Rawnsley (2005) Political Communication and Democracy
Rawnsley (2005) Political Communication and Democracy
Rawnsley (2005) Political Communication and Democracy
and Democracy
Gary D. Rawnsley
Political Communication and Democracy
Other books by Gary Rawnsley
Gary D. Rawnsley
Professor of International Studies,
University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China (UNNC)
© Gary D. Rawnsley 2005
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Rawnsley, Gary D.
Political communication and democracy / Gary D. Rawnsley.
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ISBN 1–4039–4254–4 (cloth)
1. Communication in politics. 2. Democracy. I. Title.
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Dedicated to the memory of my Dad and best friend
Jack Rawnsley
14 February 1936–28 June 2004
If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or will do so if law or
opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to
them, and rejoice that there is someone to do for us what we otherwise ought,
if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions,
to do with much greater labour for ourselves.
Free and untainted information is a basic human right. Not everyone has it;
almost everyone wants it. It cannot by itself create a just world, but a just
world can never exist without it.
List of Figures ix
List of Photographs x
Acknowledgements xi
Notes 200
Bibliography 216
Index 234
vii
List of Tables
viii
List of Figures
ix
List of Photographs
x
Acknowledgements
Gary Rawnsley
Nottingham, UK
2005
1
Introduction: Crisis? What Crisis?
The titles of some recently published books say it all: Why People Don’t
Trust Government (1997); Disaffected Democracies (1999); What is it About
Government that Americans Dislike? (2001). The ancients would shudder
at the very thought: democracy in crisis? Surely not. However, there is a
growing consensus that citizens of all democratic political systems –
though the criticism tends to be levelled at the usual suspects, the
United States and Europe – are becoming progressively more cynical,
disillusioned and apathetic.2 Hence, we should not be surprised that
people are consciously deciding not to participate in politics.3 Few
voters are prepared to turn out for elections (Gray & Caul, 2000) and
cast their vote, and even fewer are joining political parties and interest
1
2 Political Communication and Democracy
groups (Mair & I. van Biezen, 2001; Putnam, 2000). A report published
by the British Labour party in September 2001 announced that it had
lost 50,000 members during the previous year. The Conservative party
had lost 75,000 since the 1997 General Election. Between the end of
2002 and 2003, membership of the Labour party fell by more than
33,000 to 214,952. The turnout in the 1997 British General Election was
71.4 percent, the lowest since the Second World War, provoking John
Curtice and Michael Steed (Butler & Kavanagh, 1997:299) to conclude:
‘It seems clear that the 1997 general election excited less interest than
any other in living memory’ … That is, until the 2001 General Election
when turnout across the United Kingdom fell to an extraordinary
59.3 percent. (‘The 71 percent participation in 1997 was itself a record
low for almost 80 years.’ Butler & Kavanagh, 2001:2574). Only
39 percent of eligible voters under 25 cast their ballot, giving rise to the
idea that the ‘Barcardi Breezers’ (Britain’s 18–24 year olds) should be
persuaded to take more interest in politics (Julia Margo, ‘Bacardi
Breezers want a serious party … a political one’, Sunday Times News
Review, 25 August 2003:3). Only in Britain would the press celebrate the
40 percent turnout in the 2004 local elections!5 The same patterns seem
to be recurring elsewhere: In the 1996 American Presidential election,
less than 75 percent of all eligible voters were registered to vote,
49 percent of whom actually voted (www.turnout.org). In 2000, the
turnout had risen to just 51 percent of eligible voters (www.igc.apc.org/
cvd/turnout/preturn.html). The problem is particularly acute among the
young; 51 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 24 are regis-
tered to vote, but only 29 percent actually voted in the 2000 presiden-
tial election. Critics of apathy wonder whatever happened to the
politically engaged America that Alexis de Tocqueville discovered in the
19th Century:
No sooner do you set foot on American soil [he wrote] than you
find yourself in a sort of tumult; a confused clamor rises on every
side, and a thousand voices are heard at once, each expressing
some social requirements. All around you everything is on the
move: here the people of a district are assembled to discuss the
possibility of building a church; there they are busy choosing a
representative; further on, the delegates of a district are hurrying
to town to consult about some local improvements … One group
of citizens assembled for the sole object of announcing that they
disapprove of the government’s course … (de Tocqueville, 1969
edn.:242).
Introduction 3
Those were the days! In the first round of the 2002 French parliamentary
election, only 64 percent voted, the lowest turnout for a parliamentary
election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In the presidential election
of the same year, the abstention rate was 28 percent, meaning that
Jean-Marie Le Pen representing the French far right, went into the
second round. Observers suggested that the result could be explained
largely by the strength of the protest vote on both the political right and
left. This represented the general dissatisfaction with the mainstream
Socialist and Gaullist movements that have governed France for over
40 years. The turnout across Europe in the four-days long 2004 election
to the European parliament was an unprecedented 45 percent, with the
lowest voting – 26 percent – recorded in the ten states that joined the EU
the previous month (for example, turnout in Slovakia was 17 percent, in
Poland it was 21 percent). Voters were deciding to cast a ballot – or not –
on national, rather than European issues, suggesting that European
issues are ‘too complicated’, and that pro-Europe governments have to
make more of an effort to communicate or sell Europe to their citizens.
Efforts to introduce innovative voting methods have had little effect.
At first, the signs were encouraging: The Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister released figures following the 2003 local elections that showed
an average turnout of 50 percent in the 29 areas of the country using
postal only ballots, compared with only 35 percent elsewhere. The
highest recorded turnout was in Herefordshire, where 61 percent of
eligible voters returned their postal ballot. This continued a trend of
increasing turnout when the government first piloted postal-only
voting in several areas in the 2002 local elections.6 This seemed to
suggest that there is a genuine interest in local elections, but that
voters are seeking new, perhaps more convenient ways of casting their
ballot, and this prompted the government to introduce all-postal
voting in four constituencies in the 2004 local and European elections.
Turnout did increase in these regions by 13 percent compared with just
seven percent elsewhere, but in Sunderland turnout fell to 40 percent
from 47 percent recorded in 2003 when postal voting was used in local
elections, suggesting improvements may be explained by the ‘novelty
factor’. More seriously, the experiment was dogged by claims that
scores of homes failed to receive ballot papers. Security was another
concern, with two arrests made in Oldham of men who offered to ‘look
after’ ballot papers, while in Burnley the Electoral Commission agreed
to investigate a suspiciously high number of proxies. Voters com-
plained of intimidation and bullying by party canvassers, and incor-
rectly completed forms invalidated votes. Some MPs complained that
4 Political Communication and Democracy
We can take heart that the Brits are not alone in creating anomalies in
the democratic process. How can we take politics seriously, the critics ask,
when democracy allows such fiascos as the 2000 Presidential election in
the United States? After all, this was an election with no obvious winner,
accusations of voting irregularities, missing ballots and even corruption.
Many eligible citizens, including African-Americans, were ‘omitted’ from
the electoral roles in Florida.9 It is not surprising that many of the regimes
that have been the focus for American vitriol for their lack of democracy
should find the whole system laughable: Singapore’s media described
the US as a ‘banana republic’, while China declared that obviously ‘the
US electoral system is not as fair and perfect as the country boasts’.
Malaysia’s Industrial Trade and Industry Minister, Rafidah Aziz, even
suggested that ‘Maybe we, all developing countries, should send an elec-
Introduction 5
tion watch every time they have a presidential election’ (‘Either Way, A
Bad Precedent’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 23 November 2000).10
Other critics explain the absence of interest in politics by its osten-
sible professionalism, and the domination of the spin-doctor. Image
and sound-bites, they claim, have deprived voters of substantive
political discussion.11 The media and government now run democra-
tic politics, not the people. As Tony Benn once remarked, ‘The
media, the pollsters, the people who hype it up and the public rela-
tions people who engage in politics have taken the democratic
process away from us and made it something that highly paid
experts want to manage for us’ (Franklin, 1994:10). Trevor Kavanagh
of the Sun and Simon Kelner of The Independent argued about the EU
constitution on Today programme, 21 June 2004. This is a significant
development; it used to be that the politicians themselves would
debate such weighty matters. Now journalists are increasingly taking
over politicians’ debating role. If the politicians won’t take politics
seriously, why should we? 12 One only needs to recall the fury that
met Jo Moor’s comments of 11 September 2001, leaked to the British
media. On a day when the world was coming to terms with the
destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York and the death of
an estimated 6,000 people at the hands of terrorists, Ms. Moor, a
special adviser to the British transport secretary, Stephen Byers,
wrote an e-mail to her boss explaining that it was a good day to
release bad government news. Two hours after the attacks on New
York, she said: ‘It is now a very good day to get out anything
we want to bury’ (‘Pressure grows on Byers adviser to quit’, The
Guardian, 10 October 2001).13 Such seemingly insensitive behaviour
reinforces popular distrust of politicians.
Moreover, the British government’s information machinery was
again embarrassed in January 2003 when it was disclosed that a
dossier detailing Iraq’s abuses of human rights and use of weapons of
mass destruction was partly plagiarised from an American Ph.D
thesis. ‘Though it now appears to have been a journalistic cut and
paste job rather than high-grade intelligence analysis, the dossier
ended up being cited approvingly on worldwide TV by the US secre-
tary of state, Colin Powell, when he addressed the UN security
council …’ (‘Downing St admits blunder on Iraq dossier’, The
Independent, 8 February 2003:6). The Hutton inquiry that followed
Britain’s involvement in the war was convened to determine reasons
for the apparent suicide and death of weapons expert, Dr David
Kelly,14 but also revealed how the Blair government worked and was
almost ruined by its dependence on spin and presentation. The career
6 Political Communication and Democracy
(2001:xii) mourn the obsession of the American media with the 1995
O.J. Simpson trial:
From January 1, 1995, until the week after the verdict, [American]
television network news spent twenty-six hours and fifty minutes,
or 13.6% of the available airtime, covering the O.J. [Simpson] story.
That is more time than was devoted to Bosnia (thirteen hours and
one minute), the bombing in Oklahoma city (eight hours and fifty-
three minutes) and the U.S. budget (three hours and thirty-nine
minutes) – the other top three ‘news’ stories – combined.
Doctors 91 (92) 6 2
Teachers 85 (89) 10 5
Television News Readers 71 (70) 19 11
Professors 77 (80) 11 11
Judges 77 (75) 15 8
Clergymen 80 (75) 14 5
Scientists 64 (69) 23 13
The police 59 (63) 31 10
The ordinary man/woman 54 (55) 31 15
Pollsters 47 (49) 35 17
Civil Servants 45 (51) 42 14
Trades Union Officials 37 (39) 49 14
Business leaders 25 (30) 62 13
Journalists 13 (20) 79 8
Politicians 19 (22) 73 8
Government Ministers 20 (23) 72 8
N = 1972 interviews (15 years old +); conducted 7–13 February 2002
(2004 figures: N = 2,004 interviews (15 years old +); conducted Feb/March 2004
Source: http://www.mori.com/polls/2002/bma-topline.shtml; MORI
8 Political Communication and Democracy
The Hutton Inquiry exacerbated this trend (see Table 1.2 below)
and reinforced the popular view that politicians and journalists exist
in a necessarily adversarial relationship. For example, the volatile
relationship between the former Downing Street Director of
Communications, Alastair Campbell, and the BBC’s Andrew
Gilligan, has been well documented. Lord Hutton concluded that
Andrew Gilligan’s broadcast statement that the government had
‘sexed up’ (ie. deliberately falsified) the dossier that made the case
for Britain going to war against Iraq ‘attacked the integrity of the
government’.17 However, the nature of the adversarial relationship is
best demonstrated by the comment of the British television journal-
ist and presenter, Jeremy Paxman, that his philosophy when inter-
viewing politicians is to ask ‘why is this bastard lying to me?’ One
report published in September 2003, the Phillis Review of political
communications in Britain, identified similar problems of trust and
acknowledged that a hostile government-media relationship was
partly responsible.
The need to move on from this adversarial relationship was reflected
in a House of Commons motion, tabled in 2004 which said: ‘We …
hope that this report will mark a watershed in relations between
politicians and the media, where we move to a debate based on respect
for each other’s opinions and adherence to the facts’ (http://
newsvote.bbc.co.uk, 2 March 2004).
As David Yelland, former editor of the Sun newspaper commented,
‘Those in the business of communicating have to engage an audience
that presupposes you are lying, even when you are not’ (‘How did
we get so cynical?’, http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk). The so-called Phillis
‘From what you have seen or heard of the Hutton Inquiry has your opinion of
the following gone up or down?’
Politicians in general – 51 47 2
BBC 8 36 53 4
Journalists in general 3 32 62 3
N = 2,365.
Source: YouGov, Daily Telegraph, 29 August 2003, p. 14.
Introduction 9
‘I don’t care if they beat me. I’m going to vote for change’
Year Turnout
1924 48.9%
1928 51.8%
1932 52.6%
1936 56.8%
1940 58.8%
1944 56.1%
1948 51.1%
1952 61.6%
1956 59.4%
1960 62.8%
1964 61.9%
1968 60.9%
1972 55.2%
1976 53.5%
1980 52.6%
1984 53.1%
1988 50.1%
1992 55.2%
1996 49.0%
2000 51.0%
2004 60.7%
to vote. It is our right. We are not happy with the government, but
we prefer democracy to the soldiers.20
It is not the purpose of this book to review the exhaustive literature that
has been published on the theoretical and empirical approaches to
understanding the media-politics interface. For one thing, it is difficult
to offer comparative generalisations because of cross-national differences
Introduction 17
the average voter will engage with the ideas that lie behind them.
Politics is often about outcomes and the delivery of services, issues that
are unlikely to excite, outrage or even interest great swathes of media
audiences. Invariably, the media find other things to report, and thus
seize upon personalities rather than try to puzzle over the minutiae of
government decisions. On the other hand, this book will argue that
people are not disengaged from the political process or political issues.
They are passionate, clear and angry about issues that impact on their
daily lives. But they do believe far too often that their concerns are not
accepted as important or relevant by the political class.
There is no evidence to suggest that audiences are offered less politics
now than in any other period of media history; we should resist the
temptation to look back to a ‘golden era’, for the media have always
been accused of trivialising politics, political bias and failing in their
democratic duty to inform and scrutinise. Curran and Seaton (1997)
for example trace the rise of the British ‘press barons’ in the 19th and
early 20th Centuries as a response to the demands of the market. The
launch of the News of the World in 1843 combined news with human
interest stories and scandal, while
Appendix 1
‘A dark horse in Taiwan poll’
The focus in Taiwan’s presidential race has been on incumbent Chen Shui-bian
and his Kuomintang rival, Lien Chan. But some analysts say a certain dark
horse could also affect the March vote: none of the above. A tiny but growing
movement is urging voters to express their dislike of the two candidates – both
of whom ran in the last election in 2000 – by casting blank ballots. … They are
using the Internet and cellphone messages … to spread the word. None-of-the-
above movements aren’t new, of course, but in Taiwan they haven’t amounted
to much. In 2000, more than 99 percent of ballots went to one of the five
candidates. But given public dismay over incessant backbiting, and the fact that
the candidates this time are both old faces, some analysts say things could be
different if this year’s race is very close. … Emile Sheng, a political scientist at
Soochow University, says … ‘If this movement continues to get publicity … it
could gain more momentum.’
2
Guarding Against the ‘Deep
Slumber of a Decided Opinion’
As with so much in politics, it all began with the Greeks and their idea
of the polis, most notably the democracy associated with the city-state
Athens. One reason for the continued interest in Athens is that we
have at our disposal a full record of its political system. Hence, most
22
Guarding Against the ‘Deep Slumber of a Decided Opinion’ 23
chapters 1–3). Dialogue and debate outside the Assembly was there-
fore routine, and most citizens obtained their information from
‘the herald [or town crier], the notice board, gossip and rumour,
verbal reports, and discussions in the various commissions and
assemblies that made up the governmental machinery’ (Finlay,
1973:18). Writing in the Twentieth Century, Walter Lippmann,
recognised that America’s founding fathers based their political
system on a context similar to the Greek city-states: self-contained
communities, and familiarity of both each other and the locale.
This encouraged an Athenian-style commitment to participation:
‘ … not only was the individual citizen fitted to deal with all public
affairs,’ wrote Lippmann, ‘but he was consistently public-spirited and
endowed with unflagging interest. … Since everybody was assumed
to be interested enough in important affairs, only those affairs came
to see, important in which everybody was interested.’ Only three
years after the original 1922 publication of Public Opinion, Lippmann
(1925:13) argued that the pressures of modern urban and industrial
living mean that the average citizen knows very little about public
affairs, leading the author to conclude that the citizen ‘reigns in
theory, but does not govern.’
Calls for direct democracy today, even utilising the Internet tech-
nology available to us, could not replicate the ideal type of direct
democracy practised by the small and homogenous Greek city states
(Dahl, 1998, discussed the relationship between the size of a country
and the level of democracy there). Citizens are not willing to devote
the time and effort that direct democracy requires, while the size of
the population, together with the decline in face-to-face discussion
about politics, create their own difficulties.6 As Peter Golding (quoted
in Qualter, 1985:233) has suggested, ‘Most citizens undoubtedly have
better things to do than offer daily advice to their leaders’. There is
even suspicion that idealism which sees the Internet as a way to
encourage political participation threatens to create a very unstable
form of direct democracy (Birdsall et al., 1996, referred to this as
‘hyperdemocracy’). But this is not for want of trying, and the Internet
seems to be re-energising constituency-based politics. In Britain, for
example, over 67 percent of MPs have a website. Some have created
databases of their constituents whom they regularly text or email to
check their opinions on a wide range of issues. The problem with the
use of this new technology to attempt to (re)create the conditions of
direct democracy is that it depends on the representative having the
required information about constituents – telephone numbers, email
26 Political Communication and Democracy
speeches for immoral purposes; rather they were concerned with using
reason to analyse and question in a rational manner the beliefs and
institutions that were accepted by Greek society. This methodical
process would then enable the Sophists to arrive at a conclusion about
the validity of such beliefs and consider how they might be modified,
or whether they should be altogether rejected. In short, Sophists were,
according to their defenders, concerned with practising, writing, and
delivering speeches to facilitate democratic practice and government.
However, as hinted above the Sophists also had their critics. Some
worried that the Sophists would breed a generation of radicals, corrupt-
ing the young among the Greek elite (who could afford to pay for the
services of the Sophists) and encouraging them to overturn the status
quo. The problem was that in popular discourse, Sophistry came to
mean more than this. It evolved into a handy catch-all term of abuse
that could label anyone who disagreed with the mechanisms of
Athenian democracy, or had engaged in questionable conduct. While
Aeschines accused the Sophists of practising and teaching the ‘unholy
arts’ of speech, and others labelled Sophistry ‘witchcraft’ for its spell-
binding and manipulative qualities, one of Socrates’s ex-pupils was
accused of cheating a series of creditors. The speaker described this
as representative of ‘the life of the Sophist’ (Hesh, 2000:207; 212).
Sophistry was judged inconsistent with the commitment to full and
free information that the Athenians valued, because Sophistry was said
to value the construction and delivery of the speech more than its
intention and the substance.
One of the more influential critics of Sophistry was Plato, who
expressed concern that rhetoric could be used to rouse mobs (a pejora-
tive term throughout history) into activity against the best interests of
the democracy. Plato based his understanding of how rhetoric affected
Man on his knowledge of the human condition. Common Man, he
said, is incapable of reason and judgment, and seeks simple answers to
complex questions. Such Man has an innate need to be led, and is thus
vulnerable to skilled oration. It is interesting that this is the basis for
much of the theory that tries to explain how propaganda works;
throughout the 20th Century all totalitarian regimes made effective,
yet destructive use of propaganda that appeals to the base impulses of
common man (Taylor, 1996). Plato defined democracy in rather biting
tones: it is a political system, he said, that ‘treats all men as equal,
whether they are equal or not’. Elitists ask a fundamental question: Is
there reason to distrust judgement of our own interests? Some elitists
claim that the public is ignorant or apathetic of politics, and they need
to be convinced of the merit of political decisions. This means that
Guarding Against the ‘Deep Slumber of a Decided Opinion’ 29
But Plato did not reserve his invective for inclusive democracy; in fact,
he attacked the very institution of democracy itself. Today, we are used
to criticising politicians who try to ingratiate themselves with the
public, who try to ‘sell’ themselves and their policies for short term
political gain. According to David Held (1996:30), these problems
concerned Plato: the Greek philosopher claimed,
Suffice it to say that Plato was sufficiently concerned with the poten-
tial damage that oratory could do to democracy that he returned to it
again and again in his writing (see his Euthydemus, Politicus, and
Gorgias). For Plato, there was little to distinguish rhetoric from
Sophistry; he believed that all oratory was a method of acquiring and
exercising power, instead of promoting the value of reasoned and
democratic argument. Nevertheless, Plato made a unique contribution
to our understanding of both politics and political theory through
setting out his ideas in the form of dialogues. John Stuart Mill des-
cribed the dialogues as having been ‘directed with consummate skill
to the purpose of convincing any one who had merely adopted
the commonplaces of received opinion that he did not understand the
subject … in order that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be
put in the way to obtain a stable belief on a clear apprehension both of
the meaning of doctrines and of their evidence’ (Mill, 1969 edn.:172).
Was Plato therefore the most successful Sophist because he concealed
his power claims, and in directing his argument against the Sophists,
he is not suspected of being one?8
Aristotle was likewise concerned with the motives and methods of
Sophistry, and he shared Plato’s belief that rhetoric should only serve a
commitment to democracy; it must contribute to the development of
the skills of statesmanship by providing wisdom and good judgement.
Aristotle’s Treatise on Rhetoric (or On Rhetoric as it tends to be known)
supplies perhaps the earliest cogent account of communication by a
political theorist. That Aristotle, no democrat he, preferred the term
‘rhetoric’ is largely irrelevant, although (Plato notwithstanding) it does
separate him from the Sophists (for Aristotle, rhetoric is designed for a
moral purpose; Sophistry is intended only to win an argument by
whatever means possible). Theodore Buckley, the editor of the 1872
edition of On Rhetoric wrote (p. 1) that, according to Aristotle, ‘any
man who attempts to persuade another, under whatever circum-
stances, and with whatever object, may be said to exercise “rhetoric”.’
Much of Aristotle’s description of the ‘art’ of rhetoric is familiar to
political communicators and media strategists today. For example, he
explains why it is necessary to communicate through ‘the medium
of ordinary language’, and discusses ‘the manner of communicating
with the multitude’ (Ibid.:8). For Aristotle, communicating with the
multitude is an important political act; and although he agrees with
earlier Greek theorists that citizens must be expected to participate in
public affairs, his exclusive definition of citizen remained consistent
with Athenian practice. However, he does not simply follow earlier
Guarding Against the ‘Deep Slumber of a Decided Opinion’ 31
… the rule of good taste is, that your style be lowered or raised
according to the subject. On which account we must escape obser-
vation in doing this, and not appear to speak in a studied manner,
but naturally, for the one is of a tendency to persuade, the other is
the very reverse; because people put themselves on their guard, as
though against one who had a design upon them, just as they
would against unadulterated wine (Aristotle, 1872 edn.:208).
read: ‘We must conceal our art’). In fact, the whole volume, though Book
III especially, can be read as a guide to conducting rhetoric/propaganda
since it devotes many of its pages to imparting advice on style, rhythm
of speech, construction of sentences, and the use of metaphors and
hyperbole, ridicule and praise.
In short, the Greeks made a full and significant contribution to the
practice and study of political communications. From them, we acquire
the framework to understand direct democracy, the problems of paying
too much attention to public opinion, the art of spin-doctoring and
political consultancy, and the origins of modern propaganda. Those
who followed the Greeks (for example, the ‘liberals’) integrated commu-
nications into their own understanding of politics. We should not view
these theorists as standing in opposition to the Greeks, but rather build-
ing upon their contribution to nurture ideas that accounted for social
and political developments, in particular the development of the mass
media.
Enlightenment were concerned, above all, with creating a space for the
development of enlightened opinion that would erode and eventually
discard the need for the state. The first real victory of Enlightenment
liberalism was the Anti-Corn League of 1846, established to persuade
the state to end its regulation of the corn trade. This was the first real
social movement of the 19th Century, and really the first genuinely
effective ‘pressure group’ that challenged state power and forced it to
back down for the good of the people. The League demonstrated that
social mobilisation, and communication of grievances and interests
through mobilisation, could work: the state would be forced to listen.
One of the most important, and also one of the earliest liberals,11
was John Locke who published his influential Two Treatises of Govern-
ment in 1690. David Held has provided a useful summary of Locke’s
ideas: According to Locke, ‘authority is bestowed by individuals in
society on government for the purpose of pursuing the ends of
the governed; and should these ends fail to be represented adequately,
the final judges are the people – the citizens – who can dispense both
with their deputies and, if need be, with the existing form of govern-
ment itself’ (Held, 1996:80). What dates the Two Treatises is Locke’s
blatant declaration that ‘absolute monarchs are but men’. In one fell
swoop, the idea of the divine right of kings is destroyed; for Locke,
Sovereign power resides with the people who confer legitimacy on the
government by consent, though we need to be extremely careful that
we do not describe Locke as the epitome of modern democratic
thought. According to Held’s reading of Two Treatises Locke did not
advocate political liberties ‘irrespective of class, sex, colour and creed’
(Held, 1996:82). Chapter 6, Book II of The Two Treatises makes that
perfectly clear. Neither did Locke believe in regular elections, or uni-
versal suffrage. In fact, like his Greek predecessors, participation was
restricted to a particular definition of citizen, namely the propertied
classes. Held concludes that Locke ‘cannot, like many of his prede-
cessors, be considered a democrat without careful qualification’ (Ibid.).
Locke believed in the virtues of majorities (Two Treatises, Chapter VIII),
and that, by agreeing to enter political society, ‘everyone is bound by
that consent to be concluded by the majority’. Otherwise, Locke said,
the diversity of opinions and interests would make government impos-
sible. And the reason they ‘consent’ to enter this political society, or
commonwealth, is very simple: ‘the preservation of their property’. If
the majority make laws ‘for the community from time to time’ and
then execute ‘those laws by officers of their own appointing’, then,
says Locke, the commonwealth can be described as no less than a
Guarding Against the ‘Deep Slumber of a Decided Opinion’ 35
The deputies of the people … are not and cannot be their represen-
tatives; they can only be their commissioners, and as such they are
not qualified to conclude anything definitely. No act of theirs can
be a law, unless it has been ratified by the people in person; and
without that ratification nothing is law (The Social Contract:78).
citizens, while preferences and interests flow up from the people to the
legislature. Hence we have arrived at the genesis of modern parliamen-
tary democracy, and thus the origin of the problems for which political
communication is so often blamed. Like Locke, however, Montesquieu
did not contemplate the idea of universal franchise, and neither did he
believe that representatives should be accountable to the people.
In this way Montesquieu’s liberalism was limited to the notion of con-
sensual constraints on political power to avoid interference in the
private sphere.
It was left to the liberals writing in the 19th Century, notably Jeremy
Bentham, James Mill and John Stuart Mill, to develop a more coherent
theory of what Held (1996:88) has described as ‘protective democracy’:
It is not too onerous to identify in this passage the ideas that are
important for our understanding of political communication.
Accountability, participation and competition all require dialogue
between governed and governors. It also reiterates that the people are
sovereign, but provides mechanisms that allow them to exercise their
sovereignty. Moreover, communication is essential if representatives
wish to fulfil their duties and convey to the government the views,
interests, preferences and grievances of the constituents who elected
them:
upon finding somebody who speaks his mind, as well or better than
he could speak it himself (Mill, 1991:239).
The liberals were the first to discuss in any meaningful way the idea of
how the press interacted with political institutions and processes, and
in doing so, they offered vigorous defences of press freedom. Liberals
acknowledge that the media mediate; that they stand as powerful and
indispensable structures between the state and the public that can hold
the political system to account between elections. John Stuart Mill,
for example, opened Chapter II of On Liberty (p. 141): ‘The time, it is
hoped, is gone by when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty
of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical gov-
ernment.’ (Chapter II of On Liberty provides a full discussion of the
importance of freedom of thought and speech, and should be read as
the scion of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric. On press freedom, see also James
Mill, ‘Liberty of the Press’, in his Essays on Government, Jurisprudence,
Liberty of the Press and Law of Nations.) Mill was vehemently opposed
to attempts to suppress opinion: either the opinion is true, or will be
revealed to be true only through discussion and exploration.
Eulogising the great orators of ancient Greece, Mill defends the need to
understand the opposing argument in order that one’s own might be
better communicated. If an audience does not hear both sides of an
argument, Mill suggests, it would be rational for him to suspend his
judgement on that particular issue. But although Mill defended the
freedom of the press, he does submit that an audience should not rely
on ‘media’ (broadly defined to mean any person or persons that stand
between two opponents) but instead should ensure that he hears each
side of the argument from the horse’s mouth (On Liberty:163). While
Mill describes as ‘the gravest’ of offences being the suppression of facts,
arguing from mistaken or false premises, or misrepresenting the
opposite argument, he does concede that these may not be entered
into consciously or deliberately; ‘by persons who are not considered,
and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant
or incompetent’, so that they should not be culpable (On Liberty:181).
But Mill reserves his most invective for the ‘worst offence’, namely ‘to
stigmatise those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral
men (On Liberty:182).
Bentham and the utilitarians were likewise convinced that recon-
ciling the public interest with the egoistic nature of rulers was possi-
ble only through representative democracy. Not for James Mill the
42 Political Communication and Democracy
Hence, we begin to see the carving out of distinct ‘public’ and ‘private’
spheres that would inspire future generations of theorists who were
concerned with political communication (though the ‘public sphere’
was, even in the liberals’ grand scheme, inhabited exclusively by men,
and usually men of property). John Stuart Mill was an exception to
the patriarchal liberal tradition, and his 1869 book, The Subjection of
Women is a groundbreaking testament to his extraordinary vision of
social, economic and political equality. However, while Mill extolled
the virtues of universal franchise, he was less keen on the idea that all
votes should count equally:
His father, too, believed in wise leadership by the middle classes, the
opinion formers; starting from an assumption of rationality, James Mill
suggested that the working classes would be sufficiently rational to
realise that their interests were best served by following their superiors.
But John Stuart Mill cautioned against the ‘tyranny of the majority’, an
expression that continues to resonate today. Mill was worried that
majorities could subvert the communal good:
At the heart of the liberal tradition is the idea that democracy must
involve a high level of popular participation. Political leaders follow and
interpret the public mood, rather than create it. In other words, the
liberals believed that the public know their own interests and have a
desire to articulate them. To maximise popular participation, the public
requires the opportunity to articulate their opinions, but they need to
be educated of this opportunity; they need to be shown they can get
what they want rather than having laws imposed from above. In this
way, communication is itself a form of participation. Interests are not
just known but need to be translated into political action. Political
participation requires political knowledge. The more one participate,
the more knowledgeable one becomes, and thus one’s participation
becomes more rational. Hence, the liberal tradition leaves room for the
idea of improvability through political communication and participa-
tion: John Stuart Mill in particular was keen to champion the educative
effects of participation; and this ‘explains [his] … attachment to any
means by which large sections of the population could be drawn into
active participation in public life – representative democracy, local
self-government, the growth of voluntary, intermediary associations’
(Lively & Reeve, 1989:194. See also Sargeant & Steele, 1999).
Guarding Against the ‘Deep Slumber of a Decided Opinion’ 45
By the middle of the 19th Century the liberals had acquired their
desired progress: capitalism had triumphed, while the industrial
46 Political Communication and Democracy
The ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. the class,
which is the ruling material force of society, is that the same time
its ruling intellectual force. The class that has the means of material
production consequently also controls the means of mental produc-
tion so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental pro-
duction are on the whole subject to it … Insofar, therefore, as they
rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an historical
epoch, it is self-evident that they … regulate the production and
distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling
ideas of the epoch (in Wood, 1988:101).
So while Marx insists that the dominant classes will seek to defend,
strengthen or extend their rule by means of coercion, he also leaves
room for the act of persuasion. Political communications and culture
become mechanisms to prevent the emergence of a class consciousness
among the subordinate classes, but are also valuable transmission belts
for the accepted (dominant) social order. So in this scenario the media
are intent on more than just financial gain; their primary objective
might be the perpetuation of ideological, political and economic dom-
ination by a particular class. Inherent in this line of enquiry is the
assumption that the media possess a set of broad powers and purposes
that force our analysis beyond liberalism, and this requires us to ques-
tion on whose behalf the media function. Do they pursue particular
economic or political agendas? Are they servicing the interests of a
class or political elite? Marxists, for example, would claim that it is
only possible to appreciate fully the role and political power of the
media once we have identified their patterns of ownership and have
scrutinised the ideology behind their content. Curran and Seaton’s
history of the British press (1997) and especially their discussion of
the period immediately after the Second World War, demonstrates
how the press became closely aligned to big business. Interlocking
ownership, a more personal style of management, and the rise of
Thatcherism all coincided to force the press (and especially the right-
wing press) to follow a more Thatcherite agenda. As Curran and Seaton
show, many newspaper journalists and editors who tried to maintain
political independence or impartiality fell foul of their proprietors’
insistence on following a more partisan agenda. British media
observers are used to reading and writing about the power of the
new media barons – Rupert Murdoch, the late Robert Maxwell, et al. –
who have followed in the footsteps of the Northcliffes and the
Rothermeres. Randolph Hearst in the United States is a mythical, as
much as historical figure, partly owing to the film Citizen Kane, while
the post-Communist media in Russia have been reorganised under the
control and ownership of an oligopoly (Nemtsov, 1999:5–6). This
means that, despite a protracted liberalisation and democratisation
that started in the final years of the Communist era, the freedom of
speech enjoyed by Russian journalists is still limited as they are in-
hibited from criticising the owners of their newspapers or the media
50 Political Communication and Democracy
ideology. The authors analysed the partial and selective way that
mugging is represented in media and contrasted this with the
dominant discourse on law and order. They found that the media were
complicit in constructing accounts of mugging that corresponded to
more general concerns about social order. The media thus have a part
to play in constructing reality, and popularising the dominant
discourse.
However, Hall et al. seem to fall into the very trap that the post-
Marxists were keen to avoid, namely rejecting the idea that law and
order might be a genuine concern among the working classes, and not
simply the result of media complicity in projecting the dominant
discourse. This connects with Dominic Strinati’s critique of Gramsci:
People can accept the prevailing order because they are compelled
to do so by devoting their time to ‘making a living’, or because they
cannot conceive another way of organising society, and therefore
fatalistically accept the world as it is. This, moreover, assumes that
the question why people should accept a particular social order is
the only legitimate question to ask. It can be claimed that an
equally legitimate question is why should people not accept a
particular social order? (1995:174).
The post-moderns
(for a truly excellent discussion, see Melucci, 1988). Often, they will
have international links, reinforcing the notion of post-modern
de-territorialisation and the declining importance of the nation-state.
Hence many have been optimistic. Gibbins and Reimer (1999:151),
for example, have predicted a ‘return to a more open, public and
unpredictable form of politics than traditional parliamentary and
presidential forms of politics have allowed. The Athenian notion of
politics, as the public activity of free persons negotiating how they
wish to live, could turn out to be the most functional, effective, and
legitimate mode of government in the post-modern world’. Hence,
we return full circle to the discussion in Chapter 1; that for all the
anxiety about low voter turnout, declining numbers of people
joining parties and groups, widespread apathy and ignorance of poli-
tics, citizens across the world are in fact finding new ways of partici-
pating and communicating their political preferences. As we will
demonstrate in Chapter 7, new versions of direct democracy based on
new information technology (especially the Internet) are emerging
that counter outdated belief in representative government. The
Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), for example, the UK’s
leading centre-left think tank, published in 2001 a groundbreaking
study entitled Realising Democracy OnLine: A Civic Commons in
Cyberspace (Blumler & Coleman, 2001). This paper identified new
expectations and meanings of citizenship that encourage citizens to
expect more from democracy than regular trips to the ballot box.
Instead of celebrating apathy, we should recognise that we are
capable of complex deliberation on policy issues and that we should
expect more from our democratic commitment. According to the
IPPR, representative democracies are fashioned from a 19th Century
‘political culture of deference when citizens were subjects [and]
political deliberation was best left to the great and good’ (Ibid.:6).
Cannot we adapt our political institutions and culture to reflect
modern conditions and expectations (Budge, 1993)? Electronic
democracy may be the way forward: it suggests open debate, easy
access to information, and offers opportunities for encouraging
citizenship (the educative qualities so admired by the liberals). The
evidence suggests a greater desire and willingness to participate:
Coleman and Gotze (2001), for example, conducted research that
discovered a majority of respondents believe the Internet can facili-
tate their democratic participation (Coleman & Gotze, 2001:21–2).
The Internet, say its advocates, reduces the barriers of distance (in
other words, we can have direct democracy because we do not have
64 Political Communication and Democracy
Polls have shown that almost everyone supports the idea of free
speech, but few people understand that this implies granting people
holding positions they particularly dislike the right to speak. Thus
in a study … more than a third of the respondents would deny the
right of free speech for ‘someone who wanted to speak in this city
against churches and religion.’ Under these circumstances one
would say that those who supported the idea of free speech and the
Bill of Rights, but denied its implications, were uninformed.
Recent research into the nature of political man has come upon
the same discovery that marked Freud’s research into human nature:
Political life, like sexual life, starts much earlier than we had thought.
This is an important discovery because the task of shaping political
man is complicated and to be effective must take account of the
earliest beginnings (Lane & Sears, 1964:17).
Opinion comes in many guises and has multiple points of origin.
Unsurprisingly, there are several competing theories about the source
of opinion, and these can be divided for purposes of simplicity into
socialisation and cognitive theories. These explain the processes
‘through which we learn about politics’ (Hague et al., 1998:64) and are
concerned with identifying the source of political information, but
they differ in explaining how we actually process that information.
Where socialisation theory leans towards an assumption of passivity as
a human characteristic, behavioural theorists speak of political cogni-
tion to refer to the way individuals acquire and manage information,
and ultimately how they relate it to political reality as they perceive it.
It ‘denotes the image or map of the world held by the individual
person. His response to persons, things, and events are shaped in part
by the way they look to him. These cognitions are selectively organised
and integrated into a system which provides meaning and stability for
the individual person as he goes about his business in the everyday
world’ (Cohen, 1966:63). Moreover, cognition theory allows for
the opportunity for opinions to change, especially since it accords the
media a greater role than socialisation theory in actually channelling
information. When new information is introduced that conflict with
an individual’s cognitive system, the individual strives for ‘cognitive
balance’ by processing the information in such a way that he will try
to resolve the inconsistencies in what he believes and what is now
suggested to him. Cohen (1964:62) talked of ‘cognitive consistency’,
namely ‘a principle based on the notion that psychological structure is
composed of an integrated and organised set of cognitions regarding
some object or event. The introduction of new information aimed at
changing attitudes disrupts that organisation and produces disequilib-
rium.’ An earlier study by a social psychologist, Leon Festinger (1957)
described the process of trying to achieve this consistency: ‘When a
dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person
will actively avoid situations and information which would likely
increase the dissonance’ (Festinger, 1957:3). They exhibit ‘circumspect
Public Opinion 73
Hence, the idea that ‘propaganda’ can never change opinion, it merely
reinforces existing or latent opinions. Consider Walter Lippmann’s
explanation of the power of stereotypes in propaganda and how we use
them to understand the world around us:
a good many people read a paper that is at odds with their voting
behaviour. In fact, little more than half of the readers of Tory papers
in 1991 also voted Tory in 1992 and not much more than a third of
Tory readers in 1996 voted Conservative in 1997. There is a stronger
association with reading a Labour paper and voting Labour, but
nevertheless, forty per cent of those reading a Labour paper in 1991
did not vote Labour in 1992, and rather more than a quarter did
not do so in 1997. Overall, a large minority read a paper which is
not consistent with their own voting behaviour.
There are many reasons for this, and the discrepancy of the rein-
forcement theory seems determined by the curious status of tabloid
newspapers and their core readership. The research by Newton and
Brynin (2001:269) shows that fewer than two out of three Sun readers
knew that it supported the Conservative Party in 1991, while a quarter
of the readers of the left-wing Mirror believed it supported a party other
than Labour. Another possible reason is that consumers do not buy
a newspaper just because it supports a particular political party, but
because they enjoy the crossword, sport coverage, or the Page 3 model.
Moreover, the success of the British National Party (BNP) is due
largely to its ability to design a propaganda strategy around one par-
ticular issue, namely asylum seekers. In elections in February 2003,
BNP literature asked constituents to ‘Vote Labour if you want asylum
seeker neighbours,’ while linking asylum to other issues of local
concern, such as employment, education, and law and order. In short,
the BNP has made inroads in what might be described as traditional
Public Opinion 79
I1
Political Parties
I2
Interest groups
Media
I3
Social Movements
(2003) has described how the media can be agents of stability (support-
ing the status quo), agents of restraint (checking and balancing
political society) or agents of change. Through close examination of
the media in selected Asian societies, McCargo demonstrates that these
roles are not mutually exclusive. Rather, the media perform all these
roles at different political moments. The merit of this agency-based
approach is not only that it recognises the power that the media
possess, but also suggests that they are in constant strategic negotiation
with other political actors, all enjoying access to their own resources.
That the media now have the capacity to exercise political power in
their own right as political actors was demonstrated most clearly –
and alarmingly – in the events surrounding the British government’s
case for war against Iraq in 2003, how it was reported, and the
findings of the Hutton Inquiry, published in January 2004. We are
too used to the normative democratic idea that the media represent
the electorate between elections, that they act as a check and balance
in government and scrutinise government’s decisions. The Hutton
Inquiry questioned the credibility of this argument, though it had
been under attack for some time. Challenging the idea that the media
have a democratic duty to act as an unofficial opposition, the Labour
party chairman, Charles Clarke, said, ‘This arouses a vanity about the
role of the media. They have a need to question and doubt every
politician. This leads to a bad state of affairs and I think it has got to
be repaired’ (‘Labour attacks media over Mittal affair’, The Guardian,
21 February 2002).
The media do not like to admit they are political actors, as this
would compromise the functions they believe they fulfil in a demo-
cratic society (Cook, 1998). It also implies that there is little to separate
the media – ostensibly working on behalf of the powerless and voice-
less – from the politicians they try to expose. Only once they and
we accept the – in many ways disturbing – notion that the media are
political actors, do we understand that the media do not simply trans-
mit information or offer entertainment, but rather have the propensity
to be ideologically influential through the imagery they present. The
media provide the cues and the frameworks which determine political
discourse and which influence our perception and reaction to social
and political reality. ‘In the conduct of politics,’ noted Colin Seymour-
Ure in 2001, ‘media are primary and political institutions secondary.
The media can live without politics; indeed, surveys show that politics
is one of the least appealing subjects to readers and audiences. But
politics cannot live without the media’ (in King (ed.), 2001:119).
Public Opinion 85
Attitudes towards the value of polls are divided: some acknowledge that
measuring public opinion adds to the representative character of demo-
cratic politics. Polls are a form of participation, suggesting that citizens
are being listened to and that their views count. In fact, they are a
measure of interest in politics and therefore quantify the health of
democracy. Moreover, knowledge of public opinion is said to be a check
on those political activists – pressure groups etc. – who claim to speak
on behalf of, or represent, mass opinion, and is particularly important
as executive power expands. In other words, it is a powerful restraint on
elite politics. Charles Roll and Albert Cantril (1972:11–12) for example
make the rather bold claim that ‘the polling establishment is easily a
candidate to become the “Fifth Estate”’, suggesting its power and ability
to hold the decision-making community accountable for its actions.
Clearly, this over-estimates the influence of polls, for it assumes that
politicians and governments actually listen to public opinion and that
it has a positive effect on their behaviour and decisions. It is extremely
difficult to identify such a correlation, especially when ‘public opinion’
is competing with the advice and information from a range of sources –
specialist advisers, for example, or civil servants, pressure and interest
groups, one’s own political party, etc. Besides, public opinion rarely
brings its influence to bear directly on government. Rather, it is medi-
ated via parties, groups, and the media. While these institutions serve to
transmit popular opinion to government, and government opinion
86 Political Communication and Democracy
tain the strength of support for policies or their own standing during
election campaigns among different geographic and demographic con-
stituencies. It is rational for parties in a competitive democratic system
to scrutinise the polls in order to maximise their chances of winning
and maintaining support, especially as the numbers of floating and tac-
tical voters continue to increase. In preparation for the 2001 British
General Election, a number of Internet sites appeared that were
devoted to tactical voting. These were examples of targeted campaign-
ing and were designed to maximise the vote in particular constituen-
cies that were considered vulnerable or marginal, especially the 90
parliamentary seats that were most vulnerable to a swing back to the
Conservative party.17
Moreover, opinion polls are thought to add drama and excitement to
an election, but for critics, this turns the campaign into a horse-race;
who’s up, who’s down, who’s predicted to win, by what margin? There
are suggestions that that opinion polls adversely affect voting behav-
iour and therefore election results (Norris, 1989:223). Political scientists
have long wrestled with the implications of the so-called ‘Bandwagon’
and ‘Boomerang’ effects that claim voters (and floating voters in
particular) are influenced in their voting behaviour by their interpreta-
tion of the polls, especially in political systems where party
identification is weak. However, evidence that these effects do occur is
lacking and, most important, these theories underestimate voters,
providing nothing in the way of a rational explanation why voters
might want to ‘jump ship’ at the last minute. Polls may also encourage
tactical voting: in the 1997 British General Election, an estimated
8–10 percent of the electorate are thought to have voted strategically.
In Taiwan, this is known as the ‘dump-save’ effect, where voters are
encouraged to ‘dump’ their favourite candidate in favour of another
who is most likely to defeat the least desirable contender. Therefore,
some political systems believe that banning either the reporting of
opinion polls, or the polls themselves immediately before election day
is a positive method of ensuring a free and fair vote. In 1977, for
example, France passed a law to prevent ‘publication, circulation and
commentary’ of any poll ‘having a direct or indirect link’ with the elec-
tion during the preceding week. The same law also created an opinion
poll watchdog committee to monitor the objectivity and quality of
opinion polls. The 2002 presidential election was the first since 1977 in
which the French press were allowed to publish soundings up to the
eve of the vote. Following the first round of the first round of presiden-
tial elections in France in 2002, there was an extraordinary backlash
88 Political Communication and Democracy
against opinion polls that had failed to predict the level of support for
the Far Right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Broadcasting organisations
and newspapers refused to run polls because they no longer had faith
in the numbers. The pollsters blamed the elusiveness of typical Le Pen
voters, their social background, the number of abstentions, and the
record number candidates – 16 – contesting the election. However, one
must consider that banning polls or the reporting of polls may be a
form of censorship, contradicting the very principles that lie at the
heart of democratic politics. The Representation of the People’s Act
2000 made it a criminal offence in Britain to publish statements or
forecasts before a poll is closed based on information from those who
have already voted. This virtual ban on exit polls conflicts with Article
10 of the European Convention on Human Rights that grants the right
to receive and impart information. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled
that a ban on opinion polls during a federal election was unconstitu-
tional and restricted freedom of expression. Moreover, what happens
if postal voting becomes the norm? Will this mean an end to polls
altogether as the voting is usually spread out over several weeks?
Besides, while it is possible to prohibit one’s own media from reporting
opinion polls, modern technology and globalisation make it increas-
ingly unfeasible to prevent them receiving information about the polls
from foreign sources.
But are opinion polls really a danger to democratic politics? There
are two reasons why we can answer ‘no’. First, as with so much in
modern politics, we must go beyond the largely superficial characteris-
tics of the system and (in many ways meaningless) data that is pro-
vided by opinion polls and scrutinise the processes and institutions of
government. Public opinion polls have an important role to play, but
we should not overestimate their influence. For instance, one major
criticism of the British political system is that the timing of General
Elections is not fixed. Rather, the Prime Minister decides when to ‘go
to the country’ provided it is within five years of the previous election.
This means that governments can use opinion polls to their advantage;
they can look for established leads, assess the public’s reaction to their
policies, and even try to hold-off calling an election until a particularly
favourable policy has trickled down to the electorate. This is one argu-
ment for having fixed term parliaments and removing from the Prime
Minister the decision of calling an election. However, rather than
censuring politicians for behaving as rational creatures and ‘playing
the polls’, it is far more productive to question the institutional
processes of the British parliamentary system itself.
Public Opinion 89
Appendix 1
‘… Despite a flurry of recent opinion polls suggesting [US Presidential candidate
John] Kerry is widening his lead over the Republican president, a different
picture emerges from a forecasting phenomenon the combines the technical
sophistication of commodity futures markets with the thrill of gambling on a
horse race.
Admirers of the new system claim it has consistently proved more reliable
than opinion polls in predicting election results. …
… The search for a different form of political forecasting – one that ignores
day-to-day swings in voter opinion and focuses on the likely result – has led to
the creation of the new futures market. On the Iowa Electronics Market (IEM)
and several similar exchanges the “commodities” are politicians and investors
bet on their prospects. … Each candidate has a “price” that moves up and down
according to investor interest, like a company share’. …
… A recent University of Iowa study of IEM’s performance in 49 domestic and
foreign elections found that the market had an average margin of error of only
1.37% – well below opinion poll margins.19 …
… How can an obscure political trading system … outperform highly sophis-
ticated opinion polls that canvass thousands of voters? The explanation [some
believe] derives from the investor’s pride in his ability to guess right and to
make a profit. …
Appendix 2
On 23 February 2004 the Hong Kong Constitutional Development Task Force issued
a survey questionnaire entitled Seeking Your Views to gather ‘public views on the
issues of principle and legislative process relating to constitutional development
under the Basic Law’. On the left hands side of the questionnaire were listed a
number of statements; on the right a set of related questions. For example:
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) comes directly under
the Central People’s Government (CPG), the CPG has constitutional powers and
responsibilities to oversee the constitutional development in the HKSR, and has
the responsibility to ensure that the development within Hong Kong’s political
structure is in accordance with the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ and the Basic
Law, and the provisions relating to the relationship between the Central
Authorities and the HKSAR.
How could Hong Kong’s political structure develop in accordance with the following
principles in the relevant Basic Law provisions which relate to the relationship between
the Central Authorities and the HKSAR?
(1) Hong Kong is an inalienable part of China (Article 1 of the Basic Law)?
(2) HKSAR comes directly under the CPG (Article 12 of the Basic Law)?
(3) The Chief Executive (CE) is appointed by the CPG. He is accountable to both the
CPG and the HKSAR (Aricles 43 and 45 of the Basic Law)?
Public Opinion 93
When submitting the Basic Law (Draft) and its relevant documents to the
Seventh National People’s Congress on 28 March 1990, Mr Ji Pengfei, Chairman
of the Drafting Committee for the Basic Law of the HKSAR explained that: ‘The
political structure of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region should
accord with the principles of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ and aim to maintain
stability and prosperity in Hong Kong in line with its legal status and actual
situation. To this end, consideration must be given to the interests of different
sectors of society and the structure must facilitate the development of the
capitalist economy in the Region. While the part of the existing political struc-
ture proven to be effective will be maintained, a democratic system that suits
Hong Kong’s reality should be gradually introduced …’
Based on Mr Ji’s explanation in 1990, how could the development of Hong Kong’s
political structure:
(1) meet ‘the interests of the different sectors of society’?
(2) ‘facilitate the development of the capitalist economy’?
Annex I to the Basic Law stipulates that ‘If there is a need to amend the method
of selecting the CE for the terms subsequent to the year 2007, …’
Whether the phrase ‘subsequent to the year 2007’ should be understood to include
2007?
In response, I wrote the following piece for publication in Hong Kong’s South
China Morning Post.
Another question asks how the development of Hong Kong’s political struc-
ture could meet the interests of the different sectors of society and facilitate the
development of the capitalist economy. Talk about asking BIG questions.
When the survey turns to the issues of legislative process, the questions
become even more demanding: ‘What is the most appropriate legislative pro-
cedure for amending the methods for selecting the CE and forming the LegCo?
Do we need to follow the procedures set out in Article 159 of the Basic Law, if
we amend the methods for selecting the CE or forming the LegCo as specified in
Annexes I and II of the Basic Law’.
And on it goes …
The Task Force obviously forgot the first principle: A survey is only as good as
the questions it asks, and the questions asked by the Task Force do not invite
serious response because they assume a particularly high level of knowledge and
comprehension. Has everybody read, understood and, most importantly, inter-
rogated the relevant passages of the Basic Law and all its annexes to be able to
offer the kind of critical opinion the Task Force requires? Unfortunately for
Hong Kong, political science tells us that, faced with a complicated question,
citizens tend to abstain altogether from such surveys because they do not
understand the issue, or they vote to keep the status quo (surveys generally
being forces of conservative government).
The consequences are potentially ominous: if the average citizen is unable
to provide sensible and cogent answers to such surveys based on full informa-
tion and critical reflection, it is possible to imagine a time when government
concludes that the level of political ignorance is unsatisfactory for any kind of
participation. Moreover, if the response rate is low, the authoritarians among us
will claim that democracy has failed, and that Hong Kong people are apathetic
to politics after all (an argument which the July 2003 and January 2004 demon-
strations prove is nonsense). Or, the technicalities of the questions will generate
responses from certain sections of the population only, sustaining an elitist
political system that allows for the continued ‘tyranny of the minority’. Either
way, Hong Kong loses.
So if the survey is not assisting democracy, we can argue that it is merely
feeding the illusion of participation, transparency and legitimacy. It is providing
a fantasy for every Hong Kong resident – Chinese and English-speaking – that
his or her views are wanted and are valued. The appeal of such surveys is under-
standable: decisions are considered more legitimate if they have been arrived
at by soliciting popular opinion. However, the success of such surveys depends
on voter interest and participation, being user-friendly, and providing informa-
tion that is of sufficient quality that all potential respondents can form an
opinion regardless of background or status.
Let me summarise my argument in the kind of direct, jargon free language
that the Task Force has decided is not appropriate for its survey: This is bad
communication. Political communication turns on the need to persuade people
to care enough about an issue that they will form an opinion about it. This
survey does neither, and on such an important issue for Hong Kong, that is very
worrying indeed.
(Gary Rawnsley, ‘First get the questions right,’ South China Morning Post,
25 February 2004:A13).
4
Instruments of Expression (I):
Group Politics
Austria 26 22 18
Finland 19 13 10
Belgium 8 9 7
Norway 16 14 7
Italy 13 10 4
Netherlands 9 3 3
Germany 3 4 3
UK 9 3 2
Source: Reproduced from Hague & Harrop, 2001: 172 and based on Mair & van Biezen, 2001,
pp. 9, 12 & 15.
are questioning why they should give up time and effort to actively
support the party when the government in power has moved farther
away from the people they represent. GMB members feel let
down by the government’s move away from a grassroots approach
to developing policy towards policies being set in isolation by
Downing Street officials.
We can likewise take issue with the idea that groups are truly rep-
resentative because they face the same management problem as most
other large organisations, namely how to create a system of effective
leadership that genuinely represents their members. Given the large
membership that many of these organisations boast, together with the
fact that they may be representing disparate communities (the elderly,
the disabled, unemployed etc.), group management may not always be
able to guarantee that the views of the membership are heard and con-
sidered. Moreover, pressure groups tend to be populated by the middle
class and educated, belying the idea that groups offer the chance for a
more inclusive and participatory politics. Schattschneider made
this observation in 1960: ‘The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the
heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent’ (1960:35). Even
in 1994, data revealed that cause groups attracted a predominately
educated middle-class membership: 35.3 percent of Friends of the
Earth members have a first degree, 18.9 percent have a postgraduate
degree, and 10 percent were still in higher education. This means that
64 percent of Friends of the Earth had experienced higher education
(Quoted in Grant, 2000:197). While it is certainly true that group
politics are a reflection, not the cause, of deeper social problems
that inhibit a more inclusive form of participation, and may be one
Instruments of Expression (I) 103
How the media report the activities of ‘outsider groups’ has generated
a whole literature of its own. The most important work has been pub-
lished by Daniel Hallin (1986) who created a model that sought to
explain how the American media reported the Vietnam war with refer-
ence to what he called ‘spheres of influence. (Figure 4.1)’ This model can
be easily applied to any particular political issue and any political
system. (For example model has been used to explain the role of the
media during the long period of authoritarian rule in Taiwan. See
Rawnsley, 2000; Rawnsley and Rawnsley, 2001). The ‘sphere of consen-
sus’ is here presented as a sacrosanct area that embraces core American
values – apple pie, white picket fences, the Star Spangled Banner. The
‘sphere of legitimate controversy’ allows and encourages criticism; it is
an area of debate about means rather than ends. For example, during the
Vietnam war debate was tolerated provided it focused on the methods of
waging the war, not on the aims or justification of the war itself. Entry to
the ‘sphere of deviance’ or ‘unacceptable controversy’ means that the
permitted boundaries have been crossed. Here we find discussion of ideas
that contradict the sphere of consensus, i.e. American values.
Sphere of
Consensus
Sphere of
Legitimate
Controversy
Sphere of
Deviance
The key to success, however, is promoting the right issue at the right
time; catching the public mood in an emotional upswing, especially
close to an election, can make all the difference. Consider one of the
most successful campaigns of all time, the creation of the British group
Shelter that campaigns on behalf of the homeless. Shelter was founded
in 1966 after an upsurge of public opinion and sympathy following
the harrowing TV docudrama, Cathy Come Home. More recently,
the Snowdrop campaign to ban handguns in Britain following the
Dunblane School massacre of 1996 was equally successful. With little
experience, the campaigners achieved their objectives within a year.
The most important reasons for the success of this campaign can
be identified as the emotional outpouring of sympathy following the
tragedy at Dunblane, and the media’s persistence in keeping the issue
on their agenda. The pro-gun lobby could not compete with the expo-
sure their opponents were attracting, nor with Britain’s emotional
climate.
The creation of Shelter and the Snowdrop campaign highlight the
importance of the relationship between the media and the group.
Publicity is difficult but essential, and in recognition of this, many
groups have professionalised their attempts to generate publicity and
court media attention, producing their own videos that are distributed
to news organisations. Greenpeace, for example,
with the media. This may mean giving the media finished films and
polished press releases that news organisations can easily fit into their
bulletins (part of the job of the professional is knowing how the media
works and giving them what they want in a format they can use).
Usually, it means providing the media with stories, information, reac-
tions to events and policy developments, and quotable sound-bites.
These professionals understand how the media work and advise their
clients on the how to conform to the agendas and routines of the
media (such as timing and format). This gives rise to the concept
of ‘pseudo events’ or media events that refers to the organisation of
activities by groups to coincide with the presumed requirements and
functions of the news organisations (Montgomery, 1989:217). For
example, good visuals and ‘publicity stunts’ will attract the attention of
television news organisations (Fathers For Justice dressing as Batman to
climb the outside walls of Buckingham Palace in 2004 received wide
and prominent coverage in the way a simple demonstration may not).
Political parties know this very well, and are especially attune to the
timing of events; they will usually stage press conferences at a the most
appropriate time in the day’s news-cycle to make sure they receive
maximum coverage – of course, it is much better if the conferences are
live and timed to coincide with the broadcast of a news programme.
Media relations are particularly important for outsider groups who
must appeal first to public opinion to influence the policy making
communities. Baggot’s research found 75 percent of insider groups
and 86 percent of outsider groups are in contact with the media at
least once a week; 50 percent are in daily contact (Baggot, 1992:20;
1995:183). Given the importance of the media, it is not surprising,
therefore, that many groups now employ the services of lobbying
consultants who can advise groups how to professionalise their
campaign. Professional lobbying is an American phenomenon; in
1945, less than 200 lobbyists were registered with Congress. Now
there are over 16,000. The weak party structure of the American
political system, the divisions between legislative and executive, the
strong committee system within Congress, the federal system of
political organisation, and the importance of financial contributions
by Political Action Committees (PAC), have made lobbying particu-
larly effective there. In Britain, however, the stronger party structure
and discipline, and the fact that the executive operates from within
the legislature, means that lobbyists are less successful than their
American cousins in targeting individual politicians, and head first
for the mandarins of Whitehall.
108 Political Communication and Democracy
Recently, there has been a noticeable movement away from the formal
organisation of pressure groups to the rapid proliferation of what have
been termed social movements (sometimes, ‘new’ social movements).12
Unlike pressure groups, the membership and organisation of social
movements tends to be fluid, with less emphasis on hierarchy and more
attention to the possibilities offered by decentralisation. Often, they are
composed of loose coalitions of like-minded activists who transcend tra-
ditional social, demographic, and even geographic boundaries.13 Their
character has been summarised by Byrne (1997:15):
that groups and protest movements now integrate the Internet into
their campaign strategies, often as a way to keep affiliated individuals
and groups, as well as media organisations around the world, posted
about their activities. Internet users are also encouraged to lobby via
email their government representatives, engage in on-line dialogue,
and donate money to a cause. The Internet is energising global social
movements; it is giving a reality to the idea of trans-border networks
and the creation of a global civil society. It is also offering new ways
for interested individuals to participate in politics and engage in politi-
cal communication (with elites and with each other) without leaving
the comfort of their own home. (See Appendix 1) We will return to the
relationship between the Internet and democratic politics in Chapter 7
which identifies and discusses some of the problems associated with
the more idealistic claims about its impact.
Direct action is a useful tool for those groups and movements that
find it difficult to generate media attention. As Jordan (1998:327) has
observed: ‘Protest without media coverage is like a mime performance
in the dark: possible, but fairly pointless.’ Group staging of events can
attract publicity that would otherwise have been denied them; they
become news by being the news (on social movements and their
relationship with the media, see Gitlin, 1980). This, however, is a risky
strategy, because the need to find ever more spectacular methods of
attracting media attention can undermine any sympathy they may
have nurtured: the more illegal and/or violent the methods of commu-
nication, the less legitimate the movement and its cause:
which decides how to cover the event, what images to show, and what
language to use to describe what is going on (constructing a ‘semblance’
of reality. Eldridge, 1993:4).20 A largely uneventful march can very easily
become a ‘riot’ in the media because the activities of a few can make
the difference between positive and negative publicity. The media will
focus on the dramatic and sensational, overlooking the routine and the
peaceful, which means everybody is tarred with the same brush:
For these reasons, direct action, especially illegal activities, are often
the final strategy of groups who are frustrated with conventional
methods of trying to persuade government of their cause:
Direct action that involves people who would otherwise not become
involved in politics is not confined to the developed world. As the
tantalising subtitle to this section demonstrates, even in parts of
the less developed world groups of people can mobilise to take on politi-
cal and, in this case, corporate power. Networks, community groups and
local voluntary associations regularly form to engage in direct action on
such basic life issues as access to water, local education amenities, and
sanitation (Baker, 1999). The US oil giant in question, Chevron-Texaco,
‘was forced to promise jobs, electricity and other improvements to
villages in the Niger Delta after 600, mainly Itsekiri tribeswomen
stormed the company’s huge Escravos oil terminal, bringing it to a
standstill for 10 days.’ The group was powerless in terms that it did not
possess any financial or political resources to fight the oil company:
What is clear from this evidence is that the agents and targets of
influence are broadening out, as are the methods used to exercise
that influence. In 1978, Verba, Nie and Kim offered a very succinct
definition of political participation as ‘those legal activities by private
citizens that are more or less directly aimed at influencing the selection
of governmental personnel and/or the actions they take’. As this
chapter has demonstrated, this is a narrow understanding of modern
political participation that may or may not be legal, and may not
necessarily aim to influence the government.
Deborah Stone (1997) brings the threads of this chapter together by
discussing the relationship between public opinion, group politics, and
legitimacy in a plural society. Stone’s work is important because she
analysed how discourse can determine how particular policies are seen
and accepted as more important than others. Hence, Stone examines
the narrative of policy making that decides not only the relevance of
issues, but also how susceptible they are to intervention by actors
within and outside government. If a ‘causal story’ demonstrates that
citizens can have a positive effect on policy, then it legitimises the
political behaviour that occurs outside government: citizen action can
make a difference. On the other hand, a narrative that emphasises
success only through the diligent work of committed individuals inside
government will deny citizen politics any legitimacy. Stone accepts the
competition inherent in pluralism, and believes that
The narrative can make all the difference between upholding the
existing order and legitimising attempts to undermine it, peacefully or
otherwise. An important addition to the growing literature on social
protest movements was published by Jane Rhodes in 1999. Rhodes
118 Political Communication and Democracy
Appendix 1
‘There was always something quaintly old-fashioned about the way Americans
embarked on the long process of choosing their next president. …Now, with
nine Democrats vying for the job of challenging George Bush in November
2004, the process has been brought bang up to date with the arrival of a poten-
tially revolutionary new tool: the on-line primary … [on the website] …
MoveOn.org.
Proclaiming itself as a new model for grassroots activism … the site has
attracted 1.4 million subscribers in the United States and another 700,000 over-
seas. About two thirds of the membership were galvanised by their opposition
to the war in Iraq. But they all share the goal of sending President Bush off into
the sunset.
That’s quite some constituency, which explains why all nine Democratic can-
didates have submitted statements and policy positions to the site and are
taking the result of the primary … in deadly earnest. … [T]he winner can expect
to raise an extra $30 million (£18 million) in campaign funds. …
… By the mid-term elections [in] November [2002], its Political Action
Committee had raised more than $4 million for progressive candidates across
the country. …’
(‘From flying toasters to the virtual search for a president’, The Independent,
26 June 2003:16.)
5
Instruments of Expression (II):
Referendums
So far, this book has addressed the allegation that popular participation
and interest in politics are declining in representative liberal-democracies.
We have also seen how a growing sense of powerlessness and dissatis-
faction with political parties has developed alongside an extraordinary
increase in extra-parliamentary activity that might channel its frustration
through parties, but is progressively more likely to be the source of social
group mobilisation and direct action. The key here is the feeling of disap-
pointment and irritation with representative democracy in particular; how
might citizens experience the kind of direct democracy that so engaged
the ancients?
Advocates of referendums believe that they offer a solution, enabling
citizens to encounter the power and enlightenment associated with
direct democracy (Lijphart, 1984).1 Referendums are valued because they
are apparently consistent with very important criteria of democratic
politics and political communication. They are dialogical in that they
encourage participation between elections, and are far more representa-
tive than opinion polls which rely on generalising from small samples
of respondents. Elections are useful in deciding which party should form
the government, but are limited as a method of consulting public
opinion, mainly because voters do not enjoy an opportunity to register
their views between elections, and because we are asked to vote for a
complete party package, not decide our preferences on individual issues.
Finally, many electoral systems allow governments to win by a minority
of the votes; can we therefore say that they are truly representative?
120
Instruments of Expression (II) 121
‘The only thing people hate more than being asked to decide
about things that are complicated is not being asked.’
The YES campaign reassured voters that the proposed change was
‘small and safe’, that most of Australia’s brightest leaders and
celebrities favoured the change and that retaining the status quo
would risk numerous embarrassments, such as an Australia ruled
by ‘King Charles III and Queen Camilla’. The NO campaign railed
against the ‘Chardonnay-swilling elites who had fomented a
republican plot … and that ‘real democrats’ … should vote NO.
The author of this article is not suggesting that voters were persuaded
by these ridiculous assertions. He does, however, draw out attention to
Instruments of Expression (II) 125
‘He’s the best orator in the country, he’s good at jokes and he goes
for gut arguments about neutrality which are self-defining for Swiss
identity,’ said one diplomat. ‘He tells them the UN will end banking
secrecy and send their boys overseas to fight. Compared to that, the
Yes campaign is rather stolid, all facts and detail’ (‘Will the Swiss
come out of their shell?’, The Guardian, 2 March 2002:14).10
mandate to hold referendums once the party won its landslide major-
ity of 179 parliamentary seats. The government sensed that the results
would favour devolution (though in Wales devolution was approved
by the slimmest majority). In contrast to the devolution referendums
held in 1979, Labour’s majority and the abolition of the 40 percent
turnout threshold (that defeated the proposed devolution in 1979)13
meant that this time, devolution was not an issue that would witness
a long and bitter campaign (unlike the referendum on Britain’s mem-
bership of the European Economic Community in 1975). Moreover,
between June 2001 and February 2002, 23 local referendums were
held throughout the UK to allow people to decide whether they
should have an elected mayor. Turnout has varied, with the highest
recorded in Berwick-Upon-Tweed (54 percent) and the lowest in
Sunderland (10 percent).14 Referendums – and referendums about local
issues that, in theory, should excite most interest – do not encourage
participation. On 8 November 2002, the second Blair government
faced a referendum, organised by the government of Gibraltar on the
proposal that Britain should share sovereignty of the island with Spain.
Reports hinted that those in favour of such an agreement felt intimi-
dated and cowed into staying silent, with no visible ‘Yes’ campaign
being organised. This was felt to be a response to the aftermath of the
last time a poll had been held on this issue in 1967, when there were
violent attacks directed against those who proposed a deal with Spain.
On the eve of the poll, Prime Minister Tony Blair was determined that
although not legally binding, the 2002 referendum would be a genuine
exercise in consultation: ‘We know what the result of the referendum
will be, but what people in Gibraltar should realise is that there can
be no change without their express consent’ (‘For Rock’s residents, a
clear choice: say no to Spain – or nothing’, The Guardian, 7 November
2002:3. 17,900 (98.97 percent of voters with a turnout of 88 percent)
voted No to joint sovereignty with Spain; just 187 voted Yes). Peter
Caruana, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister and architect of the No campaign
expressed his conviction that the referendum was a positive political
signal:
‘included the nicety of signed ballots and produced the dark burlesque
of no negative votes and only 228 nonvoters in an eligible electorate of
over 17 million’ (Ibid.:183).
Such abuses of the referendum to veil a totalitarian regime in
populism and legitimacy prompted a rush of criticisms, most famously
from the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee who is said to have
described referendums as potentially devices of ‘demagogues and
dictators’:
But does this suggest that we should, like Clement Attlee (and Margaret
Thatcher after him who quoted Attlee in opposition to the 1975
referendum17), dismiss all referendums as the instrument of totalitari-
anism? As Philip Goodhart has observed, ‘Certainly some referenda
have been held by dictators but Hitler’s use of the referendum
to further totalitarian ends provides no more proof that referendums
help would-be dictators that Stalin’s use of the Supreme Soviet to
support his cult of personality discredits Parliamentary democracy.
Both a referendum and a representative assembly can be twisted by an
unscrupulous leader’ (Goodhart, 1971:80).
Other critics of referendums observe that Britain is a representative,
not a direct, democracy. The system works because voters elect
Members of Parliament who are in a position to inform themselves of
an issue, debate it, call on expert opinion, and then vote on behalf of
their constituents. Referendums are thus anathema to representative
democracy, and efforts to introduce an ideal direct democracy are mis-
guided: citizens do not want it; they do not want the trouble of having
to discuss, debate and vote on minor pieces of legislation. Is the cure
for the ills of democracy – especially apathy, low voter turnouts and
disinterest in politics – really more democracy? For some, referendums
are merely a way for politicians to avoid having to make difficult
decisions by passing that responsibility over to the electorate. Edmund
Burke was particularly scathing about referendums: ‘Your representa-
tive owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement’, he wrote,
‘and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your
opinion’ (‘To the Electors of Bristol … on Thursday the third of
November, 1774’, Works, vol. I, London: George Bell and Sons,
1902:447). This judgement was even upheld in an American courtroom
in 1971:
arduous process and the low success rate, the Swiss continue to
launch initiatives. The reason is that the Swiss claim to recognise the
educative and communicative character of these votes: they place on
the political agenda issues that may not otherwise receive any inter-
est; and they stimulate debate, media attention, participation. And
yet …
One of the most important factors in deciding whether referen-
dums do encourage participation is thought to be their frequency.
There is no empirical evidence to support the idea that citizens of
democracies prefer to communicate their political preferences
through referendums than through other methods; in fact, it is possi-
ble to identify the influence of the Law of Diminishing Returns – the
more one has of something, the less satisfaction it yields – because
there appears to be a direct correlation between the frequency of ref-
erendums and falling turnout of the electorate (Aubert, 1978:44–5).21
Even in Switzerland, referendum capital of the world (from 2000 to
2003, a staggering 30 constitutional initiatives were launched in
Switzerland), turnout is hardly spectacular: In a national referendum
in February 2003, 70.3 percent voted in favour of extending the
range of issues on which the Swiss could have a say. However, that
was 70.3 percent of a 28 percent turnout. Even in referendums on
issues of national importance, such as the ending of Swiss neutrality
and membership of the United Nations in March 2002, only
58 percent bothered to vote.22
If the same proportion of citizens are casting their vote in a refer-
endum as in an election, is it possible to argue that referendums are
substantively more democratic than other forms of participation?
Table 5.1 below compares the average turnout of elections and refer-
endums in 12 democracies between 1945 and 1993 and finds that in
all the cases (except Australia and Belgium where voting is compul-
sory 23) turnout for referendums is actually significantly lower than
for elections.24 When combined with the possibility that voters will
be faced with not one, but several often very technical questions on
a referendum ballot, the ensuing voter fatigue is hardly surprising.
For example, Zimmerman (2001:15) reveals that, in 1991, voters in
St. Ann (Missouri) were asked to vote on 68 separate propositions for
levying or increasing taxes on local business in one referendum.
The figures presented in Table 5.1 (referring to those political systems
that do not have compulsory voting laws) have three possible explana-
tions: (i) there is a widespread apathy against voting in general, and
referendums are not the solution to this general problem. This is highly
136 Political Communication and Democracy
Australia * 95 90 –5
Austria 93 64 –29
Belgium* 92 92 0
Denmark 86 74 –12
France 77 72 –5
Ireland 73 58 –15
Italy 90 74 –16
New Zealand 90 60 –30
Norway 81 78 –3
Sweden 85 67 –18
Switzerland 61 45 –16
United Kingdom 77 65 –12
unlikely; that more citizens turn out to vote for candidates standing for
election than for referendums challenges the assumption of apathy.
Therefore, there must be something wrong with referendums as a device
for political communication and popular empowerment. (ii) In deciding
not to vote in a referendum, citizens might be expressing their dissatis-
faction with the amount of information provided (they may have
insufficient, or even too much, information to make a sensible decision),
or they may genuinely find it difficult to make a decision on what may
be a very technical problem. This means there is a breakdown in political
communications; here referendums are discouraging, rather than
encouraging participation, and sponsors are not providing the kind of
information that makes it possible for people to make a rational decision
on an issue. This leads to the third proposition: (iii) If (ii) is correct, then
perhaps the low turnout for referendums indicates that citizens are, con-
trary to popular belief, relatively content with the system of representa-
tive democracy. It is possible to argue that abstainers are behaving
rationally because they prefer to allow more informed citizens – the
legislators they elect – to vote on their behalf. This brings us full circle to
the notion that the breakdown in representative democracy is little more
than an urban myth. Moreover, since Butler and Ranney published their
data in 1994, the turnout in many referendums has been higher than in
national elections. In the 1995 Quebec referendum, for example, turnout
Instruments of Expression (II) 137
vote on whether it should change the side of the road on which they
drive. The result was clear: 83 percent who voted communicated their
preference for remaining on the same side, but the government chose
to take no notice of the result and legislated for change anyway. Such
blatant disregard for the dialogical and consultative process that refer-
endums are thought to facilitate raises an important question that may
deter participation and encourage apathy: Is asking for an opinion and
then ignoring it as bad, if not worse than, not asking for an opinion at
all? Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that advisory referendums
will solve the problems of lack of interest in political participation:
would voters decide it is a complete waste of their time to take part in a
vote that may not result in change? Irish opposition to the Nice Treaty
was critical of having to participate in a second referendum in 2002
only one year after Irish voters had voted no (54 percent to 46 percent
on a 34 percent turnout). ‘What part of No don’t you understand,’
asked an anti-Nice poster (‘Irish keep Europe guessing on enlargement’,
The Guardian, 12 October 2002:4).
Critics of referendums opine that they undermine the democratic
process because they encourage the tyranny of the majority (Butler &
Ranney, 1994. For an alternative perspective, see Zimmerman (1986),
and Cronin (1989). For example, between 1978 and 1998, 13 anti-
homosexual initiatives were held in seven American states (Donovan
et al. 1999).26 In a study of how Americans voted in referendums on
civil rights, Barbara Gamble (1997:262) reached a disturbing conclu-
sion: ‘ … the record shows that American voters readily repeal existing
civil rights protections and enthusiastically enact laws that bar their
elected representatives from passing new ones.’ However, at the same
time it is possible to find evidence that they can encourage ‘tyranny of
the minority’. For example, referendums were held in Slovenia on
23 March 2003 on the issue of membership of the European Union and
NATO. The results of both were binding on the government (the refer-
endum results supported membership of both organisations). Turnout,
however, was only 45 percent – far below the normal 70 percent for
general elections. Is such a prospect – 45 percent of Slovenes deciding
their country’s future – really that democratic?
Low participation in referendums means that the political society is
vulnerable to what is termed a ‘false majority’, as demonstrated by
the 1973 Northern Ireland referendum to decide whether that terri-
tory should remain part of the UK. The Catholic community was
encouraged by its leaders to boycott the poll, meaning that only
58.7 percent of those eligible to vote did so. Hence, a 98.9 percent
Instruments of Expression (II) 139
140
Political Communications and Democratisation 141
from Partly Free to Not Free. Only 2 countries – Kenya and Sierra
Leone – registered a positive category shift in 2003 from Not Free to
Partly Free.’ Karlekar, 2004:2.) Critics of the Russian government under
President Vladimir Putin, for example, observe there a gradual reversal
of media liberalisation and a growing concentration of power over the
media in the Kremlin that for his detractors echo the character of com-
munist control prior to 1991. Government raids on the offices of news-
papers and television stations critical of the president and the arrest of
prominent journalists testify to the continued decline in Russian media
freedom (there is particular concern that the government is distorting
reporting of its war in Chechnya). In our rush to reprimand Putin,
however, we should not overlook the fact that this situation is partly
because the relationship between the media, government and markets
was never satisfactorily resolved after the hurried fall of communism in
Russia (see Mickiewicz, 2000).
The most disturbing aspect of such changes of direction is that
they are not confined (as one might expect) to political systems that
have recent often-traumatic experiences of democratisation or where
the consolidation of the democratic culture remains fragile. In 2003,
Freedom House classified Italy as ‘partly free’ because of the obvious
concentration there of media ownership and political power under
Prime Minister Silvio Berlosconi (Statham, 1996). Similarly, Freedom
House described Thailand as ‘partly free’ because it accused Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of trying to exercise political influence
and control over the media through censorship and the systematic
harassment of journalists and editors.
The least free nations in 2003 according to Freedom House were
Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Libya, Myanmar (Burma),4
Turkmenistan, Cuba and North Korea. In these political systems, the
media are monopolised by the state and serve as agents of government
propaganda.
However, as this book has emphasised there is more to political com-
munications than the media, and the Freedom House rankings tell
only a partial story. Analyses of political systems must also scrutinise
such indicators as the freedom of assembly and mobilisation, the
ability of trades unions and other groups to represent public interests
on a collective basis, and whether the articulation of public opinion
through referendums or elections are genuine attempts at popular con-
sultation or a crude instrument of legitimacy with little real value. The
eight countries identified as having the least free media are also among
the least free in terms of the other methods of political communica-
Political Communications and Democratisation 145
1. The press must be guided by the Party’s basic theory, basic line, and
basic guideline, and keep politics, ideology and action in conformity
with the Party Central Committee.
2. The press must firmly keep to the standpoint of the Party, adhere
to principle, and take clear-cut stand on what to promote and what
to oppose on cardinal issues of right and wrong.
3. The press must adhere to the party’s guideline with stress on
propaganda by positive examples, sing the praises of people’s great
achievements, and conduct the correct supervision of public
Political Communications and Democratisation 151
opinion that should help the party and state to improve work
and the style of leadership, solve problems, enhance unity, and
safeguard stability.
4. The press must … hold patriotism, collectivism and socialism on
high, and use best things to arm, direct and mould the people.
Here, President Jiang affirmed beyond doubt that the Chinese media
are, and must remain part of the political system; they must conform
to party lines, directives and requirements, and they have a respons-
ibility to work with the system, not against it.
Ownership was likewise central to the authoritarian control of
the media in Taiwan. Until the beginning of liberalisation and democ-
ratisation in 1987, the Kuomintang (KMT, Nationalist party) owned
four national daily newspapers, the government owned two, and the
military five, but the implied separation of ownership was deceptive
because of the overlapping character of party/state/military political
authority that defined the martial law era in Taiwan. A similar struc-
ture managed the three oldest national television stations, Taiwan
Television Company (TTV, tai-shi), China Television Company (CTV,
zhong-shi) and Chinese Television System (CTS, hua-shi). Again, the
government, party and military owned these stations, so immediately
we can observe a pattern of media ownership that does not hide politi-
cal influence and motives. Taiwan’s media were ‘advised’ by govern-
ment agencies (especially the Government Information Office, GIO)
about which stories they could cover and how, so that the media
might work towards meeting the regime’s primary objectives, namely
rapid economic development and the reunification of China on the
KMT’s terms.
However, the KMT’s control of political communication in Taiwan
extended far beyond the media as a lively article by Chen Yanhao
published in the radical opposition journal, Current Monthly (Nuan
zazhi) in 1984 makes apparent:
do not violate the constitution. They are merely the subjective views
held by those in power and run counter to society’s contemporary
trends and the natural inclinations of our people (quoted in
Rawnsley & Rawnsley, 2001:55).
and United Daily News (lian-he bao) were members of the KMT Central
Standing Committee (zhong-yang wei-yuan-yui). ‘To a certain extent, the
obligation to be profitable, the need to sell, incited the private papers
to distance themselves from propaganda, while remaining within
limits acceptable to the regime, in order not to end up being closed
down’ (Batto, 2004:65). Many publications were closed down, usually
through overt political and judicial methods, but the Public Opinion
News, a political magazine that was critical of the government in the
1950s, was closed by the KMT’s decision to invest in it enormous sums
of capital. Once it enjoyed a controlling interest, it was easy for the
KMT to engineer the journal’s downfall. The magazine was forced out
of business by the skilful manipulation of investment concerns, not by
overt government pressure or legal mechanisms.
In addition to creating institutional structures of control, many
governments in the non-democratic world subject media and journal-
ists to often legal cycles of repression and abuse, and Freedom House
remains worried by the constant intimidation of journalists by politi-
cians and criminals in clear violation of human rights regimes. In
particular, Guatemala, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Rwanda, Tunisia
and Guinea were considered particularly susceptible to election-related
political intimidation and violence against journalists in 2003
(Karlekar, 2004:5). Non-democratic political systems are inclined to
view the media either as instruments of state control or as adversaries –
there is little room for the media to play a role between these poles:
you are either with us or against us. If you decide you are against us,
then you are by definition an enemy of the state and therefore the
state is free to use any methods it may choose to destroy you.
Journalists are especially vulnerable targets as they ferret out and
expose the information certain members of the political world would
rather keep quiet. The fact that journalists are deemed such a threat to
the status quo that they deserve assassination is indicative of their
perceived influence on public opinion. In 1986, Iraq’s Revolutionary
Command Council issued Order Number 840 which imposed the
death penalty on anyone who criticised the president. This is thought
to have been the pretext for the execution of hundreds of journalists in
Iraq. In Russia, too, there have been attempts to link the deaths of
prominent journalists to the political establishment. On 9 July 2004,
Forbes’s Russian editor, Paul Klebnikov, was murdered in Moscow, and
two successive editors-in-chief of Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye newspaper
in the Volga region were likewise killed in suspicious circumstances. By
October 2004, 11 Russian journalists were murdered in contract-style
154 Political Communication and Democracy
killings and four others have died because of other violent, work-
related circumstances during President Putin’s time in office. At the
time of writing, the police have not yet brought anyone to justice for
these crimes.
By 2000, when the KMT finally lost the presidency in Taiwan and
the political system supposedly entered the consolidation phase of
transition, many journalists still reported that they were under surveil-
lance, their offices were searched, and their telephones (and those of
family and friends) were bugged. For example, in October 2000
members of the Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office searched the offices
and homes of journalists working for the China Times Express. They
were searching for information leaked to the media detailing the level
of corruption within the National Security Bureau. Journalists working
for the newspaper complained that they, and their friends and fami-
lies, were under close surveillance and that their telephone conversa-
tions were monitored. The prosecutors justified their behaviour by
referring to ‘national security’, a handy catch-all term that democratic
and non-democratic governments regularly use to justify the suppres-
sion of basic civil liberties. They claimed the leaked information could
have included ‘highly sensitive state secrets’ that threatened the lives
of Bureau members. Yet all too frequently, the intimidation is non-
political and extra-legal and originates in the criminal underworld.
Offices of Jimmy Lai’s Taiwan enterprise, Next Magazine have been
searched by prosecutors and regularly vandalised by hired thugs
following the magazine’s exposure of criminal activity. These episodes
resonate with the ‘white terror’ of Taiwan’s martial law period between
1950 and 1987 when hundreds of reporters, writers and editors were
purportedly harassed, interrogated and often jailed on the pretext of
threatening ‘national security’ (Chao & Myers, 1998; Rawnsley, 2000;
Rawnsley & Rawnsley 2001). General Park Chung-hee’s military coup
in South Korea in 1961 justified the absence of civil liberties there by
referring to the threat from North Korea and the need for economic
development. Like their KMT counterparts in Taiwan, the South
Korean government believed that it would defeat communism, but
doing so required extraordinary means and extra-democratic political
organisation.
Other governments use laws to influence the media. The problem
for those on the receiving end is that most of these laws do not make
explicit their intentions; the most common technique of exercising
authority is to leave the laws as vague as possible to allow their ex-
pedient interpretation. This is particularly worrying in the context of
the global war on terror; human rights advocates worry that the
Political Communications and Democratisation 155
towns and cities for work in the factories. This urbanisation encourages
socialisation, that is personal interaction (industrialisation tends to
oblige families to live and work close together) and thus facilitates the
circulation of information and education. Urbanisation, education
(hence increasing literacy rates that have an effect upon the circulation
of books and newspapers) and generally poor working conditions
should, all things being equal, create a more opinionated, politically
interested and better-informed population who then organise for
greater worker representation.12 In other words, economic develop-
ment facilitates political education via (interpersonal and impersonal)
communication, thereby nourishing political activism and participa-
tion. Lipset then advances his argument one stage further by referring
to citizenship: communication and education, he announces, also
instil democratic values. Education allows for the spread of political
and social tolerance, while increasing levels of wealth and education
de-radicalise the working class so its members become less susceptible
to dangerous anti-democratic ideas. Economic development also plays
a part in creating autonomous social organisations that are not only a
check on the government, but also increase popular political participa-
tion, thereby helping to build civil society. Hence political communi-
cation provides the elements of improvability and civic duty that were
central to classical liberalism.
Given their basic premises, it is not surprising that many commen-
tators used these ideas to explain international communication from
the 1940s until the 1960s (when ‘cultural imperialism’ became fash-
ionable). Modernisation theory does correspond to the paternalism
associated with apologists for colonialism, in that the advocates of
modernisation argued that communication could transform a tradi-
tional (that is, ‘backward’) society into a modern (‘western-like’) one.
This was possible because communications and the media provide a
means of popular socialisation, extend the horizons of people, and
therefore persuade them of the benefits of transforming their
lifestyles. ‘The diffusion of new ideas and information stimulates the
peasant to want to be a free-holding farmer … the farmer’s wife to
want to stop bearing children, the farmer’s daughter to wear a dress
and do her hair’ (Lerner, 1963 quoted in Shramm, 1965). Never-
theless, communications may add to knowledge, but they do not
necessarily contribute to encounter and experience, as critics of the
Internet revolution have observed (see Chapter 7). Communications
media may, and sometimes do open up genuine possibilities for
better international democratisation and co-operative regimes, but
160 Political Communication and Democracy
Liberalisation, then, does not roll back the regime’s power structure; it
merely opens the system to enable limited independent activity and
participation by the media as well as the whole citizenry or segments
of it. It represents an expansion of activity by and within civil society.
While it presents the possibility of future challenges to the continuing
system of state control, the essential power structure remains intact.
Hence liberalisation may be a conscious act by a regime when under
162 Political Communication and Democracy
power of this civil society was extraordinary: 1987–89 saw (in Hungary
as well as the Soviet Union) the rapid growth of political activity by
organisations standing outside the Communist party apparatus that
campaigned on behalf of a raft of national, environmental and social
issues. In 1988, an increasing number of enterprises and local authori-
ties confronted protests against environmental pollution. Direct
popular action such as letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and
rallies – activities previously illegal or strictly stage-managed by the
Communist party – helped to put the environment on the political
and social agendas. Perhaps most significantly, the end of the 1980s
saw a wave of nationalism in the various Soviet republics; groups in
Russia and elsewhere in the Soviet Union formed and campaigned for
national self-determination, an issue that always generates emotion
and provides the foundation for passionate political communication.
Some of these nationalist groups were chauvinistic and used extreme
methods to articulate their opinions. However, we may ask is extrem-
ism the price paid during the formative years of transition, unleashing
public forces that had been subdued for decades? The period was one
of learning and self-discovery for civil society and the government, as
both wrestled with the experience of new freedoms and sought to
balance the need (and right) for autonomous political activity with the
maintenance of public order. A decree on meetings and demonstra-
tions promulgated in July 1988 demonstrated this dilemma most
clearly. This affirmed the constitutional right to demonstrate, but also
permitted local soviets to prohibit political meetings considered con-
trary to the constitution or a threat to public order (Decree of 28 July
1988, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 2 August 1988). The more con-
servative elements within the Communist party tolerated increasing
activity by civil society organisations provided the party was able to
monitor and control it. Freedom, they believed, should not mean
anarchy.
Allowing a modicum of media independence can be a politically
advantageous strategy, for it lends an authoritarian state a degree of
legitimacy especially if, like Taiwan, it has a democratic constitution
(‘temporarily suspended’ for the duration of the ‘communist rebellion’
in China). Difficulties arise when the media decide to overstep these tol-
erated boundaries and begin to agitate and organise a formal opposition
to the regime, as samizdat media did in communist Eastern Europe and
as many political journals did in authoritarian Taiwan (Berman, 1992).
Sometimes, journals were little more than ‘recesses’ of ‘journalistic cover
to smooth the transition to a democratic political system’ (Berman,
164 Political Communication and Democracy
All in all, if it were not for the changes within the Catholic Church
and the resulting actions of the Church against authoritarianism
[since the 1960s], fewer third wave transitions to democracy would
have occurred and many that did occur would have occurred later.
In country after country the choice between democracy and
authoritarianism became personified in the conflict between
the cardinal and the dictator. Catholicism was second only to
Political Communications and Democratisation 167
2. Democratisation
fear, not easy to dispel in the short run, and the cumulative effect of
fifteen years of concentrated government programming. After
hearing the same message for years, with no alternative voice,
any television audience internalizes the message, even given initial
resistance. Persistence, reinforced by threats can finally prove
persuasive (Ibid.).
uprising). In 1990, the national media of the Cote d’Ivoire did not
report the growing pressures for democratisation and the increasing
number of student demonstrations there: citizens of that troubled
nation had to tune into the BBC World Service to learn of these events.
Similarly, the Chinese learned of the full scale of events in Tiananmen
Square on 4 June 1989 from the BBC World Service; reporters there
broadcast news and information of events out to the world, and the
broadcasts were then beamed back into China. The demonstrators
demanded that the BBC stringer, Simon Long, ‘Tell the world,’ and he
did. But in doing so, he also told the Chinese people themselves of
what was going on as wall-posters and loudspeakers relayed BBC
reports. This became more important as the authorities began what the
then Head of the Chinese Service, Elizabeth Wright, described as ‘one
of the most complete disinformation campaigns in the history of the
Chinese Communist party’ (quoted in Rawnsley, 1996a:140). When in
1992 foreign media in Thailand reported that the government was
using violence to suppress popular demonstrations, international com-
munications offered a method of channelling that information and
news back into the country (McCargo, 2003:119), a process repeated in
Burma when the BBC Burmese-language service supposedly encouraged
the brief ‘democracy summer’ of 1988. The lesson is that it is almost
impossible to seal hermetically one’s borders from radio and TV signals
and, as the next chapter will show, the impact of the Internet.18
This global flow of information, combined with the natural human
curiosity, has profound political consequences, for it has contributed
to a ‘demonstration effect’ that has been particularly important in the
Third Wave transitions (especially in Eastern Europe. See O’Neil,
1998:12; also Whitehead, 1996:4). By the mid 1980s, the rapid expan-
sion in communications technology, allowing for the regional or
global reception of television broadcasts, meant that ‘the image of a
“worldwide democratic revolution” undoubtedly had become a reality
in the minds of political and intellectual leaders in most countries of
the world’ (Huntington, 1991:102). The demonstration effect indicates
how media-users in one society discover that people in another can
have the capacity to depose an authoritarian government, inspiring
not only objectives and techniques, but also political confidence. The
demonstration effect is most pronounced when the countries ex-
periencing democratisation are geographically proximate, suggesting
that the influence of the media is in inverse proportion to distance. So,
Albanians watched the East European revolutions in the 1980s on tele-
vision broadcasts from neighbouring Yugoslavia and Italy. Student
172 Political Communication and Democracy
Optimists claim that the western media helped East Germans recognise
their plight, thus undermining popular support for, and the legitimacy
of, the communist regime there. This is a pattern of media con-
sumption that observers say is repeated throughout the Third Wave
(Huntington, 1991), and beyond. For example, in March 2005, govern-
ments surrounding Krygyzstan which experienced what became
known as a ‘tulip revolution’ feared the spread of democratic ideas and
practices. Some of Krygyzstan’s neighbours regulated coverage of
events there or simply reasserted control over their media to prevent
the possibility of the ‘demonstration effect’ (The Independent, 25 March
2005).
3. Consolidation
importance as they communicate the ‘rules of the game’ and assess the
on-going performance of democracy. To facilitate consolidation the
media must encourage full and fair debate about the development of
the country following the transition and help set the agenda for the
further evolution of the democratic culture. Representation, participa-
tion and legitimacy all presuppose the creation of channels for the
expression of public opinion and the availability of high levels of infor-
mation. Systems of communications, and especially the media, can
help to cultivate the democratic culture by socialising both masses and
elites into the process. If, as in Spain, audiences see peaceful and civil
interactions between elites on opposite sides of the political spectrum,
the standards expected of democratic procedures may be embedded
within society. However, we must acknowledge that the impact of the
media is not always so positive. If television shows political elites
engaging in vicious disruptive behaviour, as in Russia in the 1990s and
in coverage of Taiwan’s legislature, it is possible that society will
polarise further. Again, this drives us towards the conclusion that polit-
ical communication is inseparable from the political system in which
it operates, for consolidation and socialisation are less dependent on
the media and other forms of political communication than on the
behaviour and attitudes of political elites themselves.
The consolidation phase is often scarred by what we might term
‘media wars’ – a term sometimes reserved for explaining what hap-
pened in Hungary following the collapse of communism there – that
rage over the control of access to newspapers and broadcasting
systems. In other words, democratisation, implying the demise of
state control, rarely solves the problems of ownership; if anything it
can create problems as an open playing field generates new public
spaces exposed to both political and commercial competition. The
concentration of ownership and control in a few hands (Berlusconi,
Murdoch, Thaksin, Putin) is a problem facing transition systems that
may have sculptured other core institutions of democratic politics,
and is particularly acute during early elections (Hungary in the early
1990s, for example. See Körïsényi, 1992). Moreover, the comprehen-
sive privatisation of the press – isn’t democracy about distancing
such institutions as the press as far as possible from the state? – has
resulted in fierce competition between newspapers for readers and
therefore for survival. All too often, transitional systems sacrifice
the democratic ideal for profit and commercial growth, as demon-
strated by, among other cases, Hungary (Sükösd, 2000) and Taiwan
(Rawnsley, 2004). Sometimes, it is necessary for the state to rein in
174 Political Communication and Democracy
the media, to put an end to the anarchism that may characterise the
early days of a democratic transition, and reassert authority over
communications (for example, in Poland during President Lech
Walesa’s term in office. See Karpinski 1995). Democracy is as much
about responsibility as about freedom and only a balance of the two
will encourage the consolidation of the democratic political culture.
This is reflected in a major research project undertaken by Stephen
White and Sarah Oats who found ‘considerable’ support in post-
communist Russia for the idea that the media should support the
state rather than follow their own political and economic agendas
(White & Oats, 2003:33).
At this point in the discussion, it is necessary to issue a caveat. This
approach – liberalisation, democratisation and consolidation – does
not represent a strict sequence of change. Rather, in the transformation
of political society, the stages may temporally overlap. In Taiwan, for
example, democratisation of the political system began in 1987.
However, the transmission and reception of cable television remained
illegal until 1993, while call-in radio stations were only legalised in
1994 and the government did not abolish until 1999 Publication Laws
that controlled the press via strict licensing regulations (Rawnsley &
Rawnsley, 2001). Hence, full liberalisation occurred only after substan-
tive political change. Similarly, Spain experienced a partial liberalisa-
tion of the press in 1966 while the regime maintained its grip on
television until the transition to democracy had reached a relatively
advanced stage. The Polish communications system had experienced a
series of changes since the 1950s that had alternately relaxed and tight-
ened restrictions. By the time communism collapsed in Hungary, its
systems of political communication had experienced a long period of
liberalisation that might be traced back to the 1956 uprising. On the
other hand, liberalisation – the suspension of press censorship- preceded
Brazil’s democratisation. It is clear, however, that successful democrati-
sation processes do depend on the foundations of media liberalisation,
and it is difficult to imagine how democratisation might occur and
flourish without this liberalisation to create the conditions for free and
independent political communication.
Conclusions
the world wide web, then US Secretary of State George Schultz believed
that ‘new technology’ would play a crucial role in the Cold War:
programmes back into Serbia. This also helped the station reach
beyond Belgrade as the BBC retransmitted the signal via satellite to a
network of local stations throughout the country. Within six months,
B92 was broadcasting on 30 radio stations (Ferdinand, 2000:14;
Shapiro, 1999:7–9). Then in 1999, when B92 broadcast its first reports
of NATO’s bombing of Serbia, Milosevic ordered the arrest of the
station’s editor-in-chief and transformed B92 into a government
radio station. Undeterred, journalists again availed themselves of the
Internet to broadcast as ‘Free B92’ for five months, with its website
stored on computers in Holland for safekeeping until the Milosevic
regime was brought down in October 2000.5 This episode demonstrates
that groups learn quickly how to use the Internet in times of crisis
and that global connectivity can provide not only a platform for com-
municating to an international audience, but also security in the face
of political competition. Computers, along with other new ICTs such
as cell phones, allow for a greater degree of physical mobility than
was ever afforded to other media, such as television cameras or radio
transmitters. Moreover, these technologies also allow an unprece-
dented mobility of information that helps its security, for data can be
stored, transmitted, broadcast, or deleted anywhere in the world at the
touch of a button without ‘hard’ copies every having to pass through
anyone’s fingers.
In addition to the possibilities of empowerment through access to
information, the Internet is also capable of improving our manage-
ment of information and creating the conditions for what is now
called ‘e-government’. Citizens in political systems that have taken
the time to invest resources in e-government are now able at the
click of a button to access information about legislation and the
process of making it, thus bypassing the media and their editorial
judgements about political life. Thus the Internet opens new and
exciting opportunities to encourage the level and intensity of
popular accountability and government transparency that is the core
of representative democratic theory. The more information we can
access – at low financial, spatial and temporal cost – the more
informed our judgements about the political process. It is remark-
able that China’s government, infamous for the controls it imposes
on Internet use, is one of the most visible and transparent on the
web. Chinese are encouraged to fill and submit their tax returns,
search for employment, apply for import and export licences,
conduct their banking and even obtain an education (the Ministry
of Education has recently opened one of the first on-line schools in
182 Political Communication and Democracy
use it, are spending less time watching television, reading books,
listening to the radio or engaged in social activity in the household
in comparison with individuals who do not (or who no longer) have
Internet access in their household.’10 Castells describes research con-
ducted in the United States that discovered similar results, and even
quotes Robert Putnam’s now classic account of the decline of disen-
gagement from American political life, Bowling Alone (2000:170): ‘We
also know that early users of Internet technology were no less (and
no more) civically engaged than anyone else. By 1999 three inde-
pendent studies … had confirmed that once we control for the
higher educational level of Internet users, they are indistinguishable
from no-users when it comes to civic engagement.’
So, the jury is still out on the impact that the Internet may or may not
have on the scale and quality of democratic participation; arguments on
both sides are equally persuasive. Maybe we are confronted with the
same dilemma that the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai faced when asked
in the 1960s to comment on the 1789 French Revolution replied, ‘It is
too early to tell’. Nevertheless, I think that we are now far from the orig-
inal criticisms, amplified by Shapiro, which suggested Internet use would
encourage alienation and atomisation. Our understanding of the
Internet has sufficiently adjusted to appreciate that ‘online sociability’ in
virtual communities ‘is a fact of everyday life’ (Feenberg and Bakardjieva,
2004:37), and the evidence presented by Castells and others demon-
strates the opportunity offered by the Internet to engage within
extended networks. These reinforce or complement, not replace, existing
social relations. Although he missed this in the first edition of his book,
Rheingold was aware by the time the second edition was published in
2000 that pre-existing social relations are important for understanding
the impact of virtual communities. ‘One major difference between what
I know now and what I knew when I wrote the first edition of this book
is that I’ve learned that virtual communities won’t actually emerge
or grow … simply by adding a forum or chatroom to a web page’
(Rheingold, 2000:341). Hence, the Internet’s contribution to the organi-
sation and activity of political parties and interest groups, and to the
formation of ‘rhizomatic politics’ as experienced most visibly by new
social movements across the globe. Group politics are facilitated, not
created, by the Internet.
No nation has yet discovered a way to import the world’s goods and
services while stopping foreign ideas at the border. It is in our inter-
est that the next generation in China be engaged by the Informa-
tion Age … For this we determine the US feels that the Internet and
information technology is a way in which democratic ideas will
flourish and assist in managing the change that will come some day
(Baker, 1991/1992: 16–17).
Baker was followed by Gordon C. Chang who, in his 2001 book pre-
dicting The Coming Collapse of China, noted that ‘the regime may
Towards a New Democratic Political Communication 189
Empowerment or alienation?
Source: http://nua.com/surveys/how_many_online/index.html
Iceland 99.0
South Korea 74.0
Denmark 69.1
Sweden 68.9
Australia 65.9
United States 63.9
Canada 63.5
Finland 63.0
Hong Kong 61.9
Japan 61.3
Singapore 59.7
New Zealand 59.2
Austria 56.8
United Kingdom 55.1
Israel 51.2
Germany 50.8
Italy 44.0
Malaysia 43.4
France 42.3
Chile 32.1
Slovakia 29.6
Hungary 29.2
Poland 26.9
Bahrain 21.0
Peru 16.0
Russia 14.6
Lithuania 13.3
Mexico 13.2
Brazil 12.2
Argentina 12.0
South Africa 10.9
Croatia 10.86
Saudi Arabia 10.0
192 Political Communication and Democracy
Qatar 9.1
China 7.7
Anguilla 7.2
Philippines 7.0
Indonesia 5.4
Colombia 4.4
India 3.5
Egypt 3.2
Namibia 2.3
Botswana 2.1
Kenya 1.5
Guatemala 1.4
Morocco 1.2
Swaziland 1.2
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.1
Cuba 1.0
Ghana 0.9
Pakistan 0.7
Zimbabwe 0.7
El Salvador 0.6
Honduras 0.6
Iran 0.6
Angola 0.5
Georgia 0.5
Cote d’Ivoire 0.4
Vietnam 0.4
Albania 0.3
Azerbaijan 0.3
Gambia 0.3
Haiti 0.3
Libya 0.3
Malawi 0.3
Moldova 0.3
Paraguay 0.3
Syria 0.3
Eritrea 0.2
Lesotho 0.2
Madagascar 0.2
Nepal 0.2
Rwanda 0.2
Uganda 0.2
Zambia 0.2
Bhutan 0.1
Guinea 0.1
Laos 0.1
Towards a New Democratic Political Communication 193
Mozambique 0.1
Niger 0.1
Sudan 0.1
Burundi 0.09
Cameroon 0.08
Yemen 0.08
Cambodia 0.07
Nigeria 0.07
Central African Republic 0.05
Iraq 0.05
Chad 0.04
Turkmenistan 0.04
Ethiopia 0.03
Burma 0.02
Bangladesh 0.01
Congo, Democratic Republic of the 0.01
Congo, Republic 0.01
Liberia 0.01
Somalia 0.002
Source: Based on figures of population and absolute Internet penetration available from the
CIA Factbook.
Tables 7.1 and 7.2 illustrate the existence of a clear global digital
divide, with many developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and
South-East Asia excluded from the information age because of their
poverty. In Southern Africa especially, the widespread lack of access
to electricity and telephones makes the up-take of Internet techno-
logies difficult, if not impossible. Franda (2002:12) reveals that in
Southern Africa in 1999 only 20 percent of households had electricity,
while Mark Davies, founder of the American company BusyInternet,
described how in 2002 ‘There are 240,000 telephone lines in Ghana for
19 million people. … It takes about seven dials to make some phone
calls go through, just across town’ (quoted in ‘Young American helps
put Africa on Internet map,’ Taipei Times, 24 August 2002:19).13
One should also note that 87 percent of websites worldwide are
published in English only (Castells, 2001:235), meaning that language
and literacy – again linked to issues of poverty and development –
are two of the most serious obstacles to benefiting from the still
predominately text-based Internet (UNDP, 1999:62).
194 Political Communication and Democracy
wealthy and poorer families; between white, black and Hispanic fam-
ilies (Lekhi, 2000); and between the disabled and the able-bodied.
Falling Through the Net confirms the suspicions first raised by
Manuel Castells (1998) that the information revolution is contribut-
ing to the creation of a Fourth World, one that is characterised by the
absence of access to the information age between and within soci-
eties.15 The problem is that those excluded are not just information
poor; they are also denied access to the trickle down of benefits
promised by the champions of ICTs. For example, in developing
countries where the spread of ICTs is fastest, a new class is emerging;
growth in the information technology sector, and therefore the
growth of incomes for those who are investing and working in it,
means that income inequality is unavoidable (Morley, 2001). The
production and consumption of ICT-related products and services
perpetuates the existing class divisions whereby the poor, the illiter-
ate and the socially impoverished remain on the periphery. This gives
rise to a process of dualism, meaning in this case the existence of two
separate economic and social sectors operating side by side. Dual
societies typically have a rural, impoverished and neglected sector
operating alongside an urban, developing or advanced sector, and
there is little interaction between the two. The Internet amplifies
the dual nature of many less-developed societies where ICTs and ICT-
related industries are concentrated in urban areas and have little
impact beyond city boundaries. In short, we can conclude that a
great many people in the world have no choice whether or not to
participate in the process of political communications offered by the
Internet, as demonstrated by Table 7.2. Their poverty is the deciding
factor.
There are signs of limited progress: Lekhi (2000:82) documents what
might be done to encourage African Americans to go ‘on-line’, such as
programmes to subsidise the cost of access, and community-based
initiatives to provide ICTs for low income groups in public places.
However, Lekhi raises the crucial point about economics: what
happens if it is just not profitable for private companies to invest in
such endeavours? Do the costs of provision outweigh the immediate
benefits for the provider? In March 2001, Hewlett-Packard announced
the launch of its World e-Inclusion programme to try and bridge the
global digital divide. In reporting this, the Far Eastern Economic Review
(29 March 2001:42–3) exercised caution by focusing on the business-
side: ‘Nice idea, but will it pay?’ noting that HP would access to a
‘virgin market’ and ‘damn little competition’.
196 Political Communication and Democracy
200
Notes 201
from the political process as possible.’ ‘The crucial task of restoring trust’,
The Guardian, 4 September 2003:4.
19 ‘Disengagement of young people from party politics was threatening the
lifeblood of democracy, Labour’s general secretary [David Triesman] said’.
‘Labour inquest on membership loss’, The Guardian, 29 January 2002.
20 ‘Millions turn out for Nigerian elections’, The Independent on Sunday,
13 April 2003. Still, many ballot papers and boxes were stolen or simply
failed to turn up at the voting stations in several south-eastern states of
Nigeria. The election was also marred by extensive violence, with 12 people
dying in election-related violence. Echoing the sentiments of citizens in
many ‘consolidated’ democratic political systems, one Nigerian voter said:
‘I will vote, but I know that nothing will be different. All our politicians are
the same’ (‘A weary Nigeria pins few hopes on poll marred by violence,’ The
Independent, 10 April 2003:19).
21 ‘Malta and Uruguay gain pride of place as the countries with the world’s
highest turnout [in the 1990s] with over 96 percent of their eligible population
voting.’ www.idea.int.vt/survey/voter_turnout1.cfm. For the most recent
country-by-country figures, see www.ifes.org/eguide/turnout2003.htm and
www.ifes.org/eguide/turnout2004.htm.
22 For classification of democracies, see the Freedom House website,
www.freedomhouse.org
23 ‘[M]any of the ideas connected with the general theme of Duty to Vote
belong properly to the totalitarian camp and are out of place in the vocabu-
lary of liberal democracy’ (Morris Jones, 1954:25). Apathy should be under-
stood as having a ‘beneficial effect on the tone of political life’ because it is
a ‘more or less effective counter-force to the fanatics who constitute the real
danger to liberal democracy’ (Ibid.:37).
24 ‘In March 1990, 2,534 East Germans voted for the German Beer Drinkers’
Union, and in October 1991, 3.27 percent of the Polish electorate voted for
the Polish Beer Lovers’ Party and won 16 seats in the Sejm – evidence of
disillusionment with conventional politics even before democracy is firmly
established (Hill, 1994:272). While Hill’s conclusion is unsubstantiated, he
nevertheless draws our attention to one of the problems of pluralism and
democratic procedures in competitive party systems.
25 This is the conclusion of Shaun Bowler & Todd Donovan, 2002. Frequent
exposure to a range of sources of information means that voters are increas-
ingly sophisticated consumers. ‘Television advertisements, then, may not
be as inconsequential as is feared by their critics.’ Ibid.:790.
3 David Held (1996:16), has noted that this speech was ‘probably “composed”
by Thucydides some thirty years after its delivery’.
4 ‘Governance is to be a continued effort in mass education’ (Davis, 1964:40).
Or, ancient democracy was predicated on an effort to give all citizens,
regardless of background and wealth, an opportunity ‘to express and
transform their understanding of the good through political interaction’
(Farrar, 1992:38).
5 However, until the late 5th Century, there was an age qualification to speak
in the Assembly, with participants over 50 years old being invited to do so
first.
6 C.B. Macpherson (1973) and Carol Pateman (1970) would disagree, believ-
ing that genuine democracy requires us to pay greater attention to intro-
ducing as much direct forms of participation as we can. Some Swiss cantons
still practice direct democracy through the Landsgemeinden in which all
citizens can participate in debates. Ian Budge (1996) has discussed how the
Internet is likely to make a positive contribution to the development of
direct democracy.
7 Actually, the Assembly had a quorum (the minimum number required for
business to be legal, and therefore legitimate) of 6,000 citizens.
8 I am grateful to Dr Susan McManus of Queens University, Belfast for
drawing this to my attention.
9 ‘Take only the example of Islam: if Maguindanao met Berbers in Mecca,
knowing nothing of each other’s languages, incapable of communicating
orally, they nonetheless understood each other’s ideographs, because [sic]
the sacred texts they shared existed only in classical Arabic.’ Ditto
Christianity and Latin.
10 A useful discussion of the relationship between the development of the
printing press and the Protestant reformation is provided in Thompson,
1995, Chapter 2.
11 On debates concerning the legitimacy of this label, see Lively & Reeve,
1989:64–71.
12 It is interesting, however, that Locke’s toleration did not extend to
Catholics or atheists. See McClelland, 1996:243.
13 Later, John Stuart Mill likewise dismissed the idea that an Athenian direct
democracy was compatible with the demands, size and spread of modern
society. See his Consideration on Representative Government. pp. 175–6,
179–80, 217–18.
14 Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man. Paine was writing in response to Edmund
Burke who believed that a constitution created, practiced, and passed down
by the ruling classes was good for England, and that the liberalism of
the 18th century was responsible for the subversion of Europe that made it
the century of revolutions. See his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Also
see J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Burke and the Ancient Constitution – A Problem in the
History of Ideas’, in Lively & Reeve, 1989:159–182.
15 Schumpeter focuses on the procedural dimensions of democracy. That is,
democracy is synonymous with elections, and the role of the citizen is
limited to casting a ballot for government every four or five years. Between
elections, voters had no responsibility because they had transferred their
power to their elected politicians.
204 Notes
8 The all-powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) in the United States has
an annual budget of $40 million and employs 275 full-time staff (Hague &
Harrop, 2001:157). Its members also believe they have the American consti-
tution on their side. This leads Hague & Harrop to conclude that ‘Despite
public sympathy, the coalition of gun control groups cannot match the
NRA’s “fire power”.’
9 The most notorious example from recent British politics that insider groups
can influence government policy but do so at the expense of other groups’
interests (and even government’s own principles) is the so-called ‘Bernie
Ecclestone affair’. In November 1997, Formula One racing tycoon Eccel-
stone donated £1 million to the Labour party. It was then alleged that the
Labour government decided to discard its election manifesto promise to
ban on tobacco advertising (Formula One racing being sponsored by that
industry). This precipitated a discussion about the role of business lobbying
in the British political system, and in particular the way cash donations can
be used to buy influence. It seems that access to the system is determined
by the resources at a group’s disposal. At the same time, when Britain’s
biggest transport union, the RMT, voted to cut its donations to the Labour
party in June 2002, Tony Wright (Labour chairman of the public adminis-
tration select committee) said, ‘If the deal is money for policies, I hope we
shall say, “Thank you, but no thank you.” ‘ ‘Rail union cuts cash support to
Labour’, The Guardian, 26 June 2002.
10 Perhaps the most blatant examples of insider groups are found in the
European Commission. The Economist (23 October 2004:42) reported that
‘Many of the NGOs that Brussels likes to consult are directly financed by
the commission itself’ and tend to be supportive of Commission-led policy
initiatives.
11 The Blair government has taken measures, via the so-called Nolan Report,
to limit the influence of lobbies and to regulate the contact that ministers
and civil servants have with lobbyists. They were told not to privilege one
lobby over another, nor to accept or give hospitality to lobbies in return for
information or favours. The ‘cash for questions’ controversy arose when
two Sunday Times journalists posed as businessmen to find out whether MPs
would raise questions in Parliament in return for cash payment.
12 A useful introduction to (new) social movements is Tarrow, 1998.
13 Activist/author George Monbiot has said of the anti-globalisation move-
ment: ‘I think the great majority of people who have joined this movement
started off with a vague sense that something was wrong and not necessar-
ily being able to put their finger on what it was. Having a sense that power
was being removed from their hands, then gradually becoming more
informed, often in very specific areas because what you find in our commu-
nity of activism is that some people who are very concerned about farming,
those who are very interested in the environment, or labour standards, or
privatisation of public services, or Third World debt. These interests tie
together and the place they all meet is this issue of corporate power’
(‘Where did all the protestors go? The Observer, 14 July 2000).
14 In 1996, 41 percent of respondents in a British Social Attitudes survey said
that they should obey the law without exception. In 1983, the figure was
53 percent. 55 percent in 1996 agreed that on exceptional cases they should
Notes 209
follow their conscience even if this meant breaking the law. In 1983, the
figure was 46 percent. Curtice & Jowell, 1996:95.
15 Tormey (2004:50–61) credits the origin of social movements to the fractur-
ing of the European left after the Prague Spring and the protests that
erupted in Paris, both in 1968.
16 In December 2002, demonstrations in central London by an estimated
5,000 people are thought to have contributed to the Prime Minister’s
decision to back-down on charging students top-up fees (though Cabinet
ministers were also allegedly against the proposal).
17 For a view on the different approaches to political activism across the
United States, see ‘A portrait in red and blue,’ The Economist, 3 January
2004:30–32. The report contrasts the political cultures of two different cities
in the United States, demonstrating the importance of not generalising
about such a geographically and demographically diverse country.
18 The anti-war protest that marched through London on 15 February 2003,
described as the biggest in British political history, likewise attracted a range of
participants that one would not otherwise expect to find in demonstrations.
19 This was a poll conducted by the Roman Catholic Church in December
2003. It found that 90 percent of people aged 14–24 favoured a direct
election of the Chief Executive in 2007; almost 94 percent wanted direct
elections for all lawmakers by 2008. See David Lague, ‘Democracy Tolls for
Tung’, The Far Eastern Economic Review, 15 January 2004:28–32.
20 This is consistent with the models developed by Westley & MacLean (1957)
that examined the versions of news and events published by media based
on editorial selections that are themselves determined by assumptions
made of audience interest.
21 This was the 12th annual Autumn March, launched by the Committee for
Action for Labor Legislation to ‘remind the government of the kind of
difficulties workers face every year’. ‘Angry unemployed create a stink’,
Taipei Times online edition, http://www.taipeitimes.com, 11 November
2002.
22 The failure of the fuel protests can be explained by ‘poor tactics and a lack
of solidarity’ that meant the protestors ‘were unable to win major con-
cessions from government and, in that sense, their impact was … limited.’
Doherty et al. 2003:19.
elector’s attention and interest in the res republica, rather than a result of
coercion.’
24 Even in Switzerland, referendum capital of the world, the average turnout
in referendums between 1978 and 1986 was just 37 percent (Austen, Butler
& Ranney, 1987:139). This increased to 48.2 percent (1987–1989) before
dropping again to 45.1 percent between 1990 and 1993 (Kris W. Kobel,
‘Switzerland’ in Butler & Ranney, 1994:135). The referendums that asked
should Switzerland abolish its army, or withdraw from the European Union
attracted a bigger turnout; the 1992 referendum on EU membership
attracted a 78.3 percent turnout, the highest in Switzerland for 45 years.
Political scientists analysing this data have concluded that there is a correla-
tion between turnout and issue, with more ‘important’ constitutional issues
that will affect the future of Switzerland naturally of more interest to voters.
See Ibid.
25 Provisions for initiative and referendums are detailed in Chapter 2 of the
Swiss constitution.
26 ‘In voting to repeal a local law that protected homosexuals from discrimi-
nation … the people of Miami, Florida, sent an unintended message. They
reminded us that the rights of minorities are too important to be trusted to
the passions of passing majorities’. Anthony Lewis, ‘Tyranny of a Majority’,
New York Times, 13 June 1977, quoted in Zimmerman, 2001:247.
27 Switzerland is an exception to this rule: ‘ … modern Switzerland contains
virtually every ingredient needed to produce social instability – deep lin-
guistic, ethnic and religious differences … combined with the temporary
presence … of one million foreign workers and residents … Despite the
presence of so many factors which have produced instability elsewhere,
Swiss stability is taken for granted’ (Goodhart, 1971:87). This has not
prevented campaigning and voting along ethnic lines. In the 2002
referendum on whether Switzerland should join the United Nations,
the Yes campaign was supported in French-speaking areas, while the
No campaign found its support in the German- and Italian-speaking areas.
‘Switzerland decides to join UN’, The Guardian, 4 March 2002:15.
14 Useful introductions to this debate are Todd Landman (2000), Issues and
Methods in Comparative Politics: An Introduction, London: Routledge, Chapter 4;
D. Rueschmeyer, E.H. Stephens and J. Stephens (1992), Capitalist Development
and Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press.
15 This refers to a conclusion of Gunther and Mughan (2000:413) that in none
of the cases examined by the contributors to their volume of essays, ‘did
the governing elite initiate … liberalization as the first step in a deliberate
strategy of democratization, and yet that was the outcome in each of these
cases’.
16 In Poland too, splits within the government about the speed and scale of
reform, together with freer media system, allowed journalists to be more
critical than at any time in the past. This is consistent with Hallin’s (1986)
understanding of how the fissures in the American political elite over the
Vietnam war provided space for a more critical media there.
17 Although there were very clear links between the Church, the young and
the working class in the early 1970s, it would be erroneous to call the
Church in Spain the centre of opposition politics (Heywood, 1995:50, 69).
18 Atkins (2001, Chapter 6) provides an excellent discussion of the relation-
ship between foreign programming and governments in Asia. See also Page
& Crawley (2001).
19 Kurt R. Hesse (1990), ‘Fernsehen und Revolution: Zum Einfluß der
Westmedien auf die politische Wende in der DDR’, Rundfunk und Fernsehen,
38: 328–42.
20 The CPA has since transferred power to the Iraq Communications and
Media Commission, an independent and non-profit organisation.
BBC Polish service, thus ensuring that news seeped out of Poland and then
flooded back in (Walker, 1992:132).
6 A short and useful history of the Internet from its origins as ARPANET in
1969, can be found in Castells (2001, chapter 1).
7 The joint Electoral Commission/Hansard Society report, An Audit of Political
Engagement 2 (London, 2005) documents how people are interested in local
issues, but have difficulty in relating these to politics. Politics is something
that happens in London in Parliament among elected elites and not with
the involvement of ordinary people.
8 Mankind currently produces an estimated 1 exabyte of data per year; 1
exabyte is the equivalent of 1 billion gigabytes or 1,000,000,000,000
books. One the web, 2.5 billion fixed documents supply the equivalent
of 7.5 million gigabytes of data or 7,500,000,000 books. In July 2001
there were more than 30 million web domains – the equivalent of over
800 million pages of information. And it never stops growing!
See Noveck (2000:23, 26, 30) and ‘Web Statistics and Information
Overload’, available at http://www.pendergast.k12.az.us/dist/cking/
GrenY/infoPage6A.pdk.
9 A personal anecdote: When teaching classes on Chinese politics I require
students to discuss the political situation in Tibet. Students inevitably base
their discussion of this issue on pro-Tibet websites, especially Amnesty
International, for two reasons. First, these websites conform to their image
and understanding, if not their belief, about the political situation in Tibet
(reinforcement). Second, the Amnesty International website is easy to
access; it takes little time and effort to find, unlike sources of information
promoting the Chinese version of politics in Tibet.
10 Anderson and Tracey’s 2001 unpublished research report is called ‘Digital
living: the impact (or otherwise) of the Internet on everyday life,’ prepared
for BTaxCT Research.
11 For an example of the battleground rhetoric that China uses, see the
People’s Daily, 9 August 2000.
12 One of the first to discuss in a meaningful way the ‘digital divide’ was
Wresch (1996).
13 BusyInternet is an American company that is establishing technology
centres in some of the poorest countries in Africa.
14 Falling Through the Net, 1998 and 2000 are published in Washington DC by the
US Department of Commerce and are available online at www.digitaldivide.gov/
reports1998.htm and www.digitaldivide.gov.reports2000.htm
15 Castells (2001) is more optimistic about the information age. Discussing
‘Falling Through the Net’, he recognises that while gaps in access in the US
are closing, the very poor are still denied access to the information age.
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Index
234
Index 235