Page 219 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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StrategicPolitical Communication

their own position in only half of the cases. Moreover, they only rarely
address really hot issues.
Such strategies are not limited to electoral campaigns. In addition
to the basic repertoire (“stone walling,” “half-answering,” “not remem-
bering,” “disclosing drop by drop,” or “suddenly and overwhelmingly”),
the strategy of displacing problems includes also more targeted strategies
attempting to undermine exclusive reports by unfriendly papers or to di-
lute the effect of investigative journalists’ research. Direct intimidations
of such journalists and complaints about them, lodged with their su-
periors, are part of such strategies as is targeted discrediting (Esser
2000, 22).
Among the techniques of symbolic politics we also find actor-centered
strategies,especiallypersonalizingandnegativepublicity(“negativecam-
paigning”). Personalizing strategies can be used to distract attention
from political issues. Conversely, it is also possible to focus on an issue in
ordertodistractattentionfrompersonalquestions(e.g.,personnelprob-
lems within the governing coalition). Pfetsch (1993, 100) suggests that
personalizing strategies used by opponents are quite apt to thwart the in-
tended communication effects of political actors, because such strategies
correspond to the selection criteria of the media and are readily picked
up. In reaction to negative publicityin the media, political actors learn
how to deal with the media in an ever more sophisticated way. They try to
find ways to reach the public directly without passing through the media
(Swanson and Mancini 1996, 252). One possibility to do so is “the news
news” – popular interview programs or the use of unorthodox television
channels such as the appearance in music channels on cable television.
Another possibility is political marketing – paid political advertising.
Morris (1999, 206–7) believes that citizens like this kind of advertising:
citizens distrust both journalists and advertisements, but they use both
sources to be able to check the bias in the respective other source. Paid
advertisements are the best way, according to Morris, to get positive
reporting. It allows political actors to influence the public which then
influences the media, because the media have to take into account what
6
the public wishes to see and hear. A final possibility to circumvent the
media is political communication using the Internet.

6 Newton (2000) is considerably less sanguine about the success of this kind of political
marketing. Although Margret Thatcher had the huge advantage in Great Britain in that
she faced a national press that largely supported her and her policy, and although she
had a highly effective public relations secretary at her side who had enormous power
and resources (in 1989–1990 the government was next to Unilever, the second largest

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