Effective Political Communication - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages This paper looks at the work of a number of writers/researchers who have done work in the area of political communication. Each of them has put forward their theory on political communication. The ones which are of interest are introduced and critiqued separately. The paper also provides a comparative analysis of their work. This paper looks at the work of a number of writers/researchers who have done work in the area of political communication. Each of them has put forward their theory on political communication. The ones which are of interest are introduced and critiqued separately. The paper also provides a comparative analysis of their work. Highlights and Critique of ViewpointsBlumler and Gurevitch (1995) in their book ‘The Crisis of Public Communication’ looks at the issues affecting effective political communication. Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) attribute this crisis to four sources: • the change in communication technologies; • changes in the structure and culture of the surrounding social and political system; • the drive by the two political communication institutions – politicians and journalists, to understand the strategies used by each other in order to make adjustments in response to each other's actions; and Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) link the communicators and the audience in a network of expectations shared by them by indicating the roles of each of the actors in the system that are complementary to each other. In light of this Blumler and Gurevitch (1995, p. 15) indicates that if the audience plays a partisan role then the role of the media should be that of an editorial guide while that of the politician should be that of a gladiator. When the audience role is that of a liberal citizen the media personnel complements this by being the moderator and the politician as a rational persuader. ...
Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) attribute this crisis to four sources: the change in communication technologies; changes in the structure and culture of the surrounding social and political system; the drive by the two political communication institutions – politicians and journalists, to understand the strategies used by each other in order to make adjustments in response to each others actions; and the changes –‘ebbs and flows’ of the interest of the audience in politics. Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) link the communicators and the audience in a network of expectations shared by them by indicating the roles of each of the actors in the system that are complementary to each other. In light of this Blumler and Gurevitch (1995, p. 15) indicates that if the audience plays a partisan role then the role of the media should be that of an editorial guide while that of the politician should be that of a gladiator. When the audience role is that of a liberal citizen the media personnel complements this by being the moderator and the politician as a rational persuader. If the audience plays the role of a monitor then the media is expected to be the watchdog and the politician is supposed to provide information which is needed for assessment. The audience’s role as a spectator is complemented by the media’s role in providing entertainment when the politician is expected to be the performer or actor in this scenario. Blumler and Gurevitch (1995, p. 12) use the systems theory approach to analyse the media and in that vein sees the media as a system consisting of a four components: i. Political institutions in their communication aspects; ii. Media institutions in their political aspects; iii. Audience orientation to political communication; and iv. Communication ...Download file to see next pagesRead More