EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF POLITICAL

COMMUNICATION EFFECTS
Understanding Political Communication

Surveying the Boundaries

• Boundaries of political communication research expanding to the
political-science, psychology, linguistics and mass media (e.g.
Relationship between print media use and voting choices).

• Political Communication involves the exchange of symbols and

messages between political actors and institutions, the general public
and the news media that are the products of or have consequences
for political system (Meadow, 1980).
Normative standard of political commination
Following are the normative standards for mass media systems in
democratic societies:
1. Surveillance of contemporary events
2. Identification of key issues
3. Provisions of platforms for advocacy
4. Transmission of diverse political discourse
5. Scrutiny of institutions and officials
6. Activation of informed participation
7. Maintenances of media autonomy
8. Consideration of audience potentials

*Standards adapted by Gurevitch & Blumler (1990)

 Development & Rebirth of political-commination
research
• Klappers (1960) claimed that effects of mass media are “limited”,
largely based on studies of political election campaigns by
researchers at Columbia university.

• Following important historical events cause the growth and changing

nature of political commination inquiry, started from 1970s:
1. Voting as far less predictable behavior
2. Development of new media
3. Contribution of European scholarships in theoretical perspectives
Locating Political Effects
• Political communication effects are the phenomena that have
consequences for the political system, involves the effects to some
personal or institutional source of influence (e.g. a political leader,
advertising message, news media and news story).

• Effects can be manifested at the micro level of individual behavior, the

intermediary level of political groups, or at the macro level of the
system itself.

• Effect can be cross level relationship such as the impact of political

institutions on individual behavior or the process by which individual
political sentiments become translated into social policy.
Political Communication Effects

Political communication effects research has developed in many

directions;
The increased complexity of effects models:
Reflect the realities of voters using informational shortcuts of cognitive
judgmental processes.

Increased conceptions of media messages:

That media are major source of information for judgments.

Expanded emphasis on diverse type of effects:

Such as Learning, framing, perceptions of issues salience etc.
Individual Effects
• Opinion formation and change:
Opinion change is likely to be what comes to mind when thinking of
media effects.
 ELM of persuasion (1986)
 The reasoned Action Model (1975)
 Receive-Accept-sample (1992)

• Cognitive Changes:
 Agenda setting
 Priming
 Knowledge gain
 Framing
Perceptions of political system
• Self-interest and systemic perceptions
Making connections between individual-cognitive and social system levels.
Self- interest is highly individualized account such as voting. While systemic
perceptions based on media input, the news media have responsibilities for
presenting an accurate and comprehensive picture of governmental operations.

• Causal Attribution
Lyengar (1991) provided experimental evidence that television influences
attributions of responsibilities for both the creation of problems and their
resolution. He found that people who attribute the cause of a problem to
systematic forces are more likely to bring that problem into their political
judgments than are people citing dispositional cause. Television are the primary
news media may have some association to non-systemic attribution, political
news are more thematic in print media than television.
• Climate of opinion
“Quasi-statistical” judgments about which side is ahead and gaining
support on controversial issues (Spiral of silence).

• Interpersonal communication
Media stimulate interpersonal discussion and interest in the campaign,
helps people to decide how to vote.
O-S-O-R Models
• O-S-O-R framework presented by Markus & Zajonc (1985) in which
the first O stands for ‘‘the set of structural, cultural, cognitive, and
motivational characteristics the audience brings to the reception
situation that affect the impact of messages (S)’’ or stimuli, and the
second O signifies ‘‘what is likely to happen between the reception of
message and the subsequent response (R)’’.

• The communication mediation model treats news consumption and

political talk as stimuli, stressing their mediating role on orientations
such as efficacy and learning as well as on responses such as
participation.
• The center of the O-S-O-R framework is underspecified, especially
for the purposes of understanding message processing and political
communication effects. The S-O portion of the model is a jumble of
factors, including news consumption, thinking and talking about
issues, and cognitions and attitudes that arise from this process.
Reflection and discussion are particularly difficult to situate in this
framework.
Updated O-S-O-R Models
• D.V. Shah at el. (2007) argued that here need to put reasoning (R)
into the center of the O-S-O-R framework as a core mediator of the
effects of stimuli, means reasoning in the broad sense of mental
elaboration and collective consideration, including both intrapersonal
and interpersonal ‘‘ways of thinking.’’

• O-S-R-O-R framework differentiates between the cognitive processes

in stimuli stage and the deliberative processes in reasoning stage.
The impact of messages may involve a range of processes (e.g.,
exposure, attention, priming, cueing, framing) and come from various
sources (typically media such as newspapers, TV, and the Web, but
also from conversation with peers and opinion leaders). These stimuli
differ in the type of thinking.
Expanding the Field of Political Communication: Making the
Case for a Fresh Perspective Through “Propaganda
Studies” (2019)

• political communication research has been limited by an over-

emphasis on 'problem solving' research which, by and large, reflects
the interests and concerns of more powerful political actors.

• Propaganda studies can serve to rebalance the field of political

communication, which play a major role in contemporary liberal
democracies “strategic communication,” “political marketing,”
“advertising,” “public diplomacy,” and “psychological operations.”

• The problem of “fake news,” or rather distorted and manipulated

information (propaganda), is not a new problem (Coles, 2018).
• Propaganda, is universal to modern democracies. so much
propaganda production occurs across institutions of government and
civil society, some of which are not readily associated with
propaganda (Bakir et al., 2019a).

• Moreover, multiple institutions across government and civil society,

including governments, political parties, intelligence services, news
media, think tanks, academia, and popular culture (e.g., films and TV)
have been identified as being involved in the production of
propaganda.
Nonverbal Influence and the Expanding Boundaries of Political
Communication Research (2016)

• Political nonverbal communication exercise considerable persuasive

influence, particularly under conditions of low information. Moreover,
visuals affect political decisions through both cognitive and emotional
routes.

• Scholars argue for the potential of news that gives voice to ordinary
people, especially stories that showcase citizens’ facial displays of
emotion, to revitalize the public sphere.

• This study suggests that not only national but also recently created
multinational symbols can be used to signal identity values.
Moreover, awareness of visual displays may help enhance the impact
of political symbols. Simple flag presentation does little to move
perceptions.
• In “Looks that Matter: The Effect of Physical Attractiveness in Low-
and High Information Elections,” examine the impact of candidate
attractiveness in a field. Using candidate pictures displayed on touch
pad voting devices, they find strong effects for attractiveness in the
low-information election context featuring fabricated candidates.
However, candidate attractiveness fails to affect candidate support in
the high-information election.

• This study offers further evidence that the context of candidate

visuals matters for determining the impact of appearance on election
results

• The Internet and World Wide Web offer innovative means by which to
distribute new kinds of information about politics, determine nature of
the political messages being distributed in various digital forms.
The Impact Area of Political Communication:
Citizenship Faced with Public Discourse (2006)

• Television to the public sphere considered as a source of political

news, and the political parties adjust their messages to the needs of
the TV format, produce changes in political discourse and in politics
itself, the consequences of which do not seem to be merely formal.

• Internet opens up a new area of worry for the professionals of social

control; it is still an open space, although with limited access, but it is
open enough to generate new communication conducts, and, of
course, new Political Communications.
• The clear distinction between an area of personal interests and public
interests makes the existence of an area that define as the impact
area of Political Communications.

• This area is the joint intersection of the Public Agenda and the
Personal Agenda. The impact area would be that subject area that is
most sensitive to public communication in general and to political
communication in particular, because it is the area in which the
individual feels a clear coincidence between the country and himself:
a mixed agenda that has the strength of what is general and what is
specific?