Political Communication

Abstract

The concept of political communication refers to both a set of professional practices and a theoretical and scholarly discipline. As a professional practice, the term “political communication” suggests a series of communication processes that have been given labels as varied as propaganda, electoral marketing, political marketing, political campaigning, and political public relations. Political communication has developed into an academic field of inquiry, with foundations in theories and methods from communication, political science, sociology, psychology, marketing, history, rhetoric, and other fields. Its multidisciplinary nature explains the difficulty in finding a straightforward definition. But it is agreed that political communication focuses on interaction between political actors, the media, and citizens, which is marked by its persuasive and strategic character. The question posed by Lasswell (1927) on the effects of propaganda in the United States—“who says what to whom via which channels with what effects?”—is shared by a great deal of research in the political communication field. This simple question imposes and highlights the basic lines of analysis for the communication process in general and political communication in particular. Talking about who means analyzing the communicator, who controls the information. Content analysis of the messages makes it possible to find answers to what, and media analysis, which may involve a direct medium, using political advertising (e.g., posters or leaflets), or an indirect medium (e.g., editorials or opinion pieces in newspapers or on TV), reveals the channels used in the communication process. Effects analysis, a field that has been widely explored, particularly in North American literature regarding political campaigns, makes it possible to study the impacts of the communication process on audiences (whom) and normally focuses on voting behavior (using polls, for instance). The Lasswell communication model assumes that the communicator always intends to influence the receiver, that all messages have effects, and that the process is unilateral in the downward direction. For a long time in history, political communication was in fact seen simply as a linear process of information transmission from political actors, as parties or candidates to citizens, which could be direct but also mediated by the media. As is shown in Figure 1, we see the direction of communication being caught by the media and then channeled out again, what is now known as the mediatization process. However, from this traditional point of view little or no communication takes place in the upward direction, that is from social groups to the political sphere. Nonetheless, thanks to the democratization of most political systems, the nature of political communication has changed. Political communication shifted to the public