Page 228 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

SPIN

electronic means of communication have opened up a whole range of
mediated transactions that do not rely on speech. Some linguists now
use the term language community instead.
Second, the reference to ‘community’ seems something of a
misnomer under late capitalism. This is not just a question of the
division of labour. In the case of UK society, for example, it is now
clearer than ever that gross inequalities of material advantage continue
to accumulate around the divisions of ethnicity, gender, class and
region. And if the society displays not only diversity but also
fundamental division, then verbal practices themselves will not just be
held in common, but will come to operate actively in opposition to
each other.

See also: Standard language
Further reading: Montgomery (1986)

SPIN

The management of news by professional publicists and media
agencies, both independent and attached to governments or ministries.
The professionalisation of public communication in general. ‘Spin
doctors’ became familiar in the UK during the 1990s, and were
especially associated with the very tight control of their public image
that was exercised by the New Labour Party prior to the election of
the Blair government in 1997 (and subsequently). The dark arts of
media manipulation were used not only externally, to control as much
as possible the flow, even the style, of information used by journalists,
but also internally, to make sure Labour politicians themselves
remained ‘on message’ at all times.
Commercial publicists such as Max Clifford also achieved celebrity
status during the same era. Clifford specialised in selling scandalous
stories about private lives to tabloids. If the private life in question was
that of a political high flier, and preferably a Tory, so much the better.
Clifford presented himself as a champion of the ‘little person’. Not
only did they deserve to win (through his contacts with the media) the
full value of the ‘intellectual property’ their gossip or scandal could
command, but in addition, the impact of revelations on the careers of
the high and mighty – often catastrophic – was seen as exerting a kind
of moral justice. Indeed, the dying days of the Conservative
government under John Major were dogged by sleaze and scandal,
some of which undoubtedly contributed to their trouncing in the

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