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Political Communication & Journalism Notes
These are my notes for Political Communication & Journalism, including images, that I used to study for the exam. I got a 9.1 in the exam and a 8.7 in the course overall :)
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Political Communication & JournalismWeek One
What is Political Communication?
Definition: The interactions between politics, media and the public.
It deals with the relationship between political actors, media/journalists and the
citizens
Research is driven by the question who shapes these relationships; who controls
whom?
Focus on power relations! What can each group do to control another?
How can the political actors reach and manipulate the public? How can the
media influence political actors? How can citizens influence governments?
The one in power is not always the same in different countries or over time!!
In a democracy, you expect the (free) media to act as a fourth branch of the State
Functions of Media in A Democratic Society (McNair, 2003)
1) Information (monitoring, informing the citizens)
2) Education (explaining what events and facts mean)
3) Platform function: media should be the place where people can exchange ideas in
society (this is the public sphere, where all different opinions in society come
together)
4) Watchdog function: control over politics, publicity for what politics does (wrong) like
corruption scandals; however there isn’t a business model for them to paid to do
this, they do this for free and we expect it of them.
5) Channel function: political, ideological opinions needs to find their way to the
people; it’s how politics or NGOs communicate with citizens.
Role Conceptions – How journalists see their job.
1) Disseminator of information
2) Interpreter (explaining information)
3) Adversarial (like their watchdog function; journalists vs politicians and business)
4) Populist mobilizers (actively involved in mobilizing people, bringing forward issues
from society into the media agenda to show it to politicians)
, Not all journalists will do exactly as this list does!
For instance, some don’t like to be interpreters, only disseminators.
There are some difficult issues facing journalism nowadays; increasing dependence
on government, unclear business models in the face of new digitalized and drop in
revenue thus drop in quality of article writing, declining trust in media from citizens.
Negative Campaigning
Attack politics and mudslinging are other names for negative campaigning in the US.
Negative campaigning does not have to be very extreme!
Negative campaigning is related to the tone of the message.
Negative: attack against the opponent’s programs, ideas, policies, record
Positive: promotion of one’s own programs, ideas, policies, record…
Tone: the direction of the message
An entire campaign is considered negative depending on the proportion of negative
messages.
Types of Negative Campaigning
Policy attacks: They attack the opponent’s mistakes in the past (if they were elected
before), and their weak programs
Character attacks: they are personal attacks towards the opponent’s characters and
not their ideas/programs.
False Friends
Beware of false friends of negative campaigning (i.e. things that look like the same
but they are not).
Incivility: explicit use of harsh, shrill, or pejorative adjectives describing
candidates, their policies, or their personal traits.
It is often used or present in negative campaigning but it’s not the
same.
Negative emotional appeals: fear, anxiety inducing campaign messages (e.g.
trump’s fear of Mexican immigrants, etc.)
Populism: the two main components are anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism;
populist messages often attack the elite and intellectual portion of the
population.
Negativity may be in the eye of the beholder.
, There isn’t much attention to the intensity of negativity; it’s not in the definition but
we often consider it
Negativity has a clear normative deficit: voters dislike negativity; people tend to not
like those who attack others.
Maybe it’s related to our own perception of what politics means; is it
compromise and negotiating, thus strong negativity goes against that belief.
Why is there negative campaigning?
In a majoritarian system: a decrease in support for the other (target) will result in a
profit for the sponsor.
It is a zero sum game.
But also: they try to engage people to vote or encourage them not to vote.
In a system with proportional representation: there are often multiple parties so the
target may lose on negative campaigning, but the sponsor is also else likely to
benefit from it
Others, like other parties, could benefit instead.
Backlash effect for the sponsor: people don’t like negative campaigning!
Citizens may go to another party that has a similar political positioning as the
sponsor.
Negative Campaigning and the Media
Negative campaigning not only influences the political support, but it also helps gain
media attention.
Media like negativity, so negative campaigning easily gets their attention so it is an
opportunity for politicians (especially less powerful ones/rank-and-file).
Makes it easier for them to have their ideas communicated, reaching a wider
range of citizens.
Additionally, it is best to not attack the sponsor’s best issues, but on the issues
owned by the target.
Issue-ownership: when a political actor or politician is considered as best
suitable to deal with a certain issue. If the issue is high on the public or media
agenda, the issue owner benefits from exploring it in their campaigning.
E.g.: A Green Party and the environment.
Media will pay attention to someone when they attack issues owned by other people
as it is unexpected and new, rather than a party talking about an issue they own.
Organisations, other than politicians, can also have negative or positive campaigning
for their own issues outside of election times.
This is useful to get allies in politics so they can speak on your issue later if
necessary.
, The issue ownership is also relevant; If an environmental organisation attacks
an economic issue, it’s shocking!
When do you use negative campaigning?
It is a generally good idea when:
You are an opposition candidate;
You are behind in the polls;
When there are few or no third parties to profit from it;
On issues owned by the other party;
When others have started to be negative (as a reaction, you get less backlash
effect);
Late in the campaign (when the target can’t strike back anymore) but not too
late as to not look fake and desperate, which would impact the amount of
media attention it gets;
Early in the campaign, you can attack on an issue of your own, to see whether
you can make the campaign on this issue, making it higher on the agenda.
Valli & Nai (2020) showed that negative campaign is done worldwide; it showed that
challengers (rank-and-file opponents), extreme candidates and right-wing candidates
use negative campaigning more.
They found a relationship between the context (more female MPs = less
negativity) and interactions with the electoral system (majoritarian vs
proportional representation) as well.
Negative campaigning is a powerful tool (at least to get media attention) that needs
to be handled with care.
It generally doesn’t make the sponsor popular and backlash effects are likely
It can engage and mobilize against somebody, but also disengage by reducing trust in
politics.
Pains a negative picture of politics in general.
There is mixed proof about its effectiveness.
The use and effect of negative campaigning is probably very context-
dependent.
Never engage in negative campaigning lightly!
If you go negative, you need to know why, when and how you’re gonna do it;
whether it’s worth it, etc.
Political Communication & Journalism
Week 2
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