Page 63 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

was able to book 4,500 poster sites, at a cost of £1.5 million, as
compared to Labour’s 2,200 (cost, £0.5 million) and the Liberal
Democrats’ 500 (cost, £0.17 million) (Butler and Kavanagh, 1992,
p. 116). Campaign spending as a whole in 1992 was £10.1 million
for the Tories, £7.1 million for Labour, and £2.1 million for
the Liberal Democrats (ibid., p. 260). In the general election of
1997, the figures were £13 million, £17 million and £3 million
respectively.
Criticisms of the rising costs of campaigning are, as one would
expect, more likely to be heard from those with less rather than
more access to the financial and other resources discussed here.
That does not invalidate them, of course, and following the 1997
election the New Labour government introduced rules limiting each
party’s campaign spending to £15 million.

THE COMMERCIALISATION OF POLITICS

The third level at which we can examine the impact of modern
political communication is on the social system itself: the capitalist
social formation, within which democracy usually comprises the
defining political element. An important tradition within sociology
has argued that the growing role of mass communication in politics
represents the extension of capitalist social relations – in particular,
the relations of consumption – to the political sphere. In the process,
politics has become artificial and degenerate. Jurgen Habermas has
argued that ‘late capitalism brings with it the manipulation of
public opinion through the mass media, the forced articulation of
social needs through large organisations, and in short, the manage-
ment of politics by the “system” ’ (quoted in Pusey, 1978, p. 90).
Using different language, but saying essentially the same thing,
Herbert Schiller observes that in contemporary capitalism politicians
‘are “sold” to the public, much like soap and automobiles. . . .
Issues of public policy, when considered at all, increasingly receive
their expression and discussion in thirty-second commercials’
(1984, p. 117). Robins and Webster suggest that the application of
marketing and advertising techniques to the political process

signifies something about the conduct of political life [in
the advanced capitalist world]: Saatchi and Saatchi [the
UK-based marketing and PR firm responsible for some of
the most innovative political advertising of the 1980s] is an

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