What is politics?

• According to Greenberg:
Such a control of government by the wealthy that whatever happens, it‘s not working for all the people;
it‘s working for a few of the people.
• According to Paul Wellston:
Politics is not about big money or power games, it‘s about the improvement of people‘s lives.

Political communication is a subfield of communication and political science that is concerned with how
information spreads and influences politics and policy makers, the news media and citizens.

Political communication is the process by which language and symbols, employed by leaders, media, or
citizens, exert intended or unintended effects on the political cognitions, attitudes, or behaviors of
individuals or on outcomes that bear on the public policy of a nation, state, or community.

1. First, the definition emphasizes that political communication is a process.

It does not occur with the flick of a wrist, or flipping of a lever.
A president can propose a particular initiative, but to turn an idea into a credible bill and a bill into a law,
the chief executive must persuade Congress, which involves multiple influence attempts on legislators,
mediated by countless communiqués with the public.

2. Second, political communication calls centrally on words and symbols.

Political communication can be viewed as “the practice of using language to move people to think and act
in ways that they might not otherwise think and act”. Leaders harness the power of language—colorful
phrases, apt metaphors, syntax, and rhythm—to mold attitudes and move citizens. Presidents, from
Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan have aroused the imagination of Americans, using speech to
captivate, language to mobilize, and metaphors to galvanize support for their policies.
Depression, offered up hope and optimism, activating the collective confidence of a country. Ronald
Reagan spoke tender words to the nation’s school children after they watched, in tearful disbelief, as the
space shuttle Challenger exploded during take-off in January, 1986. “The future doesn’t belong to the
fainthearted. It belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue
to follow them,” Reagan said, harnessing the best of presidential rhetoric to help a grieving nation cope
with tragedy, using words to soothe and language to transform grief into hope for the future.

Three main players in political communication:

  The first is the broad group of leaders and influence agents. These are the “elites” of politics, who
include elected officials, opinion leaders spanning members of the president’s Cabinet, policy
experts, and chieftains in the vast government bureaucracy.
 The next player or players are the media. This increasingly diverse group includes the conventional
news media, bloggers, people armed with a cell phone camera and an attitude who call themselves
citizen-journalists, partisan promulgators of websites, and the gaggle of political entertainment
hosts and comedians.
 The centerpiece of political communication is the citizenry. Citizens are a cacophonous combination
of the politically engaged and opinionated, along with the indifferent and woefully ignorant. The
citizenry includes those who actively partake in civic groups — for example, pro-Life and pro-
Choice; evangelical Christian and unabashedly atheist; Wall Street investors and blue collar unions,
as well as pro- and anti-fur, vegan, and virulently pro-red- meat.

Fourth, political communication effects can be intended or unintended.

A presidential speech is intended to influence, and a flurry of favorable emails and text messages received
at the White House after the speech are examples of intended effects.
A negative political advertisement is designed to cause voters to evaluate the targeted candidate more
unfavorably, and declines in the attacked candidate’s poll ratings illustrate an intended communication
effect. But not all political communication effects are intended by the communicator.
In some instances, communicators do not deliberately set out to change an individual’s attitudes.
When a sexual scandal breathlessly discussed in the news media stirs people up and leads them to tell
pollsters they believe the offending politician should resign, the news has exerted an impact, but not one
that the news media intended.
Journalists are not interested in changing people’s attitudes toward the political figure so much as they are
hoping to expose an aspect of a politician’s behavior that the public official would rather you not see.
Reporters believe that it is their professional responsibility to offer a critical perspective on the men and
women who wield great power. Their other motives are more personal and self-interested: to grab the big
headline, gain the byline or on-air credit, or, in the case of network executives, broadcast a story that
attracts viewers and boosts ratings.
But their goal is not to persuade the public to change its attitude in a partisan direction.

A fifth aspect of political communication is that effects occur on a variety of levels.

» What makes political communication so significant is its breadth. Political media exert influence on the
micro level, affecting individuals’ thoughts, candidate assessments, feelings, attitudes, and behavior. The
first 2012 presidential debate, in which Obama seemed lethargic, exerted a micro-level impact if it led an
undecided voter to rethink her support for Obama. Political communication also works on the macro level,
exerting broad-based effects on public opinion, institutional change or retrenchment, political activism,
and public policy. For example, The Washington Post’s groundbreaking coverage of President Nixon’s
unethical actions during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s led to macro-level institutional changes,
such as the appointment of a special prosecutor and a series of Senate hearings, which ultimately paved
the way for Nixon’s resignation.
» Even broader macro-level effects occur on the cultural level. Scholar Michael Schudson notes that “the
news constructs a symbolic world that has a kind of priority, a certification of legitimate importance . . .
When the media offer the public an item of news, they confer upon it public legitimacy. They bring it into a
common public forum where it can be discussed by a general audience”

A second view places the on us on media. It emphasizes that the media—both news and entertainment—
exert a preeminent effect on the conduct of politics. This viewpoint notes that the news media’s choice of
issues, and the way they frame the news, can influence leaders and the public. For example, some
observers argue that the news media—frequently called the press— paved the way for Barack Obama’s
nomination back in 2008. Obama was attractive and charismatic, qualities that can captivate a television
audience. He was initially an underdog.
» The press likes to push underdogs who challenge the status quo. As he started to gain in the polls and
win primaries, he gained political ground, creating a bandwagon effect, producing even more favorable
press coverage. Obama also received substantially more positive press coverage than his opponent for the
Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.
» Some scholars maintained that the press gave Obama better coverage because he powered together an
unstoppable political juggernaut that captivated so many young voters, while others pointed to suggestive
evidence of press bias on the part of journalists.
» In either case, the favorable press coverage netted him momentum, a key commodity in primary
campaigns that helps to propel candidates to victory.

A third viewpoint argues that the public calls the shots. In order to get elected and reelected, leaders have
to be responsive to their constituents, implementing polices that the average voter supports. For example,
in the 2012 election, the state of the economy, with the unrelentingly high unemployment rate, was the
most important issue to the public. The media made this a preeminent part of its coverage.
» It formed the centerpiece of Republican attacks against Obama and provided the backdrop of Obama’s
strategy of blaming Republicans for blocking his legislative proposals to improve the nation’s economy. The
electorate—or voting public—helped push the issue to the front-and-center for both candidates and
media.

Political coverage focuses on:

• President;
• Political parties;
• Political event;
• Election Campaign;
• Gaffes of political candidates

Settings for Political Communication

• Election campaigns, with their compressed time limits, require the most urgent attempts to persuade people
to see things in a particular way and take a particular action. In today’s highly partisan, highly competitive
government policy environment, for better or worse, they have become the model for public policy and issue
advocacy communication.

• Policy communication describes messages from government entities or officials to win support for
particular policies or decisions. The message can be from the White House, Congress, a federal agency, a
governor or state legislature, or someone at the county courthouse or city hall. It can be aimed at winning the
sup- port of other government officials, but it nearly always includes appeals to the larger public as well,
because demonstrated public support makes it easier to win over government officials.
Advocacy communication refers to attempts by individuals or organizations outside government to influence
government decisions. Obviously, public policy and advocacy communication are closely related. Both
public policy and advocacy communication try to influence government policy decisions, but, if they’re
going to be really effective, they also have to generate, retain, and demonstrate public support.

• In all three venues, persuasive messages must try to create, shape, and move peoples’ opinions. Remember
the second principle in the preface. Everything that follows—all the research, planning, targeting, timing,
message development, approaches, and techniques—exists to achieve that end.

Election Campaigns

In today’s communication environment, with a growing reliance on e-mail, social media, and a wide variety
of web sources for information, campaign communication strategy has become infinitely more complex.
Buying advertising time on television and radio, holding an occasional news conference, making a speech,
and putting out press releases and statements will no longer convey a campaign message to all the different
demographic groups who need to hear or see it. Every bit as important as crafting the right message is
making sure the right message gets to the right audience, with enough repetition and reinforcement to
persuade the undecided and motivate the committed. Among all the things an election campaign must
prepare for, address, and deal with, four overriding imperatives have to be accomplished.

An effective campaign must:

• create awareness of its candidate—what campaigns call generating name identification;

• create a positive image to reassure committed voters and persuade undecided voters (i.e., to give
them a reason to support its candidate), create a negative image to give people a reason not to vote
for the opposing candidate, or both;

• identify those who are likely to vote for its candidate and those who are likely to vote but have not
yet decided for whom; and motivate identified voters to actually go to the polling place and vote. It’s
one thing to convince people you’re right and the opponent is wrong, but it won’t win an election
unless you also get them to act on that belief.

• campaigns are an unbelievably intense form of marketing in a competitive environment, usually with
finite resources, an absolute deadline, and an unconditional need to win more than half the market,
except in very rare cases. There are no do-overs in politics. If campaigns don’t get it right the first
time, they lose. At best, politicians have to wait a few years to try again, if they get a second chance
at all.

The message
• Communicators have to connect their message to attitudes people already have and information they use to
form opinions: their concerns, fears, hopes, ambitions, pride, or values; their geographic, ethnic, age, or
professional identity; their identification with a political party; and their support for or opposition to political
figures or groups, policies, or issues.
• Successful communicators don’t try to convey new sets of information their audience can’t relate to easily.
They make new information congruent with the opinions and attitudes already held by their audience. They
don’t make the audience come to them. They go to the audience.
• One of the most basic yet often overlooked elements in going to the audience—in connecting—is
communicating in words and phrases the audience understands. Generally, that means communicating in
plain English. Yet, it is all too common to hear or read communication about public policy matters or
government issues in rhetoric that might as well be a foreign language.

Media and political knowledge

The mass media and Internet play an important role, offering the raw materials from which citizens
construct beliefs about politics.
We gain insight on the impact media exert on political knowledge by exploring different perspectives on the
issue.
The approaches emphasize concepts from the fields of mass communication, psychology, and sociology.

Psychological Approach

A psychological viewpoint focuses more directly on the many cognitive and emotional attributes individuals
bring to political media. Like constructionism, the psychological view emphasizes that you cannot
appreciate the effects of news media on knowledge without understanding how people process or think
about news. A key psychological factor is a schema, defined as “a cognitive structure consisting of
organized knowledge about situations and individuals that has been abstracted from prior experiences”.
Political communication scholar Doris A. Graber has extensively studied the types of political schemas
citizens employ inprocessing the news. She shook up the political communication field by showing that
viewers do not just soak up whatever happens to be shown on the nightly news. Graber demonstrated that
processing the news is active, not passive. People don’t start with a blank slate. The act of remembering
news involves relating the news to what people already know or believe. News that resonates with viewers’
preexisting beliefs is likely to reinforce and strengthen their attitudes. News stories that shake up or conflict
with knowledge structures are apt to be psychologically questioned. This is why many Americans had
trouble accepting the fact that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. The White House, thought
by many to be a source of factual information, drummed in the linkage between Iraq and WMDs. The
linkage had been repeated for many years by both Democrats and Republicans. Thus, even though there was
abundant evidence that Iraq did not possess WMDs, it violated long-held beliefs and took a long time to sink
in.

Sociological Approach

A sociological view emphasizes the influence of broad demographic and social structural factors. Education
is a time-honored predictor of knowledge. With more education comes significantly greater knowledge
about politics. Social class also exerts a major impact. Wealthier individuals know more about politics than
do their less affluent counterparts. This is not to say that those with little education or income lack
knowledge about issues that bear directly on their well- being or they have no political opinions. They most
assuredly do. However, at least as judged by standard tests of political knowledge, they do not fare as well
as those with more money and education. Social class enhances knowledge for a couple of reasons. First,
people with a college degree are better able to understand and process the news. Second, middle- and upper
middle- class individuals are freed from the strains of poverty, which affords them more time to reflect on
political issues.
Other research has combined sociological and mass communication perspectives, focusing on intersections
between the disciplines. One of the persistent findings in political communication research is that there are
knowledge gaps, where media exacerbate differences produced by two sociological factors: income and
education, called socioeconomic status. According to the knowledge gap notion, people higher in
socioeconomic status are at the outset more knowledgeable about politics than those lower in socioeconomic
status. Political communication has one overriding purpose—to persuade people to agree with the
communicator in order to win an election or to win support for a position on a public policy issue.

The Tools of Political Persuasion

When government officials, candidates for office, or interest and advocacy organizations engage in
discussions about legislation, public policy, regulation, or the allocation of public resources, they are usually
attempting to generate support or opposition by individuals or groups. But problems occur when the
communicators confuse techniques of persuasion with some of the darker communication arts, like spin,
propaganda, and deception.

• Judging by his essays, such as Politics and the English Language, and his classic novel Nineteen
Eighty-Four, George Orwell had a very dark view of government and its persuasive techniques. “In
our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. . . . Thus political
language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

• Numerous psychological studies since then have confirmed that messages, particularly advertising
messages, particularly advertising messages, have an increased chance of being remembered,
accepted, and considered when they are seen or heard multiple times. In everyday life, no radio or
tele- vision commercial is intended to be seen or heard just once.
 • Advertisers have learned that the more times an audience is exposed to a message, the better the
chances it will penetrate—that is, break through the clutter of all the other messages confronting
people and sink in. In fact, in advertising media planning, two primary considerations are reach and
frequency. Reach is a measure of how many people in a target audience will be exposed to a
message.
• Frequency measures how many times those people will see or hear the message. Advertisers have
learned that a message typically needs to be seen or heard between three and five times to sink in.

• In one psychological theory, the power of repetition is based on the illusion-of-truth (or illusory
truth) effect. Research finds that people are much more likely to believe a familiar statement than an
unfamiliar statement. In other words, if they’ve heard something before, they’re more likely to
believe it when they hear it again.

• It works in advertising. It works in political rhetoric. Repeating the same thing over and over, using
the same words and phrases to describe an issue, an action, or an agenda, adds to the impact of what
has already been said. Every iteration reinforces previous iterations. This assumption underlies
message discipline, and Chapter 2 described how effectively the approach was used in the
Republican Revolution in Congress. Once a message was researched, developed, and approved,
everybody said it or said nothing at all.

Media Effects: The agenda-setting theory

The agenda-setting theory was developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw. The premise of agenda
setting is not that the media tells us what to think, but that they exert a strong influence over what we think
about by what they choose to cover. For example, in the 2016 Republican presidential campaign, it would
defy logic to suggest that the amazing amount of news media coverage and commentary focused on Donald
Trump did not create and sustain his equally amazing level of public visibility, which in turn prompted the
media to continue focusing on him and his candidacy. The media did not tell people what to think of
Donald Trump, but it was unlikely that many people failed to think about Donald Trump. The same thing
happens when the news media chooses to cover particular issues, which leads to the public perceiving those
issues as newsworthy and therefore important. The corollary is also true: if the media chooses not to cover
particular issues, then for many people, those issues simply do not exist.

Media Effects: The priming theory

The priming theory is largely drawn from the political science research of ShantoIyengar, Mark Peters, and
Donald Kinder. Political media priming is usually associated with agenda setting because both deal with
people’s recollection of information in almost a one-two sequence. Once agenda setting has created and
raised the audience’s awareness of a political figure or issue, the amount and tone of media coverage
influences how the audience perceives that political figure or issue.

The Priming Effect

Priming occurs because most people do not focus intently or remember every detail about a political figure
or issue, so they tend to reach judgments based on what they do recall. If media coverage has emphasized
certain aspects or characteristics of the political figure or issue, especially in repeated coverage, then those
aspects or characteristics will be at the forefront of many people’s memory and form the basis for their
evaluation, even if other aspects and characteristics are just as relevant or important. The more prominent
the media focus, the more the public’s memory is primed.

Media Effects: Framing

Framing is the third theory of media effect most often studied by communication scholars for its role in
persuasion and the formation of public opinion. The broader framing theory is usually attributed to the work
of Erving Goffman, who focused primarily on economics.
» The framing effect has been called a cognitive bias, in which people react to a particular choice in different
ways depending on how it is presented. Researchers find that people tend to avoid risk when a positive
frame is presented, but seek risks when a negative frame is presented. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman
described how different phrasing affected participants’ responses to a choice in a hypothetical life and death
situation in a 1981 article in the journal Science. Their research found “predictable shifts of preference when
the same problem is framed in different ways.”
» Participants were asked to choose between two treatments for 600 people affected with a deadly disease.
Treatment A would result in 400 deaths, whereas treatment B had a 33 percent chance that no one would
die, but a 66 percent chance that everyone would die. This choice was then presented to participants either
with positive framing: “How many people would people would live?” or with negative framing: “How many
people would die?”
» When presented with positive framing—“200 lives will be saved”—72 percent chose Treatment A. Yet
when the same choice was presented with negative framing—“400 people will die”— only 22 percent chose
the same treatment.

Media Effects: Political Framing

Conventional wisdom and traditional political commentary have told us that politicians use public opinion
research like a drunk uses a lamppost—for support rather than illumination. In their frames, do
communicators simply echo prevailing public opinion and attitudes and restate them in a catchy phrase?
» The answer appears to be “not always.” Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro write that this conventional
wisdom has been dead wrong on several major policy issues in the past decade. They highlighted and
analyzed the Clinton administration’s attempts to “reform” the nation’s health-care delivery system and the
Republican Contract with America that emerged just before the 1994 election, providing the conservative
philosophical agenda for the 1995 Republican Revolution in Congress, and they analyzed the 1998
impeachment of President Clinton.
» According to the authors, the political actors sought to shape rather than react to public opinion. They
conducted extensive polling, not to measure public opinion or see which direction people were heading but
to determine what arguments might be effective in manipulating public opinion to support a predetermined
policy or political goal. “Public opinion research was used by politicians to manipulate public opinion. Their
words and presentations were crafted to change public opinion and create the appearance of
responsiveness.”

Concept of Public Relations

PR is the management of communication between an organisation and its audiences.

• Using communication to increase mutual understanding between the organisation and its audiences.
• Historically, PR can be seen as a form of soft propaganda; power relations.

Areas of public relations

» Media relations
» Risk and crisis communication
» Corporate communication, image and reputation management
» Change management and communication
» Internal communication
» Social responsibility communication
» Financial communication, sponsorship, fundraising
PR – is a planned and continuous effort to create and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding
between an organisation and its target audiences. PR is associated with reputation - the result of what
you do, what you say and what others say about you. PR practitioners protect and preserve an
organisation's reputation by seeking understanding and support, influencing opinion and behavior.

• Corporate activities (organisation)

• Communication (process)
• Specificity (target audience)
• Continuous activity
• Goodwill
• Reputation

PUBLIC RELATIONS = PROCESS

Research: what the problem or situation is?

» Actions: program planning; what will be done?
» Communication: execution, how it will be communicated to the public?
» Evaluation: whether the audience was reached and what the impact was?

PRINCIPLES OF PR IN MODERN ORGANIZATIONS

Adapting to ongoing changes - technological, economic, social, political, legal;

Problem-solving oriented (reactive, proactive);
Dynamic and flexible;
Able to step back from current issues and analyse them in the wider context of organisational relationships;
An integral part of a complex modern society, inseparable from the various spheres of everyday life:
political science, health, arts, sport, leisure, entertainment, business, education.

How old is the term"public relations”? (100 y.o)

The field of communication has taken on particular importance in the 20th and 21st centuries, but various
techniques (to persuade the public to accept government decisions or religious truths) have long been used
throughout history.
• And before that, various communication techniques were used: interpersonal communication, speeches,
planned events, publicity.
• Although these were not called communication events in the past, the objectives and the desired effect
were the same.

Democracy has five primary characteristics:

(1) the right of all adult citizens to vote and run for office;
(2) free, fair elections that involve competition between more than one political party;
(3) individual liberty and freedom of expression, including for those who oppose the party in power;
(4) a civil society characterized by the right to form associations, such as parties and interest groups, that
attempt to shape the agenda and influence public policy; and
(5) to the extent possible in a large complex society, opportunities for reasoned public deliberation on major
national issues.

Barack Obama aroused passions with his eloquent rhetoric. Speaking at the 2004 Democratic convention,
four years before he ran for president, Obama used a series of verbal parallelisms as he called on a
benevolent rhetoric of unification, warning “those who are preparing to divide us” that “there’s not a liberal
America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a Black America
and White America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”
The language of political communication is laden with symbols. A symbol is a form of language in which
one entity represents an idea or concept, conveying rich psychological and cultural meaning. Symbols
include words like justice, freedom, and equality, and non-verbal signs like the flag or a religious cross. In
America, elected officials frequently invoke the American flag, the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, Jefferson,
freedom, liberty, and equality.

Democracy depends on different parts of government to work together, but the Constitution disperses power
among different branches of government, impeding efforts to find common solutions.
Democratic society depends on media to relay critical facts and opinions, but in a capitalist and partisan
society, the media can be influenced by the lure of profit and partisans who speak with the loudest voices.

Political theorist Michael Mandelbaum reminds us that democracy has “a good name, the best of any form
of government”.
Democracy earns its esteemed status, he notes, by crystallizing “the relationship between two entities: the
government and the people it governs”.
Communication plays a central role here by connecting the leaders who govern with the people they govern.
How this happens, how effectively it works, and how well it comports with democratic ideals?

Political communication is an important ingredient in a functioning democracy.

Perloff argues that political communication is essential to a functioning democracy, as it allows citizens to
participate in the decision-making process and hold their elected officials accountable.

Helfert argues that political communication is critical to democracy as it facilitates the exchange of
information and ideas between citizens and elected officials. According to Helfert, political communication
also plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion and attitudes towards political issues, which in turn can
influence election outcomes and policy decisions.

According to Perloff, a healthy democracy requires a robust marketplace of ideas, where citizens can freely
express their views and engage in dialogue with those who hold different opinions.
Perloff suggests that political communication is a two- way process that requires not just the dissemination
of information from political actors to citizens, but also the active engagement of citizens in the political
process through voting, activism, and other forms of participation.

There are three main players in political communication:

The first is the broad group of leaders and influence agents. These are the “elites” of politics, who include
elected officials, as well as the plethora of Washington, D.C. opinion leaders and chieftains in the vast
government bureaucracy.
The next player or players are the media. This increasingly diverse group includes the conventional news
media, bloggers, people armed with a cell phone camera and an attitude who call themselves citizen-
journalists,...
The centerpiece of political communication is the citizenry. Citizens are a cacophonous combination of the
politically engaged and opinionated, along with the indifferent and woefully ignorant. The citizenry includes
those who actively partake in civic groups— for example; Wall Street investors and blue collar unions, as
well as pro- and anti-fur, vegan, and virulently pro-red-meat.

Political media exert influence on the micro level, affecting individuals’ thoughts, candidate assessments,
feelings, attitudes, and behavior. The first 2012 presidential debate, in which Obama seemed lethargic,
exerted a micro-level impact if it led an undecided voter to rethink her support for Obama.
Political communication also works on the macro level, exerting broad-based effects on public opinion,
institutional change or retrenchment, political activism, and public policy.
Writing a Press Release: (Not)Inverted pyramid approach

What we will report?

 The message must be something that people will talk about!

 From any complex, broad, explanatory story or topic, it is necessary to select what could be
considered 'newsworthy' (...this is how journalists work).
 It is necessary to objectively evaluate the intended message, information - is it the right time? is it
well known? will it be understood?
 It is always better to tackle one problem at a time rather than several at once - PRIORITIES
(identified through the organisation's mission, vision, target audiences’, experience, resources and
opportunities).
 Relevant news - that which is important, new, unexpected, close, understandable and significant to
certain groups in society;
 •A press release informs about key events, developments, innovations and changes in the
organization / institution, which is why it is essential to choose the right, reliable and essential facts
that can make relevant and interesting news;
 • The message must be new, interesting and close to the media audience.
 What is the purpose?

 Dissemination and communication are planned, targeted and mutually beneficial activities. The aim
is to change negative attitudes into positive ones, to replace ignorance with knowledge = >
FORMING INTERESTS, ATTITUDES, VALUES.
  Objectives can be multifaceted, relating to the image of the organisation itself, to recognition, to
evaluation, and not only to a specific task.

• FORMULA: PROBLEM - SOLUtion

What is the main idea?

 What is most relevant to a specific audience out of the entire flow of information, how can it affect
them, why should they trust you to solve these problems (challenges) or adopt innovations, how will
you help them decide, etc.?

 It is necessary to select appropriate, reliable and essential facts that could become relevant and
interesting news;

 The reported message must be new, interesting and close to your audience;

 The title must be appropriate, interesting, "hooking" and concise;

 The writing style should be journalistic and businesslike, avoiding jargon, slang and specific
professional terms. It is recommended to present facts in a neutral manner, avoid personal comments
and assessments unless the source is cited;

 The facts in the report must be accurate and clear. Things that are not well known or mentioned for
the first time should be explained and clarified.
Press releases are sent to target media groups (topic, nature, readership, connection with the organization,
etc.);

• The most common channel is email; but may be accompanied by other forms and channels such as press
conferences ("press brunchs"), initiating and proposing topics only to certain priority media;

• The press release is recommended to be written in a classical structure, as this is most convenient for the
journalist, but may be accompanied by photo/audio/video files (particularly important for online media.)
Political campaign
A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making progress within a
specific group.
In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen
or referendums are decided.
• In modern politics, the most high-profile political campaigns are focused on general elections and
candidates for head of state or head of government, often a president or prime minister.

Campaign message

The message of the campaign contains the ideas that the candidate wants to share with the voters. It is to get
those who agree with their ideas to support them when running for a political position.
The message often consists of several talking points about policy issues. The points summarize the main
ideas of the campaign and are repeated frequently in order to create a lasting impression with the voters.
In many elections, the opposition party will try to get the candidate "off message" by bringing up policy or
personal questions that are not related to the talking points. Most campaigns prefer to keep the message
broad in order to attract the most potential voters.
A message that is too narrow can alienate voters or slow the candidate down with explaining details. For
example, in the 2008 American presidential election John McCain originally used a message that focused on
his patriotism and political experience: "Country First"; later the message was changed to shift attention to
his role as "The Original Maverick" within the political establishment.
Barack Obama ran on a consistent, simple message of "change" throughout his campaign.

Elite Party and Press Politics

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, presidential candidates symbolically jousted through the
medium of the newspaper. Politics was a rich man’s game, waged with a courtly veneer that hid the fierce
underbelly of presidential politics.
• During the 1800 election, the candidates, President John Adams and challenger Thomas Jefferson, never
left their farms. But their supporters were not so passive. The two new political parties of the era—
Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists and Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans (no relation to the current
Republican Party)—operated newspapers that brandished their ideology.
“The engine is the press,” Jefferson acknowledged. “Every man must lay his purse and his pen under
contribution,” he added, suggesting that if they wished to reach elite newspaper readers, candidates had to
avail themselves of the power of the pen.
But we would be remiss if we did not point out that there lurked a fundamental inequity just beneath the
surface. Only property owners could vote. Blacks and women could not cast ballots. By the definition of
democracy, the U.S. was not a fully democratic country.

Popular, Prejudiced Politics

It came together in 1840. “Popular politics became the new American religion, as two and a half million
men streamed to the polls—ten times the number enrolled in churches,”. Any strategy, no matter how goofy,
that engaged the electorate was deemed acceptable. The beneficiary was William Henry Harrison, in truth a
mediocre candidate, but the first to deliver a stump campaign speech on the campaign trail. Branding
himself as a man of the people, Harrison positioned himself against the incumbent, President Martin Van
Buren.

The contemporary media campaign

The media are the centerpiece of today’s campaign. As Stephen J. Wayne observes, “The road to the White
House is long, circuitous, and bumpy. It contains numerous hazards and potential dead ends”. It also wends
its way through the media, via the news and across the pathways of advertising, debates, and blogs.
• “The mass media are the main channels through which politics is communicated,” and the ways media
convey electoral reality substantially influence how voters perceive politics, political communication
researchers Jesper Strömbäck and Lynda L. Kaid observed.
• Scholar Thomas E. Patterson recognized this more than three decades ago, titling his book The mass media
election. An academic journal on political communication underscores the point, calling itself the
International Journal of Press/Politics. And you know this too, because your knowledge of presidential
campaigns is probably based almost exclusively on what you glean from the media regardless of whether
you read about it in ink-stained newspapers, watch advertisements on television, or peruse the Internet,
clicking on websites and watching candidates’ images flicker across your computer screen. There are seven
core characteristics of today’s media and technology-centered presidential campaigns.

The image

When you watch a presidential candidate on television or watch a candidate in a YouTube video, you are not
seeing the true essence of his or her personality. What you have viewed is a snapshot, a stylized
presentation, a picture that has been crafted by the candidate and consultants in an effort to influence the
impression of the candidate that you carry in your mind. Politics is about creating and molding those
impressions.
• It is concerned with convincing voters to accept the positive impressions, integrate them with their own
perceptions, and remix them mentally so they form a favorable attitude.
• Image-construction and image-management play a central role in contemporary political communication.
• Scholars have offered a precise definition of the term, image. A candidate’s image is defined as the
constellation of perceptions “based upon both the subjective appraisals made by the voters and the
messages . . . transmitted by the candidate”. In some sense, concern about images—and politicians’
beguiling of citizens with appearances rather than realities—dates back to fears articulated by the Greek
philosopher, Plato.

Candidates, not parties?

Party identification has declined over the past decades, with the growth of ticket-splitting, advent of
Independent voters, and increased education, which encouraged people to move away from reflexive support
of a political party.
• Television helped to precipitate some of the weakening in partisan ties, replacing parties as the primary
communicative link between candidates and voters.
• Candidates—beginning, to some degree, with Jimmy Carter in 1976—have become independent
entrepreneurs, who hire their own staffs, raise political money independently of the parties, employ pollsters,
devise strategies, and attempt to wage a campaign that communicates their ideas and ambitions.
• Parties are still important: They structure campaigns and influence voter attachments. But they are
nowhere near the kingmakers they once were. During the first half of the 20th century, candidates had to
break with the big city mayors—for example, Richard Daley of Chicago and David Lawrence of
Philadelphia—hoping the mayors would lend their support and deliver delegates at the nominating
convention. Nowadays, candidates must win primaries and caucuses to secure the nomination, and news
media coverage exerts an outsized impact on the nomination process, as candidates must depend on the
news to secure publicity for their campaigns.

Television is an intimate medium that people watch in their living rooms and bedrooms. It takes shattering
events in faraway places—wars, assassinations, and famines—and personalizes them, showing the human
sides of tragedy. The electronic media reveal the back regions of political lives, revealing personal details of
candidates’ sex lives, infidelities, and psychological foibles. Earlier media maintained a traditional boundary
between the private and public, showing only the most socially acceptable public behaviors of political
officials. This boundary dissipated with the development of technology (faster film, videotape, online
media) that allowed journalists easier and less obtrusive access to politicians’ activities.
• Cultural changes also eviscerated the boundary between private and public. With the growing public
appetite for political gossip, and journalists’ acknowledgment that they had covered up presidents’ private
misdeeds (like JFK’s affairs), there was virtually no private behavior a politician could perform that did not
seem suitable for mass media coverage. Political candidates, for their part, adjusted to the new era,
recognizing that there could be political mileage and rhetorical benefits in revealing aspects of their personal
lives.
In a book aptly titled Seducing America: How television charms the modern voter, Roderick P. Hart offers
telling examples of how candidates try to personalize themselves in media appearances. The 1984
Democratic convention keynote speaker Mario Cuomo spoke emotionally about his father, “a small man
with thick calluses on both hands [who worked] 15 and 16 hours a day.”
• Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson revealed that “at 3 o’clock on Thanksgiving Day we
couldn’t eat turkey because Mama was preparing someone else’s turkey at 3 o’clock . . . then around 6
o’clock she would get off the Alta Vista bus; then we would bring up the leftovers and eat our turkey”.
These personalized examples would have been unusual in the pre-television campaign. Personalization of
politics has yielded benefits, but also raised critical questions.

Favorable coverage in the media

Staffers scope out the auditorium where a candidate is scheduled to speak, to make sure that the size of the
venue matches the number of people expected to be in attendance.
• On the eve of the critical Michigan primary in 2012, Mitt Romney found himself speaking to 1,200
supporters in a football stadium that seated 80,000. Much to his chagrin, news stories emphasized that his
message was dwarfed by the size of the arena. Later in the campaign, he improved his optics, as his
strategists planned campaign appearances days in advance, searching for the most visually appealing
location for Romney to speak and working hard to build crowds so photographers could click pictures of
throngs of enthusiastic supporters as the candidate spoke in a picturesque locale.

Media’s logic for covering events

As Roger Ailes, the director of George H.W. Bush’s 1988 media campaign and current president of Fox
News, famously explained:
• Let’s face it, there are three things that the media are interested in: pictures, mistakes, and attacks. That’s
the one sure way of getting coverage. You try to avoid as many mistakes as you can . . . It’s my orchestra pit
theory of politics. If you have two guys on stage and one says, “I have a solution to the Middle East
problem,” and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?

Visual images are critical

Television is a visual medium that prizes pictures and pleasant images. Candidates are necessarily concerned
with how they look, because voters form impressions of political figures from appearances in the media.
Didn’t impressions always matter? Weren’t voters concerned with how candidates looked when they gave
stump speeches on the campaign trail or in candidate debates? Yes.
• In an 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln replied to Douglas’s charge that he was two-
faced by quipping, “I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?”.
• However, a smaller proportion of voters saw candidates on the stump than see them on TV today.
Evaluations of whether a candidate “seemed presidential” were probably less salient when there were no
visual media.

Contemporary online technologies

There was a time not so long ago that political consultants focused endlessly on how their campaigns played
on television. No longer. To be sure, TV is still a player; it is the primary source of political information for
older Americans, and campaign managers pay close attention to how network news covers their candidates.
• But today, as political management expert Dennis W. Johnson (2011) observes, campaign consultants are
likely to be equally if not more consumed with questions like these:
What are yesterday’s poll numbers posted on Polling.com showing? Did you see that Twitter posting from
our opponent? Are we following that potentially damaging rant on RedState.com blog site? Did you see how
much traffic that YouTube posting is getting? Are we getting any traction from our pop-up ads on Google?
What are they doing on our opponent’s Facebook page?

Political Speeches

From the nation’s beginnings, as now, political speeches have had two main functions:

to persuade the audience that a certain public policy is the best or worst solution to a problem, or
to persuade the audience that a certain candidate, political party, or agenda is preferable to the
alternatives.

In both cases, the speech usually attempts to get the audience to take a prescribed action that supports or
opposes a policy, party, agenda, or candidate.

• Even with all the contemporary channels of communication, public speaking remains an essential part of a
public official’s or candidate’s ability to communicate with the public. In today’s communication
environment, the hallmark of effective political rhetoric is simplicity, directness, and—the speaker hopes—a
pithy, memorable phrase or two. It doesn’t always happen.

In the Gettysburg Address, in two or three minutes—272 words—Abraham Lincoln not only dedicated a
plot of ground in Pennsylvania as a cemetery, he gave lasting definition to the purpose of a bloody war in
which Americans were killing Americans in a struggle for the ultimate soul of the nation.
In the depths of the Great Depression, with widespread business closures, millions of Americans out of
work, and a national sense of hopelessness, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a political message to the
1932 Democratic National Convention calling for a fundamental change in the role of government, and
offering the public a ray of hope and optimism, something in very short supply for most Americans at that
time. “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, July 2,
1932. )

In his inaugural speech a few months later, Roosevelt began a series of pep talks to the American public,
trying to rouse people from years of despair: “This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and
will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—
nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance”
In 1961, young, charismatic John F. Kennedy sought to evoke a sense of security and idealism and to
challenge a generation to serve their country and the world: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what
your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask
not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man” (John F. Kennedy,
“Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1961).

One of the most electrifying advocacy speeches ever delivered took place on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial on a hot August day just two and half years later. A young Atlanta, Georgia, preacher and civil
rights activist—Martin Luther King Jr.—was speaking to a rally of 250,000 people and to a national
audience, trying to reconnect the conscience of the public with the constitutional promise of equality for all
Americans. And he was trying to spur a hesitant Kennedy administration and reluctant Congress to take
action:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of
Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at
the table of brotherhood (Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963.)
A speech given and adapted many times, along with the ability to deliver it well, took Ronald Reagan from
B-movie actor to national spokesman for a conservative, business-friendly political philosophy to governor
of California to president of the United States and ultimately to an enduring political symbol.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” “There is a point
beyond which they must not advance.” And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater’s
“peace through strength.” Winston Churchill said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material
computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits—not animals.”
• Reagan added, “There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which,
whether we like it or not, spells duty.” And then, borrowing a phrase from Franklin Roosevelt, he concluded,
“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny” (Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing,” October 27, 1964.)

Barack Obama, a state senator few people had heard of, put himself squarely on the national stage with his
keynote address to the 2004 Democratic convention:
“I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my
two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a
debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible”
(Barack Obama, “Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention,” July 27, 2004).
• Obama firmly established the theme for his own presidential campaign four years later:

It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for
distant shores. The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a mill
worker’s son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that
America has a place for him, too. Hope! Hope in the face of difficulty! Hope in the face of uncertainty! The
audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things
not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.

The Seven "Deadly Sins" of Argumentation

1. Minimal answer to the question;

2. Use of unrelated material;
3. Repeating what others have said;
4. Excessive quoting;
5. Misinterpretation of another's opinion;
6. Opinion reporting instead of arguments;
7. Ignoring the obvious or strong objections;

A speaker may convey a message that is powerful. It may be gentle, or matter-of- fact, or humorous. But to
be effective, it has to sound as if the speaker is talking to us rather than reading. That ability comes in part
from experience and getting comfortable with public speaking. More than anything else, it comes from
knowing the particular speech and practicing it.

The greatest stage and film actors rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse. They typically think through and practice
the delivery of every line and word until they have it just right. Yet trying to get some politicians to run
through a speech a time or two before they actually deliver it can be a daunting challenge. I cannot tell you
how many times I’ve been told, “I don’t have time. Just make sure it’s in large print,” or, “This isn’t my first
speech, you know. I don’t need rehearsals.” Sometimes they don’t want to take the time, and sometimes they
simply believe they’re so polished and experienced, they just don’t need to rehearse.

Occasionally—but only occasionally—speeches from the floor of the US House or Senate are memorable,
even majestic. More commonly, speakers either stumble through a speech or simply read the words before
them, as if they were seeing the text for the first time—because, in fact, many of the speakers are seeing the
words for the first time; or maybe the second, if they happened to look it over on their way to the floor.
Effective speeches are not just well-crafted essays read out loud. They are written for the ear rather than the
eye, to be heard rather than read. That usually means shorter, simpler, and more direct sentences.
In Speechwriting in Perspective: A Brief Guide to Effective and Persuasive Communication, Thomas H.
Neale and Dana Ely of the Congressional Research Service state that “written sentences up to 30 words long
are easily understood by aver- age readers.” But any spoken sentence longer than 8 to 16 words is
“considered difficult for listeners to follow by ear, and according to some cognitive researchers, may be too
long for the aver- age listener to absorb and analyze quickly”.

• Given such limitations, a frequent challenge is to explain complex thoughts and processes clearly and, in
very good speeches, memorably. To do this, speechwriters and orators often utilize a number of rhetorical
techniques.

Monroe’s Principles of Speech

Monroe’s motivated sequence is a technique to organize persuasive speeches to inspire the audience to take
action. It was developed by Alan Houston Monroe at Purdue University and published in his book,
Monroe’s Principles of Speech.

• Attention: Get the attention of your audience using a detailed story, shocking example, dramatic statistic,
quotations, and so on.
• Need: Explain the problem; show how the problem connects to your audience. Establish that the
audience’s action is necessary to solve the problem.
• Satisfaction: Let the audience know there is a solution. How will the audience’s action solve the problem?
•Visualization: Tell the audience what will happen if the solution is implemented, or what will happen if it
does not take place.
• Action: Tell the audience what they can do personally to solve the problem. Call on them to act (Alan
Houston Monroe, Monroe’s Principles of Speech.)

Debate functions and definition

Presidential debates serve three different functions for the political communication system.
For candidates, they are, first and foremost political events. From the perspective of presidential candidates,
debates offer key opportunities “to win over undecided voters, to reinforce voters who have already made a
decision concerning whom to vote for,” and to change the minds of more open-minded voters. Candidates
do not want to educate the electorate. They want to exploit debates to achieve concrete political objectives.

Debates play a different role for voters. They help voters to decide which candidate best serves their interest,
who shares their values, and how the candidates might perform as president. For partisan activists, debates
are key opportunities to shore up the base and articulate strategies to appeal to swing voters. For politically
interested voters, debates stimulate conversation, sometimes funny and edgy conversations on social media
and via Twitter. For less involved voters, they are like stock car races, where you cheer for your driver and
secretly hope an exciting minor accident will occur, in the form of a gaffe or goof committed by the
opposing candidate.

Presidential debates also perform symbolic functions for the larger political system. They represent the only
live, real-time forum in which candidates stand side by side, discussing policy issues. They put potential
leaders before citizens in a relatively unmediated forum. Unlike in political commercials or microtargeted
Internet messages, arguments are not packaged by consultants. Unlike the news, debates are not screened
and edited by journalistic gatekeepers. They are exercises in civic education that help citizens to acquire new
information, approach issues more complexly, and consider new perspectives on vexing problems. At least
that is the hope.

A presidential debate is defined here as “the joint appearance by two or more opposing candidates, who
expound on their positions, with explicit and equitable provisions for refutation without interruption”.

Why it is important for an organisation to communicate effectively during crises?

Crisis situations have a negative impact on an organization's image, identity and reputation.
• A well-chosen communication strategy during a crisis can mitigate the negative effects of a crisis in an
organization.

Crises and corporate image

The image of the organization - the impression that the public and the audience have about the organization.
• The image of an organization is determined by the experiences, knowledge and feelings that the audience
has when consuming its services, product, etc.
• Organizational crisis situations often have negative consequences for society. Such negative experiences
undermine public confidence in the organization and create a negative image of the organization.

Identity of the organisation

An organization's identity consists of the various characteristics, traits, attributes, etc. of the organization.
These are what distinguishes a company from other market players.
• These are physical elements, but also patterns of behavior that are chosen and adapted by the organization
(such as slogans, social responsibility acts, etc.)..
• A crisis may require a rethinking of an organization's choices (identity elements), as a crisis often shows
that an organization is not living up to its stated values. For example, Maxima changed its slogan after the
crisis to "Thinking about everything”..

Crises and organisational reputation

The reputation of the organization is based on the image of the organization and its identity. Reputation is
formed by evaluating the organization's performance today and in the past.
• Reputation changes the slowest of all three concepts because it is formed over a long period of time.
• In order to achieve a good reputation, an organization must make efforts to communicate with its
audiences and gain their trust.
• Even the strongest reputations can be adversely affected by crises. According to Druckenmiller, the true
reputation of an organization will be tested during crises.

FOUR “R”s

Relationships
• Reputation
• Responsibility
• Response
• Relations with audiences:
Close and open communication between the organization and its audiences leads to easier solutions in crisis
situations: PROACTIVE COMMUnication

When an organisation faces a crisis, it must assess three elements:

• Audience
• Crises Type
• Crises Stage

Stages of the crisis

PRE-CRISISPERIOD:Aperiodoftimewhenitisclearthatcrisiswilloccurand cannot be avoided (eg. an

impending tsunami). At this stage, it is important for the responsible organisations or individuals to inform
as effectively as possible the people who will be affected by the crisis, eg. about evacuation plans, other
protection and prevention measures, etc.
• CRISIS: the goal of organizations responsible during a crisis is to spread information as systematically as
possible to the victims, to inform them of how and where to get help, how to stay safe, to educate about the
general situation, to mobilize people, to reassure them, to give them hope and to invite them to fight the
crisis together. At this time, it is very important to avoid or as much as possible reduce the emerging panic
and call the public to united action.

• POST-CRISIS PERIOD: it is a time when the crisis is under control, but the effects of the crisis are not.
Thus, at present, the goal of crisis management is to control negative consequences and effects.

Four-stage model

1. Prodromal stage – the period before a crisis, when signs of a potential crisis are visible. In this phase, a
crisis can be avoided if risks are recognised and appropriate action is taken.
2. The acute crisis stage – characterised by sudden changes, instability and unpredictability. This is the
period when the crisis is most visible to the organisation's external audiences.
3. The chronic crisis stage – crisis sets in, it is a less dramatic period, but also very difficult to fix.
4. Resolution stage – the organization returns to the pre-crisis period.

Five stage model

1. Signal detection;

2. Preparation/prevention – a crisis management and communication team is assembled, the purpose of

which is to prevent a crisis and/or mitigate its negative consequences;

3. Containment/damage limitation: in this phase, the crisis management plan is implemented.

4. Recovery;

5. Learning.

According to the situational theory of crisis communication, it is necessary to choose the right image
restoration strategies :

• Image Restoration Theory (according to W. Benoit) - in order to avoid losing the trust of customers and to
maintain a good image of the organization, it is necessary to choose the right image restoration strategy:
• Denial
• Evasion of Responsibility
• Reducing Offensiveness
• Corrective Actions
• Mortification

Seven rules for risk communication according to EPA

Value the public and involve it as an equal partner:

The goal of the Risk Communication is more than just the dissemination of information, but also the
construction of an informed society that is interested, involved, rational and ready for cooperation;
People must be able to participate in decisions that affect their well- being;
Involve the public at the very beginning of the process, before decisions are made.

! • Listen to the audiences:

Don't make assumptions about audiences without research;

People care more about trust, credibility, control, benefits, competence, volunteering, fairness, empathy,
caring, courtesy or compassion than, for example, mortality statistics or quantified risk measures;
If people feel they are being ignored, they will never accept or hear the risk message;

! • Work with trusted sources and be trusted yourself:

The credibility of the communicator is a key aspect of risk

communication.
Only credible information will be taken seriously by the public;
Public trust is hard to gain and even harder to regain once lost;
Short-term trust is gained by the public's appreciation of verbal and non-verbal communication;
Long-term trust is based on concrete actions;

! • Be honest, sincere and open :

Uncertainty and unknown - openly name what is unknown;

Notify the public immediately;
Don't keep anything quiet-this reduces the likelihood of rumors;
Do not underestimate and do not exaggerate the risk (do not scare the public because fear can paralyze
public to take action);
Don't be silent!

! Speak clearly and with compassion:

Sympathy and public understanding are important;

Use clean non-technical language;
Knowing the context - respect society's norms and values (language, clothing, etc.);
Personalize risk information (speak with examples, stories, etc...);
Avoid abstract information about deaths, adverse effects, etc.;
Use risk comparisons;
Speak positively;
Don’t exaggerate, but also don't underestimate the risk;
Only promise what will be done.

! Carefully plan and evaluate the actions:

Different tasks, audiences and media require different risk communication

tools;
Risk communication will only be successful if it is carefully planned and subsequently evaluated;
Continuity and consistency of communication is important;

Internet and Communication

 The Internet and the digital revolution have changed a lot of things, but not quite everything.
 Today, more and more people get most or all of their information from websites and blogs, rather
than from network television or radio.
 Over the years, internet has become a potent means of reaching target audiences and individuals with
political messages.
 The 1992 Bill Clinton presidential campaign was the first using Internet.
 The Internet, even in its earlier, less-interactive stages, brought major advances in the ability of
political campaigns to identify various target audiences and communicate more directly with them.
 In addition to using the Internet to recruit volunteers and organize, it was also very useful to raise
money as it is done in Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign.
  Internet allows a campaign’s organizational efforts and messaging to be targeted at individual voters.

 It has given political organizations a profoundly increased ability to collect, organize, and utilize
data.

 Internet allows people to get information political candidates. Before internet age, televisions were
doing filling this gap.

 Internet provides the raw materials from which people construct political beliefs. This case is
especially true with younger generations.

 And there is abundant evidence that individuals who searches on the internet are more
knowledgeable about politics than their counterparts who do not.

Data Mining and Communication

 Generally, data mining is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing
it into useful information.

 It allows users to scrutinize data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and
summarize the relationships identified.

 Internet and advancing computer technology have allowed collection and analysis of a lot more
useful data on the target audience of political campaigns.

Case study: BUSH Campaign in 2004

 During the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, Bush campaign organizers, have shaped their
discourse on Ohio Black voters by using data mining.

 For Ohio Black voters, Bush campaign has emphasized “education” and “health care” which was the
number issue raised by Black voters.

 As a result of using data mining and creating a local discourse for Ohio black voters, Bush has
gained extra 4% vote from Ohio black voters compared to black population in other states.

MICROTARGETING

Since the 2004 election, digital technology has evolved quickly, enabling the collection and manipulation of
vastly more data. Data mining evolved into microtargeting, giving campaigns and other organizations a
greater ability to target political messages to particular groups of likely voters—even individuals—rather
than relying on mass messaging. Being able to direct a message to an identifiable group with common
characteristics or interests, or to individual voters, makes a campaign’s communication process more
effective because messages can be very specific. It also saves money because campaigns are not paying to
send messages to all possible voters via mass media.

Case study: 2012 Obama Campaign Data Collection Operation

  The campaign put together the most massive database in political history, merging information from
dozens of sources into one comprehensive system.

 This megafile allowed the campaign to organize turnout data on millions of voters.

 They could then cross-tabulate the data with information from pollsters, fundraisers, consumer
databases, and, significantly, with files of social media and mobile contacts with voters in critical
states.

 Incredibly specific messages could be targeted with devastating accuracy using the most-effective
media channels.
 None of this would have been possible without the next- generation digital tools of the Internet—
Web 2.0.

Social Media and Communication

 Social media is truly democratized communication.

 Based more on starting conversations than disseminating messages, it offers, at the least, two-way
interaction.

 Because it enables user-generated content, traditional top-down communication is much more

difficult and “message discipline” nearly impossible.

 Today, effective government or policy communicators have to manage the communication process in
both traditional media and Internet and social media, which allows them to reach out to desired
audiences without the filter of the news media.

Case study: Trump Campaign 2016

 One major factor in the election of President Donald J. Trump was an amazingly effective use of
social media – particularly Facebook and Twitter.

 His messages rarely contained any details of his positions or thoughts on government policy or
issues, but more often were filled with angry reactions and playground style name- calling of
opponents and others who questioned or disagreed with him.

 Secondly, social media played a major role in driving Trump’s coverage in the mainstream media.

 Cable television news had quickly become hooked on Donald Trump.

Ethics and Communication

 Ethics in political communication refers to the moral principles and values that guide the way
political messages are created, conveyed, and received.
 Ethical political communication is characterized by transparency, honesty, and respect for different
perspectives and opinions.
 It involves a commitment to truthful representation of facts and ideas, avoiding deception or
manipulation, and promoting civil discourse.
  Ethical political communication is essential for maintaining trust and legitimacy in the political
process, and for fostering a healthy democracy where citizens can make informed decisions based on
reliable information.

 Ethical political communication also involves avoiding harmful language or messages that may
incite violence or discrimination against particular groups.

 Although it’s true that nearly all political communication is intended to persuade, there are ethical
limits on how far the communicator can go beyond a starting point of neutral, fact-based arguments
that present both sides of an issue in cold, objective terms.

 The communicator has to know where those limits are because many of the same techniques
common in effective political communication are also characteristic of spin and propaganda.

Spin of political communication

• Spin essentially means you talk only about the positive and don’t mention the negative.

• In political communication, this means to mention only positive sides to persuade the audience. As
audience lacks information about the negative aspect, spinning is viewed as not compatible with ethical
standards.

•Politicians are often accused of spin by their opponents, who are also busy doing their own spinning.

Spin Techniques

• There are two basic kinds of spin: defensive and offensive.

• Defensive spin tries to recast or redefine an unfavorable set of circumstances to encourage people to view
them in a more favorable light.

• Offensive spin is an attack, often using anger, to immobilize opponents who are trying to capitalize on
embarrassing circumstances.

Propaganda

 For many people, the word propaganda brings to mind some of the most cruel and repressive regimes
in history: Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Maoist China, and
North Korea under Kim Jong-un today.

 The notion of propaganda reeks of dictatorships and mind control on a massive scale.

 But propaganda is not only a tool for totalitarian regimes, and it does not die out when they do.
 It is alive and well in the United States, among other places, and it continues to be widely used
because it serves a variety of purposes. Some are positive and beneficial; some are not.
 Propaganda seeks to change the way people understand an issue or situation to suit a particular
interest.
 The aim of propaganda is to directly influence people’s opinions rather than communicate facts.
 Propaganda shares many techniques with advertising.
 In fact, advertising really is a form of propaganda that promotes a certain product or service.
 But the word propaganda usually refers to political or governmental uses.

 The narrower and more dangerous use of propaganda employs deliberately false or misleading
information that furthers a political cause or interest.
  What sets this sort of propaganda apart from other forms of advocacy is the willingness of the
propagandist to manipulate people through deception and confusion rather than persuasion and
understanding.

Lies and communication

• Lies are not spin.

• They are pervasive use of spin by politicians, its tacit acceptance by the media, and, to a large extent, its
acceptance by the public have created an environment that tempts political communicators to dress up flat-
out lies as spin.

• Today, lying has somehow become okay in many quarters, especially in politics and government.

• Telling an outright lie in political debates or discussion over national policy seems to be acceptable.

• Politicians get away with lying for three reasons: media timidity, party loyalty, and low expectations.

Ethics and Communication

• Ultimately, whether political communicators are ethical or not is completely up to them.

• What separates propaganda, spin, and lying from honest political discourse, more than anything else, is the
intent of the communicator.

• And intent is governed, more than anything else, by that communicator’s ethics.

• Unethical political communication will continue as long as the public allows it.