Page 261 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 251
given matter; and second, that on this occasion it was the originally less
committed voters who were most responsive to such a source of influence.

Media influence on trust in government
Although much political communication research focuses on election campaigns,
some social scientists have argued that the periods between elections are just as
crucial for understanding the role of the media in the political life of society.
This is reflected in the increasing research attention given in recent years to the
influence of styles of political reporting on people’s faith in their political
institutions. Kurt and Gladys Lang (1966) were the first to postulate such an
influence. In their words,

The mass media, by the way in which they structure and present political
reality, may contribute to a widespread and chronic distrust of political
life. Such distrust is not primarily a mark of sophistication, indicating that
critical ‘discount’ is at work. It is of a projective character and constitutes a
defensive reaction against the periodic political crises known to affect a
person’s destiny as well as against what are defined as deliberate efforts to
mobilise political sentiment…. How, we may ask, do the media encourage
such distrust?…The answers must be sought in the way in which the mass
media tend to emphasize crisis and stress it in lieu of the normal processes
of decision making. Such distrust also has its roots in the complexity of
events and of problems in which the mass audience is involved. For
instance, since viewers bring little specialized knowledge to politics, even
full TV coverage of major political events does not allay this distrust. In
fact it may abet it. (Lang and Lang, 1966, pp. 466–7)

Attempts to explore these matters empirically started when opinion polls in
several countries began to reveal steep downward trends in the readiness
of voters to trust their political leaders' management of affairs. A further boost to
this line of enquiry stemmed from the Watergate affair.
One example of such research is a study by Michael J. Robinson (1976), an
American political scientist who shared the suspicion that certain features of
television news-reporting could have been responsible for the sharp decline of
popular trust in government in the United States in recent years. He summarized
his expectations as follows:

My recent work in television has forced me to build a yet untested theory
concerning the growth of political illegitimacy. I have begun to envision a
two-stage process in which television journalism, with its constant
emphasis on social and political conflict, its high credibility, its powerful
audio-visual capabilities and its epidemicity, has caused the more
vulnerable viewers first to doubt their own understanding of their political