysts,
while failing to improve a party’s votes. In the 1987 general election,
the ‘Kinnock – the Movie’ PEB, as we have already noted, attracted
numerous accolades for the skill of its construction, to the extent
that it was shown twice on television during the campaign (a first
for British political advertising). Labour’s vote on polling day was
not substantially affected, however, unless one believes that it
would have been even lower without the positive image of Kinnock
presented in director Hugh Hudson’s film. In the 1988 US presi-
dential election, on the other hand, the Republicans’ infamous
‘Willie Horton’ spot, accusing Democratic candidate Michael
Dukakis of being dangerously liberal on crime, is widely believed to
have contributed substantially to Bush’s victory.
When all the empirical evidence is taken into account (and there
is not so much of it as one might expect, given the extent to which
image-management has become a central feature of political
campaigning) we can conclude that there do appear to be ways in
which a political message can be constructed so as to produce a
favourable response in the audience. The cut of a suit, a hairstyle,
a camera angle or the colour of a stage-set, are examples of formal
aspects of the message which might, all other things being equal,
positively influence audience perceptions of the communicator
and his or her message. In other words, there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’

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