Page 67 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

The precise nature of its effects – behavioural or attitudinal, short-,
medium- or long-term, direct or indirect, social or psychological –
may still elude social scientists and observers of the political scene,
but political actors themselves – those who are striving to influence
society in directions consistent with the furthering of their interests
– acting on the assumption that there are effects sufficient to justify
substantial expenditure on time and resources. As Doris Graber
has noted, ‘one cannot deny that people throughout the world of
politics consider the media important and behave accordingly. This
importance . . . is reflected in efforts by governments everywhere, in
authoritarian as well as democratic regimes, to control the flow of
information produced by the media lest it subvert the prevailing
political system’ (1984a, p. 19). Arterton suggests of the US that
‘those who manage presidential campaigns uniformly believe that
interpretations placed upon campaign events are frequently more
important than the events themselves. In other words, the political
content is shaped primarily by the perceptual environment within
which campaigns operate’ (1984, p. 155). Molotch et al. agree that,
without regard to the empirical measurability of effects, ‘elected
politicians, other political activists and agency policy-makers
usually “perceive” that media are critical to both public attitude
formation and to the policy process’ (1987, p. 27) [their emphasis].
Baudrillard, with typical mischievousness, put it well when he
observed that ‘we will never know if an advertisement or opinion
poll has had a real influence on individual or collective will, but we
will never know either what would have happened if there had been
no opinion poll or advertisement’ (1988, p. 210).

Further reading

Habermas’ analysis of the media’s negative impact on the
democratic process is set out at length in The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989). A more recent
and readable critique of political media, as seen from the
French perspective, is set out in the late Pierre Bourdieu’s On
Television and Journalism (Pluto, 1999). ‘Optimistic’ and
‘pessimistic’ perspectives on the evolution of the political
public sphere are compared in my own Journalism and
Democracy (Routledge, 2000).

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