Lingua inglese - How political communication happen

Politics and governance in the UK

Political communication and British democracy: the forms and significance of communication

Political communication is particularly important in a country like Britain, which is based on a democratic political system that governs a territory with a large population. The communication between governors and governed isn’t something that will happen automatically: it has to be organized. Moreover, it is not only about the world of party communication in the mass media, the debates on television between party leaders, or news reporting in national papers as we usually think. In fact, this is a part of political communication. There are actually four forms of communication that have to happen in a democratic government:

• Communication from the people to the government: Includes many theories of democracy which assume that government listens to the people’s voice. Most of them admit that the people “speak” decisively at election time. Winning parties, for example, claim that the votes recognize and support their programme, as it is expressed in their “manifesto.” In reality, voters often are unaware of many points included in a party manifesto. And even when they are, a single vote can hardly be considered as an agreement to a whole complex programme. Elections are an important but imperfect form of political communication. In Britain, there are other opportunities for government to “listen” to the people, such as polling and focus groups. The first is a method that allows monitoring the views of the population on every political issue, also on complex policy problems. But polling can’t gather deeply complex views and judgements. Focus groups are a possible solution to this problem. They literally “focus” on few issues or personalities. They originally developed in commercial marketing, and now they contribute to enrich the quality of people’s reflection. A focus group will typically involve six to ten participants as a kind of “jury.” A “moderator” will guide the discussion on an important issue demanding government decision. Focus groups are different from the conventional survey, where an interviewer poses questions: in fact, they communicate much more subtle information about popular views than do conventional surveys, but they also present many problems, for example, they are an expensive way of gathering information and maybe they can’t express what people at large think. There are other more direct and less controlled forms of communication: written direct communication and direct action. The first involves individual letters and organized petitions. Politicians give particular importance to these individual communications. Nowadays, the spread of the Web has replaced “snail” mail with email. But communication can also take the form of a physical presence: marches, blockades, gathering in large public assemblies. In these occasions, citizens make their views known. Sometimes public demonstrations that start as peaceful direct action can turn into violent, demanding police action.
• Communication from the government to the people: British government addresses three very important forms of communication to the people: commands, information, advice, and warnings.
  • Commands: Government has a variety of powers, embodied in law, over all our lives. An example of these communicated commands is road signs.
  • Information: The British government has expanded the range of services and benefits. It puts many resources to improve the information about them. For example, if you go to a post-office, you will find a lot of leaflets and brochures about housing benefit entitlements.
  • Advice and warnings: Government informs its citizens about what is unsafe to consume and about what is the best style of life. This form of warning and advice has become more common.
• Communication from the political parties to the electorate: All political parties have to communicate to the citizens their purpose and convince them to give their support at elections. But parties have to put huge resources to reach this aim. There is a difference between small, poorly supported parties and well-supported rich parties: small parties have to use traditional means like public meetings, demonstrations, or canvassing voters on their doorsteps; the others use especially techniques borrowed from commercial market research and selling. Parties use focus groups to explore what policies will be preferred by different social groups. In fact, groups are often “targeted”, with the message adapted to the target. Very often, parties pay particular attention to “swing voters”, who can be detached from other parties and make the difference in elections. They can also target particular groups of voters with “mail shots” (letters and leaflets) and contact a large number of people by ringing from a single call center. The Internet has given parties another instrument: for example, every party has its own website, and some Members of Parliament have also their own web pages.
• Communication between the people: Political communication can be not only “vertical”, that is, between political leaders and the people, but also “horizontal”, when people communicate with each other about politicians and about government. Survey research long ago discovered that we get a large part of our information and opinions from each other, especially by talking to friends and family. This kind of people-to-people communication can be very important in reinforcing or subverting political messages. In recent years, the spread of Internet news sites and the possibilities offered by mobile phones have simplified communication between people.

Political communication and the mass media

Politicians cannot manage all communications. One of their biggest obstacles is that they don’t control the most important institutions of mass communication: newspapers, television, and radio. In other national political systems, even democratic, on continental Europe, it is common for individual television and radio stations to be under the control of particular political parties. These institutions...