CHAPTER 8

POLITICAL CULTURE
AND THE MEDIA

POL101
 Civic culture

• Almond and Verba (1963, 1980) identified 3 types of

political culture:

• PARTICIPANT: citizens play close attention to politics

and regard popular participation as desirable and useful

• SUBJECT: characterized by more passivity of citizens

and a recognition of little ability to influence government

• PAROCHIAL: marked by the absence of a sense of

citizenship, with people identifying more with their locality
than their nation 2
 Models of the mass media

• PLURALIST: an ideological marketplace in which a wide

range of political views are debated

• DOMINANT-IDEOLOGY: a politically conservative force,

aligned to the interests of economic and social elites

• ELITE-VALUES: media’s political bias reflects the values

of groups that are disproportionately represented among
its senior professionals

• MARKET: the media reflects rather than shapes the

views of the general public 3
 The media and governance

• The ‘information age’ has affected governance in a

number of ways:

• Transformation of political leadership through growing

interest in personal lives of leaders at expense of serious
ideological debate

• Media-driven ‘culture of contempt’ and increasing

disenchantment with politics

• 24/7 news leads to 24/7 government – less time for the

analysis of policy options and their implications 4
 New media and politics

• Electronic mechanisms have altered the conduct of

elections and campaigning

• Citizens have wider and easier access to political

information and political comment

• New media have supported the development of political

and social movements and increased their effectiveness,
giving rise to a new style of activist politics

• However the trend towards e-democracy has been

linked with a growth of a privatized and consumerist form5
of citizenship
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