CHAPTER 8 Political Culture and the Media
‘Mankind, in general, judge more by their eyes than their hands;
for all can see the appearance, but few can touch the reality.’
NI C C O L Ò MA C H I AV E L L I , The Prince (1532)
P R E V I E W Much of politics takes place in our heads; that is, it is shaped by our ideas, values
and assumptions about how society should be organized, and our expectations,
hopes and fears about government. Ultimately, what we believe about the society
in which we live may be more important than the reality of its power structure, and
the actual distribution of resources and opportunities within it. Perception may not
only be more important than reality; in practical terms, perception may be reality.
This highlights the vital role played by what is called ‘political culture’. People’s
beliefs, symbols and values structure both their attitude to the political process and,
crucially, their view of the regime in which they live. However, there is significant
disagreement about the nature and role of the political culture, not least over
whether it sustains democracy or is aligned with the interests of dominant groups.
Others have highlighted concerns about the political culture’s (apparently)
declining capacity to foster civic engagement and a sense of social belonging. The
issue of the political culture also draws attention to the extent to which the politics
of modern societies is conducted through the media – newspapers, television, the
internet, mobile phones and so on. The media constitute much more than a
channel of communications; they are part of the political process itself, affecting,
and not merely reflecting, the distribution of power in society at large. Longstanding
debate about the media’s relationship with democracy and styles of
governance have been given a fresh twist by the advent of electronic-based ‘new’
media, while media influence generally has been associated with a growing
emphasis in politics on ‘news managment’ and so-called ‘spin’.
K E Y I S S U E S How do individuals and groups acquire their political attitudes and
values?
Do democratic regimes depend on the existence of a distinctive ‘civic
culture’?
Are modern societies characterized by free competition between values
and ideas, or by a ‘dominant’ culture?
To what extent do the media shape political attitudes?
How do the media affect the distribution of political power?
Is the politics of ‘spin’ inevitable in the media age?
POLITICAL CULTURE
Political thinkers through the ages have acknowledged the importance of attitudes,
values and beliefs. However, these past thinkers did not see them as part
of a ‘political culture’. Burke (see p. 36), for instance, wrote about custom and
tradition, Marx (see p. 41) about ideology, and Herder (see p. 110) about
national spirit. All of them, nevertheless, agreed about the vital role that values
and beliefs play in promoting the stability and survival of a regime. Interest
amongst political scientists in the idea of political culture emerged in the 1950s
and 1960s as new techniques of behavioural analysis displaced more traditional,
institutional approaches to the subject. The classic work in this respect was
Almond and Verba’s The Civic Culture (1963), which used opinion surveys to
analyse political attitudes and democracy in five countries: the USA, the UK,
West Germany, Italy and Mexico. This work was stimulated, in part, by a desire
to explain the collapse of representative government in interwar Italy, Germany
and elsewhere, and the failure of democracy in many newly-independent developing
states after 1945. Although interest in political culture faded in the 1970s
and 1980s, the debate has been revitalized since the 1990s as a result of efforts in
Eastern Europe to construct democracy out of the ashes of communism, and
growing anxiety in mature democracies, such as the USA, about the apparent
decline of social capital (see p. 175) and civic engagement. However, there is also
debate about whether or not political culture is shaped by the ideas and interests
of elite groups. This, in turn, is linked to rival views of the mass media (see p.
179) and the extent to which government can now manipulate political communication,
considered later in the chapter.
Civic culture or ideological hegemony?
Debate about the nature of political culture has often focused on the idea of civic
culture, usually associated with the writings of Almond and Verba (1963, 1980).
Almond and Verba set out to identify the political culture that most effectively
upheld democratic politics. They identified three general types of political
culture:
A participant political culture. This is one in which citizens pay close attention
to politics, and regard popular participation as both desirable and
effective.
A subject political culture. This is characterized by more passivity amongst
citizens, and the recognition that they have only a very limited capacity to
influence government.
A parochial political culture. This is marked by the absence of a sense of
citizenship, with people identifying with their locality, rather than the
nation, and having neither the desire nor the ability to participate in poli-
tics.
Although Almond and Verba accepted that a participant culture came closest to
the democratic ideal, they argued that the ‘civic culture’ is a blend of all three, in
that it reconciles the participation of citizens in the political process with the
vital necessity for government to govern. Democratic stability, in their view, is
172 P O L I T I C S
CONCEPT
Political culture
Culture, in its broadest
sense, is the way of life of
a people. Sociologists and
anthropologists tend to
distinguish between
‘culture’ and ‘nature’, the
former encompassing
that which is passed on
from one generation to
the next by learning,
rather than through
biological inheritance.
Political scientists,
however, use the term in
a narrower sense to refer
to a people’s
psychological orientation,
political culture being the
‘pattern of orientations’
to political objects such
as parties, government,
the constitution,
expressed in beliefs,
symbols and values.
Political culture differs
from public opinion in
that it is fashioned out of
long-term values rather
than simply people’s
reactions to specific
policies and problems.
Civic culture: A set of
specific attitudes which are
crucial to the success of
modern democracies.
underpinned by a political culture that is characterized by a blend of activity and
passivity on the part of citizens, and a balance between obligation and performance
on the part of government.
In their initial study (1963), Almond and Verba concluded that the UK came
closest to the civic culture, exhibiting both participant and subject features. In
other words, while the British thought that they could influence government,
they were also willing to obey authority. The USA also scored highly, its relative
weakness being that, as participant attitudes predominated over subject ones,
Americans were not particularly law-abiding. The difficulty of building or
rebuilding a civic culture was underlined by the examples of both West Germany
and Italy. By the early 1960s, neither country appeared to have a strong participant
culture; while the subject culture was dominant in Germany, parochial
attitudes remained firmly entrenched in Italy. Almond and Verba’s later study
(1980) highlighted a number of shifts, notably declining national pride and
confidence in the UK and the USA, which contrasted with a rise in civic propensities
in Germany.
The civic-culture approach to the study of political attitudes and values has,
however, been widely criticized. In the first place, its model of the psychological
dispositions that make for a stable democracy is highly questionable. In particular,
the emphasis on passivity and the recognition that deference to authority is
healthy has been criticized by those who argue that political participation (see p.
444) is the very stuff of democratic government. Almond and Verba suggested a
‘sleeping dogs’ theory of democratic culture that implies that low participation
indicates broad satisfaction with government, which politicians, in turn, will be
anxious to maintain. On the other hand, when less than half the adult population
bothers to vote, as regularly occurs in the USA, this could simply reflect
widespread alienation and ingrained disadvantage. (The link between declining
participation rates and the health of the political system is discussed in greater
detail in Chpater 20.)
Second, the civic-culture thesis rests on the unproven assumption that political
attitudes and values shape behaviour, and not the other way round. In short,
a civic culture may be more a consequence of democracy than its cause. If this is
the case, political culture may provide an index of the health of democracy, but
it cannot be seen as a means of promoting stable democratic rule. Finally,
Almond and Verba’s approach tends to treat political culture as homogeneous;
that is, as little more than a cipher for national culture or national character. In
so doing, it pays little attention to political subcultures and tends to disguise
fragmentation and social conflict. In contrast, radical approaches to political
culture tend to highlight the significance of social divisions, such as those based
on class, race and gender (see Chapter 7).
A very different view of the role and nature of political culture has been
developed within the Marxist tradition. Although Marx portrayed capitalism as
a system of class exploitation and oppression operating through the ownership
of the means of production, he also acknowledged the power of ideas, values and
beliefs. As Marx and Engels put it in The German Ideology ([1846]1970), ‘the
ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is
the ruling material force of society, is at the same time the ruling intellectual
force’. In Marx’s view, ideas and culture are part of a ‘superstructure’ that is
conditioned or determined by the economic ‘base’, the mode of production.
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 173
These ideas have provided Marxism with two theories of culture. The first
suggests that culture is essentially class-specific: as members of a class share the
same experiences and have a common economic position and interests, they are
likely to have broadly similar ideas, values and beliefs. In Marx’s words, ‘it is not
the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence
that determines their consciousness’. Proletarian culture and ideas can
therefore be expected to differ markedly from bourgeois ones. The second theory
of culture emphasizes the degree to which the ideas of the ruling class (what
Marx referred to as ‘ideology’) pervade society and become the ‘ruling ideas’ of
the age. In this view, political culture, or even civic culture, is thus nothing more
than bourgeois ideology. What is important about this view is that it sees
culture, values and beliefs as a form of power. From the Marxist perspective, the
function of ideology is to reconcile subordinate classes to their exploitation and
oppression by propagating myths, delusions and falsehoods (in Engels’ words,
‘false consciousness’). Later Marxists have understood this process in terms of
bourgeois ‘hegemony’.
Modern Marxists have been quick to acknowledge that, in no sense, do the
‘ruling ideas’ of the bourgeoisie monopolize intellectual and cultural life in a
capitalist society, excluding all rival views. Rather, they accept that cultural, ideological
and political competition does exist, but stress that this competition is
unequal. Quite simply, ideas and values that uphold the capitalist order have an
overwhelming advantage over ideas and values that question or challenge it.
Such ideological hegemony may, in fact, be successful precisely because it operates
behind the illusion of free speech, open competition and political pluralism
– what Herbert Marcuse (see p. 42) termed ‘repressive tolerance’.
The most influential twentieth-century exponent of this view was Antonio
Gramsci (see p. 175). Gramsci drew attention to the degree to which the class
system is upheld not simply by unequal economic and political power, but also
by bourgeois hegemony. This consists of the spiritual and cultural supremacy of
the ruling class, brought about through the spread of bourgeois values and
beliefs via ‘civil society’; the mass media, the churches, youth movements, trade
unions and so forth. What makes this process so insidious is that it extends
beyond formal learning and education into the very common sense of the age.
The significance of Gramsci’s analysis is that, in order for socialism to be
achieved, a‘battle of ideas’ has to be waged through which proletarian principles,
values and theories displace, or at least challenge, bourgeois ideas.
The Marxist view of culture as ideological power rests on the distinction
between subjective or felt interests (what people think they want) and objective
or real interests (what people would want if they could make independent and
informed choices). This draws attention to what Stephen Lukes (2004) called a
‘radical view of power’ (see p. 9): ‘A exercises power over B when A affects B in a
manner contrary to B’s interests’. Such a view of political culture has, however,
attracted considerable criticism. Some have argued that it is unwarrantedly
patronizing to suggest that the values and beliefs of ordinary people have been
foisted upon them by manipulation and indoctrination. The acceptance of capitalist
values and beliefs by the working classes may, for instance, merely reflect
their perception that capitalism works.
The dominant-ideology model of political culture may also overstate the
degree of homogeneity in the values and beliefs of modern societies. While a
174 P O L I T I C S
CONCEPT
Hegemony
Hegemony (from the
Greek hegemonia,
meaning ‘leader’) is, in its
simplest sense, the
ascendancy or
domination of one
element of a system over
others. In Marxist theory,
the term is used in a
more specific sense. In
the writings of Gramsci
(see p. 175), hegemony
refers to the ability of a
dominant class to
exercise power by
winning the consent of
those it subjugates, as an
alternative to the use of
coercion. As a noncoercive
form of class
rule, hegemony typically
operates through the
dissemination of
bourgeois values and
beliefs throughout
society.
Bourgeois ideology: A
Marxist term, denoting ideas
and theories that serve the
interests of the bourgeoisie by
disguising the contradictions of
capitalist society.
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 175
‘ruling’ ideology may provide a dominant class with self-belief and a sense of
purpose, it is less clear, as Abercrombie et al., (1980) argued, that subordinate
classes have been successfully integrated into this value system. Finally, the
Marxist view, which purports to establish a link between unequal class power
and cultural and ideological bias, may do nothing more than describe a tendency
found in all societies for powerful groups to propagate self-serving ideas.
Whether this constitutes a dominant value system, in which a coherent and
consistent message is disseminated through the media, schools, the churches and
so on, is rather more questionable.
Decline of social capital?
The process of political and economic reconstruction in former communist
states has stimulated renewed interest in the issue of political culture since the
1990s. This is because pervasive state control over a number of generations had
evidently destroyed or suppressed the social connections and sense of civic
responsibility that usually sustain democratic politics. In other words, there was
a perceived need to rebuild civil society (see p. 6), in the sense of a realm of
autonomous groups and associations, including businesses, interest groups,
clubs and so on. Indeed, such ideas can be traced back to Alexis de Tocqueville
(see p. 245), who, in the nineteenth century, had explained the USA’s egalitarian
institutions and democratic practices by reference to the American’s propensity
for participation and civic association. No sooner had this revived concern with
political culture arisen in relation to postcommunist states than it was being
applied to perceived problems in mature democracies.
Robert Putnam (see p. 176), for example, argued that variations in the quality
of local government in different regions of Italy were determined by the presence,
or absence, of traditions of civic engagement, reflected in differing levels of
voter turnout, newspaper readership, and membership of choral societies and
football clubs. In Bowling Alone (2000), Putnam drew attention to the USA’s
declining ‘social capital’, and argued that other industrialized countries are likely
to follow US trends. He highlighted the emergence of a ‘post-civic’ generation.
This was demonstrated by a 25–50 per cent drop in the number of voluntary
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
Italian Marxist and social theorist. The son of a minor public official. Gramsci joined
the Socialist Party in 1913, and in 1921 became the General Secretary of the newlyformed
Italian Communist Party. Although an elected member of parliament, he was
imprisoned by Mussolini in 1926. He remained in prison until his death. His Prison
Notebooks (Gramsci, 1971), written in 1929–35, tried to counterbalance the emphasis
within orthodox Marxism on ‘scientific’ determinism by stressing the importance
of the political and intellectual struggle. Although proponents of Eurocommunism
have claimed him as an influence, he remained throughout his life a Leninist and a
revolutionary.
CONCEPT
Social capital
The concept of social
capital was developed in
the 1970s to highlight
the social and cultural
factors that underpin
wealth creation. The term
has since been used to
refer to social
connectiveness, as
represented by networks,
norms and trust that
promote civic
engagement. In common
with economic assets,
social capital can decline
or rise, usually through
education and a stress on
active citizenship. The
alleged decline in social
capital in modern society
has been linked, variously,
to the ‘parenting deficit’,
the rise of individualism
and the increase in social
and geographical
mobility.
176 P O L I T I C S
clubs and associations since 1965, and by sharp declines in attendance at public,
town and school meetings, as well as in the membership of, and work done for,
political parties. Putnam’s view, which is influenced by communitarianism,
explains declining social capital in a variety of ways. These include the spread of
suburbanization and, therefore, of longer journeys to work; the rise of twocareer
families and their impact on the quantity and quality of parenting; and
the tendency of television to privatize leisure time, misshape social perceptions
and reduce achievement levels in children. From an alternative social-democratic
perspective, however, the decline of civic engagement is explained by the
triumph of consumer capitalism and the spread of materialist and individualist
values.
Conservative thinkers have long supported their own view of social capital in
the form of tradition (see p. 82) and, in particular, ‘traditional values’. These are
values and beliefs that have supposedly been passed down from earlier generations
and so constitute a kind of cultural bedrock. Conservative politicians regularly
call for such values to be ‘strengthened’ or ‘defended’, believing that they are
the key to social cohesion and political stability. In the UK in the 1980s, for
example, Margaret Thatcher called for the resurrection of what she called
‘Victorian values’, while John Major’s ill-starred ‘Back to Basics’ initiative
attempted much the same in the 1990s. In the USA, Ronald Reagan embraced
the notion of the ‘frontier ideology’, harking back to the conquest of the
American West and the virtues of self-reliance, hard work and adventurousness
that he believed it exemplified. Not uncommonly, such values are linked to the
family, the church and the nation; that is, to long-established institutions that
supposedly embody the virtues of continuity and endurance.
In his essay ‘Rationalism in Politics’, Michael Oakeshott (1962) developed
a further defence of continuity and tradition. Oakeshott (see p. 177) argued
that traditional values and established customs should be upheld and
respected on account of their familiarity, which engenders a sense of reassurance,
stability and security. This suggests that there is a general human disposition
to favour tradition over innovation, the established over the new. To be
a conservative, Oakeshott suggested, is ‘to prefer the familiar to the unknown,
to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the
Robert D. Putnam (born 1941)
US political scientist and social commentator. Putnam’s work has revived interest in
civil society and focused attention on the importance of ‘social capital’: the social
networks in a society that build trust and cooperation and develop‘the “I” into the
“we”’. His most influential work, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community (2000), used the image of a man bowling alone, rather than in a team, to
illustrate the decline of community activity and political engagement in the USA.
Amongst the causes of this decline, Putnam identifies the growing influence of television,
two-career families and longer commutes. His other works include Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Italy (1993).
CONCEPT
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is the
belief that the self or
person is constituted
through the community,
in the sense that
individuals are shaped by
the communities to
which they belong and
thus owe them a debt of
respect and
consideration. Left-wing
communitarians hold
that community
demands unrestricted
freedom and social
equality. Centrist
communitarians hold
that community is
grounded in reciprocal
rights and
responsibilities. Rightwing
communitarians
hold that community
requires respect for
authority and established
values.
limited to the unbound, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the super
abundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss’
(Oakeshott, 1962).
The defence of traditional values and established beliefs has been one of the
central themes of neoconservatism, advanced in the USA by social theorists such
as Daniel Bell (1976) and Irving Kristol (1983), who have warned against the
destruction of spiritual values brought about both by market pressures and by
the spread of permissiveness. The problem with this position, however, is that it
assumes there is an authoritative moral system upon which order and stability
can be based. The simple fact is that, in modern multicultural and multireligious
societies, it is doubtful whether any set of values can be regarded as authoritative.
To define certain values as ‘traditional’, ‘established’ or ‘majority’ values may
simply be an attempt to impose a particular moral system on the rest of society.
Indeed, empirical evidence appears to support the view that political culture is
becoming increasingly fragmented, and that modern societies are characterized
by growing moral and cultural diversity.
An alternative view of the social capital debate suggests not that there has
been a decline of civic engagement or social connectedness, but that the forms
these have taken have changed. According to Inglehart (1977, 1990), such shifts
are linked to the spread of affluence and to the growth, particularly amongst
young people, of ‘postmaterial’ values. As new generations have grown up since
the 1960s accustomed, in advanced industrial countries at least, to economic
security and material well-being, ‘traditional’ ideas about subjects such as sex,
marriage and personal conduct have been displaced by more ‘liberal’ or ‘permissive’
attitudes. At the same time, traditional political attitudes and allegiances
have been weakened and sometimes replaced by growing interest in issues such
as feminism, nuclear disarmament, animal rights and environmental protection.
Thus party membership and electoral turnout may have declined but there has
been a growth of interest in single-issue protest politics and campaigning
groups. Post-Fordist (see p. 154) theorists argue that such cultural changes are
irresistible, because they are linked to a wholesale shift in economic and political
organization that is bringing about a decline in deference and a rise of individualism
(see p. 158).
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 177
Michael Oakeshott (1901–90)
UK political philosopher. Oakeshott was a professor of political science at the London
School of Economics from 1951 until his retirement in 1968. His collection of essays
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962) and his more systematic work of political
philosophy On Human Conduct (1975) are often seen as major contributions to
conservative traditionalism. By highlighting the importance of civil association and
insisting on the limited province of politics, he also developed themes closely associated
with liberal thought.Though often seen as an advocate of a non-ideological style
of politics, in line with the ideas of Edmund Burke (see p. 36), Oakeshott influenced
many of the thinkers of the New Right.
CONCEPT
Postmaterialism
Postmaterialism is a
theory that explains the
nature of political
concerns and values in
terms of levels of
economic development.
It is loosely based on
Abraham Maslow’s
(1908–70) ‘hierarchy of
needs’, which places
esteem and selfactualization
above
material or economic
needs. Postmaterialism
assumes that conditions
of material scarcity breed
egoistical and acquisitive
values, meaning that
politics is dominated by
economic issues.
However, in conditions of
widespread prosperity,
individuals express more
interest in ‘postmaterial’
or ‘quality of life’ issues,
typically concerned with
morality, political justice
and personal fulfilment.
THE MEDIA AND POLITICAL
COMMUNICATION
Any examination of the factors that influence people’s psychological orientation
to politics, whether their long-term beliefs and values (political culture) or their
short-term reaction to particular policies or problems (public opinion), must, in
modern circumstances, take account of the crucial role played by the media. The
mass media have been recognized as politically significant since the advent of
mass literacy and the popular press in the late nineteenth century. However, it is
widely accepted that, through a combination of social and technological
changes, the media have become increasingly powerful political actors and, in
some respects, more deeply enmeshed in the political process. Three developments
are particularly noteworthy. First, the impact of the so-called ‘primary’
agents of political socialization, such as the family and social class, has declined.
Whereas once people acquired, in late childhood and adolescence in particular,
a framework of political sympathies and leanings that adult experience tended to
modify or deepen, but seldom radically transformed, this has been weakened in
modern society by greater social and geographical mobility, and by the spread of
individualist and consumerist values. This, in turn, widens the scope for the
media’s political influence, as they are the principal mechanism through which
information about issues and policies, and therefore political choices, is
presented to the public.
Second, the development of a mass television audience from the 1950s
onwards, and more recently the proliferation of channels and media output
associated with the ‘new’media, has massively increased the media’s penetration
of people’s everyday lives. This means that the public now relies on the media
more heavily than ever before. For instance, television is a much more important
source of news and current-affairs information than political meetings; many
more people watch televised sport than participate in it; and even shopping is
increasingly being carried out through shopping channels and the internet.
Particular interest has focused on the burgeoning political significance of the
internet, with, by 2011, two billion people worldwide having access to it.
Although the highest internet penetration is in North America (78 per cent),
Oceania/Australia (60 per cent) and Europe (58 per cent), the highest usage
growth is in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Third, the media have become more powerful economic actors. Not only are
major media corporations major global players, but also a series of mergers has
tended to incorporate the formerly discrete domains of publishing, television,
film, music, computers and telecommunications into a single massive ‘infotainment’
industry (Scammel, 2000). Media businesses such as Microsoft, Time
Warner Inc, Disney and News Corporation have accumulated so much
economic and market power that no government can afford to ignore them.
Theories of the mass media
Few commentators doubt the media’s ability to shape political attitudes and
values or, at least, to structure political and electoral choice by influencing public
perceptions about the nature and importance of issues and problems, thereby.
178 P O L I T I C S
‘New’ media: A generic term
for the many different forms of
electronic communication
made possible through digital
or computer technology.
CONCEPT
Political
socialization
Political socialization is
the process through
which individuals acquire
political beliefs and
values, and by which
these are transmitted
from one generation to
the next. Families and
schools are usually
viewed as ‘primary’
agents of political
socialization, while the
workplace, peer groups
and the media are viewed
as ‘secondary’ agents of
political socialization.
Interest in political
socialization peaked
during the so-called
‘behavioural revolution’,
as external stimuli were
seen to explain (and
possibly determine)
political attutudes or
behaviour.
However, there is considerable debate about the political significance of this
influence. A series of rival theories offer contrasting views of the media’s political
impact. The most important of these are the following:
the pluralist model
the dominant-ideology model
the elite-values model
the market model.
Pluralist model
Pluralism (see p. 100) highlights diversity and multiplicity generally. The pluralist
model of the mass media portrays the media as an ideological marketplace in
which a wide range of political views are debated and discussed. While not
rejecting the idea that the media can affect political views and sympathies, this
nevertheless suggests that their impact is essentially neutral, in that they tend to
reflect the balance of forces within society at large.
The pluralist view, nevertheless, portrays the media in strongly positive
terms. In ensuring an ‘informed citizenry’, the mass media both enhance the
quality of democracy and guarantee that government power is checked. This
‘watchdog’ role was classically demonstrated in the 1974 Washington Post
investigation into the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of
Richard Nixon as US president. Some, moreover, argue that the advent of the
new media, and particularly the internet, has strengthened pluralism and
political competition by giving protest groups, including ‘anti-capitalist’
activists, a relatively cheap and highly effective means of disseminating information
and organizing campaigns, as discussed later in the chapter. However,
the pluralist model suffers from significant deficiencies. For example, weak
and unorganized groups are excluded from access to mainstream publishing
and broadcasting, meaning that the media’s ideological marketplace tends to
be relatively narrow and generally pro-establishment in character. In addition,
private ownership and formal independence from government may not be
sufficient to guarantee the media’s oppositional character in the light of the
increasingly symbiotic relationship between government and journalists and
broadcasters.
Dominant-ideology model
The dominant-ideology model portrays the mass media as a politically conservative
force that is aligned to the interests of economic and social elites, and
serves to promote compliance or political passivity amongst the masses. In its
Marxist version, rooted in the larger Marxist critique of political culture
(discussed earlier in the chapter) and particularly the ideas of Gramsci, it
suggests that the media propagate bourgeois ideas and maintain capitalist hegemony,
acting in the interests of major corporations and media moguls.
Ownership, in other words, ultimately determines the political and other views
that the mass media disseminate, and ownership is increasingly concentrated in
the hands of a small number of global media conglomerates. The six largest are
Time Warner Inc, News Corporation, Viacom, Disney, CBS and Bertelsmann.
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 179
CONCEPT
Mass media
The media comprise
those societal institutions
that are concerned with
the production and
distribution of all forms
of knowledge,
information and
entertainment. The ‘mass’
media channel
communication towards
a large and
undifferentiated audience
using relatively advanced
technology. The clearest
examples are the
‘broadcast’ media
(television and radio) and
the ‘print’ media
(newspapers and
magazines). The ‘new’
media (cable and satellite
telecommunications, the
Internet and so on) has,
subverted the notion of
mass media by
dramatically increasing
audience fragmentation.
From this perspective, the media play an important role in promoting globalization
(see p. 142), in that their tendency to spread ideas, images and values that
are compatible with western consumerism (see p. 159) helps to open up new
markets and extend business penetration worldwide.
One of the most influential and sophisticated versions of the dominantideology
model was developed by Noam Chomsky (see p. 181) and Ed Herman
in Manufacturing Consent (2006), in the form of the ‘propaganda model’. They
identified five ‘filters’ through which news and political coverage are distorted by
the structures of the media itself. These filters are as follows:
the business interests of owner companies
a sensitivity to the views and concerns of advertisers and sponsors
the sourcing of news and information from ‘agents of power’, such as
governments and business-backed think-tanks
‘flak’ or pressure applied to journalists, including threats of legal action
an unquestioning belief in the benefits of market competition and
consumer capitalism.
Chomsky’s analysis emphasizes the degree to which the mass media can
subvert democracy, helping, for example, to mobilize popular support in the
USA for imperialist foreign policy goals. The dominant-ideology model is,
nevertheless, also subject to criticism. Objections to it include that it underestimates
the extent to which the press and broadcasters, particularly public service
broadcasters, pay attention to progressive social, racial and development issues.
Moreover, the assumption that media output shapes political attitudes is determinist
and neglects the role played by people’s own values in filtering, and possibly
resisting, media messages.
Elite-values model
The elite-values model shifts attention away from the ownership of media
corporations to the mechanism through which media output is controlled.
This view suggests that editors, journalists and broadcasters enjoy significant
professional independence, and that even the most interventionist of media
moguls are able only to set a broad political agenda, but not to control day-today
editorial decision-making. The media’s political bias (see p. 183) therefore
reflects the values of groups that are disproportionally represented amongst its
senior professionals. However, there are a number of versions of this model,
depending on the characteristics that are considered to be politically signifi-
cant.
One version of the elite-valuies model holds that the anti-socialist and politically
conservative views of most mainstream newspapers, magazines and television
stations derive from the fact that their senior professionals are well-paid and
generally from middle-class backgrounds. A quite different version is sometimes
advanced by conservatives, who believe that the media reflect the views of
university-educated, liberal intellectuals, whose values and concerns are quite
different from those of the mass of the population. In its feminist version, this
model highlights the predominance of males amongst senior journalists and
broadcasters, implying that this both explains the inadequate attention given to
180 P O L I T I C S
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 181
women’s views and issues by the mass media, and accounts for the confrontational
style of interviewing and political discussion sometimes adopted by
broadcasters and journalists. Although the elite-values model helps to explain
why the range of political views expressed by the mass media is often more
restricted than pluralists suggest, it also has its limitations. Chief amongst these
is that it fails to take full enough account of the pressures that bear upon senior
media professionals; these, for example, include the views and interests of
owners and commercial considerations; notably, ‘ratings’ figures.
Market model
The market model of the mass media differs from the other models, in that it
dispenses with the idea of media bias: it holds that newspapers and television
reflect, rather than shape, the views of the general public. This occurs because,
regardless of the personal views of media owners and senior professionals,
private media outlets are, first and foremost, businesses concerned with profit
maximization and thus with extending market share. The media therefore give
people ‘what they want’, and cannot afford to alienate existing or potential
viewers or readers by presenting political viewpoints with which they may
disagree. Such considerations may be less pressing in relation to public service
broadcasters, such as the BBC, which are more insulated from commercial and
advertiser pressures but, even here, the tyranny of ‘ratings’ is increasingly
evident.
Nevertheless, although this model dispenses with the idea that at least the
privately-owned mass media should be seen as part of the political process, it
helps to explain some significant trends in political life. One of these may be
growing popular disenchantment with politics resulting from the trivialization
of political coverage. Fearful of losing ‘market share’, television companies in
particular have reduced their coverage of serious political debate, and thus abandoned
their responsibility for educating and informing citizens, in favour of
‘infotainment’.
Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
US linguistic theorist and radical intellectual. Chomsky first achieved distinction as a
scholar in the field of linguistic studies. His Syntactic Structures (1957) revolutionized
the discipline with the theory of ‘transformational grammar’, which proposed that
humans have an innate capacity to acquire language. Radicalized during the Vietnam
War, Chomsky subsequently became the leading radical critic of US foreign policy,
developing his views in an extensive range of works includingAmerican Power and the
New Mandarins (1969), New Military Humanism (1999) and Hegemony and Survival
(2004). In works such as (with Edward Herman) Manufacturing Consent ([1988]
2006), he developed a radical critique of the mass media and examined how popular
support for imperialist aggression is mobilized.
Media, democracy and governance
Custodians of democracy?
The impact that the media have on democracy is one of the most widely-debated
aspects of the relationship between the media and politics. For many, the existence
of a free press is one of the key features of democratic governance.
However, how do the media act as custodians of democracy? And why have some
questioned the media’s democratic credentials, even arguing that they may
undermine it? The media has traditionally been said to promote democracy in
two key ways: by fostering public debate and political engagement, and by acting
as a ‘public watchdog’ to check abuses of power. (The specific impact of the new
media on democracy and politics more generally is considered later in the
chapter.)
The capacity to provide a civic forum in which meaningful and serious political
debate can take place is often viewed as the key democratic role of the media.
The virtue of this is that better-informed citizens with more independent and
considered views will be more politically engaged. The media are therefore
agents of political education. Indeed, the media may have largely replaced formal
representative institutions, such as assemblies, parliaments and local councils, as
arenas for the dialogue, debate and deliberation that are the very stuff of democratic
politics. This has happened because the media are, arguably, better-suited
to this role than are traditional representative bodies. In addition to offering the
public perhaps its only meaningful opportunity to watch politicians in action
(through, for example, interviews with politicians and televised assembly
debates), the media provide a forum for the expression of a much wider range of
viewpoints and opinions than is possible within representative institutions
composed only of elected politicians. Thus, academics and scientists, business
leaders and trade union bosses, and representatives of interest groups and lobbyists
of all kinds are able to express views and engage in public debate through the
mechanism of media. Not only do the media substantially widen the range of
views and opinions expressed in political debate, but they also present debate
and discussion in a way that is lively and engaging for the general public, devoid
of the formality, even stuffiness, that characterizes the exchanges that take place
in assemblies and council chambers around the world.
The ‘watchdog’ role of the media is, in a sense, a subset of the political debate
argument. The role of the media, from this perspective, is to ensure that public
accountability takes place, by scrutinizing the activities of government and
exposing abuses of power. Once again, in carrying out this role the media is
supplementing and, to some extent, replacing the work of formal representative
institutions. Media professionals such as researchers, journalists and television
presenters are particularly suited to this role because they are ‘outside’ politics
and have no interest other than to expose incompetence, corruption or simply
muddled thinking whenever and wherever it can be found. By contrast, if public
accountability is left solely in the hands of professional politicians, it may be
constrained by the fact that those who attempt to expose ineptitude or wrongdoing
wish themselves, at some stage, to hold government power. This may not
only taint their motives, but it may also discourage them from criticizing
processes and practices that they may wish to take advantage of in the future.
182 P O L I T I C S
Free press: Newspapers
(and, by extension, other media
outlets) that are free from
censorship and political
interference by government
and, usually, are privately
owned.
However, the media can only perform this role effectively if they are properly
independent, and not dominated by government. Democratic governance therefore
requires either that the publicly financed media are accountable to an independent
commission, or that there is an appropriate level of competition from
‘free’ or privately financed media. The example of WikiLeaks nevertheless highlight
how controversial the media’s‘watchdog’role can be in practice (see p. 184).
However, reservations have also been expressed about the capacity of the
media to promote effective democratic governance. The first of these, as
advanced by dominant-ideology and elite-values theorists, is that, far from
providing citizens with a wide and balanced range of political views, the content
of the media is tainted by clear political biases. Whether political bias stems from
the opinions and values of editors, journalists and broadcasters, or from a more
general alignment between the interests of the media and those of economic and
social elites, it is difficult to see how the media’s duty to provide objective information
and remain faithful to public-service principles can be discharged reliably
and consistently in practice. Particular emphasis has, in this respect, been
placed on the implications of media ownership, and the fact that the views and
interests of major corporations or powerful media moguls cannot but, at some
level, influence media output. Insofar as the mass media affects the political
agenda, this agenda is likely to be politically conservative and, at least, compatible
with the interests of dominant groups in society.
Second, as the mass media is not subject to public accountability, it is the
classic example of ‘power without responsibility’ (Curran and Seaton, 2009).
However well-informed, knowledgeable and stimulating the views of journalists
and broadcasters may be, and however eager they may be to portray themselves
as the ‘voice of the people’, media professionals – unlike elected politicians –
‘represent’ no one other than themselves, and have no meaningful basis for
claiming to articulate public opinion. Third, there are reasons for doubting the
independence of the media from government. As discussed in the final section
of this chapter, all too often a symbiotic relationship develops between media
professionals and the political elite which constrains both the mass media’s political
views and its capacity to act as an effective ‘watchdog’.
The media and governance
Apart from its impact (for good or ill) on democracy, the prominence of the
mass media in an ‘information age’ has affected the processes of governance (see
p. 74) in a variety of ways. The most significant of these include the transformation
of political leadership and, with it, a reapportionment of government
power; changes to the political culture that, some have warned, are leading to a
growing disenchantment with politics and making societies more difficult to
govern; and alterations to the behaviour of governments and the nature of
policy-making.
The chief way in which the media has transformed political leadership is
through growing interest in the personal lives and private conduct of senior
political figures, at the expense of serious and ‘sober’ policy and ideological
debate. This, in part, stems from the media’s, and particularly television’s, obsession
with image rather than issues, and with personality rather than policies. In
the UK and other parliamentary systems, it is evident in a tendency towards the
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 183
CONCEPT
Political bias
Political bias refers to
political views that
systematically favour the
values or interests of one
group over another as
opposed to ‘balanced’ or
‘objective’ beliefs. Bias,
however, may take
various forms (McQuail,
1992). Partisan bias is
explicit and deliberately
promoted (newspaper
editorials). Propaganda
bias is deliberate but
unacknowledged (‘lazy’
students or ‘militant’
Muslims). Unwitting bias
occurs through the use of
seemingly professional
considerations (the
‘newsworthiness’ of a
story). Ideological bias
operates on the basis of
assumptions and value
judgements that are
embedded in a particular
belief system (wealth is
gained through talent
and hard work).
184 P O L I T I C S
Events: WikiLeaks was launched in 2006 as a project
of the Sunshine Press. Since January 2007, its key
spokesperson has been Julian Assange, an Australian
internet activist, often described as the ‘founder of
WikiLeaks’. The main purpose of Wikileaks is to
publish and comment on leaked documents alleging
government and corporate misconduct, with documents
and other materials being submitted anonymously
through an electronic ‘drop box’. Either
directly, or through collaboration with other media
(including, at times, The Guardian, the New York
Times and Der Spiegel), WikiLeaks has published a
massive quantity of documents on issues ranging
from war, killing, torture and detention to the
suppression of free speech and free press, and
ecology and climate change. Many of the most high
profile leaks have shed light on US military, security
and intelligence activities. These have included almost
400,00 previously secret US military field reports about
the Iraq War; secret US files on the war in Afghanistan
which reveal civilian killings, ‘friendly fire’ deaths and the
activities of special forces; more than 250,000 US state
department cables, sent from, or to, US embassies around
the world (so-called ‘CableGate’); and US military files
containing secret assessments of the 779 detainees held
at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre.
Significance: Making use of the new internet culture and
modern technology, WikiLeaks has been responsible for
the biggest leak of secret information in history. However,
assessments of the implications and value of its work
have varied starkly. Supporters have used two key arguments
to uphold media freedom. The first is that transparency
is the only effective means of preventing, or at
least reducing, conspiracy, corruption, exploitation and
oppression. Quite simply, those in power, whether in
government, the military, the security forces or in the
world of business and finance will be less likely to abuse
their positions and engage in unethical activities if they
know that their actions are likely to be publicly exposed.
Open governance thus promotes good governance.
Second, media freedom underpins democracy, in that it
allows citizens to make up their own minds, having access
to information from all sources and not merely ‘official’
sources. There is therefore a clear public interest defence
for ‘whistleblowing’, or ‘principled leaking’. This was
accepted by the 1971 ‘Pentagon Papers’ case, in which the
US Supreme Court upheld the right of the New York Times
to publish classified documents about the conduct of the
Vietnam War, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, on the grounds
that ‘only a free and unconstrained press can effectively
expose deception in government’.
WikiLeak’s activities have also attracted criticism,
however. These have included that WikiLeaks has been
over-concerned with generating publicity for itself and
with promoting funding (especially in the light of restrictions
imposed by the financial industry on online
payments to WikiLeaks). However, the most serious criticisms
have alleged that WikiLeaks has allowed information
to get into the public domain that could both threaten
national security and leave intelligence operatives working
in foreign countries, together with those who assist them,
vulnerable to identification and reprisals. This has been
claimed, in particular, in relation to CableGate, where the
alleged source of the leaked embassy cables, Private
Bradley Manning, a US army intelligence analyst, was
accused in a pre-trial military court hearing in December
2011 of ‘aiding the enemy’. The release of the CableGate
documents stimulated a wave of criticism not only from
governments around the world, but also from human
rights groups and former sympathizers and partners,
including The Guardian. Some have accused Wikileaks of
going beyond a traditional liberal defence of openness and
transparent government in supporting ‘free information
fundamentalism’, a stance that has deeply libertarian, if
not anarchist, implications. For example, the private rituals
of the Masons, Mormons and other groups were published
even though this did not serve a clear political purpose.
POLITICS IN ACTION . . .
WikiLeaks: speaking truth to power?
‘presidentialization’, or ‘Americanization’, of politics (as discussed in Chapter
13). Such trends reflect not so much conscious bias on the part of the media, as
an attempt to ‘sell’ politics to a mass audience that is deemed to be little interested
in issues and policies. This also accounts for the tendency to treat elections
as ‘horse races’, the public’s attention being focused less on policy significance of
the outcome and more on who is going to win. These two tendencies invariably
coincide, turning elections into ‘beauty contests’ between leading politicians,
each of whom serves as the ‘brand image’ of their party. Leaders are therefore
judged largely on the basis of their ‘televisual’ skills (relaxed manner, sense of
humour, ability to demonstrate the ‘popular touch’ and so on), rather than their
mastery of political issues and capacity for serious political debate. However, has
exposing leading politicians to the unrelenting glare of media attention merely
given them celebrity status, or has media attention affected the location of power
within the governmental system?
There can be little doubt that the advent of the ‘media age’ has changed the
behaviour of political leaders, as well as affected the career prospects of individual
politicians. For example, presentational factors, such as personal appearance,
hairstyle, dress sense and so on, have become more important in determining
political preferment or advancement. However, such developments have not
merely changed the ‘face’ of modern politics; they have reordered power relationships
both within the political executive and between the executive and the
assembly. The growth of ‘celebrity politics’ gives presidents, prime ministers
and other party leaders the ability to make personalized appeals to the voters,
creating the phenomenon of spatial leadership. This allows leaders to appeal
‘over the heads’ of their senior colleagues, parties and government institutions,
directly to the public. Furthermore, the messages they give, and the policy and
ideological stances they adopt, are increasingly determined by leading politicians
personally, supported, it appears, by an ever-expanding band of public relations
consultants, ‘spin doctors’, media managers, pollsters and publicity directors.
One of the consequences of this is that junior politicians may have an additional
reason for deferring to their leaders: their fear of damaging their leader’s image
and reputation. If the leader is damaged, especially by splits and internal criticism,
all members of his or her party or government suffer. Political power thus
comes to be structured on the basis of the publicity and media attention received
by individual politicians. The greater the media attention, the greater the political
leverage. However, media attention is far from an unqualified benefit for
political leaders. Although their triumphs and successes can be publicly trumpeted,
their flaws, failings and transgressions can also be ruthlessly exposed.
Indeed, the ultimate vulnerability of contemporary political leaders may well be
that negative media coverage may turn them into ‘electoral liabilities’, encouraging
their parties and colleagues to remove them in order to ‘save the party’, or
their own political careers.
The second way in which the media has affected governance is through its
impact on the political culture. The media is sometimes charged with having
created a climate of corrosive cynicism amongst the public, leading to growing
popular disenchantment with politics generally, and a lack of trust in governments
and politicians of all complexions (Lloyd, 2004). This may, in turn, be
linked to trends that have afflicted mature democracies in particular, such as
declining voter turnout and falling party membership. The UK is often seen as
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 185
Presidentialization: A
growing emphasis on personal
leadership, in line with the role
and powers of an executive
president.
Celebrity politics: Either or
both the cultivation of
‘celebrityhood’ by elected
politicians, or interventions by
stars of popular culture into the
political domain.
Spatial leadership: The
tendency of political leaders to
distance themselves from their
parties and governments by
presenting themselves as
‘outsiders’, or developing their
own political stance or
ideological position.
the most advanced example of such a media-driven ‘culture of contempt’, but
similar tendencies are evident elsewhere; notably, in the USA, Australia and
Canada. Why has this happened? A critical stance towards politicians in general
and governments in particular is, of course, vital to the maintenance of democratic
governance. However, the distinction between legitimate criticism and
systematic and relentless negativity may, in practice, be difficult to uphold. This
occurs, in part, because increasingly intense commercial pressures have forced
the media to make their coverage of politics ‘sexy’ and attention-grabbing. The
media, after all, is a business, and this places inevitable pressure on the coverage
of news and current affairs. Facts are absorbed progressively more quickly into a
swirl of comment and interpretation, blurring, seemingly altogether, the distinction
between what happens and what it means. Similarly, routine political debate
and policy analysis receive less and less attention, as the media focus instead on
– or ‘hype’ – scandals of various kinds and allegations of incompetence, policy
failure or simple inertia. Leading politicians have, as a result, come to live in a
kind of ongoing reality-television programme, the sole purpose of which
appears to be to embarrass and denigrate them at every possible turn. The
public, for their part, tend to view politicians as untrustworthy and deceitful,
according them the same level of respect they would accord any other realitytelevision
programme participant (The implications of such developments are
examined further in Chapter 20.)
The final way in which the media has influenced governance is through its
impact on the policy-making process. This has happened in at least two ways.
The first is that, just like everyone else in society, government is bombarded by a
much greater quantity of information arriving almost immediately. Knowing
too much can sometimes be as dangerous as knowing too little. An example of
this can be found in the USA’s inability to predict and prevent the September 11
terrorist attacks in 2001. The problem the USA faced was not that it lacked information
about al-Qaeda, its plans and movements, but that the sheer quantity of
national-security intelligence available made effective analysis almost impossible.
Moreover, as news and information spreads around the globe at a faster pace,
governments are forced to react to events more quickly, and often before they
have been fully discussed and digested. An age of ‘24/7 news’ inevitably becomes
one of ‘24/7 government’. Politicians are encouraged, even forced, to take a stance
on issues simply to avoid being criticized for inertia or inactivity, leaving little
time for the analysis of policy options and their implications. Second, greater
reliance on the media means that it is often the media, and not government, that
sets the political agenda and dictates the direction of policy-making. For
example, the fact that television pictures of the Asian tsunami in December 2004
were broadcast almost immediately across the globe, creating an outpouring of
public sympathy for its victims and leading to unprecedented levels of private
charitable donations, forced governments around the world, within days, to
make substantial increases in the scale of their of aid and support.
New media and the rise of e-politics
The revolution in communication technologies, brought about since the 1990s
especially by the spread of satellite and cable television, mobile phones, the internet
and digital technology generally, has transformed the media and society,
186 P O L I T I C S
CONCEPT
E-democracy
E-democracy (sometimes
called ‘digital democracy’
or ‘cyberdemocracy’)
refers to the use of
computer-based
technologies to enhance
citizens’ engagement in
democratic processes.
This nevertheless, may
happen in different ways.
(1) In the representative
model, e-democracy
seeks to strengthen
the operation of
established democratic
mechanisms (e-voting
and e-petitions,). (2) In
the deliberative model,
e-democracy aims to
open up new
opportunities for direct
popular participation
(electronic direct
democracy). (3) In the
activist model,
e-democracy attempts
to strengthen political
and social movements
and bolster citizen power
generally (‘virtual’
communities and ICTbased
protests).
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 187
helping to create what has been called an ‘information society’ or a ‘network
society’ (as discussed in Chapter 7). This is also a process that has occurred with
remarkably rapidity. For instance, internet penetration worldwide went from
about 1 in 17 of the world’s population in 2000, to almost 1 in 3 by 2012, and
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Google, unknown only a few years
ago, have become part of many people’s everyday lives. But how, and to what
extent, has new media affected politics? The most common claim is that new
media are a progressive force, helping to improve the quality of political life, in
particular by contributing to a general transfer power from governments and
political elites to the public at large. This is often summed up in the idea of ‘edemocracy’.
However, e-democracy is a vague and contested term which covers a
diverse range of activities, some of which may be ‘top-down’ (initiated by government
or other public bodies) while others are ‘bottom-up’ (initiated by citizens
and activists), with a further distinction being made between those that involve a
one-way flow of information from government to citizens and those involving a
two-way process of interaction. Examples of e-democracy include the following:
online voting (e-voting) in elections or referendums
online petitions (e-petitions) organized by governments or other bodies
the use of ICT to publicize, organize, lobby or fundraise (e-campaigning)
accessing political information, news and comments via websites, blogs
(web-logs) and so on
the use of interactive television or social networking sites, or social media,
to allow citizens to engage in political debate and, possibly, policy-making
the use of mobile phones and social media to organize popular protests and
demonstrations.
New media can be seen to have changed, or be changing, politics in at least
three key ways. In the first place, electronic mechanisms have altered the conduct
of elections. This is particularly apparent in the case of election campaigns,
which increasingly revolve around internet-based activities. Websites, emails and
podcasts provide political candidates and parties with a fast and cheap means of
getting their message across to a (potentially) large audience, in the process
allowing them also to recruit campaign volunteers and raise campaign funds. Ecampaigning
has the advantage that it is particularly effective in reaching
younger people, who are often the most difficult section of the population to
engage through conventional strategies. Although the internet has been used in
campaigning since the mid-1990s, particularly in the USA, it became particularly
prominent during Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Obama's team
used forums and social media such as Facebook and MySpace to build relationships
particularly with supporters and would-be supporters aged 18–29, also
encouraging the spread of wider networks of support via the website
MyBarackObama.com. Sympathizers were also sent regular updates on events
and policy positions via emails and text messages. Nevertheless, new technologies
were certainly not the be-all and end-all of the Obama campaign, which also
relied heavily, and spent most of its money, on more traditional strategies such
as television advertising and poster campaigns.
A further way in which digital innovations have affected elections is through
growing experiments in electronic voting, sometimes portrayed as ‘push-button
Social media: Forms of
elecronic communication that
facilitate social interaction and
the formation of online
communities through the
exchange of user-generated
content.
democracy’. E-voting has been particularly important in countries such as India,
where it has proved to be the only practicable solution to the problem of tallying
some 400 million votes without substantial delays occurring in announcing election
results. The first experiments in India in the use of electronic voting
machines located at polling stations started in 1982, with e-voting subsequently
being adopted, first, for state elections and, later, for national elections. Similar
electronic mechanisms have been used in countries ranging from France,
Germany and Finland to Romania and the Philippines. However, although trials
have taken place in the use of ‘remote’ e-voting, through use of the internet
(sometimes called ‘i-voting’), its wider adoption has been hampered because
fears about the greater likelihood of electoral fraud have yet to be allayed.
Second, new media offer citizens wider and easier access to political information
and political comment. This has occurred in a number of ways. For
example, governments in all parts of the world have, albeit at different speeds,
recognized the advantage of making government information available online,
and, in a growing number of cases, of allowing citizens to access government
services through websites, so-called ‘e-government’. The most significant new
sources of information are, nevertheless, non-governmental in character. The
proliferation of websites developed, variously, by professional groups, businesses,
lobbying bodies and think-tanks means that, for the first time, citizens
and citizen groups are privy to a quantity and quality of information that may
rival that of government. This has generally empowered non-state actors at the
expense of national governments and traditional political elites. Non-governmental
organizations (see p. 248) and interest groups (see p. 247) have thus
become more effective in challenging the positions and actions of government
and, sometimes, even displaced government as an authoritative source of views
and information about specialist subjects ranging from the environment and
global poverty to public health and civil liberties. A further development has
been the impact of new media on journalism. This has occurred in two ways. In
the first, the rise of the blog has greatly expanded the contours of political
commentary, as the growing ‘blogosphere’ allows writers, academics, politicians
and others to share their observations and opinions about political matter with
whoever may be interested in accessing them. In the second, there has been a
growth of ‘user-generated content’, stemming from the increased willingness of
private citizens, often in newsworthy or politically-charged situations, to share
their thoughts, experiences and, frequently, pictures with other via social media.
Third, new media have supported the development of political and social
movements, and increased their effectiveness, thus giving rise to a new style of
activist politics, sometimes called the ‘new politics’, and contributing, some
argue, to a general shift of power from governments to citizens. The key advantage
of new media, from this perspective, is not just that they open up new
opportunities for political participation, but also that these forms of participation
are, by their nature, decentralized and non-hierarchic. Armed with mobile
phones and through the use of the internet, anti-globalization or ‘anti-capitalist’
protesters have been able to mount demonstrations, and engage in agitation and
direct action, a trend that first became apparent during the so-called ‘Battle of
Seattle’ in 1999, when some 50,000 activists forced the cancellation of the
opening ceremony of a World Trade Organization meeting. Social media such as
Twitter and Facebook were, similarly, instrumental in facilitating the spread of
188 P O L I T I C S
pro-democracy protests during the 2011 Tunisian revolution, at the beginning of
the Arab Spring (see p. 88). Their capacity to promote self-management and
grass-roots organization has made new media particularly attractive for modern
anarchist and libertarian groups, sometimes dubbed ‘new’ anarchists. Old-style
anarchist collectives have therefore given way to online anarchist (or anarchiststyle)
networks such as Anonymous, which, since 2008, has engaged in
campaigns and protests, usually associated with internet freedom or exposing
corporate malpractice, and sometimes associated with what has been called
‘hacktivism’.
New media have, nevertheless, also attracted criticism. These have, for
instance, linked the trend towards e-democracy with the growth of a privatized
and consumerist form of citizenship. How meaningful is democratic participation
if it lacks a genuinely public dimension and fails to engender meaningful
debate and discussion. Perhaps an underlying problem with the debate over the
impact of new media is the tendency to believe that political problems (such as
low voter turnout rates or declining party membership), can be solved by ‘technical
fixes’. Similarly, it is perhaps a mistake to suggest that technology, in itself,
has a particular political character, whether positive or negative; rather, technology
may be either liberating or oppressive, depending on who is using it and the
uses to which it is put. It is worth remembering, for instance, that the same technologies
that helped in the spread and coordination of pro-democracy demonstrations
during the Tunisian revolution were the same technologies that, only
six months later, were also used to organize looting during riots in London and
other English cities.
Media globalization
An aspect of the media’s influence that has attracted growing political attention
is its role in strengthening globalization. Radio and television started this
process, as it became increasingly difficult to insulate the populations of one
country from news, information and images broadcast from other countries. An
example of this was the extent to which the communist regimes of Eastern
Europe were destabilized by the growing penetration of pro-western, and therefore
pro-capitalist, radio and television broadcasts from Western Europe and the
USA, contributing to the revolutions of 1989–91. New media, and especially
satellite television, mobile phones and the internet, have dramatically intensified
this process, both because of their dramatic spread and because of their inherently
transnational characters. China and Singapore are amongst the few countries
still trying to censor the internet, with such attempts likely to become less
and less successful over time. Insofar as the media facilitates, or even fuels, globalization,
it has contributed to a far-reaching range of political developments,
including the growth of a globalized capitalist economy, the declining (or, at
least, changing) role of the state, and the emergence of what some see as a
homogenized global culture.
The role of the media in promoting cultural globalization has been an area
of particular controversy. The power of the media, allied to the growth of
transnational corporations (see p. 149) and trends such as mass tourism, is often
held to be responsible for the development of a single global system that
imprints itself on all parts of the world; this results, in effect, in a global monoP
O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 189
Hacktivism: The use of
computers and computer
networks to achieve political
ends by methods including
‘denial-of-service’ attacks on
targeted websites.
Cultural globalization: The
process whereby information,
commodities and images
produced in one part of the
world enter into a global flow
that tends to ‘flatten out’
cultural differences between
nations and regions.
190 P O L I T I C S
It is generally accepted that new digital or computer technologies are having a profound impact on society and politics,
but it is less clear what that impact is. Is ICT a motor for decentralization and democracy, or may new technologies
debase politics and threaten freedom?
YES NO
Debating . . .
Does the wider use of new media enrich politics?
Modernizing politics. Technological development reflects
an ongoing desire to use science and innovation to make
human existence more convenient and comfortable, and
this applies in politics as well as other spheres of life. Evoting
and ‘virtual’ referendums thus enable citizens to
express their views easily and conveniently, possibly
without having to leave home. Falling electoral turnouts
may therefore simply be a consequence of the failure of the
democratic process to keep up-to-date with how citizens
in an ‘information society’ wish to participate in politics.
Knowledge is power. New technologies massively enlarge
citizens’ access to information, making possible, for the
first time, a truly free exchange of ideas and views. The
internet already makes available to private citizens
specialist information that was once only available to
governments. Accessing information through Wikipedia
and the myriad other online sources is not only almost
instantaneous, but it also exposes the public to a rich
diversity of views, including radical and dissident ones.
Citizen empowerment. The great advantage of new technologies
is that they make possible a two-way transmission
of views, thereby promoting active and engaged
citizenship. Instead of participating in politics simply
through the act of voting every few years, citizens can
express views and opinions on an almost continuous
basis, through, for instance, online consultations on draft
legislation and online petitions. More radically, new
media may foster direct popular participation, making a
reality of Athenian-style democracy, for so long dismissed
as impracticable, or relevant only to township meetings.
Decentralized activism. The broadest claim made for
new media is that, in contributing to a wholesale shift in
power from political elites to the public at large, it is
bringing about a process of radical democratization. This
occurs because new technologies are implicitly egalitarian
(being relatively cheap, easily accessible and simple to
use), and also facilitate decentralized and spontaneous
social action. As modern protest movements clearly
demonstrate, the use of mobile phones and social media
in particular helps to make leadership and formal organization
unnecessary, even irrelevant.
Technological ‘Big Brother’. Technology has always been
developed to serve the interests of elite or powerful
groups, and ICT is no exception. Contrary to the popular
image that they are tools of liberation, mobile phones
and the internet actually provide the police, security
forces, tax officials and so on with access to a massive
amount of information about the movements, views and
activities of private citizens. As such, new media provide
a highly effective means of controlling dissident behaviour
and containing political opposition.
Dangers of information anarchy. Many of the new political
spaces opened up by new media have been polluted
by both the nature of the views they feature and the style
of expression they tend to encourage. The internet
provides a platform for religious fundamentalists, racists,
ethnic nationalists and other extremists, who would
otherwise struggle to attract public attention. Similarly,
the blogosphere tends to be dominated by shrill, uncivil
and opinionated views, fashioned, seemingly, by the
desire to create notoriety.
New inequalities. The claim that new technologies are
implicitly egalitarian is bogus. Most obviously, a ‘digital
divide’ has opened up based on the fact that access to new
communication technologies is not universal. The ‘information
rich’ have come to dominate the ‘information
poor’. In the feminist version of this argument, computers
and technology generally have been seen to benefit men,
since they reflect essentially male interests and patterns of
thought. New media also provide private business with
new opportunities to advertise, generate profits and
improve their public image.
Impoverished, debased democracy. E-democracy, or
‘virtual’ democracy, threatens to turn the democratic
process into a series of push-button referendums while
citizens sit alone in their own living rooms. This further
erodes the ‘public’ dimension of political participation,
reducing democratic citizenship to a set of consumer
choices, somewhat akin to voting in the television show
Big Brother. By weakening face-to-face human interaction,
the danger is that people will be consumed by their
own opinions, and become indifferent to those of others.
culture. The most prominent feature of this process has been the worldwide
advance of consumerism and of the materialistic values and appetites that
underpin burgeoning global capitalism. Benjamin Barber (1995) dubbed this
emerging world ‘McWorld’, to capture the idea that mass communications and
modern commerce, tied together by technology, has created a world in which
people everywhere are mesmerized by ‘fast music, fast computers, fast food –
with MTV, McIntosh and McDonald’s pressing nations into one commercially
homogeneous theme park’. In this view of cultural globalization, the rich diversity
of global cultures, religions, traditions and lifestyles is being subverted by a
process of ‘westernization’ or ‘Americanization’, made possible by what has been
called ‘media imperialism’. The western – or, more specifically, American – character
of cultural globalization stems not only from the fact that the West is the
home of consumer capitalism, but also from the tendency of global media
content to derive disproportionately from the West, and particularly from the
USA. This is reflected in the rise of English as the global language, and in the
global dominance of Hollywood films and US-produced television programmes.
However, this image of cultural homogenization fuelled by the global mass
media fails to capture what is, in practice, a complex and often contradictory
process. Alongside the media’s tendency to ‘flatten out’ cultural differences, there
are also strong tendencies towards diversity and pluralization. This has occurred
in a number of ways and for a variety of reasons. In the first place, as Barber
(1995) argued, the rise of McWorld has been symbiotically linked to the emergence
of countervailing forces, the most notable of which is militant Islam, or
what Barber called ‘Jihad’. The second development is that new media have
substantially reduced the cost of mass communication, as well as widened access
to it. An example of this is the success of the Qatar-based television station Al
Jazeera, launched in 1996, in providing a forum for the expression of nonwestern
views and opinions across the Arab world and beyond, offering a rival
to, for instance, CNN, Voice of America and the BBC. Third, cultural exchange
facilitated through the media is by no means a ‘top-down’ or one-way process;
instead, all societies, including the economically and politically powerful, have
become more varied and diverse as a result of the emergence of a globalized
cultural marketplace. In return for Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and MTV, developed
states have increasingly been ‘penetrated’ by Bollywood films, Chinese martial
arts epics, ‘world music’, and non-western religions and therapeutic practices.
Political communication
Propaganda machines
The notion that government and the media are always opposing forces, the latter
exposing the failings and flaws of the former (either for the public’s benefit or for
commercial advantage), is highly misleading. Instead, the media have often been
controlled, directly or indirectly, by government and used as a form of propaganda
machine. The classic example of a propaganda machine was that
constructed under Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany. The Nazis set out to ‘coordinate’
German society through an elaborate process of ideological indoctrination.
For example, youth organizations were set up in the form of the Hitler
Youth and the League of German Maidens; the school curriculum was entirely
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 191
CONCEPT
Propaganda
Propaganda is information
(or disinformation)
disseminated in a
deliberate attempt to
shape opinions and,
possibly, stimulate
political action.
Propaganda is a pejorative
term, implying both
untruth or distortion, and
a (usually crude) desire to
manipulate and control
public opinion.
Propaganda differs from
political bias, in that it is
systematic and deliberate,
whereas the latter may be
partial and unintentional.
A distinction is sometimes
drawn between ‘black’
propaganda (blatant lies),
‘grey’ propaganda
(distortions and half
truths) and ‘white’
propaganda (the truth).
revised and all teachers coerced to join the Nazi Teachers’ League; and the
German Labour Front replaced free trade unions, providing workers with recreational
facilities through the‘Strength through Joy’ organization. As chief propagandist
of the Nazi Party, in 1933 Goebbels created a new department, the Reich
Ministry of Information and Propaganda, which inundated Germany with an
unending flood of propaganda. Little in the field of mass communication and
entertainment escaped the censorship of Goebbels’ ministry. It supervised all
the writing, music, theatre, dance, painting, sculpture, film and radio. Goebbels
placed particular stress on radio broadcasting and encouraged the manufacture
of a cheap ‘people’s’ radio set, which resulted in huge and ever-growing audiences
for his propaganda through the radio. He began the world’s first regular
television service in 1935, which, although restricted to closed-circuit showing in
Berlin, kept going until near the end of World War II.
Media propaganda was also a significant feature of communist regimes. The
Soviet Union, for example, not only operated a system of strict censorship over
the mass media, but also fostered a journalistic culture (the ‘internal censor’)
that demanded total support of the ideology and policies of the Communist
Party, or CPSU. Both the print and broadcast media were used as propaganda
tools by the Soviet authorities, with media content unwaveringly mirroring the
policies of the state at each stage in the history of the Soviet Union (Oates, 2005).
However, the introduction of ‘glasnost’ by Mikhail Gorbachev when he became
CPSU General Secretary in 1985 initiated changes in the Soviet media that were
to have far-reaching, and ultimately unstoppable, political implications. The
high point of the media’s influence came in August 1991, when journalists and
broadcasters defied the coup that had toppled Gorbachev and was intended to
reinstate authoritarian rule. In so doing, they contributed both to the collapse of
the coup and, later in the year, to the downfall of the Soviet regime itself. Russia’s
record of media freedom in the postcommunist era has nevertheless been patchy.
Despite the formal abolition of censorship in 1990 and the inclusion of freedom
from censorship in the 1993 Russian Constitution (Article 29), the Russian
media, and television in particular, continue to be dominated by state interests.
Television channels such as Channel 1, NTV and RTR have been criticized
during election campaigns of systematic bias towards Vladimir Putin and the
government-backed United Russia party, and Russia remains one of the most
dangerous places in the world to be a journalist (Shiraev, 2010).
Criticisms of the use of the media as a propaganda machine are not restricted
to totalitarian regimes and new democracies, however. For instance, controversy
was sparked in Italy by Silvio Berlusconi’s periods as prime minister in 1994–05,
2001–06 and 2008–11. Berlusconi, who is Italy’s richest person, owns Mediaset,
which controls three of Italy’s six privately-owned television channels. In 1993 he
founded the Forza Italia political movement, in part to further his own political
ambitions. The success of Forza Italia was certainly linked to widespread disenchantment
with Italy’s sclerotic party system, but the movement undoubtedly
also benefited from the consistently positive coverage it received in the
Berlusconi-owned media. During his period in power, however, Berlusconi was
frequently criticized for trying to extend his media control beyond the Mediaset
channels, bringing pressure to bear also on the publicly-owned RAI television
channels. This, his critics alleged, gave Berlusconi control of almost all television
sources of information in Italy, ensuring favourable coverage for Berlusconi
192 P O L I T I C S
Censorship: A policy or act
of control over what can be
said, written, published or
performed in order to suppress
what is considered morally or
politically unacceptable.
Glasnost: (Russian) Literally,
‘openness’ or ‘transparency’; the
liberalization of controls over
political expression and the
media.
personally and for the centre-right views of Forza Italia. Although the Italian
example is unusual because of Berlusconi’s joint role as media mogul and political
leader, attempts by democratic politicians to exert influence over the media are by
no means uncommon. Indeed, they have become routine in an emerging age of
‘spin’ and news management.
Politics of spin
In addition to political biases that operate in and through the mass media,
growing concern has been expressed about the closer relationship in modern
politics between government and the media, and about how each uses the other
for its own purposes. This has led to a transformation in the style and substance
of political communication in democratic regimes, affecting both public
opinion and, more widely, the political culture. Governments of whatever
complexion have always had an unreliable relationship with truth. Politicians are
concerned primarily with winning and retaining power, and are thus ever sensitive
to the need to maintain public support. The desire to accentuate the positive
and conceal the negative is therefore irresistible. In a liberal-democratic context,
in which the existence of free media rules out ‘official’ propaganda and crude
ideological manipulation, governments have come to shape the news agenda by
new techniques for the control and dissemination of information, often
described as ‘news management’ or ‘political marketing’. The favourable presentation
of information and policies, or what has come to be called ‘spin’, has thus
become a major preoccupation of modern governments.
The art of ‘spin’, practised by so-called ‘spin-doctors’, has many facets. These
include the following:
the careful ‘vetting’ of information and arguments before release to the
media
the control of sources of information to ensure that only an official ‘line’ is
presented
the use of unattributable briefings or ‘leaks’
the feeding of stories only to sympathetic media sources
the release of information close to media deadlines to prevent checking or
the identification of counter-arguments
the release of ‘bad’ news at times when other, more important events dominate
the news agenda.
News management of this kind is most advanced in the USA, where it has
become common for election strategists and campaign managers to take up
senior White House posts, if their candidate wins the presidency. The Clinton
administration was widely seen to have taken ‘spin’ and the skills of policy presentation
to new and more sophisticated levels. The Blair government in the UK
also devoted particular attention to the ‘packaging’ of politics, leading some to
criticize it for being concerned more with style than with substance. Amongst
the developments that occurred under Blair were the centralizing of government
communications under the control of the prime minister’s press office; a ‘carrot
and stick’ approach to journalists, who were rewarded with information for
sympathetic coverage but penalized for criticism; and the politicization of
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 193
Spin: The presentation of
information so as to elicit a
desired response, or being
‘economical with the truth’.
departmental information offices through the imposition of control from
Downing Street. Blair also employed a former senior editor of a tabloid newspaper
(Alistair Campbell) as his director of communications, 1997–2003, as did
David Cameron, 2007–10, (Andy Coulson).
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the media have been reluctant
or passive players in the development of news management. The media need
government as much as government needs the media. Government has always
been an important source of news and information, but its role has become even
more vital as the expansion in media outlets – television channels, websites,
magazines and newspapers – has created greater pressure for the acquisition of
‘newsworthy’ stories. In some cases, publishers, editors and journalists conspire
with ‘spin-doctors’ to manage the news for mutual benefit. This was alleged in
the UK in relation to the Blair government and the Murdoch press, as, for
instance, the government’s unwillingness to press ahead with privacy legislation
coincided with the (temporary) conversion of, first, the Sun, the UK’s largest
selling tabloid, and then The Times into Labour-supporting newspapers.
In addition to undermining the rigour and independence of political reporting,
the advent of media-orientated government has a range of other implications.
Some, for example, argue that it strengthens democracy by allowing government
to deal with the public more directly and to respond more effectively to popular
views and concerns. Others, however, see it as a threat to the democratic process,
in that it widens the scope for manipulation and dishonesty, and weakens the role
of representative institutions such as assemblies or parliaments. Moreover, it may
engender apathy and undermine interest in conventional forms of political activity;
in particular, voting and party membership. This occurs because ‘spin’, style
and presentation themselves become the focus of media attention, strengthening
the image of government as a vast publicity machine that is disengaged from the
lives and concerns of ordinary people.
194 P O L I T I C S
SUMMARY
There are rival theories of the media’s political impact. Pluralists portray the media as an ideological marketplace
that enhances debate and electoral choice. However, others highlight systematic media bias, stemming
either from links between the media and economic and social elites, or from the personal views of the editor,
broadcasters and journalists. The market model suggests that the media output simply reflects the views of
the general public.
The media play a key democratic role in four senses. They promote political education by providing a public
forum for meaningful and serious debate; act as a public watchdog, exposing abuses of power; tend, through
the ‘new’ media in particular, to widen access to information and facilitate political activism; and serve as a
mechanism through which democracy takes place. Concerns have, nevertheless, been raised about the political
views of the media, their lack of democratic accountability and their over-close links to government.
The mass media has affected governance in various ways. These include that they have transformed political
leadership and, in the process, reapportioned government power. They have also changed the political culture
and, some have warned, contributed to declining respect for politicians and politics in general. Finally, the
growing influence of the media is evident in a policy-making process that has to react more rapidly and
make sense of a vast amount of information.
The use of new media has been defended on the grounds that it facilitates political participation, widens
citizen’s access to information, and stimulates new forms of decentralized political activism. Critics, nevertheless,
warn against the growth of a consumerist form of citizenship and doubt the value of ‘technological fixes’.
The role of the media in promoting globalization has provoked particular controversy. Some have warned
against ‘media imperialism’, drawing attention to the media’s role in spreading a global culture of
consumerism and in strengthening ‘westernization or ‘Americanization’. However, cultural exchange facilitated
by the mass media is by no means always a ‘top-down’ or one-way process.
Governments have sometimes used the media as a propaganda machine. This involves direct control over all
kinds of media output to ensure that only ‘official’ views and ideas are distributed. Classic examples of this
can be found in Nazi Germany and in communist regimes, but there has been a growing tendency for democratic
regimes to engage in news management and the politics of ‘spin’, providing evidence of a symbiotic
relationship that tends to develop between government and the media.
P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D T H E M E D I A 195
Questions for discussion
Is civic culture a cause or a consequence of effective
democratic rule?
Do the mass media reflect public opinion or shape
it?
Is a free media vital for democratic rule?
How has the media changed the nature of political
leadership? Are leaders stronger or weaker as a
result?
What is new about the ‘new’ media?
Is the media an agent of cultural homogeniza-
tion?
Do all governments use propaganda, or only some?
Are modern governments more concerned with
political marketing than with political perform-
ance?
Further reading
Almond, G. A. and S. Verba (eds), The Civic Culture
Revisited (1989). An updated version of the authors’
classic 1963 analysis of the conditions required for
democratic stability.
Jenkins, H. and D. Thorburn (eds), Democracy and New
Media (2004). A wide-ranging collection of essays
that discuss, from a variety of perspectives, the relationship
between democracy and cyberspace.
Putnam, R. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community (2000). A highly influential
anaysis of the decline of civic engagement and
social participation in the USA.
Street, J., Mass Media, Politics and Democracy, 2nd edn
(2011). A readable and wide-ranging overview of all
aspects of the relationship between the media and
politics.