"Revise"Media and Politics (Political communications)

Introduction

According to Robert E. Dento and Gray C. Woodward (1998), two of the most famous contributor to the political communication studies in America, said that political communication mainly refers the way in which senders to transfer the political messages to the receivers. The methods of sending the message, which will effect a region’s political environment, normally include political speeches, news media coverage, and ordinary citizen’s talk. The concentrations usually focus on the discussions of who has the authority to sanction, to allocation of public resources, who has the authority to make decision, as well as social meaning like what makes someone an American. As a result, it is obviously to see that the nature of political communication is not only the source of a message, but it is the transformation of political content and purpose to citizens. Therefore, the purpose of political communication strategy can be defined as to influence public knowledge, beliefs, and action on political matter. (McNair B, 2003)

However, due to the progress of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the 20th century, the traditional mass media, which includes TV shows, newspapers and magazines, and radio, is losing its place to the latest type of media, such as the Internet and real-time communication tools in the area of political communication. For example, in February, 2011, the Americans had closed the video station, the ‘ Voice of America’, which has been conducted for more than half century. It used to be regarded as a powerful mass media in political communication tool. But, does it mean that the American government has weakened its use of mass media in political communication? The answer is no. When the announcement of shutting down the ‘Voice of America’, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, has given a freestyle presentation at George Washington University, and it was published on the Internet, synchronously. the event itself indicates that the American government has realized that the powerful capability of newly mass media. (Platform Magazine, 2015) and the government is getting ready to use this tool to reinforce it political status.

Consequently, this essay will discuss how the new mass media affects American political communication strategy in election, as well as the practice of strategies. At the same time, the three discussion points will be analyzed in the following part.

The characteristics of newly mass media in Election

The concept relates to the emergence of ‘newly mass media’ results form the development of ICTs. The ICTs enables some real-time communication tool, such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, to become a critical platform for citizens to express their political issues. Consequently, as a government, which is famous by its democratic social media, it was announced by Hillary that the US would spend 2.5 billion in the enhancement of “internet democracy”. Thus, the year of 2011 is regarded as a turning point of social communication tool to occupy a position in American political communication supporter. It means that the US government is now suing newly enhanced mass media to diffuse the American way of life into the rest of the world. The US government intends to exert other “netizens” (network citizen) by persuading them to accept the western cultural through the use of internet. Thus, the American Culture is able to permeate to other cultures in an influential and beneficial way for the American society. Specifically, under the modern international relationship network, social media, like Facebook and Twitter are now playing significant roles in American military diplomacy, annotation of democracy, and electoral activities; or in other words, the social media is now being an extension for the government activities to some extent. (Meng Wei, 2012)

The characteristics of online social media in political communication strategy can be explained from four perspectives, namely the anonymity of transformational method, powerful ability of creating the interaction, the unlimited nature of time and space, as well as the production of political celebrities. To be specific, the unlimited nature of time and space based on the trait of mass media itself, and will not be explained in too much detail in this report. Additionally, other characteristics will be explained by some typical examples.

Firstly, the characteristic of anonymity illustrates that the Internet is able to provide a communication platform for consensus and difference political groups. It means that one political group will explore the heated discussed issues and exaggerate some opposite voice to other groups and then use these opposed issues to beat its competitors. Normally these opposed voices are spread through the Internet without mentioning the senders’ name. In another word, in order to become too aggressive, some politicians will control or induce their supporters to publish their political messages instead of posting by themselves (Meng Wei, 2012). One of the biggest advantages of anonymity is that the sender will not take the responsibility for the occurrence of possible conflicts. Therefore, they will not be impacted by these negative reports and at the same time, the opposed voices from citizens will easily lead to the resonance among normal citizens.

Secondly, according to (Dahlgren, J. 2005) the interaction actually consists of two aspects. The first aspect refers to the interaction between citizens and senders, while the second aspect relates to the citizens themselves. The interaction between the citizens and media appears when the citizen chooses the right media and just yet that media has explained their problems. Meanwhile, they are able to use the knowledge. In addition, the interaction among citizens happens when they are sharing the same sense. As a consequence, the concept introduced above indicate that if a candidate would like to use the mass media effectively, they are required to find the right platform to spread their political issues, while the topic should be attractive to the consensus. Moreover, the appropriate objects should be chosen by the senders as well.

Finally, the new mass media is also beneficial for the production of political celebrities. To take President Roosevelt as an example, he chose radio as a communicating media to give his presentation, in order to cultivate his reliable, and

pro-people’s personality. Than, with the appearance of TV shows, the new election model of debating had become quite popular. In 1996, due to the development of the Internet, almost every candidates had built a personal website to communicate and refresh their personal status on the Internet. Specifically, in the year of 2012, Obama announced his participation of election by publishing a video on his personal website and sending emails to his supporters instead of giving a presentation in pubic. It indicates that due to the newly social media’s nature of grass root, candidates are able to cultivate any personal image to their supporters.

This report will take Trump as a typical example. Trump’s communication style with the media is quite individualistic. What he posted on his social media platform always leads to a huge controversy. There is no doubt that in several occasions, his was failed to please the public. However, within the growing number of criticism and flack, his numbers in numerous polls continue to rise and have made him one of the top three GOP candidates at the moment. Trump is now “growing under the voice of opposing and critics”. Ethan Stokes, Ph. D. candidate studying public relations and political communication at The University of Alabama emphasized that “In regard to Trump, you have political scientists and theorists who have studies this for years, and it really is phenomenal what he is doing.” Through advertising and attack videos, generated by dependent political action committees or by the campaigns themselves could be very influential. Thus, the success of Trump in his early stage relies on his use of social media, in creating public controversies, attracting public attention and the cultivation of his individual characteristics.

Discussion Points

According to the political communication strategy in elective activities, we are able to identify three discussion points:

1. The relationship between the supporting rate and candidates’ times mentioned by mass media.

2. The main objects for political communication strategies in election

3. The relationships between the Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication.

1. Are there any relationship between the supporting rate and candidates’ times mentioned by mass media?

Recently, a journal from Niman Journalism Lab has implemented a research about the relationships between the election and mass media. The attention from mass media and the polls provide an important reference to criteria the operational level of American political system. The chart below compares the relationship between American president candidates’ frequency mentioned by social media and their National primary polls, in 2016. (The Future Linker, 2016)

Figure 1. Polls VS Mentions in 2016 Primary.

This chart displays the appearing numbers of every candidates’ name among all candidates, which can be shorted as ‘exposed rate’ in the following paragraphs. It is surprised to explore that the exposed rate and the mentions are most equal, except Jeb Bush and Ben Carson’s data shows a little difference. However, the data only calculates the frequencies mentioned by social media, but no more contents in the reports. Therefore, it seems that the content of the report dose not the impact too much on the voting results. Or, in the other words, what was mentioned in the report has slightly affected the voting result but does not outweigh the effect of exposed rate. The typical example is still the comparatively high voting rate of Donald Trump, who is actually accepting more negative reports comparing with other candidates. Thus, this shows that at least in the earlier stage of election, new media will exert some impacts on voting rate.

2. What are the main objects for political communication strategies in election?

Although there is some relevant between mentions and polls, it does not mean that media will determine the voting processes. Thus, the question is what is the real factor to supporting rate? The diagram shows a possible model. (The Future Linker, 2016)

Figure 2. The process of influences in voting.

This diagram illustrates that the heated discussed topics from other objects will influence the media attention and poll results at the same time. These objects include the social media, other celebrities, and other famous organizations. To be specific, the social media will cause a ‘epidemic transformation’ of reports via Internet. Therefore, there is no doubt due to high level of attention, mass media will certainly prefer to follow the topics which most people pay attention to.

In addition, candidate himself still plays an important role in polls. Let’s take a brief look of the chart below.

Figure 3. The change of Trump’s voting rate.

This line chart demonstrate the relationships between the weekly mentions of website media and Trump’s polls in Nation primary polls. As soon as he participated the election, the polls and mentions from media shows a tendency of increase. However, the increase of mentions not always brings the rising of polls. It is obvious to see that in September and December, Trump’s polls have decreased. while the mentions have gone up. Although his two debates and the argument about the prohibition of Muslims’ entering a country caused increasing media mentions of him, his polls had not gone up as expected. Therefore, the candidate’s personal performance will affect the election result as well.

Actually, there occurs a feedback cycle between media mentions, other factors and poll result as shown in figure 2. This result indicates that social media will be the main aspect to be considered at the early stage of election for political communication strategies. However, with the later stage it is the coalitions among media, public, and candidate to influence the election.

3. The relationships between the Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication.

According to Peter Dahlgren (2005), there are three dimensions of democracy’s communication spaces, namely the structural, the representational, and the interactional dimensions of transferring democracy in political communications through newly mass media.

The structural factor related to the internet has effected the degree to which net ID is accessible for civic use. In addition, people are required to do something about the manner, such as cyber-geography, social, economic, cultural, technical, and even web-architectural features. This dimension determines the original type of internet platform, which the political communication will conduct.

Moreover, the representational dimension refers to the output of the media, which means that the promising targets the messages intend to arrive. Based on this dimension, the sender should establish questions and criteria about media output for political communication, including fairness, accuracy, completeness, pluralism of views, agenda setting, ideological tendencies, modes of address, and so forth.

Finally, the dimension of interaction is all about how to make spheres to have resonances about the argument or have the texts is certainly answering the questions. Hence, your target group will automatically give you the feedback in a preferable website platform, no matter if it is Twitter or personal website.

These three dimensions determine the basic considerations for candidates who would like to use newly Internet based political communication strategies.

Conclusion

Based on the discussion above, we cannot deny that the relationships of the new mass media and political communication strategy are getting closer, due to the media’s characteristics of flexibility, mobility, capability of sharing by large amount of people leading to the transformation of democracy. America is regarded as a pioneer to realize the importance of information technology. The future searcher may concentrate on how to better transfer the real meaning “democracy” by latest mass media. Because it is reported that due to the use of social media, American government is involved in using the effect of it highly developed ICTs to intervene other country’s political system.

References

Dahlgren, J. (2005) The Internet, Public Sphere, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation. Political communication. Vol. 22. 147-162

Denton R. E. & Woodward G. C. (1998) Political Communication in American, New York: Praeger

McNair B. (2003) An Introduction to Political Communication, London: Routledge

Meng Wei (2012) The tendency of American mass media and political system. Dang Dai Shi Jie. Retrieved from: http://www.qstheory.cn/wz/hlw/201203/t20120329_148673.htm

Platform Magazine, (2015) Political Communication from Past to Trump. Retreived form: http://platformmagazine.org/2015/09/21/political-communication-from-past-to-trump/

The Future Linker, (2016) How the mass media effect election. Retrieved from: http://news.qq.com/original/quanmeipai/meiguodaxuan.html

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