To what extent do the media in Britain determine political attitudes and opinions?

To what extent do the media determine

political attitudes and opinions?

In a liberal democracy media is the channel through which freedom of speech and the opinions of the public is exercised, in order to provide accountability through criticising the government (Street 2001). Heywood (2007) recognizes that, through a combination of social and technological changes, the media have become increasingly more of a powerful political actor and more deeply involved in the political process. The relationship between politicians and the media is symbiotic: politicians need the media to get their message across, while the media need politicians and their news to sell (Kavanagh 1996). The vast majority of the population attain their information about politics from the mass media, such as radio, press, television and the Internet. The media do not only report, but also propose interpretations of the news. Some argue that the media can help set an agenda, by stressing certain matters and ignoring others, thus influencing general perceptions and images, for instance a “strong” Mrs Thatcher or a “wimpish” John Major. (Kavanagh 1996 pp. 208) This essay will look at how the media has been transformed in Britain, as well as different actors within the media, how they influence politics and the popular opinion, and to what extent this can be argued through different theories.

Measuring media has been proved to be very difficult and one can identify, according to Budge (2001), that the main problems are the difficulties in distinguishing the effects of media from other influences, such as family life and education, which highly varies from person to person. The different media channels, for instance television and the press, have dissimilar impacts; they push and pull in different directions. An example of this is the Labour and Conservative support by the press versus the quiet neutral TV. Finally, there is a predicament when establishing causes and effects, where people choose the sort of media that suit their taste and opinions. Nevertheless, the media can shape themselves in order to appeal to a particular sort of market, so they reflect rather than create views of the audience, thus, as Budge puts it; “it is difficult to know whether the chicken or the egg comes first (Budge et al 2004 pp. 338).

The augmentation of media influence in politics has generated various theories analysing the effect of media. The “reinforcement theory” was developed in 1960s by Joseph Klapper, which states that the media does not create or shape opinions or attitudes regarding politics, but rather reinforce the existing beliefs and opinions of the individual that is determined by social influences, such as family and social class. Thus, the audience will simply ignore messages that contradict their beliefs. However, he argued that when introducing a new subject the outcome of the representation from the media has a much greater effect in a short-term perspective until the issue has been influenced by social factors. Furthermore, McCombs and Shaw introduced the “Agenda setting theory” in 1972 in their study of the role of the media in the 1968 presidential campaign in the US. The theory implies that the media does not determine what we think, but it can however strongly influence what we think about (Cohen 1963, cited by McCombs and Shaw 1972 pp.177), thus helping to set a public agenda. The amount of attention given to an issue in the media affect the level of importance assigned to it by the public, which implies a control of the access to news by the media, often referred to as “gate keeping”. As situations in politics develop, the media will have to choose certain issues which they hold to be the most important in terms of public interest, and this choice greatly determines what people think about in terms of politics by upping their importance within the political spectrum (Budge 2001). For instance, in 1997 during the General Election Campaign, almost the entire media focused on the sleaze of the Conservative government, where many Ministers where shamed and put in the public eye, thus undermining the public’s confidence for the party. This could have had a substantial effect on how the public viewed the politicians and the Conservative Party, consequently affecting the outcome of the Election itself. If this theory is accurate, it could be argued that the media does have part in determining political opinion, since it increases the awareness of the current and most important political issues that could potentially lead to revision of choice and opinion by the voters (Kavanagh 1996).

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The “Framing theory”, usually attributed to the work of Erving Goffman in 1975, goes further claiming that the way in which modern media present politics have a strong influence on public opinion and that the media’s treatment of politics actually affects politics itself, and in turn the way people comprehend and perceive it (Budge et al 2001). Parties and candidates are usually stronger in some areas, and weaker in some, thus media can, by concentrating on these flaws or strong points, help or hinder their campaigns through news reports. For instance, when covering a story on the British anti-war protesters of the invasion of Afghanistan the media can choose to interpret and portray the protesters as a violent anti-US minority group, or as a peaceful group who disagree with the invasion of one of the world’s poorest countries on the rightful grounds that not all Afghanistan’s are terrorists. In this way, media can possibly shape the opinions and views of events. Additionally, the media’s obsession with bad news, investigated by the Glasgow University Media Group (1976), such as war, scandals and violence, can lead to a form of “videomalaise”, which can encourage scepticism, a general distrust in the political system and the politicians involved, ultimately causing an apathy towards politics as a whole (Budge et al 2001). This considered, it could be argued that the media has a profound affect on political opinions and attitudes, since it essentially determines how the public see and understand current political situations.

The most recent school of thought is the “Direct effects theory” that argues that the mass media directly influences political attitudes and voting behaviour (Budge et al 2001). This theory claims that the “Reinforcement Theory” wrongly assumes that people read the paper that suits their own political attitudes, instead claiming that many readers are unsure about the political stance of the very paper they read. They argue that there remains a strong link between the political standpoint of the individual’s choice of paper, and the way in which the individual will choose to vote, in spite of any other factors that affect voting behaviour (Budge et al 2001). If media are able to influence and determine political opinion in this way, then perhaps the “reinforcement theorists” do significantly underestimate media’s power.

Since the Second World War it is noticeable how far Britain has come in terms of the relationship between media and politics. In 1945 there was no television, no opinions polls and politicians communicated with the electors mainly through public meetings and newspapers. In the last half of the century we have seen a transformation where new channels of media has been developed and increasingly used, both in the advantage, and disadvantage of politicians. Almost everything politicians say or do is scrutinised, and parties and their leaders think long and hard about their image and campaigns. Media advisers, or “spin doctors” such as Peter Mandelson for the Labour party, have become key figures in politics, and parties spend millions on advertising (Budge et al. 2001). Evidence of politicians influence over media is more evident during elections, and it is often claimed that the party in office have many opportunities to shape news agenda by exploiting its use of office, for example policy initiatives and the budget, surely giving them some advantage. It is difficult to pin down what sort of medium that has what kind of impact on whom, since different kinds of media work in dissimilar ways. In Britain, it is essential to distinguish between the more balanced and impartial electronic media, while newspapers can be as partial and party political as they like. Different types of media are used by different kinds of users, for instance broadsheet readers are usually better educated, spend more time with their paper than tabloid readers, trust their paper more than TV as a source of news, and know more about politics. Contradictory, tabloid readers spend less time with their paper and rely more on the TV for news (Budge 2001).

The electronic media, where both BBC and ITV is seen by the public to be neutral, and only a minority believe it is Conservative bias (15%) and Labour bias (5%) (Budge et al. 2001). Thus, television might have a more direct affect since it is seen as a more reliable source. Television has affected politics in a way where politicians have to think strategically how they want to be presented to an advantage, as it might appear that more attention is paid to the presentation than to the actual substance of politics (Kavanagh 1996). A two minutes exposure at peak-time television enables politicians to reach far more people than they could through, for example, a press release. However, there is more pressure, because if the appearance is unsuccessful the damage is also greater. (Jones et al. 1991)

One of the most distinguishing features of British politics is the presence of a highly partisan press. Thus, since print media is more partial than TV, there might be a correlation between class habits and the high number of papers supporting conservatives, since the highly educated middle and upper class read more papers. One should therefore question whether print media has a greater effect on conservatives than on labour supporters, and how great the effect of the higher number of conservative papers have on non-conservatives. Budge (2001) mentions three explanation for the claim of newspapers being biased; firstly, the press is mostly controlled by multimillionaires and multinational companies that often has a strong economic and political view, for instance News Corporation who controls newspapers, such as the Sun and News of The World, and satellite and cable channels like SKY. Secondly, the head of the companies who own the British press have pursued power over their papers promoting certain political aspects, for example Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, who was in close relationship with Mrs Thatcher (BBC 14 December 2004). Thirdly, since the newspapers rely on income from advertising they need to answer for the interest of their investors. The superior support for the Conservative in the press has raised concerns about its affect on voting behaviour. After the 1992 election, The Sun newspaper ran the famous headline “It’s the Sun wot won it”, after a heavy support of the Conservatives, with headlines such as “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights” (Kavanagh 1996). Some, especially The Sun, believed this caused a late swing to gain the Conservatives the victory, which was accepted by Tony Blair and therefore Labour put in considerably effort into securing The Sun’s support for the 1997 election. If British newspapers do have an influence on voting behaviour, it should be most apparent when newspapers change side, for instance in the 1997 election when The Sun and News of The World switched support to Blair and the New Labour, thus implying direct effects of the media on politics (BBC 14 December 2004). However, as Dearlove and Saunders (2000 pp. 194) suggests, “there is little evidence to suggest that these were decisive factors in the final result…most voters had made up their minds well before the campaign started, and support for Labour actually declined slightly in the polls after sections of the Murdoch-owned press had endorsed Labour”. Even though the media can claim to be biased one can not prove, through this example, that the media have the power to shape people’s attitudes, thus strongly suggests a limited impact and the Reinforcement theory to be accurate (Curtice 1999).

The rise of the new media, where about 40% of the British population used the Internet in order to access news in 2006, have changed and added a new method for political interaction. (UK Statistics Authority). It has allowed voters to connect and enabled the public to be a part of the political discussion, where in traditional media have been limited in such aspect. For the politicians it has enabled a more personal approach engaging the public in policy discussion, by, for instance, the blogging by David Cameron, escaping the filters of journalists (Fisher, Denver and Benyon 2003). New media has also created availability on a global level of political news, and the spread of news is increasingly faster and demanding more from the politicians.

The media can be seen as the guardians of the public’s right to know, and undoubtedly they are the source of most of our information and understanding about the modern world. Clearly the media is only one of many influences on public opinion and political attitudes. One can suggest that media has a limited affect on political behaviour since people have set minds about politics and often read whatever suits their support of party, thus the reinforcement theory would be correct. However, media’s choice of what to cover and how it is presented must have an affect on what people think of subjects discussed in the public sphere. Also the different actors, such as owners of media channels and politicians, have a say in what is published in media, thus they are powerful actors indirectly influencing the public opinion. In conclusion one can assume that media is, not the only, but one of the most important factors influencing political behaviours and attitudes.

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