The Changing Landscape of Political Communications

This is based off a question given to the Politics and the Media cohort by Dr Ian Ward, University of Queensland, St Lucia.

In what ways are new developments shaping a political communications landscape that differs greatly from that which has existed since the age of television?

Traditionally, politicians relied on the ‘media machine’ to get their message out to the public. This media included newspapers, and radio and television stations. Now days, the range of media a politician can exploit to broadcast his/her message to the public has expanded exponentially.

The new media, centring around the internet, includes blog sites, online newspapers, social networking sites and video sharing sites such as Youtube. While this enables politicians to broadcast their message on a much broader scale, meaning they can reach a much larger and more varied audience, it has problems that traditional communications broadcasting didn’t.

However this doesn’t change the fact that media and communications broadcasters such as the internet have greatly changed the landscape politicians work in. Previously, the commonest, if not only way for a politician to be ‘caught out’ was for a journalist to investigate and eventually uncover something scandalous or moronic. Today, the developments in media and communications mean that the ordinary person can play a large role in broadcasting a politicians message, regardless of whether their role in spreading the message is supportive or antagonistic. As Kushin (2010) said, “The individual viewer in a campaign crowd with a cell phone can record a candidate’s gaffe, post it on Youtube or Flickr, and within days millions will be gasping or guffawing”.

Politicians need to be more careful than ever in this new age of media and communication, as the ever changing communications landscape means they are increasingly, if not constantly, in the public eye, bringing them a higher level of accountability than in the days of traditional media.