the changing character of political communication in uk

THE CHANGING CHARACTER OF

POLITICAL COMMUNICATIONS

A brief history

ELECTIONS Pippa Norris identifies three

key phases in this history:

The premodern period

The modern period

The media became the object of party attention.

The postmodern era.

• Sound bites and photo opportunities have become more important than “the informed advocacy of policy”.

MASS MEDIA

Politicians

Parties produce guidebooks for candidates:

what to wear how to pose for photographs.What questions to ask before giving an interviewWhat answers to give during it.

Government communication

BEFORE

“Official secrets act”

•“Lobby” it was an exclusive club of journalist given priviledge acces to governement information on an anonymous way.

NOW“Freedom of

information act”.

•However the goverment still retains considerable power over what is published about its activties.

Government advertising• The British Government became in the late

1990s the larger spender on advertising in the UK.

• The purpose was to promote the interest of the party in the government.

• It has always had a propaganda dimension

Government Online• Early in 2007, news

reports claimed that a government website had collapsed.

• The e-petition

• The internet provide a weapon to allow direct communication between the public and the government.

New Labour

BLOGS

http://www.conservatives.com/default.aspx

USE OF POPULAR CULTURE AND POPULAR MUSIC

• Folk music and traditional jazz in the Campaign for nuclear Disarmament(CND)in 1950s)

• Punk and reggae bacame the Rock soundtract against Racism in the 1970s

• Rock tours of bands such as Coldplay or events such as the Glastonbury Festival. “ Live 8”.

• Also the NGOs are in the business of supplying music downloads, which help to raise money as well as awareness. http://www.war

child.org.uk/

Explaining changes in politicalcommunication

The commodification of the public sphere Regulating the new public sphere

Public sphereIt is the audience and it is constituted in the act of communication: mode of the address and the technological form.

• According to Jürgen Habermas the public sphere in the 18th century was created by proliferation of small magazines and café society.

• Electronic mass media create a new economic order and a new set of priorities.

• Jürgen Habermas alludes that internet makes possible and recreation of the near idea of the public sphere.

• “New public sphere” It is supposed to be the “ World Wide Web” that is unregulated and free.

Civic and cynical journalism

The future of political journalism

The issue of the regulation of journalism.

The practice and profession of journalism.

The numbers of bloggers growing daily.

David Miranda• He was moving material between Glenn

Greenwald (left) and a film-maker in Berlin. So hardly a journalist by most definitions; more of a bagman on his own account.

• Miranda was detained by the Metropolitan police for nine hours l as he was passing through Heathrow in London on his way to Brazil.

• Greenwald has broken a series of stories about the US intelligence agencies based on material leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

• David Miranda's detention is a threat to press freedom, say European editors

• They say that the "events in Great Britain over the past week give rise to deep concern" and call on the British prime minister to "reinstall your government among the leading defenders of the free press".

Celebrity politics and the dumbing-down debate.

David Cameron’s appearance on Jonathan Ross

• The elected politician seeks to reach a new and larger public and cultivate secure votes.

Celebrities to endorse political parties campaigns.

Labour party conference

Arnold Schwarzeneggerconservative

LIVE8 Bod Geldof

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHkonojSmRE

Style and performance as political communication

Labour Party vs. Conservative