Page 150 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

COMMUNICATION
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STRATEGIC POLITICAL
with a particular category of people. Stereotypes are learned, relatively fixed,
and often negative impressions of a group of people based on easily identified
characteristics such as ethnicity, race, gender, or religion. The noun "stereo-
type" originally denoted a metal printer's mold that could exactly reproduce a
printed page. Walter Lippmann used the term "stereotypes" in his 1922 book
Public Opinion to describe "the pictures in our heads." Lippmann's concern
was with the influence of stereotypes to create "pictures of groups of people
that were distorted or unjustified." Lippmann wrote about the nature of language
and meaning in terms of how the press shapes public opinion by portraying the
"world" outside the reader's experience.

SOURCES: Melvin DeFleur, Patricia Kearney, and Timothy Plax, Fundamentals of Hu-
man Communication, 1991; Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922.
Kathleen B. Waiters

STRATEGIC POLITICAL COMMUNICATION. Political communication
encompasses the creation, distribution, control, use, processing, and effects of
information as a political resource, whether by governments, organizations,
groups, or individuals. Strategic political communication incorporates the use of
sophisticated knowledge of such attributes of human behavior as attitude and
preference structures, cultural tendencies, and media-use patterns. This involves
knowledge of such relevant organizational behaviors as how news organizations
make decisions regarding news content and how congressional committees
schedule and structure hearings. The objective of strategic political communi-
cation is to shape and target messages so as to maximize their desired impact
while minimizing undesired collateral effects. Social scientists have been gath-
ering knowledge and generating theories about the nature and effects of political
communication for more than half a century. Since at least the 1960s, profes-
sional practitioners of political communication have been applying this knowl-
edge for the benefit of their clients. Initially, those clients were mostly political
candidates interested in election, and the advice they received guided their de-
cisions on advertising content, debate strategy, and the like. Beginning in 1981
with the selling of the Reagan administration's tax policy and continuing to the
present, the clients have come to include advocates of special interests who seek
to influence voters in referenda or to mobilize "grassroots" pressure on legis-
lators and even governments themselves. In the 1980s, for example, the British
government employed such techniques to sway public opinion in favor of main-
taining American missile bases in England, and in 1990 the Bush administration
used strategic communication to build popular support for an American military
response following Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
Strategic political communication is intensely research-driven. Its practitioners
use content analysis of the media, demographic analysis, focus groups, and sur-
vey research to determine the precise nature of the informational environment