Page 54 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

P1: kic/kaa/Ivo P2: KaF
0521828317agg.xml CY425/Esser 0521828317 May 22, 2004 10:57

Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini

unions, and other traditional organizations of “civil society” as the cen-
tral means by which individuals are connected to the wider social and
political world.
One specific version of the argument that expansion of the media
leads to political change is the hypothesis that a “growing availability of
political information through the media” makes individual citizens less
dependent on party and group leadership. This hypothesis involves par-
ticularly tricky issues, and only limited empirical evidence is available.
That more political information is available in the abstract is certainly
true. But how much political information is actually taken in by the
“average” citizen is an extremely complex issue. On the one hand, it is
certainly plausible that the rise of electronic media increased the flow
of political information, both through their wide reach and their rel-
atively accessible forms of presentation. This may have been especially
important in Southern Europe where newspaper circulation is limited.
On the other hand, many have argued that the commercialization of
media – which we will take up in detail in the following text – creates
apowerful countertrend, pushing political content out of the media.
2
Empirical evidence on this point is fragmentary and inconclusive. It
may be that the flow of political information did increase up to a point –
perhaps in the 1980s – and since has diminished; it may also be that
the downward tendency is just beginning. A strong emphasis on public
affairs content was clearly one of the distinctive characteristics of Euro-
pean public service broadcasting. Its most important manifestation was
the placement of substantial news broadcasts in the heart of prime time,
often simultaneously on all available channels. Commercialization and
the multiplication of channels is clearly eroding this emphasis – though
political content does migrate into new, more entertainment-oriented
forms (talk shows and the like) – with uncertain consequences for the
net flow of political ideas and information.

TELEVISION AND SECULARIZATION
To understand the impact of electronic media, of course, we need to look
beyond their mere existence to their social organization. The electronic
media were organized originally in Europe under political authority.
2 Some of the – conflicting – evidence on commercialization of broadcasting is sum-
marized in Brants and Siune 1988. Information – again conflicting – on changing
political content in the British press can be found in McLachlan and Golding (2000)
and Rooney (2000).

34