Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy

303 Pages·2010·0.92 MB·English

Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy
Also by Kees Brants
THE MEDIA IN QUESTION: Popular Cultures and Public Interests (co-edited with
Joke Hermes & Liesbet van Zoonen)
Also by Katrin Voltmer
PUBLIC POLICY AND THE MASS MEDIA: The Interplay of Mass Communication
and Political Decision Making (co-edited with Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten)
THE MASS MEDIA AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN NEW
DEMOCRACIES (edited)
Political Communication
in Postmodern Democracy
Challenging the Primacy of Politics
Edited by
Kees Brants
and
Katrin Voltmer
Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Kees Brants and Katrin
Voltmer 2011
Foreword © Jay G. Blumler 2011
Afterword © John Corner 2011
Individual chapters © Contributors 2011
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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First published 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy : Challenging the
Primacy of Politics / Edited By Kees Brants, Katrin Voltmer.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–230–24335–4 (hardback)
1. Journalism—Political aspects. 2. Mass media—Political
aspects. 3. Communication in politics. 4. Democracy. I. Brants,
Kees, 1946–, editor of compilation. II. Voltmer, Katrin, 1953–, editor of
compilation. III. Beus, J. W. de (Jos W. de). Audience democracy. IV. Title.
PN4751.P58 2011
320.01'4—dc22
2010042400
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
Contents
List of Figures, Tables and Appendix vii
Foreword: In Praise of Holistic Empiricism ix
Jay G. Blumler
Notes on Contributors xiii
1 Introduction: Mediatization and De-centralization of
Political Communication 1
Kees Brants and Katrin Voltmer
Part I New Approaches to Political Communication
2 Audience Democracy: An Emerging Pattern in Postmodern
Political Communication 19
Jos de Beus
3 Representation and Mediated Politics: Representing
Representation in an Age of Irony 39
Stephen Coleman
Part II Mediatization: The Changing Power Game between
Politics and the Media
4 Mediatization and News Management in Comparative
Institutional Perspective 59
Robin Brown
5 Spin and Political Publicity: Effects on News Coverage
and Public Opinion 75
Claes H. de Vreese and Matthijs Elenbaas
6 Changes in Political News Coverage: Personalization,
Conflict and Negativity in British and Dutch Newspapers 92
Rens Vliegenthart, Hajo G. Boomgaarden and Jelle W. Boumans
7 A Changing Culture of Political Television Journalism 111
Judith Stamper and Kees Brants
8 A Question of Control: Journalists and Politicians in
Political Broadcast Interviews 126
Katrin Voltmer and Kees Brants
v
vi Contents
9 The Elephant Trap: Politicians Performing in Television
Comedy 146
Liesbet van Zoonen, Stephen Coleman and Anke Kuik
Part III De-Centralization: New Forms of Citizenship
and Political Communication
10 Political Consumerism as Political Participation? 167
Janelle Ward
11 The New Frontiers of Journalism: Citizen Participation in
the United Kingdom and the Netherlands 183
Tom Bakker and Chris Paterson
12 The New Cultural Cleavage: Immigration and the Challenge
to Dutch Politics and Media 200
Philip van Praag and Maud Adriaansen
13 The Mediation of Political Disconnection 215
Stephen Coleman, David E. Morrison and Simeon Yates
14 ‘Voting is easy, just press the red button’: Communicating
Politics in the Age of Big Brother 231
Valentina Cardo
15 What’s Reality Television Got to Do with it? Talking Politics
in the Net-Based Public Sphere 248
Todd Graham
Afterword 265
John Corner
Index 273
List of Figures, Tables and
Appendix
Figures
1.1 Changes in political communication 4
5.1 Media mentions of ‘spin doctors’ in the
United Kingdom and the Netherlands, in
absolute counts per year 80
6.1 Trends in personalization in Dutch and British
newspapers between 1990 and 2007 102
6.2 Trends in presidentialization in Dutch and British
newspapers between 1990 and 2007 103
6.3 Trends in conflict and cooperation news in Dutch and
British newspapers between 1990 and 2007 104
6.4 Trends in negativity in Dutch and British newspapers
between 1990 and 2007 105
9.1 Number of politicians who appeared in Have I Got News
for You (black bars) and Dit was het Nieuws (grey bars) 148
11.1 Typology of citizen participation in the news 188
12.1 Newspaper coverage about ethnic minorities from 1991
to 2005 206
Tables
5.1 Political public relations cynicism by experimental
condition, health care experiment 83
5.2 Political public relations cynicism by experimental
condition, air security experiment 83
5.3 Effects on political public relations cynicism by
experimental condition: regression model examining
political PR cynicism as the criterion variable 85
6.1 Comparison of coverage in the years 2006 and 2007
in British and Dutch newspapers 101
vii
viii List of Figures, Tables and Appendix
6.2 Comparison of coverage during election periods and at
routine times in British and Dutch newspapers between
1990 and 2007 106
8.1 Frequency and determinants of interruptions of politicians
by journalists (% of turn-taking resulting from interruption) 138
8.2 Types of question asked by journalists and subsequent
response from politicians (%) 139
8.3 Reaction to questions and answers (%) 140
8.4 Determinants for controlling the interview (means) 141
9.1 Themes and repertoires of politicians talking about Have
I Got News for You and Dit was het Nieuws 159
10.1 Socially conscious consumption in the United Kingdom
and the Netherlands: Mean scores of responses on a five-
point scale from never (1) to very often (5) 174
10.2 Examining the relationship between socially conscious
consumption and political participation in the
United Kingdom 176
10.3 Examining the relationship between socially conscious
consumption and political participation in the
Netherlands 177
12.1 Educational levels, political interest and political cynicism
of the three groups (%) 208
12.2 Daily media use of the three groups (%) 209
15.1 The normative analysis 258
15.2 The use of expressives in relation to political talk 261
Appendix
9.1 Politicians who have appeared on Have I Got News for You
and Dit was het Nieuws 161
Foreword: In Praise of Holistic
Empiricism
Jay G. Blumler
Political communication is an exceptionally rich, complex, fluid and
important sub-field among those that populate the overall field of
communications studies. Scholarship has not always done suitable
justice to those characteristics – either focusing discretely on isolated
particulars or striving to comprehend it all in one grand-theoretical go.
Take how it has changed over time. Since the end of World War II, the
prime medium of political communication has been first the press, next
network television, next multi-channel television and soon, perhaps, an
Internet–television hybrid. Other major changes – for communicators,
media content, audience/citizens and for political institutions themselves –
have followed in train. We need frameworks that can capture such devel-
opments, identifying and pursuing the research questions they highlight.
Take complexity. As Jack McLeod and his colleagues (McLeod,
Kosicki & McLeod, 2010) have often stressed, political communication
is eminently a multi-level field. At its simplest, it links political culture,
political actors, media organizations, including the roles played by
political journalists within them, and bodies of increasingly heteroge-
neous and varyingly involved citizens. We need frameworks that can
help us to understand how these relationships work, how they evolve,
how they feed on each other and in what ways they matter. For matter
they do, since political communication is inescapably a normative
domain, intimately involved in the realization (or failure to realize) of
collectively self-determining processes of citizenship and democracy.
Of course people’s political and communication values will differ, and
nobody of empirical evidence can definitively determine which among
them are superior. Nevertheless we do need frameworks and research that
can shed light on the ideas and information that are made available to
citizens by existing and prospective communication arrangements and
on the models of democracy that they do or do not make possible.
Readers interested in grasping political communication in all the
above respects will get a great deal out of this book. It conceptualizes
the role of political communication in what the editors call a ‘post-
modern democracy’, shaped by formative, ongoing, incomplete and
tension-ridden processes along two over-arching dimensions.
ix