What role does the media play in the political process?

Résumé du document

Since its beginning, about five decades ago, the mass media have been intertwined with political processes of every type, ranging from coverage of major political events and institutions to effects on campaigns and elections. In our liberal democracies, the media are central for the public: people have come to treat television, radio, newspapers, magazines and Internet as the basis on which to think and act in the world. We will devote special attention to television. Indeed, from its early position as a new medium for political coverage in the 1950s, it quickly supplanted radio and eventually newspapers to become by the early 1960s the major source of public information about politics. First, we will explore the power of the media over the political process. The media create the rules and set the agendas for coverage of politics.

Extraits

[...] If you want to get things done in life you go into communications. Absolutely certain.”[2] REFERENCES Dahlgreen, P 2001, transformation of Democracy?', New Media and Politics, SAGE Publications, London. Gross, G 2005, Survey: Internet can help people gain political power. Available from: http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/websitemgmt/story/0,10801,106 909,00.html [accessed 09/12/2005] Kaid, L 1995, Political Processes & Television, MBC's Encyclopedia of Television. Available from: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/P/htmlP/politicalpro/politicalpro.htm [accessed 09/12/05] McConnachie, A 2001, How the national mass media attempt to control the political process, Sovereignty. Available from: http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/articles/media1.html [accessed 09/12/2005] Negrine, R 1996, Politics and the Mass Media in Britain, Routledge, London. [...]

[...] We need an intelligent press as a filter to guarantee the democratic process. Television keeps an eye on government institutions and the governing process. Every branch of the government is affected by this watchdog. The mass media often style themselves as voice of the people': it is this role that entitles them to interrogate public figures and to scrutinise the actions of public institutions. Indeed, there are commentators who claim that the media are more effective at ensuring democratic accountability than the arrangements formally designed for this purpose. [...]

[...] We begin with the power of the media over the political process. Agenda- setting theory the idea that media do not tell us what to think but what to think about remains an important theory of media effects. Researchers have demonstrated that the agenda of issues stressed by television and other media may become voters' agenda as well. Television news coverage of campaigns has come to rely extensively on “soundbites”, snippets of candidate messages or commentary excerpts. It has also been characterized by reliance on “spin doctors”, individual experts who interpret events for viewers by framing, directing, and focusing remarks to favour one side or the other. [...]

[...] Bush who likes to listen to Van Morrison) is an act designed to tell the people something about you as a person, about who you ‘really' are. This is the stuff of modern political campaigning: getting the right image, making the right celebrity connections, ensuring that both appear on the nightly news or the next day's front page. Several reasons account for the pre-eminence of television advertising in politics. First, television spots and their content are under the direct control of the candidate and his/her campaign. Second, the spots can reach a much wider audience than other standards forms of electoral communication. [...]

[...] Mass Media in Modern Democracy, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Street, J 2001, Mass Media, Politics and Democracy, Palgrave, London. Gross, G 2005, Survey: Internet can help people gain political power. The Guardian, G2 sec. 25/06/2001, p.6. [...]