giornalismo politico-economico 26/04/2016 #carmelitaintervie · the structural relationship of the...

Giornalismo Politico-Economico

26/04/2016

#carmelitainterview

Political parties and candidates now have to produce their constituencies on the basis of their appeal rather than relying on already existing social commonalities. Adherents of political parties seem to share no more than their appreciation of the performance of that party and its candidates; they may have social factors in common, but that does not sufficiently explain their alliance with particular politics. An intermediate process of identification takes place, which is evoked and mobilized through the particular appeals of parties and their candidates. The cognitive rational bias of political theory notwithstanding, these appeals also include emotional, affective, moral, and aesthetic components.

[p. 59]

The Fan Democracy(Van Zoonen, 2005)

The structural relationship of the political field to its constituencies as communities, which materialize as a result of performances and appeals, has an equivalent in the articulation of mass media with their audicenes. Street (1997, p. 60) says, for instance, that

politics, like popular culture, is about creating an “audience”, a “people” who will laugh at their jokes, understand their fears and share their hopes. Both the popular media and politicians are engaged in creating works of popular fiction which portray credible worlds that resonate with people’s experiences

[p. 59]


Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998) have developed a continuum of audience involvement that ranges from consumers on the one hand and petty producers on the other, with fans, cultists and enthusiasts in the middle. Paraphrasing their understanding of the three middle categories in political terms, one can see how they capture the way constituencies are called into being by (mass mediated) politics.

[p. 60]


“Fans are those people who become particularly attached to certain programmes or stars within the context of a relatively heavy media use” (p. 138). These could be considered, in other words, the voters of a party for a party or a candidate.

“Cultists are more organized than fans. They meet each other and circulate specialized materials that constitute the nodes of a network” (p. 139). The political parallel here is with the volunteers of a political party.

“Enthusiasts are, in our terms… based predominantly around activities rather than media or stars” (p. 139). Enthusiasts would be analogous to party representatives in various governing bodies.

[p. 60]


Miller and his colleagues (1986) examined data from a succession of American election studies (1952-1984) and identified five stable categories that people use in their perception of political candidates: competence, reliability, integrity, charisma, and personal traits. The first three indicators are related to political performance… In contrast, charisma and personal traits… are entirely based on the perception of private features and thus cover the celebrity dimension of the contemporary politician.

[p. 72]

PersonalizationThe celebrity politician(Van Zoonen, 2005)

The celebrity politician, then, is the successful embodiment of the concurrent constituents of the political field and the stage of private life. He emerges mainly from performance on television, because television and its many genres are the main source from which the majority of people learn about politics, with talk shows ranking high when it comes to influencing voting decisions. This has to do with the fact that politicians get to speak much longer in talk shows than the sound bites allowed to them in regular news and current affairs programs, which enables politicians to perform a more diverse and complete persona built from the performance requirements that emerge from the political and the personal stage.

[p. 78]

PersonalizationThe celebrity politician(Van Zoonen, 2005)

Elisabet Gidengil’s (2003) comparison of leader effects and voter characteristics in nine Western democracies suggests that the morepolitically involved people are and the better they know who they want to vote for, the more leadership evaluations matter to them.

[p. 127]

PresentationsPopular Resources for Citizenship(Van Zoonen, 2005)

Both real and fictional politicians thus seem to function in the continuous (re)construction and expression of people’s evaluative schemata. People use their evaluation of both fictional and real politicians to male clear to others what they think are appropriate models of conduct to express civic values and perform citizenship.

[pp. 130-131]

PresentationsPopular Resources for Citizenship(Van Zoonen, 2005)

For many, the current state of political news, and thus of citizens’ political knowledge — as well as, by extension, their competence as democratic citizens — is bleak (L. Bennett 2003; S. Bennett N.d.; Patterson 1994, 2000). But others (e.g., Popkin 1994; Schudson1998; Zaller 2003) counter that a press that provides limited quantities of political information is not necessarily dysfunctional, arguing that such concerns underestimate citizens’ capacity to make reasoned voting decisions based on relatively small quantities of information… Advocates of the former perspective frequently cite the proliferation of soft news as evidence of the news media’s failure to equip citizens with proper or sufficient information (L. Bennett 2003; Patterson 2000, 2003). [pp. 946-947]

The Oprah effect(Baum&Jamison, 2006)

Baum (2002, 2003) refers to those media outlets that focus primarily on such material — including entertainment and tabloid news shows, network newsmagazines, and daytime and late night talk shows —as the soft news media. These outlets differ in many respects. Yet, in contrast to traditional, hard news outlets — such as The New York Times or network evening newscasts — they all focus primarily on soft news themes like crime, disaster, or scandal, and they all cover political issues similarly to one another (Baum 2003). Their audiences also tend to have comparatively little education or interest in politics (Baum 2003; Hamilton 2003).

[p. 947]


Why would an individual who is uninterested in and does not understand politics pay attention to political news? Baum (2002, 2003) argues soft news can, under some circumstances, render political information cost-effective for even apolitical individuals. His “incidental by-product” model shows that if substantive political information is presented in an entertaining context, it can be attached to information intended primarily to entertain, and hence consumed incidentally, effectively at no extra cost.

[p. 948]


Many low-awareness voters, in turn, base their vote choices more on the candidates’ personal qualities—as an information shortcut—than their policy positions (Baum 2005). By assessing the candidates’ “likeability” (Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991), voters can often figure out which candidate best represents their interests, even absent substantial knowledge of their policy positions. Consequently, entertainment-oriented talk show (“E-talk show”) candidate interviews can help viewers vote consistently even absent significant discussion of policy issues. Nevertheless, despite their “soft” approach to political interviews, E-talk show interviews do address public policy, albeit far less so than campaign coverage by traditional news outlets.

[p. 949]


Looking to the interaction of political behavior and news consumption, we render an understanding of quality that extends to hard or soft news, and thereby focuses our analysis on the conditions under which quality results from the interaction of citizens’ news consumption and their political decision making. As much as possible, this places the assessment of news quality in the hands of citizens we understand to be rational. Upon doing so, we discover that, at least with respect to voting, most citizens are able to act in their own interests, even if their predilection is for Oprah Winfrey instead of Jim Lehrer.

[p. 957]


Even though E-talk shows focus far more on candidates’ personalities than their policy positions (Baum 2005), there is no reason to believe that the political information contained in these programs, however limited in scope or personality oriented, is fundamentally inaccurate. This suggests that, in the context of U.S. elections, a little information may indeed go a long way, particularly for the least politically aware voters. It further suggests that when low-awareness Americans tune in to Oprah, Regis, or Leno, democracy may well be strengthened, rather than weakened.

[p. 958]


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giornalismo politico-economico 26/04/2016 #carmelitaintervie · the structural relationship of the...

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