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Political communication is the study of political messaging that is communicated, usually to the public e.g. political campaigns, speeches and political advertising, often concerning the mass media. [1] It is an interdisciplinary field that draws from communication and political science. Political communication is concerned with ideas such as information flow, political influence, policy making, news, and their effects on citizens. [2] The field also focuses on the study of political social media, propaganda, political economy of communication and non-profit organisations that communicate to affect political processes.[ citation needed ] Modern societal changes that have affected the field include the digitization of media, polarization and a movement towards a post-truth media environment.
Political communication has existed since antiquity. During this era it was common for rulers to use symbols and monuments to communicate power and authority to the masses. In ancient Greece, public speeches such as those delivered by Pericles in Athens, played a crucial role in shaping political discourse and rallying public support for war efforts. [3]
During the era of the Roman Empire, political communication took on a more sophisticated form with the use of propaganda, rhetoric, and public spectacles in order to try and influence public opinion. [4] Figures famed for their political communication skills include Cicero.
After the creation of the print media with the dawn of the modern printing press in modern industrial Britain, this led to the ability to create modern mass media in the 20th century, which transformed political communication, giving rise to new forms of propaganda, advertising, and public relations. [5] Political leaders such as Winston Churchill and Franklin. D. Roosevelt utilized radio broadcasts to reach millions of listeners during times of crisis and war. Edward Herman notes that the expensive nature of the printing press meant that early on in the technology's existence, labour and co-operative organisations were easily priced out of press media markets due to funding issues, meaning that corporations obtained an early grip on the market. [6] Herman therefore states that this meant that early on in the mass media of Britain, corporate right-wing voices that would self-select editors to run their publications, essentially stopped organised working class and left-wing voices from participating in the mass media via lack of capital. [6]
During the 1990s and the early 2000s (after successful campaigns by corporate advertising companies) political spin started to come into mainstream usage. Governments like Tony Blair's in The United Kingdom and George W. Bush were known for instituting spin within their communications. [7] Alistair Campbell, a journalist turned Downing Street Press Secretary (who was referred to as a 'spin doctor' in the media) [8] had the job of deflecting or 'spinning' bad situations that showed the government in a bad light, via press briefings with the British media. [9] Campbell became an influential and controversial addition to the political communication toolkit of Tony Blair's Labour government in the United Kingdom. This practice has now become standard in subsequent governments in Western countries like the United Kingdom [10] and the United States, with dedicated 'briefing rooms' whereby members of government address and communicate with the countries' press, which have also come to be known as spin rooms.
Now, during the digital age, political communication has come to include the use of online platforms like social media, free online video services like YouTube where news channels can post freely, and online News Websites, which has changed how the public and voters receive their political news and information. Barack Obama's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 are notable for mobilizing supporters, as they helped innovate the use of social media to engage voters and raise funds. [11] Volodymyr Zelenskyy's successful 2019 Presidential Campaign also featured heavy usage of social media posts. [12]
Today, Political communication continues to evolve quickly, as new technologies such as AI and big data analytics have begun to reshape how campaigns can target and persuade voters. However, this has led to large concerns regarding misinformation, echo chambers, and online polarization. [13] Recent election manipulation scandals like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal which was found to have assisted Donald Trump's election campaign unethically by mining user's Facebook data, leading to a further distrust of corporate and political institutions. [14]
An outline of key areas of political communication study are: [15]
James Chesebro, further suggests five critical approaches to the modern study of Political Communication: [16]
Robert E. Denton and Gary C. Woodward, via their work in Political Communication in America, [17] define Political communication as the ways and intentions of message senders to influence the political environment. This includes public discussion (e.g. political speeches, news media coverage, and ordinary citizens' talk) that considers who has authority to sanction the allocation of public resources, who has authority to make decisions, as well as social meaning like what makes someone American.
"...the crucial factor that makes communication 'political' is not the source of a message, but its content and purpose." [18]
David L. Swanson and Dan Nimmo define political communication as "the strategic use of communication to influence public knowledge, beliefs, and action on political matters." [19] They emphasize the strategic nature of political communication, highlighting the role of persuasion in political discourse. Brian McNair provides a similar definition when he writes that political communication is "purposeful communication about politics." For McNair, this means that this not only covers verbal or written statements, but also visual representations such as dress attire, make-up, hairstyle or logo design. In other words, it also includes all those aspects that develop a "political identity" or "image". According to Harald Borgebund, the author of Political Communication and the Realities of Democracy, "Political communication is essential in a democratic polity." [19]
Reflecting on the relationship between political communication and contemporary agenda-building, Vian Bakir defines Strategic Political Communication (SPC) as comprising 'political communication that is manipulative in intent, utilizes social scientific techniques and heuristic devices to understand human motivation, human behavior and the media environment in order to inform effectively what should be communicated – encompassing its detail and overall direction – and what should be withheld, with the aim of taking into account and influencing public opinion, and creating strategic alliances and an enabling environment for government policies – both at home and abroad'. [20]
To further expand on why political communication can be viewed as manipulative, Michael Gurevitch and Jay G. Blumler, contributors of Political Communication Systems and Democratic Values [19] stated that "the very structure of political communication involves a division between movers and shakers at the top and bystanders below." However, one way that contemporary media has tried to combat the imbalances of political communication is through the creation of public access television. According to a study done, Access Television and Grassroots Political Communication in the United States, by Dr. Laura Stein "public access has opened up a space for grassroots political communication on television" [19] this is because public access communication has allowed for an open space in a variety of fields of communication no matter the speakers ideological view points.
In regards to the Political Strategic Communication in The USA one example is The Bush Administration's torture-for-intelligence policy, initiated soon after 9/11, which was kept secret for several years, as remains the level of complicity of many other nation-states' governments. While this secret policy was gradually revealed from 2004 onwards, initiated by the Abu Ghraib torture photos, the Bush administration engaged in SPC to publicly reframe and protect its secret policy. SPC included silencing and persuasive discursive activity. [21]
According to Jake Sherman and Albert Trithart, “United Nations peace operations often struggle to communicate their messages to the local population and the broader global community.” It argued, therefore, that “the outdated public information approach of the United Nations must be transformed into more dynamic communications efforts.”, "This required missions to better understand key audiences, make better use of national staff, embrace technology, train leaders in effective communication, proactively engage with local populations, and tailor both the message and means of communication to particular audiences." [23]
The Middle East
In the Middle East, “even those supported by a U.S. administration, are at best visionary and without any real practical use”. [24] As explained by Hussein Amin from the American University of Cairo, “-because many people view censorship as a sign of social responsibility, civil society has a deep distrust of itself. While admitting that political communication in the mass media has diversified and developed some more liberal patterns in recent years”. [24] In general, “Mass media have long been linked to the historical development and emergence of national identities and the modern nation-state by creating bounded spaces of political communication and discourse". [25]
In cases of on-going war like Syria and Palestine, the majority of media formats are censored towards the Middle East in order to avoid further catastrophization of an event, possibly by the West. For example, in Syria, 'The Rebel Free Syrian Army' was created as an opposition to Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship. [26]
Political communication has long used political persuasion. Political figures understand the role of the media in gaining the acceptance of voters. [27] For example, political communication delivered through social media tends to be accompanied by social interaction and public opinion. [28] Logos, ethos, and pathos are key methods of communication theories known to be used in political public speaking to persuade. [29]
A theoretical model in political communication that emerged during the 1980s was the propaganda model. [30] In 1988 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky theorized that the interests of globalized elites were warping the journalistic integrity of the mass media and its attempts to communicate news, using the United States Corporate media (and its basis in the British Corporate-Capitalist model) to critique modern Western communications, looking at the communications in relation to Capitalism and Neo-Imperialism. They suggest that the political consent of the electorate would also be damaged by this type of political communication in the mass media:
"The more elusive or imaginary the foe, the better for manufacturing consent. The picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality." [6]
In terms of political communication, the propaganda model is generally used in the context of the globalized American corporate media and how it organically acts in the interests of corporate elites, specifically in an anti-democratic way. Therefore, Herman and Chomsky argue that the interests of the corporate elite (trying to profit maximize) are not often interested in the democratic rights of citizens and therefore create a new form of propaganda (via the mass media of privately owned news corporations), which has damaging effects on different democratic governments i.e. The United States Government. [31]
Social media has become an increasingly important tool for political communication. For certain demographics it is one of the main platforms from which individuals acquire their news, and allows them to interact with it via commenting and sharing. [32] Social media has dramatically changed the way in which modern political campaigns are run. [33] [34] With more digital native citizens coming into the voting population, social media has become an important medium where politicians can establish themselves and engage with voters. [35] In an increasingly digitized world, new research has shown that social media is becoming increasingly important in electoral politics. [36]
Social media experience relies heavily on the user themselves due to the platforms' algorithms which tailor consumer experience for each user. This results in each person seeing more like-minded news due to the increase in digital social behavior. [37] Additionally, social media has changed politics because it has given politicians a direct medium to give their constituents information and the people to speak directly to the politicians. This informal nature can lead to informational mistakes because it is not being subjected to the same "fact-checking processes as institutional journalism." [38]
Social media creates greater opportunity for political persuasion due to the high number of citizens that regularly engage and build followings on social media. The more that a person engages on social media, the more influential they believe themselves to be, resulting in more people considering themselves to be politically persuasive. [39]
In Australia 86% of Australians access the Internet, and with a 17,048,864 voting age population, [40] around 14,662,023 voting population has access to Internet, and 65% of them use social media, with 9,530,314 Australian voters using social media. The 2013 Yellow™ Social Media Report also found that among internet users, 65% of Australians use social media, up from 62% in 2014. [41]
With almost half of the Australian voting population active on social media, political parties are adapting quickly to influence and connect with their voters. [42] Studies have found that journalists in Australia widely use social media in a professional context and that it has become a viable method of communication between the mainstream media and wider audiences. [43]
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. The title refers to consent of the governed, and derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent" used by Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion (1922). Manufacturing Consent was honored with the Orwell Award for "outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse" in 1989.
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. Propaganda can be found in a wide variety of different contexts.
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization to the public in order to influence their perception. Public relations and publicity differ in that PR is controlled internally, whereas publicity is not controlled and contributed by external parties. Public relations may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment. The exposure is mostly media-based, and this differentiates it from advertising as a form of marketing communications. Public relations often aims to create or obtain coverage for clients for free, also known as earned media, rather than paying for marketing or advertising also known as paid media. However, advertising is also a part of broader PR activities.
A politician is a person who participates in policy-making processes, usually holding a position in government. Politicians represent the people, make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy. The roles or duties that politicians must perform vary depending on the level of government they serve, whether local, national, or international. The ideological orientation that politicians adopt often stems from their previous experience, education, beliefs, the political parties they belong to, or public opinion. Politicians sometimes face many challenges and mistakes that may affect their credibility and ability to persuade. These mistakes include corruption resulting from their misuse and exploitation of power to achieve their interests, which requires them to prioritize the public interest and develop long-term strategies. Challenges include how to keep up with the development of social media and confronting biased media, in addition to discrimination against them on the basis of gender, race, or belief, which requires them to adapt their communications to engage citizens, confront discrimination, and spread their message effectively.
In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to influence public opinion about some organization or public figure. While traditional public relations and advertising may manage their presentation of facts, "spin" often implies the use of disingenuous, deceptive, and manipulative tactics.
Media manipulation refers to orchestrated campaigns in which actors exploit the distinctive features of broadcasting mass communications or digital media platforms to mislead, misinform, or create a narrative that advance their interests and agendas.
The hypodermic needle model is claimed to have been a model of communication in which media consumers were "uniformly controlled by their biologically based 'instincts' and that they react more or less uniformly to whatever 'stimuli' came along".
In international relations, public diplomacy broadly speaking, is any of the various government-sponsored efforts aimed at communicating directly with foreign publics to establish a dialogue designed to inform and influence with the aim of building support for the state's strategic objectives. These also include propaganda. As the international order has changed over the twentieth century, so has the practice of public diplomacy. Its practitioners use a variety of instruments and methods ranging from personal contact and media interviews to the internet and educational exchanges.
A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making progress within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen or referendums are decided. In modern politics, the most high-profile political campaigns are focused on general elections and candidates for head of state or head of government, often a president or prime minister.
The sleeper effect is a psychological phenomenon that relates to persuasion. It is a delayed increase in the effect of a message that is accompanied by a discounting cue, typically being some negative connotation or lack of credibility in the message, while a positive message may evoke an immediate positive response which decays over time. The sleeper effect also refers to a delayed positive response that is maintained over time. The effect was first noticed among US Army soldiers exposed to army propaganda. It was hypothesized that over time the soldiers forgot that the message was propaganda. The effect has been widely studied but notoriously difficult to reproduce, leading to some doubt over its existence.
Media democracy is a democratic approach to media studies that advocates for the reform of mass media to strengthen public service broadcasting and develop participation in alternative media and citizen journalism in order to create a mass media system that informs and empowers all members of society and enhances democratic values.
Mass communication is the process of imparting and exchanging information through mass media to large population segments. It utilizes various forms of media as technology has made the dissemination of information more efficient. Primary examples of platforms utilized and examined include journalism and advertising. Mass communication, unlike interpersonal communication and organizational communication, focuses on particular resources transmitting information to numerous receivers. The study of mass communication is chiefly concerned with how the content and information that is being mass communicated persuades or affects the behavior, attitude, opinion, or emotion of people receiving the information.
Sustainability advertising is communications geared towards promoting social, economic and environmental benefits (sustainability) of products, services or actions through paid advertising in media in order to encourage responsible behavior of consumers.
Communicology is the scholarly and academic study of how people create and use messages to affect the social environment. Communicology is an academic discipline that distinguishes itself from the broader field of human communication with its exclusive use of scientific methods to study communicative phenomena. The goals of these scientific methods are to create and extend theory-based knowledge about the processes and outcomes of communication. Practitioners in the communicology discipline employ empirical and deductive research methods, such as cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys, experiments, meta-analyses, and content analyses, to test theoretically-derived hypotheses. Correlational and causal relationships between communication variables are tested in these studies.
Political journalism is a broad branch of journalism that includes coverage of all aspects of politics and political science, although the term usually refers specifically to coverage of civil governments and political power.
In social psychology, the Yale attitude change approach is the study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages. This approach to persuasive communications was first studied by Carl Hovland and his colleagues at Yale University during World War II. The basic model of this approach can be described as "who said what to whom": the source of the communication, the nature of the communication and the nature of the audience. According to this approach, many factors affect each component of a persuasive communication. The credibility and attractiveness of the communicator (source), the quality and sincerity of the message, and the attention, intelligence and age of the audience can influence an audience's attitude change with a persuasive communication. Independent variables include the source, message, medium and audience, with the dependent variable the effect of the persuasion.
Since the end of the 20th century, propaganda has evolved significantly. In the 21st century, propaganda is largely disseminated through the news, internet and on social media platforms such as Twitter. Modern propaganda still utilises classic tactics such as name-calling and bandwagoning in order to sway the audience toward or against a particular belief. Pieces of "traditional" propaganda are typically created and distributed by larger entities or organisations, while modern propaganda can be created and spread by vast numbers of individuals simultaneously online. Modern propaganda can take many forms, ranging from memes to mainstream partisan news.
Social media use in politics refers to the use of online social media platforms in political processes and activities. Political processes and activities include all activities that pertain to the governance of a country or area. This includes political organization, global politics, political corruption, political parties, and political values. The media's primary duty is to present us with information and alert us when events occur. This information may affect what we think and the actions we take. The media can also place pressure on the government to act by signaling a need for intervention or showing that citizens want change
Political linguistics is the study of the relations between language and politics. It argues that language gives origin to the state. The reason is that when humans perform linguistic communication, they use media. Media extend the distance of linguistic communication. Humans interact with one another on a large scale. They form a large community. This leads to the dissolution of the tribes and the formation of the state. Language plays a role in the growth of the state in every aspect. Language plays a role in the formation of the state, in the governance of the state and in the building of the spirit of the state. That is, language is used as a means to form a state and is enacted in various ways that help achieve political objectives. Language allows for people in a very large number to communicate with each other on a large scale to the effect that a state is formed. As language forms the basis of communication, politics is thus affected by language.
Vian Bakir is a professor of journalism at Bangor University in Wales in the United Kingdom who researches political communication, propaganda and national security.
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