The changing character of political communication in UK

1. THE CHANGING
CHARACTER OF
POLITICAL
COMMUNICATIONS

2. A brief history

3. ELECTIONS
Pippa Norris identifies three
key phases in this history:

4. The premodern period

5. The modern period
The media became the object of party
attention.

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

8. MASS MEDIA

9. Politicians
Parties produce
guidebooks for
candidates:
what to wear
how to pose for
photographs.
What questions to
ask before giving an
interview
What answers to
give during it.

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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.

13. New
Labour

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

15. 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.warch

17. Explaining changes in political
communication

18. Public sphere
It is the audience and it is constituted in
the act of communication: mode of the
address and the technological form.
The commodification of
the public sphere
Regulating the new public
sphere
• According to Jürgen Habermas
the public sphere in the 18th
century was created by
proliferation of small magazines
and café society.
• Jürgen Habermas alludes that
internet makes possible and
recreation of the near idea of
the public sphere.
• Electronic mass media create
a new economic order and a
new set of priorities.
• “New public sphere” It is
supposed to be the “ World
Wide Web” that is unregulated
and free.

19. Civic and cynical journalism

20. The future of political
journalism
The issue of the regulation of journalism .
The practice and profession of journalism .
The numbers of bloggers growing daily.

21. David Miranda
•
•
•
He was moving material between
Glenn Greenwald (left) and a filmmaker 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.

22. • 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".

24. 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.

26. Celebrities to endorse political
parties campaigns.
LIVE8
Bod Geldof
Arnold Schwarzenegger
conservative
Labour party
conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHkonojSmR

27. Style and performance as
political communication

28. Labour Party vs. Conservative