Page 72 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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DavidL.Swanson

and cynicism about politics and government, a style of journalism that
was more entertaining but less informative, and an approach to gov-
erning that was closely bound with public relations. Realistically, the
prospects for reversing the trend were not encouraging. Blumler and
Coleman summarized the British experience in this way: “communica-
tions as presently organized is sucking both the substance and the spirit
out of the politics it projects. This is naturally mistrusted and spurned
by many of the independent-minded and wary electors who form its
intended audience. Yet their chances of enjoying a more nourishing or
engaging supply of messages from a public service broadcasting system
in crisis, or from a press system embroiled in circulation wars must be
rated as no better than slim” (2001, 4).
This brief summary of the conventional view is, of course, an overly
simplified portrait. It stresses the common themes that have emerged
from transnational studies but gives insufficient attention to the com-
plex influences that shape the specific forms those themes take in each
country. Those influences – such as the role played by different electoral
systems, approaches to regulating political communication, different
structures of political competition, different national political cultures –
are discussed at length elsewhere (e.g., Swanson and Mancini 1996a).
It is to these influences we must look to explain the particular forms
that modern political communication takes in each country, and the
rich variety of practices we see – where sophisticated media campaigns
sometimes exist side by side with traditional customs and at other times
overwhelm traditional communications altogether. Overly simplified as
it is, however, this summary of the traditional view serves well enough
to set the stage for understanding how the “new realities” discussed in
the following text raise such questions about whether the forces that
shaped political communication in so many countries in the 1980s and
1990s really are inexorable, and whether the conventional view grants
too much power and autonomy to political communication.

TRANSNATIONAL TRENDS: SOME NEW REALITIES
Two recent developments give reason to question some of researchers’
settled views about the evolving models of political communication and
their inevitable consequences. One development concerns whether pub-
lic cynicism about politicians and government is in fact the inescapable
result of modern political communication. A second development con-
cerns whether the coalescence of transnational broadcast journalism

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