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Politics Lost, Politics Transformed, Politics

Colonised? Theories of the Impact ofMass Media

John StreetUniversity of East Anglia

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the literature on the relationship

between politics and mass media, mainly in discrete topic areas such as the impact of mass

media on electoral behaviour, the emergence of new forms of political communication, or

media political economy. At the same time, this diverse literature has often focused on a singlegeneral issue, typically characterised in terms of the transformation of politics. Despite this

common theme, there has been relatively little attempt to connect and compare the differ-

ent approaches. Looking at the theoretical differences in the new literature on politics andmass media reveals three perspectives pluralist, constructivist, and structuralist. These

approaches have too often tacitly co-existed, instead of more competitively striving to advance

knowledge in the three main topic areas above.

Whatever else the Hutton Inquiry established, or failed to establish, it provided

another illustration of the link between the worlds of politics and mass media.

In a few seconds, and a few (ill-chosen) words, on an early morning two-way

between two professional journalists, the lives of individuals and institutions

were irrevocably changed. Or so it seemed, and so it was widely reported by

those same broadcasters and their colleagues elsewhere. The news stories and

commentaries gave credence to the assumption that media and political insti-

tutions were locked together, the fate of each dependent on the other. The

phrase sexing up, at the heart of Andrew Gilligans initial report on the UK

governments behaviour, was emblematic of the relationship. Lord Hutton gave

quite specific attention to the phrases precise political significance. What the

judge did not question was the assumption that a dossier could be more or less

sexy, that it could be made to seduce those who read it; and that its sexiness

was directly measurable in the headlines and column inches it produced. The

words sexing up symbolised the conjunction of politics and media, and the

Hutton report can be read as an extended lament for the fate that has befallen

traditional political life as a result of its intimate conjunction with media (a

theme subsequently developed by the journalist John Lloyd (2004)).

This pessimistic view is echoed in much recent academic literature on the rela-tionship between politics and mass media, although here, amidst the lamen-

tations there is also the sound of celebration What these different responses

POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW: 2005 VOL 3, 1733


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18 JOHN STREET

editors usurping that of political leaders; they are partly about mass political

behaviour: the ways in which citizens thoughts and actions are shaped and

influenced by the output of mass media; and partly about political communi-

cation and the management of parties and governments: the emergence of

spin and the extensive use of the techniques and practitioners of advertisingand popular culture.

But while the assumption of this process of transformation, whether for good

or ill, is widespread and fast proliferating, it is striking how little attention has

been paid to the theoretical assumptions and implications upon which such

claims rest. There has been a tendency either to incorporate the new tech-

niques of communication into established accounts of political processes, or to

focus on the debates about the effects (captured in ideas such as video- or

media-malaise), without reflecting on the theoretical paradigms within whichsuch debates are framed. This article attempts to identify those paradigms that

inform the literature that is now filling library shelves at a prodigious rate. As

political sciences interest in media has burgeoned, how might our account of

political processes change to accommodate these new insights? It is clear that

there is now a great deal of research available on the medias political effects

and on the political uses of mass media for political communication and cam-

paigning. But how does this knowledge relate to the theories and concerns

that define the broader discipline of political studies?

The difficulty posed by this question stems in part from the fact that the wealthof literature is a product of the concatenation of different political science

fields, asking different questions about the medias impact on their territory,

and adopting different approaches to answering them. These divisions are

compounded by the work emerging from cognate subject areas such as media

and cultural studies. And in the process, there has been limited conversation

between the sub-areas, limited debate about the theoretical and method-

ological assumptions that might otherwise constitute a common enterprise.

The failure to engage may, in part, be a product of information overload, of

indifference, of lack of opportunity, or even sometimes of outright hostility.1

What I want to propose here is that there are three theoretical approaches

organising thinking about the relationship between politics and mass media.

These are those represented by pluralism, constructivism, and structuralism.

Their differences are revealed in their competing accounts of how they under-

stand communication, the way they define the political and the balance they

strike between structure and agency. In reflecting upon the medias relation-

ship with politics, it is crucial to be aware of these competing perspectives in

order to make sense of the noise that is emerging from this now crowded field.

First, though, it is useful to map briefly the ways in which the study of massmedia has come to feature in the study of politics.


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THEORIES OF THE IMPACT OF MASS MEDIA 19

marked contrast to the situation two or three decades ago. The change can be

detected in the content of textbooks. The first volume of Developments in

British Politics, published in 1983, contained only a brief mention of the mass

media in the final chapter; but, three years later, the second volume (Drucker

et al., 1986) had a chapter on mass media by Kenneth Newton. The journalPolitical Communication was founded in the early 1980s, and The Harvard Inter-

national Journal of Press/Politics in 1996, at roughly the same time as the Politi-

cal Studies Association established its Politics and Media specialist group. Now

publishers catalogues have pages devoted to books on political communica-

tion and the mass media, not to mention the many undergraduate and post-

graduate courses and degrees that they serve.

Historically, the issue of mass medias relationship to politics has been framed

by the idea of propaganda and fear of its effect on mass society. For example,in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter (1976 [1943],

p. 257) famously wrote: Newspaper readers, radio audiences, members of a

party even if not physically gathered together are terribly easy to work up into

a psychological crowd and a state of frenzy in which attempt at rational argu-

ment only spurs the animal spirits. What is distinctive about this concern with

the power of mass media is that the attention is less on the content, and more

on its effects as a medium on political rationality and behaviour. This perspec-

tive has continued to dominate the literature. The political effects research,

certainly within mainstream political science, tends to feature most promi-nently and to be organised around elections (for example, Miller, 1991). There

is surprisingly little work on general media content within political science; this

has been left largely to maverick writers like Edward Herman and Noam

Chomsky (1988) or those located in sociology, such as the Glasgow University

Media Group (for example, GUMG, 1976, 1980, 1993), or in linguistics (Chilton,

2003; Fowler, 1991). There are exceptions (for example, Norris, Kern and

Just, 2003), but they are relatively few in number, and some of the explicitly

ideological critiques of news have been subject to robust critique from within

political science (for example, Harrison, 1985). There has, then, been a crudedemarcation between the effects work and the ideological or content work.

This divide has, of course, never been neat, but the distinction has become yet

fuzzier with the emergence of a third strand that has, instead, focused on

the form and organisation of political communication. This research has been

less concerned with the mass behavioural impact of media, and more with

its impact on political communication and party organisation (Kavanagh,

1995; Rosenbaum, 1997; Wring and Horrocks, 2001). Much of its attention has

been on parties and elections (Bartle, Atkinson and Mortimore, 2002; Crewe,

Grosschalk and Bartle, 1998), but it has also addressed government communi-cation (Lees-Marshment, 2004; Scammell, 1995). The fourth strand to political

sciences interest in media has occupied a lower profile while still establishing


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20 JOHN STREET

This work has been supplemented by studies of the broader political economy

of media and culture industries (see, for example, Hesmondhalgh, 2002, and

Tunstall and Machin, 1999). This work can be bracketed with research into the

medias role in setting broader policy agendas and its impact on their imple-

mentation (Robinson, 2001). A final strand to political interest in the media hasbeen that emerging from political theory and political philosophy. This is typ-

ically concerned with the relationship between media and democracy (Keane,

1991; Lichtenberg, 1990; ONeill, 2002).

These five strands of political research into which media propaganda, effects,

communication, policy and democracy have typically been intended to con-

tribute to pre-existing political science concerns: the conduct and outcome of

elections; party organisation and practice; government policy; and principles of

democracy. In fixing their attention on established fields within the discipline,researchers have not tended to engage with the theoretical assumptions that

organise those fields. They are inclined to take on the assumptions about, say,

structure and agency that are implicit in the field of interest. In doing so, they

obscure the larger implications of the relationship between politics and media.

It is these implications that I want to draw out in reviewing recent literature

on the media-politics relationship.

Politics Lost? The Pluralist Debate

An obvious theme within the contemporary literature on the relationship

between media and politics in liberal democracies is that of crisis. There is a

fear that the democratic process is threatened by the erosion of the public

sphere, by the packaging of political communication, by the dumbing down

of political news (see Marquand, 2004, for a recent example). One of the

most important early articulations of this concern is Jay Blumler and Michael

Gurevitchs (1995) The Crisis of Public Communication. Published in the mid-

1990s, it brought together essays written by the authors over more than two

decades, but it framed them within an account of a systemic process. In doing

so, they argued that public communication had to be understood as theproduct of series of interlinked institutional practices, an important claim in

itself. They went on to conclude that this system, in the case of the US and UK,

was getting into ever deeper trouble, and was impoverishing the way in

which citizens were addressed politically (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995, p. 203).

Their contribution helped to establish an agenda that has had profound

consequences for the field.

One of its obvious legatees is Robert Putnams Bowling Alone (2000) (and the

articles that preceded it (for example, Putnam, 1995)), a book that has itselfhad an impact throughout political science and especially on the debate about

the relationship between politics and mass media Much recent literature has


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literature on mass media that served to sustain his claim (Capella and Jamieson,

1997; Iyengar, 1991) and to question it (Newton, 1999; Norris, 2000). The debate

that Putnam fuelled has also given substance to what might be described as

the pluralist paradigm in conceptualising and analysing the role of mass media

in politics.

It is not necessary to rehearse Putnams argument in detail here, but it is useful

just to sketch out his key claims and assumptions in relation to the mass media.

In the first part of Bowling Alone, Putnam adduces a wealth of data to support

the view that political participation and other forms of civic engagement in

the US have, with few exceptions, been in decline. One of the chief suspects

is, for Putnam, mass media (in particular, television). When he comes to

attribute responsibility for civic disengagement, pressures of time and money

and suburbanisation come lowest (at 10%). Electronic entertainment, by con-trast, is held to be responsible for at least 25% of the effect (Putnam, 2000,

pp. 2834).

His argument derives from the testing of three hypotheses that link television

to civic disengagement. First, it competes for scarce time; secondly, its psy-

chological effects inhibit social participation; and thirdly, programme content

undermines civic motivation (Putnam, 2000, p. 237). For Putnam, these

hypotheses are confirmed by the survey and other data upon which he draws.

Television, he contends, not only steals time but induces lethargy and

passivity (Putnam, 2000, pp. 238 and 242). It also propagates messages that

exacerbate this trend (Putnam, 2000, p. 242ff). Putnams general claims have

been incorporated into a general thesis of video or media malaise, an idea

first suggested by Michael Robinson (1976) in the American Political Science

Review. What is important is the way in which Putnams claims have framed

key recent contributions to our understanding of politics relationship to mass

media in particular, the work of Pippa Norris (1999 and 2000) and her col-

leagues. I concentrate here on two contributions. The first is the co-authored

book on the 1997 General Election, On Message: Communicating the Cam-

paign, and the second is the solo-authored international comparative study,AVirtuous Circle.

On Message traces the development of new forms of political communication

and the adaptation of parties to them. Norris (1996) has typically represented

this history as falling into three phases or types: the pre-modern, the modern

and the post-modern. The chronicling of changing communicative strategies

form the backdrop to the books main concern, which is to analyse the effect

of these strategies and systems of communication on political attitudes and

behaviour. Using a mixture of large-scale surveys, panel studies and experi-ments, the authors argue that the evidence fails to support the media malaise

thesis; that media effects are limited or unprovable (experimental data reveals


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22 JOHN STREET

The book is organised around an explicit model of communication and of

effect, and an implicit theory of political structure and agency that grounds

the model. The communication-effect model is as follows: Who (the source)

says what (the content) through which channel (the media) to whom (the audi-

ence) with what effect (Norris et al., 1999, p. 9). In short, it is seen as a sequen-tial process that starts with a message and ends in the casting of a ballot

paper (Norris, 1999, p. 19). The assumption appears to be that the individual

voter processes information in accordance with their interests and dispositions,

and engage in rational computation, within the limits of their available

resources and skills.

A similar framework informs A Virtuous Circle (Norris, 2000, especially

pp. 1314). It too addresses and seeks to discredit the media/video malaise

literature. It uses the same model as On Message to isolate the source(the media), the message (political communications) and effect (electoral

behaviour). The changes and trends in each of these three stages of the com-

municative process are studied via detailed international comparisons. Norris

argues that, while media has changed over time and differs between countries

(so that generalisations about the character of the civic forum or public sphere

ought to be avoided), this does not sustain a claim about the general decline

in the quality or quantity of political information. Rather, it is suggested, infor-

mation is now available in different forms and at different levels. Norris also

casts a sceptical eye over claims that political communication has been trans-

formed. Her contention is that the trends involved differ according to the po-

litical context (most obviously, the system for regulating communication) that

restrain and organise the pressures that might otherwise lead to a transfor-

mation. Her evidence supports the contention that mass media contribute posi-

tively to political knowledge, by which she means the practical knowledge

that helps people to connect their political and social preferences to the avail-

able options (2000, p. 213).

There is no doubting the considerable value of the comparative data that Norris

produces, and the way in which she challenges the accumulated conventionalwisdom that has come to sustain ideas of video malaise. Her work, and that of

her colleagues, is a valuable antidote to the Putnam thesis. But despite their

differences, Putnam and Norris have much in common. They both, for instance,

ally themselves to the conventional distinction to be drawn between political

and non-political content. This is explicit in Putnams critique of the deleteri-

ous effect of television entertainment, and Norriss implicit value distinction in

her reference to serious political coverage (Norris, 2000, p. 28). What consti-

tutes or defines trivial political coverage is assumed, rather than argued. Such

value distinctions reflect a wider assumption, which is that media content isto be viewed, at least in its relationship to politics, as information which is

right or wrong trivial or serious (Norris 2000 p 212) Media coverage is not


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structure-agency relationship in which voters are portrayed as relatively

autonomous individuals engaged in a two-way interactive process with media

messages (Norris, 2000, p. 18). This is the way in which practical political knowl-

edge helps connect preferences to options. It is also consistent with Norriss

model of political communication in which there is a chain that leads fromcommunicator to audience, by way of media content and form, and which is

measurable as effects.

These effects, though, are of a limited kind. They relate only to the ways in

which information changes decisions about how to relate preferences and

options. It does not relate to the constitution of those preferences or options.

Norriss account, in this sense, sits squarely within a pluralist paradigm in which

agents preferences are given, and the media act only as instrumental inter-

mediaries between those agents and the options offered by the politicalsystem. Such an account stands in stark contrast to one in which the media

construct that political system and the relations between the agents within

it. Where in the pluralist account the media is one actor among many, in this

constructivist account the media are the playwrights.

Politics Transformed? The Constructivist Turn

A popular classic of the view that politics has been transformed by its encounter

with mass media is Neil Postmans Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985). It is abook that, like Allan Blooms Closing of the American Mind, attracted a great

deal of attention in the late 1980s by identifying and explaining a popular

anxiety about the deterioration of the quality of public life. Postman despaired

at what is now called the dumbing down of political communication, a process

that he saw as part of the logic of the medium of television, a logic that has

turned political communication into a variant of show business. The political

world is re-constituted according to the conventions of the medium in which

it comes to exist; it is constructed as reality by the media that present and

report it, a reality in which politics is a superficial game of appearances.

Bob Franklin, with his books Packaging Politics (1994) and Newszak and News

Media (1998), might be seen as being political sciences Postman. Franklin has

eloquently documented what he sees as the decline of political communica-

tion, and the damage to democracy that it has engendered. The new forms of

political communication, according to Franklin, privilege presentation over sub-

stance, appearance over policy. The new architects of this era the spin doctors

and advertising executives recruited by governments and parties serve to dis-

empower citizens and to diminish politics.

Not all those who note such changes in political communication despair of it.

Just as the argument about media malaise provoked the debate represented


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24 JOHN STREET

communication is provided by the collection Political Communications Trans-

formed, edited by John Bartle and Dylan Griffiths (2001).

While this emerging political science literature has concerned itself with the

larger questions of the effect of changes in political communications fordemocracy, they have not sought, for the most part, to provide a systematic or

theorised overview of the connections being made. They have not felt drawn

to Postmans picture of an all-encompassing transformation. They have tended

to work within the fairly narrow field of political communication and cam-

paigning, tracking the detailed changes in the ways in which parties in parti-

cular now operate. To this extent, they do not warrant the label constructivist

because they are monitoring the changes in a particular, established political

process: the communications between politician and citizen. Their approach

tends to operate within similar pluralist political and instrumental communi-cation assumptions as those employed by Norris, albeit focused on a different

aspect of the political process. They do not aspire to make the kind of trans-

formative claim that Postman made, and the assumption that it contains, which

is that politics exists only in its mediated form.

There are those, however, who make this more radical move. Writers like

Roderick Hart (1999) have argued that television has rewritten the relationship

between voters and politics, shaping the way that people see, and feelabout,

politics. This claim is not just about the instrumental changes to political com-

munication; rather it is about the transformation of politics as a realm of activ-ity. Such a thought is captured in expressions such as new politics or mediated

politics.

This argument is constructivist in the sense that it contends that politics is con-

stituted by, and exists only as, a series of media representations. Such an idea

is illustrated by the claim made by David Kertzer (2001) in a collection of recent

writings on political communication in Italy, in which he argues that politics is

constituted by rituals, and rituals derive their power from their symbolic re-

presentations. The media, as the source of those representations, thereby plays

a determining role in constituting politics. In a similar way, Michael DelliCarpini and Bruce Williams (2001, p. 161) question the idea that politics con-

stitutes a discrete realm that can be mapped onto the serious media repre-

sentations of news and current affairs. Politics exists in, and is constituted by,

other trivial forms of media culture: Politics is largely a mediated experience

(Delli Carpini and Williams, 2001, p. 161). In direct contrast to Norriss identifi-

cation of serious political coverage (2001, p. 161), they draw attention to the

political significance of popular culture in the construction and interpretation

of the news. Hence, they argue that the question of whether in fact Bill Clinton

and Monica Lewinsky had sex is ultimately overshadowed by the representa-tion of these issues (Delli Carpini and Williams, 2001, p. 170). It is the world of


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of new and old communication technologies (Bennett and Entman, 2001,

p. 3). Their ambition is shared with others. For example, Peter Dahlgren argues

(2001, p. 85) in another such collection (New Media and Politics2), for an

element of modest post-modern reasoning, by which he means the view

that politics no longer exists as a reality taking place outside the media, tobe covered by journalists. Rather, politics is increasingly organized as a

media phenomenon, planned and executed for and with the co-operation of

the media. This is the spirit in which these recent collections are presented

(even if their contributors do not always share this strong agenda): a sense

of politics being constituted and transformed by the media that formally

reports it.

There are three moves that are implicit in this constructivist turn. The first is to

call into question the focus on communication, and the models of it adoptedby Norris and others. Political communication, write John Corner and Dick Pels

(2003, p. 5), is both too limiting in its suggested scope (centred, sometimes

exclusively, upon political publicity and political journalism and with a bias

towards electoral campaigns) and too functionalist in its implications of a

defined role self-consciously performed. The second move is to shift the focus

onto the aesthetics of politics, onto the idea of politics as an exercise in sym-

bolic interaction hence, the focus on the presentational and performative

aspects of politics. The third move is away from the sharp dichotomy estab-

lished between those who see medias engagement with politics as enablingand those who see it as disabling, and instead to represent it as a more ambigu-

ous and contradictory state of affairs.

Corner himself is an exemplar of these constructivist tendencies. Coming from

a background in media and cultural studies, he notes how the figure of the

politician looms very large in political culture (Corner, 2000, p. 401). It is there

in endless journalistic profiles and narratives of politics, and in the popularity

of the political biography, but it features hardly at all in political analysis (for

a notable exception, see Stanyer and Wring, 2004). Corner (2000, p. 401) argues

that this oversight causes political analysts to miss the way in which individu-als in politics serve to, in Corners words, condense the political: Agents of

political choice and action, they are nevertheless foci for political values and

ideas in a way that goes beyond the limits of their sphere of practice. A similar

thought can be found in John Thompsons earlier work on The Media and

Modernity(1995, p. 126), where he notes: The development of the media has

... given rise to new forms of mediated publicnesss.

Drawing on Machiavellis advice that princes do not have to have good quali-

ties, but do have to appearto have them, Corner focuses attention upon theway in which particular appearances are necessary to the conduct of modern

democratic politics Such appearances are constructed via the performances


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26 JOHN STREET

are constructed through media performance, and the relationship between

politics and mass media, it is being suggested, has to be understood in these

terms.

Although Corner is drawing attention to one neglected aspect of politics, hisapproach has important implications for the way in which politics more

generally is theorised. It invites the thought that the realm of politics is to be

understood as the product of cultural construction in which mass media play a

decisive part. Mass media do not function simply as means of communication,

as instruments of politics, but instead constitute the very relations of politics.

This perspective rejects the account of communication and of agency that

characterises the pluralist paradigm, replacing them with the interpretative

processes of encoding and decoding and the social construction of reality and

of identity. To this extent, it might be read as the reconstruction of politics inthe language of cultural studies. It is a conclusion that political scientists are

inclined to resist.

Politics Colonised? Constructivism Postponed

One recent example of political sciences resistance to the constructivist cause

is Thomas Meyers Media Democracy(2002). In this, he sets himself against both

Norriss pluralism and cultural studies constructivism. Although Meyer recog-

nises the importance of appearance and style in political communication, he

is unwilling to embrace it fully. He insists on retaining a space for a form of

politics that is not equivalent to a representation of it or of the communica-

tive gestures that it inspires. Constructivism, he argues, must assume a world

outside that is being constructed. It is only by acknowledging the existence of

this entity outside the process of construction that allows judgement of the

adequacy or value of the construction (Meyer, 2002, pp. 4950). Otherwise,

what is the construction of? Meyer, therefore, insists on separating the two

realms, that of media and that of politics, and on identifying two different

logics. He argues that political events have a logic that is independent of

any media-constructed realm. As he writes (Meyer, 2002, p. 10): Whatever con-struction the media code may try to impose on the political events to be re-

presented, however much it may attempt to transform them, in the end the

logic of the events themselves has to shine through in the medias finished

product. This analytical and empirical distinction becomes part of an argu-

ment, the main thrust of which is the ways in which a media logic colonises

politics. The idea of colonization preserves the thought that there is something

that pre-exists the imperial intervention, but that is then taken over by it.

Medias logic, according to Meyer, is contained in two filters. The first involvesthe selection of news: what counts as newsworthy. The second involves pre-

sentation the means by which audience attention is grabbed typically by


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Meyer is insistent that in using the idea of colonisation he is not talking about

wholesale transformation. He is not a constructivist. One aspect of this coloni-

sation is the way in which media time-horizons usurp political time-horizons.

The latter are necessarily longer, to allow for deliberation and consensus build-

ing; the former work towards the instantaneous and immediate. News is notnews if your rivals have already reported it; the development of new media

technology is directed towards the ability to transmit sound and images live,

as they happen, from wherever they happen. Media Communications, writes

Meyer (2002, p. 44), are forced into an uncompromising presentism. This

tension between political and media notions of time is resolved in the process

of colonization in which the latter takes over the former. This account retains

the idea that there are real political processes that operate in constant tension

with those of the media. This establishes a dynamic that Meyer sees as missing

from Norriss more static, instrumental model of communication (Meyer, 2002,p. 51).

For Meyer, the outcome of the struggle between media and political logic is

that politics is stage-managed. Legitimacy is established via media-generated

perceptions. Political communications recognises media logic and becomes

increasingly politainment (Meyer, 2002, p. 53, his emphasis). In other words,

media set the rules by which politics is conducted, and increasingly actual politi-

cal processes get lost to view. They do not disappear; they justseem to. Meyer

writes (2002, p. 57): Once the sphere of politics falls under the influence of themedia system, it changes considerably: it becomes dependent on the latters

rules, but without completely losing its separate identity.

For many popular representations of this process, the cause is the spin doctor

(for example, Jones, 1995). But Meyers account reverses this causal claim. Spin

doctors are not responsible for the transformation; rather, they are called into

being by the need to manage the process of colonization: The more crudely

the mass media present politics, guided by the superficial criteria they are

accustomed to apply, the more politics has to call on its own cast of spin-doctors

so that it does not lose control over the way it is portrayed (Meyer, 2002,p. 61). As the terms of politics are increasingly redefined or reinterpreted in

the logic of media, politics increasingly takes on the appearance of a vivid,

scintillating show (Meyer, 2002, p. 65). Parties and other intermediary processes

are marginalised by this media colonization; their time-horizons are incom-

patible with the relentless presentism of the media logic (Meyer, 2002, p. 107).

This is important for the way in which media effects must be understood and

captured. For Meyer (2002, p. 148), Norriss approach, whatever its statistical

detail, fails to appreciate this because of its limited account of political

knowledge (as the means of linking preferences and options), which pays toolittle attention to wider forms of knowledge, that of understanding the politi-


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28 JOHN STREET

corollary of larger political changes. His argument is that the medias most sig-

nificant impact is upon the political process. In such a situation, crude measures

of political knowledge or of the engagement of citizens is of little relevance,

since their capacity to exert influence has been rendered null. By marginalis-

ing parties and the intermediary system, argues Meyer (2002, p. 108), themedia diminish the opportunities that civil society might have to exert influ-

ence on political inputs.

Meyers case is persuasively made in a short book, but it does beg questions.

Some of the claims are supported by reference to research data that is not

discussed in any detail. Terms such as genuine politics or communicative

appropriateness (Meyer, 2002, pp. 134 and 139) are used rhetorically without

being justified. And in discussing the possibilities of de-colonization, he talks

of the need for a culture of democratic responsibility in editorial offices(Meyer, 2002, p. 133), without giving an indication of what this entails and

how it might be realised. Perhaps, though, the Meyer thesis is most vulnerable

in its appeal to the organising ideas of a media and a political logic. It implies

an essence to these two realms that is hard to demonstrate, and one that

is challenged by constructivist accounts that locate politics in a variety of

cultural forums and performances. The two logics might, after all, be the

products of power rather than some innate characteristics of the realms them-

selves. This thought informs the final of the three theoretical strands that

animate attempts to make sense of the relationship between politics and mass

media.

Politics Revived? The Structuralist Return

Nicholas Garnham stands as exemplification of this third, structuralist strand.

It is perhaps ironic that, although he (unlike Norris and Meyer) is not based in

a political science department, his thesis is the one that most explicitly engages

with and embraces political theory. Where the pluralist deals in information

and knowledge, Garnham deals in power. In almost direct reversal of Norriss

pluralist communicative model, Garnham (2000, p. 4) writes: Who can saywhat, in what form, to whom for what purposes, and with what effect will in

part be determined by and in part determine the structure of economic, politi-

cal, and cultural power in society. Equally, Garnham is not a constructivist, at

least in the sense that he attributes causal effect to material resources and eco-

nomic relations.

For Garnham (2000, pp. 1012), studying the media is part of a larger project

of social theory, which has to do with the perennial issues of structure and

agency, the constitution of communities, and the nature of the subject. Fromsuch a perspective, issues such as the dumbing down of political communica-

tion or media malaise more generally are given exaggerated or misplaced


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time. Dumbing down appeals to some (idealised) prior situation of intelli-

gent communication, when in fact the process being described is better under-

stood as the commodification of communications (Garnham, 2000, pp. 301).

Media systems, Garnham writes (2000, pp. 5960), are at their core, just like

supermarkets. They are systems for packaging symbolic products and distrib-uting them as rapidly and cheaply as possible. Garnhams (2000, p. 38) claim

is that all theories of the media rest upon historical theories as to the process

of the historical development of media institutions and practices and their

relationship to the development of modernity and its characteristic social

structures and practices. For Garnham, this history is a product of the logic of

the commodification of media, rather than of media per se, as Meyer tends

to do.

Garnhams focus is upon the structural power that allocates resources and con-strains behaviour. These forms of power account for the regulations that

operate in the media realm and determine the fate of the public sphere. The

implication of this approach is that the core concern of those interested in the

relationship between the media and politics is not with the capacities and

behaviour of individuals or the practices of parties and journalists, but rather

with the systems of political regulation that organise media systems.

One way of illustrating this is to contrast Norriss focus on political knowledge

with Garnhams on education. Education is, he suggests (2000, p. 4), the major

form of communication, one that serves to accredit and train people to fitwithin a larger process of social stratification. Hence Garnham argues against

a focus on the products of media systems newspapers, programmes and

instead on the producers of these products. The corporate management of the

processes of journalism becomes the key to understanding the representation

of the political world. This contrasts again with Norriss theoretical model, in

which messages are conveyed rather than created.

In his approach, Garnham (2000, p. 109) claims to be offering an alternative to

the methodological individualism and simplified behaviourist linear cause-

effect model that tends to characterise the literature on media effects within

the pluralist tradition. But he also has little time for ethnographic research into

the active audiences that is characteristic of the constructivist approach.

Instead, he argues for the need to begin research with family expenditure

surveys and the studies of demographics and consumption patterns used by

advertising agencies and marketing departments (Garnham, 2000, p. 116).

Such information is to be set within an account of the institutional construc-

tion of audiences and the fields of action that opened up or closed down

(2000, p. 118). Garnham argues that media messages can shape our under-

standing of the world, but how we then interpret or act on that understand-ing is related to social position and experience (2000, p. 125). In short,


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30 JOHN STREET

and when structures operate in the way he claims. There is, however, research

emerging that seems to go some way to meeting this requirement. One intrigu-

ing example is that by Timothy Besley and Andrea Prat (2001) who have pro-

duced economic models of the ways in which media may be captured by

government, enabling politicians and others to suppress information about cor-porate and political corruption. Besley and Prat show how the ability to capture

media is dependent on, inter alia, systems of media ownership. This work pro-

ceeds by establishing models of political and media behaviour and then testing

them with international comparative data of media regimes, indexes of cor-

ruption, and political longevity. Besley and Prat point towards systematic, if not

unequivocal, evidence for the sort of claims that structuralists of the Garnham-

type make. They certainly provide exemplification of the ways in which abstract

media theory can be linked to empirical analysis to provide a systematic account

of the media-politics relationship.

Conclusion

It might be tempting to conclude that, rather than demonstrating the existence

of three competing theoretical paradigms in the analysis of the relationship of

politics and mass media, this article has, in reality, merely pointed to the fact

that there are three different topics (media effects, political communication,

and media political economy), all of which are approached in different ways.Different topics generate different theories, and not vice-versa. Alternatively,

the three approaches might be seen to divide along methodological lines, from

the empiricism of the pluralists to the abstract theory of the structuralists. But

to draw such conclusions would be to overlook the common strands and issues

that organise these theories. Each approach makes particular claims about the

character of communication, about the nature of the political realm, and

about the relationship of structure and agency. Further, the divide between the

emphasis on the empirical and the theoretical is not a necessary fact, but rather

a contingent feature of the work under review.It is, therefore, more appropriate to acknowledge that the different (some-

times explicit, sometimes implicit) theoretical traditions compete to define and

capture a field of study. And it is the fact of this competition that needs to be

recognised and explored for that field to develop in ways that can enable us

to re-think more fully our account of political processes. Instead of the sepa-

rate approaches co-existing peacefully (or, at least, indifferently to each other),

there needs to be more attempt to develop and refine both the theoretical

ideas and research methods appropriate to the study of the relationship of

politics and mass media. These might be organised along the fault-linesof theories of communication, of conceptions of politics and of accounts of


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About the Author

John Street, School of Political, Social and International Studies, University of East Anglia,Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK; email:[email protected]

NotesMy thanks to Political Studies Reviews anonymous referees, who tried to save me from some of mycruder claims and more embarrassing omissions.

1 There is at least one leading student of the relationship between politics and mass media, whosteadfastly believes that the discipline of cultural studies, in particular, has yet to provide a singleuseful insight into the political significance of mass media.

2 In the interest of transparency, it should be noted that I have contributed to two of the collec-tions mentioned here (Axford and Huggins, 2001, and Corner and Pels, 2003).

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