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post-debate analyses and phone-ins to gauge ‘the winner’. In effect, they invited an
impressive succession of politicians, entertainers, analysts, media editors and
intellectuals to comment on the debates. According to AGB Hellas, the TV ratings
research company, of those households that had TV the 1996 debate was seen by
35.8%,the 2000 debate was seen by 41% and the 2004 debate was seen by 44%.

A third new feature was the heavy presence of ‘telegenic’ politicians, mainly from the
two leading parties. In both the 1996 and 2000 national elections, smaller parties
complained that there was a ‘bi-party’ dialogue among the candidates of the main
political parties. Private channels preferred these politicians, many times in pairs, so as
not to upset their ratings.

The fourth new feature was the growth in negative political advertising. Jay Blumler
notes (1990, p. 109) that the modern publicity process may be promoting an increased
circulation of negative messages about political actors, events and decisions, a striking
example being the heavy use of negative advertising. In Greece, as in other countries
that have left public rallies and pamphlet scattering behind, negative political TV
advertising has become a key election issue.Since the 1993 election,a major part of the
campaign strategy has been based not only on political TV advertisements but also on
negative ‘polispots’ (‘black advertisements’ or ‘black propaganda’, as these became
known in Greece). These were also in evidence in the 1996 and 2000 elections
(Papathanassopoulos, 1997; 2000; 2002) but much less so in the 2004 elections. For
example, less than two hours after Prime Minister Costas Simitis called a ‘snap election’
for September 1996, the main opposition New Democracy party’s first campaign
commercial aired on television was a compilation of clips of Simitis rejecting the notion
of an early election, ending with a voice-over asking: ‘Elections on September 22. Can
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
you trust him?’ The message echoed the theme pursued by conservative officials in
public statements and on talk shows that the Prime Minister and ruling PASOK party
had lost credibility by calling the election despite earlier claims that they intended to
serve out the four-year term of office.In effect,both parties were accusing each other of
being unable to run the country and of not being trustworthy.

The fifth new, but not yet significant, feature is the role of the Internet. A minority of
Greeks have access to the Internet, which has meant that, with less than 25% of the
population using the web before the 2002 election, the web played little importance in
political campaigning. Few candidates had web sites and even fewer used this in any
political manner.One has to note also that there are very few media producing news for
the web, as most outlets re-publish content that gets published through other outlets
(In.gr and flash.gr being the exception). So it is safe to say that the new media did not
make their debut in Greek political life until the 2002 election. During 2002, new media
and the democratising possibilities of new technologies became the key buzzwords for
the Papandreou campaign. New technologies were introduced hand-in-hand with a
number of other concepts – slogans such as ‘civil society’, deliberation ’, ‘citizens’
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