You are not currently logged in. Please create an account or log in to view the full course.
Role of the Media
- About
- Transcript
- Cite
Politics and the Media
In this course, Dr Richard Heffernan (Open University) thinks about the relationship of the modern media to British politics. We begin in the first module by thinking about the indispensability of the media in all its forms to the enactment of modern politics, using a series of metaphors to help us understand its roles. We then briefly survey the history of the modern media and consider the balance between, on the one hand its freedom to comment, and on the other its obligation to inform. In the third module, we move on to think through four key theories that political scientists have developed to try and disentangle the impact of the media on our political views, namely: (i) the ‘hyperdermic needle model,’ (ii) the ‘reinforcement model’, (iii) marginal effects, and (iv) agenda-setting/framing. We then turn in the fourth module to characterise the relationship between the media and politicians as at once symbiotic and adversarial: politicians need the media as a platform and the media needs political stories, but the media is always critical and interrogative of politicians who seek favourable coverage. Finally, in the fifth module, we think about the profound impact of social media on political communication, noting its capacity to both unite and divide us.
Role of the Media
In this module, we think in general terms about the role of the media in modern British politics. We begin by considering the media in all its forms – print, broadcast, and digital – as increasingly the place in which modern politics is enacted: where politicians speak to us, the citizenry, and to each other. We then outline four metaphors to help us make sense of the media’s various functions in modern politics, imagining the media as: (i) a window on the world’s events; (ii) a signpost pointing to certain things but not others, insofar as the media is a participant in politics as much as it is an observer and reporter; similarly, (iii) a filter which allows certain information to pass through and obscures other information; and (iv) a screen in which participants are vying for air time and attention.
Hello. My name is Richard Heffernan.
00:00:06I'm a reader in government at the Open University, and I studied British politics,
00:00:07and I got to share some thoughts with you today about the
00:00:11role that the news media plays in the practise of British politics.
00:00:13I think the news media is everywhere.
00:00:18I mean, if we think of our role as citizens,
00:00:21every piece of information that we don't get firsthand is provided to a second hand,
00:00:23either by somebody else or by usually by a opinion,
00:00:29formal report or a commentator by means of the news media,
00:00:32either by broadcast media, by the news on the television,
00:00:36by reading newspapers in print or indeed,
00:00:40more usually now online or by using social media
00:00:43and hearing opinions. Everything is media artist. Very few of us
00:00:48almost none of us speak directly to politicians.
00:00:54Politicians speak indirectly to us by means of the news media.
00:00:57So the news media, in all the form that it takes in the generation of political news,
00:01:01provides a space, a space within which politics is enacted.
00:01:05It's also increasing, I think, the place within which modern politics is enacted.
00:01:10It's a place in which politicians speak to us
00:01:15in which
00:01:18commentators speak on our behalf by measuring our opinions in terms of polls,
00:01:19in terms of presenting
00:01:23what popular opinion and feeling about an issue is.
00:01:24And it's where politicians speak to each other, both within parties,
00:01:28between parties and between countries.
00:01:32It's a bulletin board,
00:01:34a variety of ways in which opinion is expressed
00:01:36so as an environment within within which politics is
00:01:39enacted as a space as part of the public
00:01:43private square within which politics play is enacted.
00:01:45I think the news media is essential
00:01:49and a series of metaphors that I like to to
00:01:51use to try to help myself understand its modern role
00:01:54and the first metaphor is very simply to suggest that the
00:01:58media in all its forms is a window on the world.
00:02:01It allows us to see further
00:02:04and faster and more quicker on the world that we can through our own little windows.
00:02:06In our own busy little lives. It's a window shows us the most amazing things.
00:02:11It's also, however,
00:02:16simultaneously a signpost because the media is a participant in
00:02:17politics as much as a spectator and reporter of it.
00:02:21The media points out things by sin, posting certain events and
00:02:24happenings
00:02:29in the window. It shows us things, points things out.
00:02:30It brings things to our attention and tries to
00:02:34dissuade us from thinking about other things.
00:02:38It's also a philtre. It just shows us certain things in Britain.
00:02:40We're going to hear about British politics first.
00:02:44Then we're going to hear about politics and out of Mongolia,
00:02:47though you can find out that if you look in a different part of the window
00:02:50in our increasingly interconnected world,
00:02:53it's a screen.
00:02:56It's one in which the participants inside the window beyond
00:02:58the window are trying to draw attention to themselves.
00:03:03Politicians are eager for attention
00:03:05and they are going to try to scream at the news
00:03:08media to report them and to allow us to see them.
00:03:10So
00:03:13I cannot imagine the enactment of politics in its present form without factoring
00:03:14in the role that the news media plays as a principal means By enabling
00:03:20politicians to communicate to us
00:03:25by representing in various forms, public opinion to politicians,
00:03:28allowing politicians to fight it out,
00:03:32duke it out amongst themselves in the public eye,
00:03:35but also because the media is a watchdog,
00:03:38the modern media is eager to hold politicians to account,
00:03:41to have them explain and to have them justify their
00:03:47actions and also to interrogate and criticise those actions.
00:03:50It means that the space,
00:03:53as I like to think of it, that in which politics is enacted
00:03:56in a liberal democracy like Britain is now the news media
00:04:00in all its forms.
00:04:04Print journalism,
00:04:05broadcast journalism and the hybrid form of print
00:04:06blended with a broadcast journalism and allowing citizens
00:04:09to use social media to communicate their opinion.
00:04:15I think it's an indispensable way in which contemporary politics is now played out.
00:04:18
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Heffernan, R. (2019, September 26). Politics and the Media - Role of the Media [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/politics-and-the-media
MLA style
Heffernan, R. "Politics and the Media – Role of the Media." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 26 Sep 2019, https://massolit.io/courses/politics-and-the-media