British Politics and the Media – Introduction
British Politics and the Press
British Politics and the Tabloid Press
British Politics and Media Ownership
British Politics and Media Self Regulation
The Leveson Inquiry and Regulation
British Politics and the Cinema Newsreel
British Politics and the Radio
British Politics and the Television
British Politics and the Internet
Media Effects Theory – Direct Effects
Media Effects Theory – Minimal Effects
Media Effects Theory – Long Term Effects
Constructivism, Media and Society
Structuralism and Critical Theory
Political Communication – Introduction
Political Communication – National and Direct
Political Communication – Local and Direct
Politicians and the Media – Their Relationship
The First Phase of Political Communication
The Second Phase of Political Communication
Political Communication – The Leader’s Debates 2010 and 2015
There are a range of concepts and theories which can loosely be grouped together under this heading and which have developed out of ideas of culture and ideas of postmodernism.[amazon_link asins=’B00F2KNV0Y’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’brituniversity-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’57cbeab2-ed24-4649-8183-6e3dcda59fe2′]
Whereas effects approaches see media messages as transmitted from media people and organisations to individuals on whom they may have an impact, a body of theory has been developed which see the relationship between the media, the messages, and the people receiving them as more complicated and related to a much broader pattern of culture in society.
The first step in this is the study of language, known as semiotics, developed by Ferdinand de Saussure. Although we experiences things through our senses, once we use language we are not experiencing an object directly but a representation of it which Saussure called a sign.
The word ‘church’ is a representation of a physical object and replaces it in our mind and carries meanings of religious observance, family events and so on.
Semiotics has categorized not just words but clothes, music, pictures, facial expressions and handshakes as signs so that a handshake, for example, conveys the meaning of friendship.
Roland Barthes in Mythologies argues that the use of signs can go further than just representation and create a wider meaning that he calls a ‘myth’.[amazon_link asins=’0809071940′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’brituniversity-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’9c9fdf0b-6463-43fb-9a03-bc277e79f617′]
His book sets out a set of these myths but two examples are:-
That red wine in France symbolises equality as the universal drink and purity as the colour of blood in the Communion.
A Paris Match front page of a young black soldier saluting creates a myth of the multicultural and wide ranging French colonial Empire.
The importance of all this for media theory is that media messages consist entirely of representations. Television is not what an eye witness would see and the newspapers are not verbatim accounts of what people have said.
So media portrayals of David Cameron or Theresa May are never actually David Cameron or Theresa May but representations of them and the way these representations are constructed by the media, as well as representations that denote the meaning of the position of the Prime Minister, influence people’s understanding of politics. Attaching meaning to words or symbols is used all the time in politics and the presentation of news.
Some examples:
