Page 139 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

P1: Irk-Kic-JzL
0521828317agg.xml CY425/Esser 0521828317 May 22, 2004 12:27

Global Political Communication

It is particularly important that state-owned or public television stations
should be open to a plurality of political viewpoints and viewpoints
during campaigns, without favoring the government. This principle has
been recognized in jurisprudence from countries as varied as Ghana, Sri
Lanka, Belize, India, Trinidad and Tobago, and Zambia (Administration
and Cost of Elections [ACE] Project).
What empirical evidence supports the claims made in liberal theories?
Early accounts assumed a fairly simple and straightforward relationship
between the spread of modern forms of mass communications, socio-
economic development, and the process of democratization. Early stud-
ies in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Lerner, Lipset, Pye, and Cutright,
among others, suggested that the diffusion of mass communications
represented one sequential step in the development process. In this per-
spective, urbanization and the spread of literacy led to growing use of
modern technologies such as telephones, newspapers, radios, and televi-
sion, and the diffusion of the mass media laid the basis for an informed
citizenry able to participate in democratic life (Lerner 1958; Lipset 1959;
Pye1963;McCroneandCnudde1967).Basedonsimplecorrelationanal-
ysis, showing a strong connection between the spread of communica-
tions and political development, Daniel Lerner theorized: “The capacity
to read, at first acquired by relatively few people, equips them to perform
the varied tasks required in the modernizing society. Not until the third
stage, when the elaborate technology of industrial development is fairly
well advanced, does a society begin to produce newspapers, radio net-
works, and motion pictures on a massive scale. This, in turn, accelerates
the spread of literacy. Out of this interaction develop those institutions
of participation (e.g., voting) whichwe find in all advanced modern
societies” (Lerner 1958, 60). Yet in the late 1960s and early 1970s the
assumption that the modernization process involved a series of sequen-
tial steps gradually fell out of fashion. Factors contributing to a more
skeptical view of the promises of modernization included (1) the com-
plexities of human development evident in different parts of the world,
(2) major setbacks for democracy with the “second reverse wave” expe-
rienced in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, and (3) growing
recognitionthatcontrolofnewspapersandtelevisionbroadcastingcould
be used effectively to prop up authoritarian regimes and reinforce the
power of multinational corporations, as much as to advance human
rights and provide a voice for the disadvantaged (Hur 1984, 365–78;
Sreberny-Mohammadi et al. 1984; Stevenson and Shaw 1984; Mowlana
1985; Preston et al. 1989; Huntington 1993).

119