Political communication

Political communication is the study of political messaging that is communicated, usually to the public e.g. political campaigns, speeches and political advertising, often concerning the mass media. It is an interdisciplinary field that draws from communication studies and political science. Political communication is concerned with ideas such as information flow, political influence, policy making, news, and public opinion. The field also focuses on the study of political social media, propaganda, political economy of communication and non-profit organisations that communicate to affect political processes. Modern societal changes that have affected the field include the digitization of media, polarization and a movement towards a post-truth media environment.
Political communication has existed since antiquity. During this era it was common for rulers to use symbols and monuments to communicate power and authority to the masses. In ancient Greece, public speeches such as those delivered by Pericles in Athens, played a crucial role in shaping political discourse and rallying public support for war efforts.
During the era of the Roman Empire, political communication took on a more sophisticated form with the use of propaganda, rhetoric, and public spectacles in order to try and influence public opinion. Figures famed for their political communication skills include Cicero.
After the creation of the print media with the dawn of the modern printing press in modern industrial Britain, this led to the ability to create modern mass media in the 20th century, which transformed political communication, giving rise to new forms of propaganda, advertising, and public relations. Political leaders such as Winston Churchill and Franklin. D. Roosevelt utilized radio broadcasts to reach millions of listeners during times of crisis and war. Edward S. Herman notes that the expensive nature of the printing press meant that early on in the technology's existence, labour and co-operative organisations were easily priced out of the press media market due to capital constraints, meaning that corporations obtained an early grip on the market. Herman therefore argues that this meant early on in the mass media of Britain, corporate right-wing voices would self-select editors to run their newspapers, stopping organised working class and left-wing voices from participating in the mass media market.
During the 1990s and the early 2000s political spin had become common place as a form of political communication, with these political communicators known as spin doctors . For example governments like Tony Blair's in The United Kingdom and George W. Bush were known for this. Tony Blair's Press Secretary Alistair Campbell, who was previously a journalist, had the job of spinning bad situations that showed the British government in a bad light, by using press briefings with the British media. Campbell became an influential and controversial addition to the political communication toolkit of Tony Blair's Labour government in the United Kingdom. This practice became standard in subsequent governments in Western countries like the United Kingdom and the United States, with dedicated 'briefing rooms' whereby members of government address and communicate with the countries' press, which have came to be known as spin rooms.
Today, due to the diversification of media during the digital age, political communication now also includes online platforms like social media, free online news channels on services like YouTube, X (previously Twitter), Meta platforms and online News Websites. This has changed how the public and voters receive their political news and information. For example Barack Obama's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 are notable for mobilizing supporters, as they helped innovate the use of social media to engage voters and raise funds. Volodymyr Zelenskyy's successful 2019 Presidential Campaign also featured heavy usage of social media posts.
Today, Political communication continues to evolve quickly, as new technologies such as AI and big data analytics have begun to reshape how campaigns can target and persuade voters. However, this has led to large concerns regarding misinformation, echo chambers, and online polarization. Recent election manipulation events like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal have now become an issue. The company was found to have assisted Donald Trump's election campaign by unethically mining user's Facebook data, exemplifying increased levels of distrust of corporate and political institutions by the public.
Darren G. Lilleker states that key concepts include:
Brian McNair states that key areas of study include:
Robert E. Denton and Gary C. Woodward, define political communication as concerning the modes and intentions of message senders when attempting to influence the political environment. This includes public discussion (e.g. political speeches, news media coverage, and ordinary citizens' talk) that considers who has authority to sanction the allocation of public resources, who has authority to make decisions, as well as social meaning like what makes someone American.
Political communication has long used political persuasion, which is a key subfield for rhetoric studies. Political figures understand the role of the media in gaining the acceptance of voters. For example, political communication delivered through social media tends to be accompanied by social interaction and public opinion.
In political communication, rhetorical strategies such as logos, ethos, and pathos are commonly used to persuade audiences, alongside techniques like metaphors, narratives, and strategic discourse, which shape public perception and influence opinion. These rhetorical techniques contribute to framing, a process that determines how political issues are presented and understood. Through generic framing in the media, political rhetoric can emphasize conflict (contestation), political competition (strategic-game/horse-race), personal stories(human interest), economic consequences, or moral justifications. These choices shape how the public interprets political events and policies, reinforcing certain viewpoints while downplaying others.
The rhetorical presidency highlights how persuasion and public communication have evolved, particularly through presidential speeches. Originally, directed at Congress, the State of the Union address became a direct appeal to the public, with Franklin Roosevelt leveraging radio and television to transform into a national event. This shift, alongside the increasing use of inclusive language, underscores the growing role of rhetoric in shaping public opinion. Barack Obama exemplified this modern approach by using rhetorical devices like parallelism, repetition, and metaphor to create emotional resonance, further cementing the presidency as a platform for persuasion.
David L. Swanson and Dan Nimmo define political communication in relation to strategic communications as "the strategic use of communication to influence public knowledge, beliefs, and action on political matters." They emphasize this strategic nature of political communication by highlighting the role of persuasion in political discourse. Brian McNair provides a similar definition when he writes that political communication is "purposeful communication about politics." For Brian McNair, this means that this not only covers verbal or written statements, but also visual representations such as dress attire, make-up, hairstyle or logo design. In other words, it also includes all those aspects that develop a 'political identity' or 'image'. According to Harald Borgebund, the author of Political Communication and the Realities of Democracy, "Political communication is essential in a democratic polity."
In terms of political communication and its relationship to modern agenda-setting, Vian Bakir defines strategic political communication as comprising 'political communication that is manipulative in intent, utilizes social scientific techniques and heuristic devices to understand human motivation, human behavior and the media environment in order to inform effectively what should be communicated – encompassing its detail and overall direction – and what should be withheld, with the aim of taking into account and influencing public opinion, and creating strategic alliances and an enabling environment for government policies – both at home and abroad'.
To further expand on why political communication can be viewed as manipulative, Michael Gurevitch and Jay G. Blumler state that "the very structure of political communication involves a division between movers and shakers at the top and bystanders below." Public access television has been one way in which political communication has been commbatted. Dr. Laura Stein states that "public access [television] has opened up a space for grassroots political communication on television"
In regards to the Political Strategic Communication in The USA one example is the Bush Administration's torture-for-intelligence policy, initiated after 9/11, which was kept secret for several years. While this secret policy was gradually revealed from 2004 onwards, revealed by the Abu Ghraib torture photos, the Bush administration engaged in strategic political communication to attempt to publicly re-frame and protect its policies. Strategic political communication during the event included both silencing and persuasive discursive activity.
Discursive activity aimed at silencing consisted of plea bargains, censoring Guantánamo detainees’ descriptions of their own torture in pre–trial hearings, deals with journalists to censor or withhold information that affected national security, weeding out personal sousveillance of torture online, and suppression of visual sousveillance of torture while court–martials and criminal investigations proceeded. Destruction of videotapes of CIA interrogations and withholding key information from intelligence oversight committees also occurred. Those that were complicit aimed at suppressing this information to minimize public interest and discussion.
Persuasive discursive activity included the propagation and repetition of key messages consistently over time, with the aim of misdirecting public attention from the silence–generating activities. Key Bush Administration messages included: that detainees were evil and dangerous terrorists, that the practice of extraordinary rendition was normal and pragmatic, that interrogation techniques, although were legal, that they were necessary and successful in preventing future acts of terror, and that Guantánamo was a model prison. Key British administration messages initially indicated igonorance of the American intelligence agencies’ new strategies, after which intelligence agencies’ guidelines were tightened, and then indicated that no direct involvement of British intelligence agencies were involved in extraordinary rendition. Key messages common to both the British and American Administrations were that the Abu Ghraib sousveillance and similar visual evidence involving British soldiers were examples of isolated abuse rather than a torture policy. This being indicated from changes to Army training and interrogation guidance under both the Bush and Blair Administrations. These messages were propagated through a range of discursive activities (including press conferences and media interviews, authorized leaks, real–time reporting, official investigations and public inquiries) and were periodically bolstered by selective public release of once–secret documents. The consistency of key messages over time, together with the offering up of specific evidence, gives the appearance of official disclosure and truth–telling, positioning the public as a force to which political administrations willingly hold themselves accountable.
According to Jake Sherman and Albert Trithart, “United Nations peace operations often struggle to communicate their messages to the local population and the broader global community.” It argued, therefore, that “the outdated public information approach of the United Nations must be transformed into more dynamic communications efforts.”, "This required missions to better understand key audiences, make better use of national staff, embrace technology, train leaders in effective communication, proactively engage with local populations, and tailor both the message and means of communication to particular audiences."
The Middle East
Kai Hafez states that when discussing the Middle East concerning projects like e-projects “supported by a U.S. administration, are at best visionary and without any real practical use”. Concerning censorship, Hussein Amin states that “-because many people view censorship as a sign of social responsibility, civil society has a deep distrust of itself. While admitting that political communication in the mass media has diversified and developed some more liberal patterns in recent years”. Further when it comes to national identities Nisbet et al., state that “Mass media have long been linked to the historical development and emergence of national identities and the modern nation-state by creating bounded spaces of political communication and discourse".
In cases like the on-going conflict like in Syria, the majority of media formats are censored towards the Middle East in order to avoid further catastrophization of an event, possibly by the West. For example, in Syria, the Rebel Free Syrian Army was created as an opposition to Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship.
During a political economy analysis of U.S. mass communications, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky developed a model during the 1980s call the propaganda model. It theorized that the interests of globalized elites in the US were warping the journalistic integrity of the mass media and its attempts to communicate news, to critique modern Western communications. They suggest that the political consent of the electorate would also be damaged by this type of politicized news in the mass media:
In terms of political communication, the propaganda model is generally used in the context of the globalized American corporate media and how it organically acts in the interests of corporate elites, specifically in an anti-democratic way. Therefore, Herman and Chomsky argue that the interests of the corporate elites are not overly concerned with the democratic rights of citizens and that this creates a new form of propaganda, which has damaging effects on democracies like the United States Government.
Social media has become an increasingly important tool for political communication. For certain demographics it is one of the main platforms from which individuals acquire their news, and allows them to interact with it via commenting and sharing. Social media has dramatically changed the way in which modern political campaigns are run. With more digital native citizens coming into the voting population, social media has become an important medium where politicians can establish themselves and engage with voters. In an increasingly digitized world, new research has shown that social media is becoming increasingly important in electoral politics.
Social media experience relies heavily on the user themselves due to the platforms' algorithms which tailor consumer experience for each user. This results in each person seeing more like-minded news due to the increase in digital social behavior. Additionally, social media has changed politics because it has given politicians a direct medium to give their constituents information and the people to speak directly to the politicians. This informal nature can lead to informational mistakes because it is not being subjected to the same "fact-checking processes as institutional journalism."
Social media creates greater opportunity for political persuasion due to the high number of citizens that regularly engage and build followings on social media. The more that a person engages on social media, the more influential they believe themselves to be, resulting in more people considering themselves to be politically persuasive.
In Australia 86% of Australians access the Internet, and with a 17,048,864 voting age population, around 14,662,023 voting population has access to Internet, and 65% of them use social media, with 9,530,314 Australian voters using social media. The 2013 Yellow™ Social Media Report also found that among internet users, 65% of Australians use social media, up from 62% in 2014.
With almost half of the Australian voting population active on social media, political parties are adapting quickly to influence and connect with their voters. Studies have found that journalists in Australia widely use social media in a professional context and that it has become a viable method of communication between the mainstream media and wider audiences.