Page 66 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

THE EFFECTS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

The intrinsic pessimism of this perspective is rejected by others,
often those with interests in the political marketing industries,
who view it as elitist and patronising. Political communication
consultants, note Denton and Woodward,

believe that they are actually making the electoral process
more democratic. They claim that they cannot control
votes as the old political bosses did through the patronage
system. Also, consultants can’t enforce voter discipline or
the voting behaviour of elected officials. There is no
empirical evidence of a direct causal relationship between
watching a commercial or series of commercials and
voting. Consultants further argue that they make elections
more open and provide access for reporters to candidate
strategy, views and campaign information.
(1990, p. 68)

The masses, it is argued, were hardly part of the political process
before universal suffrage became a reality. Even after the majority
of citizens gained the right to vote they were still relatively ignorant
about political issues. The rise of the mass media, and television
in particular, has brought the masses into the political process to
an historically unprecedented degree. And the masses, such voices
insist, are not so stupid as to be the passive victims of crude
manipulation.
In any case, the argument continues, why shouldn’t media
performance be a legitimate criterion of political fitness, in a world
where media are so fundamental to the political process? Critics of
the media’s expanded role, from this point of view, are simply
expressing a modern variant of John Stuart Mill’s argument
against universal suffrage which, as we noted earlier stated that the
masses should be deprived of the vote because they were inferior
educationally and intellectually.

CONCLUSION

The debate introduced here will recur in subsequent chapters, as we
examine the communication strategies and tactics of political actors
in greater detail. Beyond argument, we may state at this point, is the
notion that political communication is too important to be ignored
by those with a concern for the workings of modern democracies.

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