Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy Also by Kees Brants THE MEDIA IN QUESTION: Popular Cultures and Public Interests (co-edited with Joke Hermes & Liesbet van Zoonen) Also by Katrin Voltmer PUBLIC POLICY AND THE MASS MEDIA: The Interplay of Mass Communication and Political Decision Making (co-edited with Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten) THE MASS MEDIA AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN NEW DEMOCRACIES (edited) Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy Challenging the Primacy of Politics Edited by Kees Brants and Katrin Voltmer Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Kees Brants and Katrin Voltmer 2011 Foreword © Jay G. Blumler 2011 Afterword © John Corner 2011 Individual chapters © Contributors 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–24335–4 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy : Challenging the Primacy of Politics / Edited By Kees Brants, Katrin Voltmer. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–24335–4 (hardback) 1. Journalism—Political aspects. 2. Mass media—Political aspects. 3. Communication in politics. 4. Democracy. I. Brants, Kees, 1946–, editor of compilation. II. Voltmer, Katrin, 1953–, editor of compilation. III. Beus, J. W. de (Jos W. de). Audience democracy. IV. Title. PN4751.P58 2011 320.01'4—dc22 2010042400 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Contents List of Figures, Tables and Appendix vii Foreword: In Praise of Holistic Empiricism ix Jay G. Blumler Notes on Contributors xiii 1 Introduction: Mediatization and De-centralization of Political Communication 1 Kees Brants and Katrin Voltmer Part I New Approaches to Political Communication 2 Audience Democracy: An Emerging Pattern in Postmodern Political Communication 19 Jos de Beus 3 Representation and Mediated Politics: Representing Representation in an Age of Irony 39 Stephen Coleman Part II Mediatization: The Changing Power Game between Politics and the Media 4 Mediatization and News Management in Comparative Institutional Perspective 59 Robin Brown 5 Spin and Political Publicity: Effects on News Coverage and Public Opinion 75 Claes H. de Vreese and Matthijs Elenbaas 6 Changes in Political News Coverage: Personalization, Conflict and Negativity in British and Dutch Newspapers 92 Rens Vliegenthart, Hajo G. Boomgaarden and Jelle W. Boumans 7 A Changing Culture of Political Television Journalism 111 Judith Stamper and Kees Brants 8 A Question of Control: Journalists and Politicians in Political Broadcast Interviews 126 Katrin Voltmer and Kees Brants v vi Contents 9 The Elephant Trap: Politicians Performing in Television Comedy 146 Liesbet van Zoonen, Stephen Coleman and Anke Kuik Part III De-Centralization: New Forms of Citizenship and Political Communication 10 Political Consumerism as Political Participation? 167 Janelle Ward 11 The New Frontiers of Journalism: Citizen Participation in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands 183 Tom Bakker and Chris Paterson 12 The New Cultural Cleavage: Immigration and the Challenge to Dutch Politics and Media 200 Philip van Praag and Maud Adriaansen 13 The Mediation of Political Disconnection 215 Stephen Coleman, David E. Morrison and Simeon Yates 14 ‘Voting is easy, just press the red button’: Communicating Politics in the Age of Big Brother 231 Valentina Cardo 15 What’s Reality Television Got to Do with it? Talking Politics in the Net-Based Public Sphere 248 Todd Graham Afterword 265 John Corner Index 273 List of Figures, Tables and Appendix Figures 1.1 Changes in political communication 4 5.1 Media mentions of ‘spin doctors’ in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, in absolute counts per year 80 6.1 Trends in personalization in Dutch and British newspapers between 1990 and 2007 102 6.2 Trends in presidentialization in Dutch and British newspapers between 1990 and 2007 103 6.3 Trends in conflict and cooperation news in Dutch and British newspapers between 1990 and 2007 104 6.4 Trends in negativity in Dutch and British newspapers between 1990 and 2007 105 9.1 Number of politicians who appeared in Have I Got News for You (black bars) and Dit was het Nieuws (grey bars) 148 11.1 Typology of citizen participation in the news 188 12.1 Newspaper coverage about ethnic minorities from 1991 to 2005 206 Tables 5.1 Political public relations cynicism by experimental condition, health care experiment 83 5.2 Political public relations cynicism by experimental condition, air security experiment 83 5.3 Effects on political public relations cynicism by experimental condition: regression model examining political PR cynicism as the criterion variable 85 6.1 Comparison of coverage in the years 2006 and 2007 in British and Dutch newspapers 101 vii viii List of Figures, Tables and Appendix 6.2 Comparison of coverage during election periods and at routine times in British and Dutch newspapers between 1990 and 2007 106 8.1 Frequency and determinants of interruptions of politicians by journalists (% of turn-taking resulting from interruption) 138 8.2 Types of question asked by journalists and subsequent response from politicians (%) 139 8.3 Reaction to questions and answers (%) 140 8.4 Determinants for controlling the interview (means) 141 9.1 Themes and repertoires of politicians talking about Have I Got News for You and Dit was het Nieuws 159 10.1 Socially conscious consumption in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands: Mean scores of responses on a five- point scale from never (1) to very often (5) 174 10.2 Examining the relationship between socially conscious consumption and political participation in the United Kingdom 176 10.3 Examining the relationship between socially conscious consumption and political participation in the Netherlands 177 12.1 Educational levels, political interest and political cynicism of the three groups (%) 208 12.2 Daily media use of the three groups (%) 209 15.1 The normative analysis 258 15.2 The use of expressives in relation to political talk 261 Appendix 9.1 Politicians who have appeared on Have I Got News for You and Dit was het Nieuws 161 Foreword: In Praise of Holistic Empiricism Jay G. Blumler Political communication is an exceptionally rich, complex, fluid and important sub-field among those that populate the overall field of communications studies. Scholarship has not always done suitable justice to those characteristics – either focusing discretely on isolated particulars or striving to comprehend it all in one grand-theoretical go. Take how it has changed over time. Since the end of World War II, the prime medium of political communication has been first the press, next network television, next multi-channel television and soon, perhaps, an Internet–television hybrid. Other major changes – for communicators, media content, audience/citizens and for political institutions themselves – have followed in train. We need frameworks that can capture such devel- opments, identifying and pursuing the research questions they highlight. Take complexity. As Jack McLeod and his colleagues (McLeod, Kosicki & McLeod, 2010) have often stressed, political communication is eminently a multi-level field. At its simplest, it links political culture, political actors, media organizations, including the roles played by political journalists within them, and bodies of increasingly heteroge- neous and varyingly involved citizens. We need frameworks that can help us to understand how these relationships work, how they evolve, how they feed on each other and in what ways they matter. For matter they do, since political communication is inescapably a normative domain, intimately involved in the realization (or failure to realize) of collectively self-determining processes of citizenship and democracy. Of course people’s political and communication values will differ, and nobody of empirical evidence can definitively determine which among them