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For the academic journal, see Political Communication (journal).
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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.

History

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Ancient History

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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.

Modern era

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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]

21st century spin

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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.

Digital media

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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]

Key areas of study

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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]

  1. Machiavellian - power relationships and manipulation in political communication
  2. Iconic - analysing political symbollism
  3. Ritualistic - looking at redundant and superficial political acts and symbols
  4. Confirmation - looking at political leaders
  5. Dramatistic - the idea that politics is symbolically constructed[16]

Definitions

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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.

Strategic Political Communication

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The United States

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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]

  • Discursive activity aimed at generating silences comprised plea bargains that silenced detainees, censoring Guantánamo detainees’ descriptions of their own torture in pre–trial hearings, deals with journalists to censor or withhold information that affected national security, weeding out personal sousveillance of torture online, suppression of visual sousveillance of torture while courts–martial and criminal investigations proceeded; destruction of videotapes of CIA interrogations; and withholding key information from intelligence oversight committees. These position those in the know as part of an elite force policing the public sphere to keep the wider public and their representatives ignorant of unpalatable but necessary official practices, relegating the likely emotional and/or moral public dissent towards such practices as unaffordable niceties.[22]
  • Persuasive discursive activity included the propagation and repetition of a few key messages consistently over time, with the aim of misdirecting public attention from the silence–generating activities. Key Bush Administration messages were that detainees were evil, dangerous terrorists; that the practice of extraordinary rendition was normal and pragmatic; that interrogation techniques, although harsh, were legal (apart from isolated acts of abuse), necessary and successful in preventing future acts of terror; and that Guantánamo was a model prison. Key British Administration messages were of initial ministerial ignorance (until 2004) of American intelligence agencies’ new interrogation strategies, after which intelligence agencies’ guidelines were tightened; and of no direct involvement of British intelligence agencies in extraordinary rendition. Key messages common to both British and American Administrations were that the Abu Ghraib sousveillance and similar visual evidence involving British soldiers were examples of isolated abuse rather than a torture policy from which lessons had been learned regarding Army training and interrogation guidance (new Army guidelines on interrogation were produced under the Bush and Blair Administrations). These key messages were propagated through a range of discursive activity (including press conferences and media interviews, authorized leaks, real–time reporting, official investigations and public inquiries) and were periodically bolstered by selective public release of once–secret documents. The consistency of key messages over time, together with the offering up of specific evidence, gives the appearance of official disclosure and truth–telling, positioning the public as a force to which political administrations willingly hold themselves accountable. However, the strategic generation of key messages and selectivity of supporting information presented across all these discursive modes means that full accountability is avoided, while the public is potentially fooled into thinking that justice has been served, all–the–while being constant targets of manipulation.[citation needed]

The United Nations

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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 Persuasion

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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]

The Propaganda Model

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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]

Role of social media

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Main article: Social media use in politics

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]

Australia

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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]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Chandler, D. (2011). A Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199568758.
  2. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2016-06-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. ^ Miller, Jerry L.; McKerrow, Raymie E. (2010). "History of Political Communication". Review of Communication. 10: 61–74. doi:10.1080/15358590903370233.
  4. ^ Political communication - scholar commons. (n.d.). https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1100&context=comm
  5. ^ Cited examples required here.
  6. ^ a b c S. Herman, Edward (and Chomsky, Noam) (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (3rd ed.). New York: New York Pantheon Books. pp. 3–4. ISBN 0-375-71449-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ Greenberg, David (September 24, 2006). "Spin Doctors". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 14, 2024.
  8. ^ Barrett, Patrick (2003-06-25). "Campbell lambasts BBC over Iraq 'lies'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  9. ^ White, Michael (2000-03-15). "Inside story of a Campbell briefing". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  10. ^ "Gordon Brown's former spin doctor is set for a surprise return to frontline politics". The Independent. 2016-02-19. Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  11. ^ Source/ linked example required.
  12. ^ Varshalomidze, Tamila (16 April 2019). "Ukraine media demands access to runoff frontrunner Zelensky". Al Jazeera.
  13. ^ Reinemann, Carsten, ed. (2014). Political Communication. doi:10.1515/9783110238174. ISBN 978-3-11-023816-7.
  14. ^ Wolffe, Richard (2018-03-21). "The evil genius of Cambridge Analytica was to exploit those we trust most". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-09-13.
  15. ^ McNair, Brian (2017-07-06). AN Introduction to Political Communication: Sixth Edition (6 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315750293. ISBN 978-1-315-75029-3.
  16. ^ a b Chesebro, J. W. (1974, February 28). Theoretical Approaches to Political Communication. 1974-Mar. ERIC ED089379
  17. ^ Reference for listed work needed.
  18. ^ Reference for quote needed.
  19. ^ a b c d Reference needed.
  20. ^ Bakir, V. (2013). Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda–Building Struggles. Farnham: Ashgate. p. 3. ISBN 9781472402554.
  21. ^ Bakir, V. Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda–Building Struggles. Farnham: Ashgate (2013)
  22. ^ Sutanto, Haryo; Purbaningrum, Dwi (2022-12-29). "Representation of Power and Ideology on Jokowi's Speech". WACANA: Jurnal Ilmiah Ilmu Komunikasi. 21 (2): 238–251. doi:10.32509/wacana.v21i2.2143. ISSN 2598-7402. S2CID 255654982.
  23. ^ Ibid., paras. 307–308. Technology was also emphasized in the 2014 final report of the Expert Panel on Technology and Innovation in UN Peacekeeping: “A more modern approach to strategic communications can enhance the mission's ability to deliver across its mandate. In addition, social media, crowdsourcing, big data and traditional public media sources must also be incorporated into the mix, and peacekeeping should maximize its use of open source information and analysis tools.” United Nations, “Performance Peacekeeping: Final Report of the Expert Panel on Technology and Innovation in UN Peacekeeping,” 2015. See also: Ingrid A. Lehmann, “Still Caught in the Crossfire? UN Peace Operations and Their Information Capacities,” in Communication and Peace, Julia Hoffmann and Virgil Hawkins, eds. (London: Routledge, 2015).
  24. ^ a b Hafez, Kai (April 2002). "Guest Editor's Introduction: Mediated Political Communication in the Middle East". Political Communication. 19 (2): 121–124. doi:10.1080/10584600252907399. ISSN 1058-4609. S2CID 144202049.
  25. ^ Nisbet, Erik C.; Myers, Teresa A. (2010-10-29). "Challenging the State: Transnational TV and Political Identity in the Middle East". Political Communication. 27 (4): 347–366. doi:10.1080/10584609.2010.516801. ISSN 1058-4609. S2CID 5548665.
  26. ^ DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY WASHINGTON DC (2000-09-15). "The Army Public Affairs Program". Fort Belvoir, VA. doi:10.21236/ada407635. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  27. ^ Perloff, Richard M. (2012), The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice (2 ed.), Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., pp. 258–277, doi:10.4135/9781452218410, ISBN 9781412983136, retrieved 2023-05-09
  28. ^ Gil de Zúñiga, Homero; Barnidge, Matthew; Diehl, Trevor (2018-11-15). "Political persuasion on social media: A moderated moderation model of political discussion disagreement and civil reasoning". The Information Society. 34 (5): 302–315. doi:10.1080/01972243.2018.1497743. ISSN 0197-2243. S2CID 59248808.
  29. ^ Mshvenieradze, Tamar (2013). "Logos Ethos and Pathos in Political Discourse" (PDF). Theory and Practice in Language Studies. 3 (11): 1939–1945. doi:10.4304/tpls.3.11.1939-1945.
  30. ^ Harcup, Tony (2014-09-18), "propaganda model", A Dictionary of Journalism, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acref/9780199646241.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-964624-1, retrieved 2024-04-14
  31. ^ Herman, E.S., and Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (3rd ed.). New York: New York Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-375-71449-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  32. ^ Park, Chang Sup (2019-05-27). "Learning Politics From Social Media: Interconnection of Social Media Use for Political News and Political Issue and Process Knowledge". Communication Studies. 70 (3): 253–276. doi:10.1080/10510974.2019.1581627. ISSN 1051-0974. S2CID 151230215.
  33. ^ Foster, Steven (2010). Political communication. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-3114-8. OCLC 650304204.
  34. ^ Enli, Gunn (2017). "Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election". European Journal of Communication. 32 (1): 50–61. doi:10.1177/0267323116682802. hdl:10852/55266. S2CID 149265798.
  35. ^ Kreiss, Daniel (2016). "Seizing the moment: The presidential campaigns' use of Twitter during the 2012 electoral cycle". New Media & Society. 18 (8): 1473–1490. doi:10.1177/1461444814562445. S2CID 206728421.
  36. ^ Wei, Ran; Xu, Larry Zhiming (2019). "New Media and Politics: A Synopsis of Theories, Issues, and Research". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.104. ISBN 9780190228613.
  37. ^ Freelon, D., & Wells, C. (2020). Disinformation as Political Communication. Political Communication, 37(2), 145–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1723755
  38. ^ Graber, Doris A.; Dunaway, Johanna (2017-07-20). Mass Media and American Politics. CQ Press. ISBN 9781506340227.
  39. ^ Weeks, Brian E.; Ardèvol-Abreu, Alberto; Gil de Zúñiga, Homero (2015-12-31). "Online Influence? Social Media Use, Opinion Leadership, and Political Persuasion". International Journal of Public Opinion Research. 29 (2): edv050. doi:10.1093/ijpor/edv050. ISSN 0954-2892.
  40. ^ "Voter turnout data for Australia (Parliamentary) | Voter Turnout | International IDEA". Archived from the original on 2016-03-06. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
  41. ^ "Political Campaign and Social Media". Political Marketing. Archived from the original on 2014-01-16. Retrieved 2014-01-16.
  42. ^ "Benefits of Social Media for Business | the Social Savior". 28 November 2015.
  43. ^ Cision (2012). Journalists Views and Usage of Social Media. http://mb.cision.com/Public/329/9316712/8978ed4b0993062c.pdf
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