WK21 – BRITISH POLITICS, POLITICAL

CAMPAIGNING AND CONTENT ANALYSIS

Dr. Carolina Matos

Government Department

University of Essex

Reading list for week 21 • Required text:

• Bartle, J. et al (2013) “Rules, Strategies and Words: the content of the 2010 prime ministerial debates”, paper presented to the Political Studies Association.

• Additional:

• Butler, David and Dennis Kavanagh (2005) The British General Election of 2005 New York, Palgrave

• Campbell, A. and Scott, R. (2007) The Blair years, London: Hutchinson

• Lees-Marshment, Jennifer (2001) “Political parties and political marketing: what is it all about?” in Political Marketing and British Political Parties – The Party’s Just Begun, Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 1-49

• Schmitt-Beck, Rudiger and Farrell, David M. (2002) “Studying political campaigns and their effects” in Do Political Campaigns Matter? Campaign Effects in Elections and Referendums, London: Routledge, p. 1-22

Key points

• Politics and popular culture (i.e. Street, 1997)

• The changing nature of politics and its relationship to the

media

• Political marketing: what is it?

• “Modern” political campaigning practices and

“Americanization”

• “How the media colonise politics” (Meyer, 2002)

• Political campaigning practices and British politics

• The 2010 prime-ministerial debates and content analysis

• Conclusions

• Seminar activities and questions

Who has more power: the media or

politicians?

The role of political parties in democracies

• Main function of political parties is to provide countries with leaders (Lees-

Marshment, 2001)

• Wide range of literature on party politics discusses how parties behave ( i.e.

Catch all parties (Kirchheimer, 1966)

• I.e. Downs (1957) argued that political parties are rational actors that

change their behaviour to capture the middle ground

• One of the key transformations of the political party has been the

strengthening of its leaders

• Rise of television and other media technologies means that politicians

compete with various leisure activities for the attention of voters

• Politicians will compete with each other to gain more voters (i.e. reach out to

younger publics). Thus they will start to incorporate entertainment formats to

their political platform and/or political persona

Politics, branding and the logic of consumption

• The brand idea has acquired significant importance over the past 20

years in politics

• “Political parties are the ultimate brands” (Burkitt, 2002)

• I.e. Bennett (2003, 104), in Branded Political Communications,

talked about the re-branding of the Social Democrats-Green coalition

in Germany,Clinton’s “re-branding” of the US Democratic Party.

New Labour also was re-branded in 1997.

• Scammell (2003) argues that there is a mismatch between confident consumers and insecure citizens (i.e. decline of citizenship rationales)

• “…consumerism in the sense of a more productive, less collective public policy choice is becoming the cause of the relationship between citizens, representatives and governments in the electoral politics of a number of nations (Scammell, 1995; Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999 in Bennett, 2003).

The psychology behind branding and the re-branding

of New Labour

• Scammell (2003) makes a distinction between commercial and

political brands (i.e. Coca Cola)

• Some reasons for the rise of the phenomena: 1) economic; 2)

growing skepticism about efficacy of advertising ; 3) increasing

consumer power

• Brands can operates at an emotional level

• Gould’s surveys found that the hostility to Blair and Labour was

highest among women

• Promise, a commercial consultancy specialised in brand building,

was hired to design a strategy to reconnect Blair with voters for the

2005 election

• Labour brand was undermined by media attacks (i.e. Iraq war).

Blair’s image as a “celebrity politician” in decline

PR and spin-doctoring in British and American

politics

• Politics has become a televisual activity; politicians have been

transformed into TV performers (Louw, 2005)

• “Politics becomes stage managed for largely televisual audiences –

scripted by spin-doctors…performed by politicians as performers

and represented by journalists who….play the role of celebrities in

their own right” (Louw, 144)

• I.e. Clinton was seen as a model celebrity politician at ease in

front of the cameras with ability to follow scripts

• Thatcher was also coached on her TV appearances and adapted

her style, including tone of voice and manners, to suit voters

wishes

Popular culture and politics: the emergence of the

celebrity politician

• * Street (1997) has argued how politics has become more like popular culture, adapting to its logic:

• Core of the critique is that it contributes to the impoverishment of the relationship between the representative and the represented

• According to Postman (1987, 4,129), appearance and image have come to dominate politics, so that “we may have reached a point where cosmetics have replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control’ (in Street, 439).

• Street (2004) argues that there are two types of celebrity politicians: the politicians who become celebrities and the celebrities who engage in political causes and act like politicians

• “The politics of character tend to drive out the politics of substance” (Lichtenberg, 1990)

Politicians use the media in their struggle over symbolic

power

• Thompson draws from Bourdieu’s discussion of cultural capital • “…the media become the primary means by which political leaders

accumulate symbolic capital in the broader political field. Through the management of visibility and the…presentation of self, political leaders use the media to build up a store of symbolic capital in the eyes of the electorate….”(Thompson, 2000, 105).

• Reputation is an aspect of symbolic capital (a politician’s good reputation implies that he is trusted by voters)

• However, the media has been seen by many as being more powerful

• Meyer (2002) argues that politicians have lost some of their authority and now seek to influence adapting to the logic of the media

• The media are perceived as more powerful - they are not the ones who are controlled by political elites; rather, they are controlling them

• Shift in political scenario from politicians debating what they want to discussing how to implement what voters want

• Concerns: what are the consequences of this new state of things for democracy? Can politicians now really serve the public?

Politicians are seen as submitting to the rules of the

media (in Meyer, 2002)

* Chief perceptions of politics will be what the media choose to portray on

their stage

* Thus the real political process - behind the stage - becomes invisible to the

wider public

• “From the point when the idea of democracy as popular sovereignty began to

attract widespread support, it was inevitable that politics would have to

engage the mass media… Thus, in its efforts to cater to the tastes of the mass

public, and due to the pressures to stage manage media events, politics itself

becomes “politainment or a variant of popular culture” (Meyer, 2002, 53).

• Process has culminated in citizens becoming more detached from

politics:

* “…democratic principles thus guarantee that “information is made available

in participation in decision-making as extensive as possible, but …this same

process of colonization makes it difficult for the vast majority….to monitor

and influence political events in an informed way”, culminating in ordinary

citizens feeling more detached from politics (Meyer, 2002, 56)

Political marketing as a new form of political

engagement?

* According to Scammell (1999), political marketing covers a multitude of

activities, including advertising, public relations and any political activity

concerned with image and persuasion

* Thus a simple political speech might not be considered political marketing,

whereas a rally complete with mood music, balloons and flags.. would be

(Scammell, 1999)

* Debate centres on the ways in which political marketing can be used by

political parties to stimulate more civic engagement and attract wider groups to

the political sphere

* Attacks on political marketing seem to imply that a “golden age” of rational

political debate existed once

* The disengagement of voters should not be blamed only on the media -

changes in political system and rise of educational levels have made voters less

predictable

Political marketing and the democratic process

* Political marketing can be understood as the commercialisation of politics

and the extension of the relations of consumption to the political sphere

(McNair, 1995)

• Criticisms of its impact on the overall quality of the democratic process:

* Critics argue that marketing contributed to the decline of ideological

commitments of parties. These critiques are somewhat inserted within a

Habermasian understanding of the fall of “rational political debate”, or of a

rational debating public

* Critiques of the decline of the quality of leaders - shift towards their

personality and character (“just like us”)

• “The rational citizen of classic liberal theory has become “a consumer of

politics and policies….the competing political parties present electors with

different policy options in broadly the same way as firms offer rival products

to the consumers’ (Greenaway, 1992, 51 in McNair, 1995; 41).

• Rise of political consultants, who become just as important as the leaders that

they serve (Scammell, 1995)

After all, do political campaigns matters? (David Farrell

and Rudiger Schmitt-Beck, 2002)

• Political campaigns are a core feature of the political process in

contemporary democracies

• Bennett (2003) states that we are living in a current about era of

“permanent campaigns” (politicians are always campaigning)

• Most studies have focused on campaign effects in national contexts

(US and UK mainly),but there has been a rise in comparative political

campaigning practices in wider discussions of globalization

• Comparative studies (i.e. Swanson and Mancini, 1996; Holtz-Bacha,

2004 in Esser and Pfetsch) on the adoption of political campaigning

practices around the world have talked about the emphasis on: 1)

personalization and celebrity politics; 2) political marketing techniques

and 3) “Americanization” or “modernization” of campaign practices

• Farrell and Schmitt-Beck (2002) talk about 4 types of political

campaigns: 1) elections; 2) referendums; 3) single-issue campaigns

or interest-based and 4) image campaigns

Political leaders and “modern” political campaigning

practices

Studies on campaign affects and goals * “The ultimate….goal of campaigns….is political conversion – attracting

undecided voters to one’s own fold, or, even more difficult, getting people to

decide in ways other than their initial predisposition….” (Lazarsfeld, 1968,

1944 in Schmitt-Beck and Farrell, 14).

• Problems for democracy of attack and “negative” campaigning:

• “…from being exposed to campaign communications, voters may become

motivated to follow politics more closely on the news; levels of cynicism

may also be connected with certain styles of (negative) campaigning and

attacks between political rivals, so that voters may become de-motivated, as

has been some of the critiques made in regards to political campaigning in

the US (Schmitt-Beck and Farrell, 2002, 15).

* Lees-Marshment (2001, 15) shows data on how party membership has fallen

from both parties (Conservative and Labour)

Designer Politics (Scammell, 1995; 2000)

* What can be said of political marketing in Britain?

1) Marketing is entrenched in the political process

2) Does not offer magic solutions for winning elections

3) Use of political marketing needs to be closely monitored

* Initial reluctance of the Left in adopting political marketing prior to the re-

branding of New Labour in 1997:

* Political marketing has its limits in its capacity of persuasion

* Scammell points out how voters can be influenced by various factors, mainly

socio-economic ones: “…marketing may bring real democratic benefits by

improving two way communications between voters and politicians

theoretically….allowing both parties and voters to be better informed and

make more rational choices” (xv).

Decline of party loyalty, fluidity of politics and climate of

instability

* New social movements also pose a challenge to parties – voters turn to other

forms of political participation and not just traditional political parties (rise

of lifestyle politics, environment, animal rights welfare, etc

• Decline of party loyalty has given rise to electoral volatility – voters are less

likely to vote over and over for same party (15)

• As Charles Clarke argued, British voters in 2010 did not see enough reason

to continue to vote for Labour (in power for 13 years). For the majority of

voters are not those who are loyal to either (i.e. Labour or Conservative)

• Beyond the criticisms of Gordon Brown’s weakness as a party leader, Labour

lost in 2010 because of a lack of vision of the party for its future.

• Argues about general difficulties of building a platform for the centre-left for

the future

• * I.e. the 2010 prime-ministerial debates where shown to be focused more on

policy debates than on personality (Bartle et al, 2013)

“Rules, Strategies and Words: The Content of the 2010 Prime

Ministerial Debates” (Bartle et al, 2013)

• Authors have treated the debates as composite of three distinct parts –

opening statements, three-way debates and closing statements

• “Comparing the leaders’ opening and closing statements with their other

contributions allows us to distinguish between the leaders’ “ideal” messages

and what they were able to say in their responses to questions. Comparing

the changing content of three debates enables us to observe how the leaders

adapted their strategies.”

• Debates took place among the three main political parties at the BBC, ITN

and Sky News

• Each debate focused on a specific theme: the first debate produced by ITV

focused on “domestic affairs”; the second produced by Sky News focused on

“international affairs” and the final debate, produced by BBC, addressed

“economic affairs.”

• Across the three debates there were a total of 24 questions. There was a

dominance of domestic affairs (in total, 14 out of 24 questions).

Theme

Acclaim

(P)

Attack

(A)

On Cameron

(DC)

On Brown

(GB)

On Clegg

(NC)

Defence

(D)

Against Cameron

(DC)

Against Brown

(GB)

Against Clegg

(NC)

Agreement

AG)

With Cameron

(DC)

With Brown

(GB)

With Clegg

(NC)

Policy

Past Deed

(PD)

Future Plan

(FP)

General Goal

(GG)

Issue Topic

(P*)

Character

Leadership Ability

(LA)

Ideals

(ID)

Themed questions ‘Open’ questions

First debate • Immigration (D)

• Law and order (D)

• MPs expenses (D)

• Education (D)

• Budget deficit (E)

• Armed forces equipment (I)

• Healthcare (D)

• Care of the elderly (D)

Second

debate

• Europe (I)

• Anti-terrorism (I)

• Environment & transport

(I)

• Pope’s visit to Britain (I)

• Faith in the political system

(D)

• State pension (D)

• National government (D)

• Immigration (D)

Third debate • Honesty about cuts (E)

• Taxation (E)

• Banks (E)

• Manufacturing industry

(E)

• Immigration (D)

• Housing (D)

• Abuse of welfare benefits

(D)

• Education (D)

Hypothesis testing:

(1) General trends

Party competition and issue ownership (Bartle et al, 2013)

• “Theories of party competition focus on how issues structure voters’ decisions. Issues are conventionally divided into position and valence types (Stokes, 1963). Position issues are those that involve agreement about objectives or ends. These are often represented in spatial terms as positions on a dimension anchored by opposing poles, for example, nationalisation versus privatisation. Parties attract voters by locating their policies as closely as possible to the median voter on the issues that matter most (Downs, 1957)”

• “Valence issues are those that involve a consensus or near consensus about goals (Stokes, 1963).” (i.e. corruption free government)

• Issue ownership theories – “Position and valence models of party competition have increasingly been supplemented by ‘issue ownership theories’ (Budge and Farlie, 1983; Green and Hobolt, 2008). This suggests that different parties are advantaged on different issues and can attract voters by emphasising on these…..”

“Rules, Strategies and Words: The Content of the 2010 Prime

Ministerial Debates” (Bartle et al, 2013)

• Ideology of Labour and the Conservatives:

• “National defence and security goals that are central to Conservative ideology (Leach, 2003) and the party has traditionally had an advantage on issues such as immigration and crime. They continued to hold this advantage in 2010. One might expect Cameron to try to emphasis those issues…”

• “Equality and full employment are key components of socialist ideology (Leach, 2003), and Labour traditionally has had an advantage on the issue of public services and jobs…..One might still expect Brown to return to jobs when possible”.

• Functional theory also suggests that messages will focus either on policy (the problems facing the nation and the proposed measures for addressing them) or character (the personalities and the qualifications of the candidates).

• Acclaims, Attacks, Defences and Agreements - Campaign messages can be divided into acclaims (which provide a positive reason for preferring the candidate); attacks (which provide a negative) and defences (which try to rebut attacks made on oneself).

Functional theory and hypotheses (Bartle et al, 2013)

Hypotheses:

H1 – Brown will devote more content to the economy and, H2, unemployment

H3 – Cameron will devote more content to immigration and H4, law and order.

H5 – Clegg will devote more content to the environment and H6, political reform.

H7 – Brown will devote most content to the economy in the opening and closing statements.

H8 – Acclaims will be more frequent than attacks for all leaders.

H9 – Attacks will be more frequent than agreements for all leaders.

H10 – Defences will be more frequent than agreements for all leaders.

H11 – The leaders will discuss policy more than character.

Coding:

• Themes = smaller unit of discourse capable of expressing a coherent idea

• Context unit = used to interpret the theme (not coded)

• Functions: Acclaims; attacks; defences; agreements

• Topic: policy; character

Hypothesis testing: main results (in Bartle et al, 2013)

Acclaim Attack Defence Agreement

1st Debate 60% 27% 12% 2%

2nd Debate 50% 36% 11% 3%

3rd Debate 52% 38% 8% 2%

Total 54% 33% 10% 3%

Hypotheses 1-3

“Rules, Strategies and Words: The Content of the 2010 Prime

Ministerial Debates” (Bartle et al, 2013)

• Further assumptions that can be made:

• H12 – Brown and Cameron will attack each other more than Clegg.

• H13 – Brown and Cameron will agree more with Clegg than with each other.

• H14 – Brown will be the subject of more attacks than Cameron or Clegg.

• H15 – Brown will acclaim past deeds and H16, his leadership abilities more

than Cameron or Clegg.

• Authors used Hamlet II software package to explore text for the occurrence

of words…. Hamlet II codes designated coding units, quasi-sentences

delimited by standard punctuation conventions….Each coding unit is

examined on the basis of a series of categories…

• Researchers analysed separately the three leaders’ contributions to the

debates in order to compare their emphases on the various policy areas. The

opening and closing statements made by each leader were analysed as well

• Fifteen policy categories were identified, representing categories of the three

designated themes. Domestic – i.e. education, health, immigration, welfare.

“Rules, Strategies and Words: The Content of the 2010 Prime

Ministerial Debates” (Bartle et al, 2013)

In the second part, the researchers examined the function of content and involved manual coding.

Highly structured nature of the debates meant that all content could be coded as an acclaim, attack, defence or agreement

Third, each unit was classified depending on whether it focused on policy or character. Policy – past deeds, future plans or general goods; Character – personal qualities, leadership abilities or ideals.

Discussion of hypotheses:

H4. Brown and Cameron will attack each other more than Clegg

• 1st debate: Clegg was the target of only 9 attacks

• 2nd debate: Clegg was the target of 43 attacks

H6. Brown will be the subject of more attacks than the others

• Overall Brown was the target of 262 attacks; Cameron 223 attacks; Clegg 79 attacks

• A mere 21% of the questions related to economic affairs, 58% to domestic issues.

The first election debate 2010

• The First Election Debate – ITV1 15th April 2010

• (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk5HvJmy_yg)

Conclusions • 1) Political systems have changed in advanced capitalist societies

due to globalisation, geographical mobility and increase labour

migration – decline of family and community, of party-based politics,

etc

• 2) Rise in educational levels of the public, increase in sophistication

and criticism and decline of class interests (middle and working class

has become blurred)

• 3) Voters less faithful, less disposed to vote ideologically and more

pragmatically

• 4) Shift of concern from parties away from political debate to present

voters with what they want (i.e. Party delivery of product)

• 5) Submission of politicians to the media’s logic?, or a vicious circle of

cooperation and conflict (i.e. the political media complex model)

between the media and politicians?

Seminar activities

• 1) In what way has politics changed today and what is the nature of

its relationship with the media? Why are politicians seen as

“celebrities”?

• 2) What are some of the critiques made regarding the adoption of

political marketing practices by political parties? What is the implied

consequence for democratic politics?

• 3) What are some of the “modern” campaign practices that have

began to be adopted throughout the world? Why do some see this as

being a form of “Americanization” of politics?

• 4) According to Bartle et al (2013), the 2010 prime-ministerial debates

in the UK were seen as having focused more on policy and not on

personality. What were some observations made regarding the

debates?

• 5) Discuss the methods used in the Bartle et al (2013) text. What

were the hypotheses? Where they confirmed or not? How was the

coding conducted?

Readings for week 22

Required texts:

• Allan, S. (2004) “The culture of distance: Online reporting of the Iraq war” in B. Zelizer and S. Allan, (Eds.) Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime, pp 347-366. NY: Routledge

• Keeble, R. (2004) “Information warfare in an age of hypermilitarism” in S. Allan and B. Zelizer, Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime, pp 43-58. London: Routeledge.

• Robinson, P. (2004) “Researching US media-state relations and twentyfirst-century wars” in S. Allan and B. Zelizer, Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime, pp 96-112. London: Routeledge.

• Tumber, H. (2004) “Prisoners of news values? Journalists, professionalism, and identification in times of war” in S. Allan and B Zelizer, (Eds.). Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime, , pp 190-205. London: Routeledge.

Additional:

Robinson, P. (1999) “The CNN effect: Can the news media drive foreign policy?” in Review of International Studies, 25, 301-309.