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Politicians and modernizationModernization is a product of selection processes (see Appendix: Selection and functionality).

This means that not all political initiatives that are self-described as a modernization can beconsidered as genuine modernizations. Many such modernizing reforms actually diminish the

selection processes that tend to generate complex functionality. This mismatch between rhetoric and

reality3 arises from a terminological ambiguity by which modernization means different things in

different contexts.

In this book we follow Luhmann in arguing that true modernization is the increase in

functional specialization of societies, and that the functionality of a social system is defined by its

having prevailed over other social system variants during a history of competition. In other words,

functionality is relative; and the most functional systems are those that have displaced other system

variants in a competitive situation. Selection processes are therefore intrinsic to modernization.

But another use of modernization is as a synonym for rationalization. Rationalizationusually entails the reform of a social system by central government, along the lines of making it more

of a rational bureaucracy involving standardization of explicit procedures in a hierarchical command

system. The confusion arises from the fact that (as Weber famously noted) the emergence of rationalbureaucracies characterized many modern states, such as nineteenth-century Germany. Later, this

ideal of rational bureaucracy as being the most efficient mode of organization was to dominate thesocial system of the USSR and its satellites.

Rational bureaucracies may indeed be an instrument of modernization in the Luhmann sense,

especially when (as in nineteenth- century Germany) meritocratic formal bureaucracy replacedhereditary, arbitrary personal rule by an aristocracy. However, rational bureaucracy is not necessarily

associated with modernization (as became obvious in the later decades of the Soviet Union), since

politically-dominated bureaucracies that emerge without sufficient competition may tend to become

less functionally efficient, in terms of producing less output per unit input. Rational bureaucracy is

therefore merely a means to the end of increasing functional complexity. For example, in the economy

a variety of organizational forms have prevailed in economic competitionsuch forms includerational bureaucracies, but are certainly not restricted to this model of organization. Furthermore,

many of the most successful economic systems have been highly autonomous from control by central

government.

The point is that modernization in the Luhmann sense is not synonymous with the imposition

of rational bureaucracies. Rationalizing political modernization may indeed be anti-modernizing especially when central government introduces reforms that lead to long-term political domination of

other social systems. This constitutes a de-differentiation of society, a reversion towards less

specialized traditional social organization, and therefore tends to reduce efficiency in social systems.

For example, if self-styled modernization of the educational system tended to increase directpolitical control of education, then this mixing of political and educational functions would constitute

a reduction in the functional specialization of the education system; and would lead to lowerefficiency of the system in pursuing educational objectives.

Of course, true modernization might, in principle, legitimately involve a temporary phase of

increased political control which led onto a more functionally-differentiated social system. For

example, central government might impose re-structuring of a social system in order to encourage

growth and competition (of the right sort); after which the government would withdraw its domination

to allow the social system to increase in functional complexity in a selective environment that

rewarded efficiency. In other words, short-term subordination of a social system might lead to greater

autonomy of that system in the longer term. Examples might include economic de-regulation bywhich a government intervenes to impose new rules and procedures on banking services or the stock

exchange, but then stands back to allow the re-structured system to grow and differentiate in the new

context of increased market competition. This is a classic example of effective modernization. But a


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rationalizing modernization which did not introduce selection mechanisms would probably becounter-productive.

This leads on to a consideration of the extent to which the political system can sabotagemodernization by increasing the power of the political system (or individuals within this system)

at the cost of reduced efficiency in other social systems. Clearly, it makes a difference whether

politicians and political parties make the right decisions with respect to modernization. An effective

modernizing government will increase the speed of modernization and/or diminish its disadvantages.

An incompetent or anti-modernizing government can slow, stop or reverse modernization, at least

temporarily. But given that we live in a modernizing world, no individual or government can roll-back

modernization in the long term. Modernization does not depend upon individual will.

Indeed, if modernization had depended upon the insight and motivation of politicians or

parties it never would have happened in the first place. And certainly it would not have progressed so

widely and with such rapidity over recent decades. It is the diversity of societies, and the competition

between societies, which drives the process, and which enforces modernization in the long term.

Governments that do the wrong thing, whether deliberately or accidentally, find their countries

increasingly dominated by those countries which are making a better job of it. And this dominationembraces all the social systems in which communications are internationalsuch as economics, thearmed forces, science, technology and the mass media. Since modernization is multi-system,

dominance in one system tends to be associated with dominance in other systems. For example, the

differential between the USA and Europe, hence the domination of the European social system by the

US system, is probably growing in all the systems mentioned.

Communication and democratic politicsIn representative democracies communication between leaders and led is a necessary

condition for the political system to work. Voters need to be informed about the political programs,

policy issues and political alternatives presented by the candidates and/or political parties (opinion

formation); on the other hand, political representatives need to know the wishes and demands of those

whom they are supposed to govern (interest mediation). In modern mass democracies it is politicalparties that connect government and the governed with one another: Citizens in modern democracies

are represented through and by parties (Sartori 1976:24) which means that communication occursthrough political parties and comes from them. Sarcinelli (1998:277) ascribes a communicative hingefunction to parties in the democratic process; they perform a reciprocal middleman service in thecommunication between state agencies and citizens, in both the process of opinion formation and

interest mediation. Parties can best be conceived as a means of communication (Sartori, 1976:29).Although parties have been, and still are, the main actors in the political communication process,

candidates are now playing an increasing important role. This is due to a range of factors, principal

among which are arguably technological developments and the rise of television as a visual medium;

the personalization of political messages offers voters an information shortcut in deciphering and

making sense of complex policy issues.

Although parties are the key organizations linking citizens to government they are by no

means the only organizations that engage in political communication. The communicative behaviour

of NGOs and protest movements has also attracted a lot of scholarly attention, especially with the rise

of new ICTs. A number of studies have indicated that the most likely beneficiaries of the new media

are loosely organised ad hoc protest groups (Boncheck 1995; Bimber 1998). In part, this is because of

the relative low cost of the net and the lack of editorial control, which means that fringe campaigns

have greater opportunities to voice their concerns and get the message across than they do via the

traditional media. Moreover, email and hypertext links make it easier than before to mobilise protest

quickly and link together previously unconnected individuals even breaking down traditional barriers

of time and space. We return in greater depth to the role played by new ICTs in political actorscommunication strategies in part 4 of this chapter. When one studies political communication, three

actors appear to occupy the center stage the media, political elites and voters - all of which are


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dependent upon, and influence one another. Changes and developments occurring to one actor

naturally then have an influence on the other actors.

In this chapter we concentrate primarily on the roles of two of those actors - the media and

political elites. This does not, however, mean that we regard the voters as playing an unimportant role;

throughout the chapter we refer to how changes at the mass level, and particularly the decline of party

identification has affected the way in which political actors communicate. In addition, in part 4 of the

chapter we consider how the new ICTs are changing the ways in which citizens and politics (can)

communicate, both in terms of the mode and also the message. However, these changes to the citizen

body are documented more explicitly elsewhere in this volume (CHAPTER ref) and are not explored

systematically here.

Development of political communication in different disciplinesCommunication research is a very broad research field linking many other subdisciplines like

psychology, literature, business administration and political science. From the perspective of political

communication, a heavy interest obviously lies in the effect communication has on citizens (and

potential voters). Although there is common ground that the mass media are a powerful instrument ofinfluencing opinion and effects on behaviour, there is great difficulty in predicting effects or in

proving that they have happened, after an event.

The development of thinking about media effects may be said to have a natural history, inthe sense of it being strongly shaped by the circumstances of time and place. It has also been

influenced by several environmental factors, including the interests of governments and law-makers,

changing technology and historical events. McQuail (2005) distinguishes four phases of media effect

history starting from the phase of regarding media as a very powerful tool of influencing public

opinion.

In thefirst phase, ranging from the turn of the 19th to 20th century until the 1930s, the media

were credited with considerable power to shape opinion and belief, to change habits of life and tomould behaviour more or less according to the will of their controllers (Bauer and Bauer, 1960). In

Europe, the use of media by First World War propagandist, by dictatorial states in the inter-war years

and by the new revolutionary regime in Russia, all appeared to confirm that the media could be

immensely powerful. Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion hasbecome a self-conscious art and a regular organ of government (Lipmann 1922). In the 1930s thePayne Fund Studies in the United States looked at the impact of movies on delinquency, aggression

and prejudice, while early experimental studies by Hovland et al (1949; 1953) examined the impact of

the media for planned persuasion. Popular accounts in the inter-war years reinforced the notion that

the mass media could have a direct and decisive impact upon shaping public opinion, and ultimately

voting choices.

In the second phase, roughly to be located from the 1930s to the 1960s, we find a shift tosophisticated empirical studies (Blumer 1933; Blumer and Hauser 1933). Many different studies were

carried out investigating effects of different types of content and media. The findings now suggest a

much more modest role to media in causing any planned or unintended effects. The still influential

and useful summary of early research by Joseph Klapper appeared to set the seal on this research

phase. It summarized that mass communication does not ordninarily serve as a necessary or sufficentcause of audience effcts, but rather functions through a nexus of mediating factors.

Hardly had the minimal-effects conclusion been written into communication textbookswhen it was being challenged. The third phase of media effects can be titled (leaning on an article by

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann 1973): Return to the Concept of Powerful Media. Especially those withpolitical or commercial motives for using or controlling the media did not feel they could risk

accepting the message of relative media impotence which research had produced. In relation to public

opinion effects, Lang and Lang (1981) argue that the minimal effect conclusion is only one


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particular interpretation which has gained undue currency: The evidence available by the end of the1950s, even when balanced against some of the negative findings, gives no justification for an overall

verdit of media impotence.

One obvious reason for the reluctance to accept a minimal effect conclusion was the arrivalof television in the 1950s and 1960s as a new medium with even more power ofattraction than its

predecessors and with seemingly major implications for social life. However, systematic survey

analysis emphasized that the overall impact of mediated communiations was essentially one of

reinforcement not change (Trenaman and McQuail 1961; Blumler and McQuail 1968; Matterson and

McClure 1976).

The new attempt to studying media effects, the fourth phase, was marked by a shift of

attention towards long term-change, towards cognitions rather than attitude, and towards collective

phenomena such as climates of opinion, structures of belief, definitions of social reality and

ideologies (in more detail see McQuail 2005: 460).

In essence, this involves a view of media as having their most significant effects by

constructing meeanings. These constructs are then offered in a systematic way to audiences, wherethey are incorporated (or not), on the basis of some form of negotiation, into personal meaning

structures, often shaped by prior colletive identifications. Meanings (thus effects) are constructed by

receivers themselves. This mediating process often involves strong influence from the immediate

social context of the receiver. The break with all powerful media is also marked by amethodological shift, especially away from quantitative survey methods.

One approach playing a dominant role in in this phase is agenda setting. Theories of agenda-

setting suggest that the news drives the publics issue prioirites, thereby not telling people what tothink but what to think about (McCombs and Shaw 1972). The theory implies that stories which getmost attention in the news become the problems which the public regards as most important. The

theory focuses only on the amount of coverage, not its tone or content. There are, of course, many

other ways of systamtically looking at media effects from the perspective of political communication.We have chosen the historical perspective. Perse (2001) strongly critizises this approach since it does

not recognize the differences between various research areas. Instead of the historical approach she

proposes to deal with key differences in terms of alternative models of effect. The four models she

names are: (1) direct effects; (2) conditional effects (varying according to social and psychological

factors); (3) cumulative effects (gradual and long term); and (4) cognitive-transactional effects (with

particular reference to schemata and framing). As McQuail rightly points out though, these models

correspond quite closely to the four phases described above. Table 19.1 summarizes the main features

of these models.

Research of political parties and communicationPolitical communication is also a focus taken up from a party research perspective. The

question here is by and large, how political parties are adapting to the changes and demands the mediasystem and media society is putting towards them. The focus of much of the discussion is on the

demise of the mass party and its replacement by new models of organization, showing a shift in focus

of the parties away from inward concerns with party members and acitivists towards more outward

concerns with voters.

The expanding role of political consultants, computer databases, telephone opinion polling,

and the media the process of professionalization is seen as reducing the role of parties asmobilizers and conduits for popular participation and opinon. Drawing on the example of the

American parties, where this type of campaigning is regarded as having reached its zenith, observers

warn of the dangers to party relevance and vitality that professionalization represents. Indeed, one

commentator wrote that parties have witnessed nothing less than a destruction of their status inrecent years (Johnson-Cartee and Copeland 1997: 12). Not all accounts are so doom-laden, with some

authors preferring to talk less normativeley about party change rather than party decline as a result of


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professionalization. The principal approach is to explore the role of parties in the new campaign

process, as well as the role of the new campaign process in affecting the parties.

The picture of party decline and/or party passivity is problematic on a number of fronts. Most

obviously, it is clear that parties at some stage must be conscioulsy involved in the uptake of the new

way of political communication. It is a process that involves extensive senior-level decision making,

organizational reform, and financial muscle consultants have to be hired, polls and focus groupscommissioned, and media training undertaken. Such a change could not simply be foisted on parties,

but would require consent. This consent would inevitably be influenced by organizational outlook and

capability.

Beyond these logical objections, however, if systemic factors were solely responsible for

professionalization then we would expect all parties to be at a similar stage in their use of the

techniques. The empirical evidence suggest, however, that there is considerable variance within party

systems over the timing and pace of professionalized political communication in general and

professionalized campaigning in particular. In the United States, for example, the Republicans were

credited with professionalizing their campaign operation at least a decade before the Democrats.

Similary, the conservatives in Britian were considered the first exponents of the new campaigningstyle in the late 1970s, whereas Labour actively resisted them. Finally, in Germany, although the 1998

campaign by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) under the leadership of Gerhard Schrder seemed to

mark the new era of professionalized campaigning in German, stirrings were detected in the Christian

Democratic Union as early as 1972.

Given these objectives, we have argued elsewhere that parties role in the process ofprofessionalizing political communication may be more active than has hitherto been recognized

(Gibson and Rmmele 2001). Relating political communication to the party goals literature, we

argued that it is evident that parties with vote maximization as their primary goal would be mostlikely to adopt the new techniques. Major changes to electoral strategy are undertaken to shore up and

increase a partys vote share. Thus, it is the large catch -all type of parties that we would expect to

most readily embrace professional campaigning.

There is a young body of literature dealing with these issues (Farrell 2006, Gibson and

Rmmele 2001, Panebianco 1986, Jun 2005) showing that parties expand and equip themselves

organizationally. Party research has shown that due to the growing importance of staying onmessage, of organizing the permanent campaign, the party headquarters become more and moreimportant. Due to the growing importance of television the candidate is gaining more importance. The

fact that new campaign styles have requried political parties to adapt their organizational dynamics as

well as their communication strategies does not of itself imply that the parties are somehow weaker as

a consequence, but what certainly cannot be disputed is that they have been forced to adapt; standing

still was never an option.

Bringing the disciplines together: research on campaigningThe research on political campaigns is a rather young research field. It brings together research

on political parties, electoral research and communication research. Scholars focus on campaigns as

the prototype situation of political communication. Political actors do not behave and communicate

differently in campaign periods compared to non-campaign periods. However, during a campaign, one

can see communication patters, strategy, effects much clearer.

The pioneer study in the area of campaign communication no doubt is the work conducted by

Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues in The People`s Choice: How The Voter Makes Up His Mind in a

Presidential Election (1944). In this study, scholars focus on the formation, change and development

of public opinion in a presidential election, more precicely: what impact do campaigns have on voters

decisions. The overall message from the Lazarsfeld study was that theories of propaganda had largelyexaggerated the effect of political communications on the mass public.


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In summary, then, the people who did most of the reading and listening not only read andheard most of their own partisan propaganda but were also most resistant to conversion because of

strong predispositions. And the people most open to conversion [...] read and listened least. [...] The

real doubters the open-minded voters who make a sincere attempt to weigh the issues and the

candidates dispassionately for the good of the country as a whole exist mainly in deferentialcampaign propaganda, in textbooks on civics, in the movies, and in the minds of some political

idealists. In real life, they are few indeed.

If we think about the different phases of media effects discussed earlier in this chapter, the

Lazarsfeld findings clearly are an example for the second phase.

It was a pioneering study combining in a very convincing way electoral research, and

communication research. The effect of campaigns on voters decision has since then been of limited

interest, most likely because of the difficulty to relate campaign and media effects to individual

(voting) behaviour. The study on election campaigns, as opposed to elections, is a major gap in theliterature (Harrop and Miller 1987: 240). This quite correctly describes the situation for campaignresearch in the late 80s.

Although practitioners of course always state that campaigns are important and make a big

difference, this view was and is not shared within the academic community. For a long time, political

scientists did not give political campaigns a big importance. Since voters had a strong party

identification and other predispositions, campaigns had little effect despite of course getting ot the

votes. It was taken up again in the edited volume by Farrell and Schmitt-Beck with the eloquent title

Do Campaigns Matter? (2002).

As the authors rightly point out, since the seminal work of Lazarsfeld et al, there has been

little analysis of how voting behaviour is influenced by the communication activities of political

parties and other political actors. Whether campaigns matter is certainly an under-researchedquestion (2002: 16). Together with their contributors, the editors come to the conclusion that

campaigns may not be of such a predominant importance as is assumed by the political actors (whoseoutlook is glued to the superficial back-and-forth of day-to-day political debate), but they do count for

something in the political process. They are one factor among many others that are important for how

and what people decide. While it would be a clear exaggeration to state that campaigns are of prime

importance in determining the election result, it seems pretty incontrovertible that campaigns do,

indeed, matter for the behavior of citizens at elections and referendums.

The major gap in the literature, which was pointed out to earlier, has been filled by a number

of outstanding and highly recognized studies. Edited volumes, (Bowler and Farrell 1992; Swanson

and Mancini 1996), articles in mainstream academic journals (Electoral Studies, Party Politics,

Press/Politics, European Journal of Political Marketing) as well as monographs (Norris 2000,

Rmmele 2005; Plasser 2002) have taken up the subject of campaign research from a comparative

perspective. The general notion in these scholarly works is the change that can be observed in ahistorical as well as international perspective. How can this change be described and empirically

measured and what implications does it have? According to most academic observers, there have been

two broad phases in political campaigning that have preceded the current one.

In the first or premodern era (Norris 2000), political communication was based on the strengthof the local party organization and face-to-face contact.

The second wave of campaigning, in contrast, saw a shift from communication via the partyorganization to mass media communication between parties and voters. Citizens do not

receive their information directly from party meetings or rallies, but through the mass media.

With the mass media, parties can communicate their message to a broader audience. Because

party identification and party attachment have declined, parties not only have to mobilize

their electorate, they also have to convince the undecided voters of their party program.


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Since the early 1990s, parties are seen as facing new challenges. With the rising number of swing

voters and weakening party identification, the processes of individualization and modernization are

increasingly pushing political campaigns into the limelight. Such trends are clearly reflected in the

voting and communications research literature, which have become increasingly intertwined. This

new era of uncertainty is marked by increasing efforts by the parties to reach individual voters via the

internet, direct mail, and telemarketing. Extensive use is made of survey research, focus groups, and

public relations experts to better package the parties message.

While initially this new campaign era was referred to in generic terms as an Americanized style of

campaigning (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1996), recently it has had more historical or

developmental labels applied to it, such as postmodern (Norris 2000), phase 3 (Farell and Webb

2000), post-fordism (Denver and Hands 2000) or professionalized campaigning (Gibson and

Rmmele 2003). Despite these differences in nomenclature, there is considerable agreement between

these scholars as to the central features of this new era in party campaigning.

Whereas the above-mentioned scholars describe and measure the change from campaigning from

a historical perspective, others discuss a potential convergence of campaigning to the US campaignmodel; is there an Americanization to be observed? Scholars putting forward this thesis argue, that

campaigning in democracies around the world is becoming more and more Americanized ascandidates, political parties, and news media take cues from their counterparts in the US (Swansonand Mancini 1996: 4). Scammell suggests that Americanization is useful as a shorthand descriptionof global trends [...] the U.S. is a leading exporter and role model of campaigning.

The modernization perspective takes a more broader view. All established democracies arefacing a decrease in party identification (although to a different degree), a rise in late deciders in

election campaigns etc. Hence, methods of professionalized campaigning are taken up. Plasser (2000)

distinguishes between a shopping modeland an adoption model. The most widespread model ofadopting selected innovations and techniques of U.S. election campaigns might be the shopping

model, whereby certain techniques and organizational routines of professional campaigning practiceare imported from the United States and are modified and implemented taking the national content of

political competition into account. The shopping model primarily focuses on down-to-earth

techniques that can easily be implemented in the national context while maintaining country- and

culture-specific campaign styles and philosophies (Plasser 2000:35).

No one would seriously question US campaign practices having an impact on campaign activities

of parties and candidates in other countries. During US presidential elections party employees and

campaign consultants from other countries pilger to the US to closely monitor cutting-edgeelectioneering (Blumler et al 1995:59). However, whether US campaign features can and aretransported one-to-one to other countries is a question of comparative campaign communication (see,

for more detail, Farrell 2006: 124-5). Comparative work is in its infancies in that field, but a few

studies have already proven that structural filters (electoral laws, party systems, media system,governmental make-up) as well as cultural restraints limit the Americanization trends (Rmmele

2005) Due to different electoral systems a campaign can follow a completely different logic

(Zittel/Gschwend 2007). Especially differences in the media system and media logic bring about

different styles of political communication. In their very thorough and rich comparative analysis on

the comparison of media systems Hallin and Mancini (2004) distinguish three types of media systems

and link the way politics is communicated to the origin of these systems. In the Mediterranian or

Pluralist Model, predominant in Southern Europe, the media system due to its historical development,

is closely tied to the world of politics. Once democracy was consolidated in those countries a high

degree of political parallelism prevailed, with the media serving to represent a wide range of political

forces that contended for influence.

Newspaper circulation in these countries remains relatively low and electronic media

correspondingly high. In the Democratic corporatist model (including Scandinavia, the low countries,


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Germany, Austria and Switzerland) we see strong mass circulation of commercial media and of media

tied to political and civil groups; the coexistence of political parallelism and journalistic

professionalism, and the coexistence of liberal traditions of press freedom and a tradition of strong

sate intervention in the media, which are seen as a social institution and not as purely private

enterprises is to be seen. The third model put forward by Hallin and Mancini is the North Atlantic or

liberal model with the US being the prime example. There we observe a strong development of a

commercial press and its dominance over other forms of press organization as well as early

development of commercial broadcasting, relatively strong professionalization of journalism. Media

has been institutionally separate from political parties and other social grpus and state intervention has

been limited by comparison with the other two models.

Political communicationThe story of online political communication up until the middle of the first decade of the new

millennium, therefore, appears to be one of limited innovation among elites and minimal albeit

growing relevance for citizens. For the most part, political actors, great and small have been content to

set out their virtual stalls to attract voters with occasional forays into viral techniques to help push

their message to a wider audience of less interested voters. Reliance on this fixed point to massmodel of dissemination, however, has come under increasing strain with the rise of next generation ofweb tools to arrive in the hands of users.

1. The emergence of Web 2.0.The term Web 2.0, although decried by purists in the industry as a

vacuous buzzword, has become synonymous with significant shift in Web design and use.

It was

coined at a commercial conference on Web development in U.S. in October 2004 which was held to

demonstrate that the internet was alive and kicking despite the dot.com crash. The organisers of the

conference sought to bring together some of the major survivor companies on the basis that they

shared a common approach and philosophy about how Web to be used. In essence, therefore, the term

does not refer to particular type of technology or infrastructure but to a developmental moment in

internet history, and a point of paradigm shift in the functionality of the web.

From a technical standpoint the key shift is that the Web itself has now become the platform

for accessing tools and services, replacing the desktop personal computer. Through the browser it

becomes possible to select the software and data needed to manage and automate online activities

including maintaining a home page, uploading and circulating photographs, as well as ensuring one

receives the latest news and entertainment sources direct to the personal computer. A secondary and

associated practical development is that these applications are all increasingly able to talk to oneanother behind the scenes through advances in new inter-operability software, creating a more

seamless interface and enhanced user experience.

From a human or societal perspective, the consequences are possibly even more profound,

involving a significant increase in the level of autonomy and control that individuals bring to theirmedia use and consumption. Through what is increasingly now described as social softwareeveryday users can create, distribute and value-add to online media content. In practical terms this

means widespread use of new applications such as blogging, tagging and wikis, all of which areseen to embody the spirit of Web 2.0.

A hallmark of these applications is the devolution of creative

and classificatory power to ordinary users in developing online tools and resources. This shift hasled to the Web 2.0 being alternately known as the participatory Web.

1. From political communication 1.0 to 2.0?The key question for this chapter in relation to theWeb 2.0 era is what it means for political communication? There are four key developments in

the nature of political communication that the rise of Web 2.0 technologies herald.

The movefrom a one to many to a many to manymode of message distribution. Those seekingto influence popular debate and attitudes will need to find ways of gaining entry into the social


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networks growing up around the new collective spaces that users, and particularly younger users

congregate and inhabit (for example, Myspace or Bebo). This could entail parties, social

movements such as Moveon.org in the US or governments even becoming more neutral hostsfor such citizen network formation than guiding and directing those activities.

2. A rising role for aggregator or information broker services. With the growing volume ofinformation available online, people increasingly need trusted search tools and aggregator services to

help them locate, sort and collate the information that they need. Conversely then, while the number

of news sources may be proliferating, individuals need for authoritative and credible material mayreplicate or even drive a further concentration of information providers. Political communicators,

therefore, will need to either invest in developing their reputation as sifter and sorter of relevant

information (a possibility for established government bodies), or at least ensure that they are linked to

major news feed services such as Feedster.

3. A focus on the production of dynamic political content that can be distributed via different media

and across different platforms and an erosion of any offline/online division in developing

communication strategy. The convergence of internet technologies with previous media is already

taking place through innovations such as Web television, interactive cable, and net connected mobilephones. While it is not quite a return to the medium being the message, considerations of distribution

and dissemination will loom large in content design and campaign tactics. The manufacturers of

political messages will need to adopt a more integrated or whole of media approach that ensurestheir widespread and rapid delivery.

4. An increase in channels for bottom-up communication to policy-makers and enhanced scrutiny of

elites. The harnessing of new ICTs to social network formation, the rise of citizen journalism and

populist encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia, places an upward pressure on the agents of representation

to look at ways of enhancing their transparency and accessibility. One example of such developments

is the incorporation of a searchable website within the US Federal Funding Transparency andAccountability Act which will allow the public to trace how their federal taxes are spent. In Estonia,

for example, the Today I Decide website allows anybody to send in their ideas for policy to thegovernment.

Of course the provision of such tools does not mean that the input will directly or even indirectly

inform policy development. Indeed a proliferation of such mechanisms without any procedures for

following up on concerns raised could misfire, with democratic hopes being raised and then swiftly

dropped. However, the opportunities now offered by the technology for feeding vox populi into the

political process and letting the wisdom of crowds speak are undeniably growing. And with reports

that Wikipedia was proved almost as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica in Nature during 2005

along with the robustness of open source software, the argument against inclusion using the

technology for more direct democracy appears to be waning.

In short, it appears that the dominant thrust of this second phase in new political

communication is to place ordinary citizens increasingly in the drivers seat. The role of parties,government departments, politicians and candidates becomes one of assisting voters and supporters in

their quest for information, social interaction and self-expression. As a corollary, while content is not

unimportant, its crown is slipping. The audience for the new political communication is big and

growing. It is, however, a mass audience in the sense of a bulk of people consuming a fixed and

predetermined diet of information. Nor is it even an audience given the growth of user-generated

content. Recent Pew Centre figures report that almost one in ten of the online audience (7%) have

created their own web-based journal or log (now commonly referred to as blogs). Getting a message,any message, across to these busy individuals constitutes the major challenge for communicators

working in the Web 2.0 era. The counter-trend, however, as noted above is that this rising noiselevel means that citizens increasingly need moderating and legitimating bodies. The emergence of A-


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list bloggers for instance indicates a new concentration of power and influence with an informationtechnology elite.

These changes may take decades to be fully realised and will not see the wholesale

displacement of traditional political communication approaches. Already, however, we can discern

some movement toward their realisation. From very beginnings in the form of subscription based e-

newsletters, parties and candidates have graduated on to more continuous and direct communication

through RSS news feeds from their site, allowing users to feed through updates direct to their desktop

or into their own Web pages. Blogs are being embraced by the political class, albeit with varying

degrees of authenticity key means of content distribution. While many leading politicians now run a

blog, few occupy the A-list. More typical, and seemingly more effective is the Howard Dean

approach of securing and favourable mentions on the most prominent few. A process which entails

some sustained and careful coordination of net-savvy supporters who blanket the net with positive

statements of support. The social networking sites appear to remain largely a politics-free zone, which

may say something about the outlook and average age of those using these spaces.

Conclusion

Thus far the actual impact of Web 2.0 on political communication remains to be seen. Thereare, as we note, some conflicting trends at work with a proliferation and fragmentation of the public

space, countered by persistent trends among users to seek out established voices. Overall, it does seem

that the technology at the heart of the new political communication allows the smaller parties and

advocacy groups to attract more notice and be heard. Judging by the minor parties own expressed

views they did not count themselves as losers in the online communication stakes. While it certainly

appeared to be true that the old faces are better connected and have higher level of visibility, the

internet gives smaller groups a far cheaper means to reach a possible global audience. Just being out

there and on the radar is a win for them. In the old media, this type of unedited, always on, direct

and two-way communication channel to supporters just did not exist.

sat polite

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