Political Communication

Political communication is concerned with the role of communication within the political process. Consequently, the development of new forms of mass media at the turn of the twentieth century foreshadowed significant changes in the study and practice of this phenomenon. This was also the period when there was significant growth in adult literacy as well as a major expansion of the electoral franchise among the most advanced industrial societies. The arrival of (near) universal suffrage alerted political elites to the limitations of their traditional interpersonal forms of address and of the increasing need for them to be able to address a much enlarged, more heterogeneous public. Political communication through different media then became the norm for campaigns that increasing went beyond simply trying to inform or publicize an issue or candidature to seeking to engage and persuade a mass audience.

Pioneering theorists with an interest in political communication recognized that sometimes emotive imagery would increasingly become prominent in what passed for public debate as competing politicians particularly sought to attract the attention and support of the large numbers of new voters. The resulting forms of address were far removed from the kind of rational debate that many critical theorists argue is a central component of a healthy functioning public sphere. The debasement and “refeudalization” of the latter took place with the rapid growth of commercially driven forms of communication, such as advertising and public relations.

Contemporary public intellectuals active in interwar politics were among those keen to welcome and explore the potential interplay between mass media and mass democracy. It is no coincidence that the 1920s saw the publication of important books with major relevance to the development of strategic communication including Charles Higham's on advertising and Walter Lippmann's treatise on public opinion, which promoted the desirability of elites manufacturing consent. Similar sentiments underpinned Edward Bernays's popularization of the concept and practice of public relations as a means of influencing mass opinion through the solicitation of favorable coverage from a range of news media outlets with large audiences.

Lippmann and his fellow practitioners and theorists of political communication held to patrician notions of an essentially benevolent party and media elites managing debate and influencing the popular will. Their complacency was seriously challenged by the destruction of many European democracies during the [Page 709]1930s. The Nazi takeover, in particular, was conceived of as a response to economic and civil crises but also as the result of a concerted campaign that demonstrated the power of mass propaganda. The perceived success of this debauched strategy contributed to a belief in the “hypodermic needle” model, which suggested an influential media coexisted with a largely passive, suggestible audience. The idea of this strong effect was reinforced by other, more-discreet and lessdisturbing incidents, such as Orson Welles's notorious 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds, in which he caused panic in the rural Midwest with his all-too-vivid radio dramatization.

The strong effects model encouraged the pioneering work of early political communication scholarship involving Harold Lasswell and his colleagues at the Institute of Propaganda Analysis. Their attempt to develop typologies of the different kinds of manipulative activity was superseded by Paul Lazarsfeld and others' attempts at researching the relationship between media consumption and voter participation. These and other studies led to the forging of an influential limited effects consensus that argued the primary influence of the media over voters was reinforcement not change.

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