Where politics live

Politics land on front porches each morning. They are blasted through car audio systems and iPod earbuds and sent to inboxes via RSS feeders. They play out in the background endlessly and relentlessly on the small screens of our homes.

Politicians make decisions on Capitol Hill but politics arrive, thrive and die in the media. As Manuel Castells points out, newspapers, radio, podcasts, blogs and television are the privileged space of politics in America.

This presidential election season is more of a testament to this than ever before. But politics dwelling in the media isn’t a novelty, as Castells points out in “The Crisis of Democracy.”

Being elected to public office depends on the ability of gaining a majority of votes from citizens. And since we are bombarded with messages in so many media forums, politicians — who Castells calls political actors — have to abide by the rules, technology and interests of the media. This in turn makes the politicians and governance itself dependent on the daily influx of information from media outlets.

And since media aren’t only purveyors of political information but also reality TV shows, celebrity gossip, sporting events and talk shows, political campaigns and those in the starring roles compete with these entertainment genres. Politcs has to offer the suspense, drama, rivalries, champions and losers that permeate the media.

“Only ‘bad news,’ relating to conflict, drama, unlawful deals, or objectionable behavior, is interesting news.” — Castells, The Crisis of Democracy

Castells contends that even though the sagas surrounding our political elections are played out in the media doesn’t mean television, blogs or any other form of media dictate citizen’s political opinion. Rather what happens in the media is an open social and political process — simply capturing politics in the space of the media impacts elections, political organization, decision-making and governance.

“Neither television nor other media determine political outcomes by themselves, precisely because media politics is a contradictory realm, where different actors and strategies are played out, with diverse skills and with various outcomes, sometimes resulting in unexpected consequences.” — Castells, The Crisis of Democracy

Castells points to John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon as the point where media and politics joined hands. The two candidates participated in the first televised debate and Kennedy’s campaign was the first to be based on television and polling strategies.

Since, budgets for television have skyrocketed — campaigns in the early 1960s spent about nine percent of their budgets on TV while the much larger budgets of the 1990s allotted 25 percent to the small screen.

Castells sees the three main information outlets of media — radio, newspaper and television — as a public opinion system. Newspapers, Castells said, report the 5Ws of an event and elaborating on it as much as their time and space constraints allow. Television, then, digests the information and diffuses it to a wider audience via local and network newscasts and, now, 24/7 coverage on channels like CSPAN and MSNBC. Radio talk shows provide the average citizen the chance to engage and debate the issues covered in the papers and TV outlets.

Times have changed. Howard Dean recognized the power behind political bloggers in his bid for the Democratic nomination in 2004, and that essentially thrust him into the spotlight. Steve McGookin at Scientific America called this year’s election cycle the first of the YouTube era. Most news is old news by the time it’s viewed on nightly newscasts and most definitely on front pages of papers.

But don’t count the power of television out just yet. Two of the largest segments of the public still say television is their main source of news. Forgette and Morris wrote in a 2006 study that Americans are viewing Fox News, CNN and MSNBC for political news with more frequency than network news. Like Castells stated, the industry competition to hold viewers’ attention in our message-overloaded society has grown and the news media has turned to drama, conflict and opinion to afloat amongst the competition.

According to Castells, media statements by pundits and critics from the right, left and center become political events in themselves. CNN’s Crossfire and Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor are built around the premise of two opposing political commentators yelling back and forth to each other only to smile and shake hands at the end of the segment.

“News stories are tending to devolve into mere discussions of public reactions to recent news coverage. Who are the winners and the losers, whose popularity ratings have crept up and whose have dropped, as a result of political events of last month, last week, or last day.” — Sandra Moog

Forgette and Morris studied high and low-conflict news coverage in a 2006 study. They aimed to answer the question of whether uncivil televised political conflict had an adverse effect on viewers’ perception of political actors, institutions and parties.

Subjects were exposed to either CNN’s Crossfire and Inside Politics. Both segments were taken from the same day and addressed issues in context of the 2004 State of the Union Address. The content of both shows were analyzed and coded for content and tone.

“Uncivil: (1) a negative statement about an individual or institution, or (2) an interruption of another speaker.” — Forgette and Morris’ research definition of uncivil discourse

Ultimately, as the researchers hypothesized, the content of the show wasn’t what influenced attitudes of viewers but the format and style did. The results showed that 52 percent of the content on pundit-starring Crossfire was uncivil, compared with 13 percent of Inside Politics. It wasn’t that the latter featured less conflict, but that the drama surrounding the State of the Union Address was presented in a more traditional manner with journalists’ reports and sound bites.

As far as the attitudes of viewers, those that watched the Crossfire segment projected a lower approval rating for the actors and institutions involved in the conflict. Still, the flip side is that these uncivil political dramas receive higher ratings.

So while the media cannot dictate public opinion, as Castells contends, Forgette and Morris demonstrate that the style and level of civility — or lack thereof — most definitely do have an impact on public attitudes toward political players.

But if Americans watch networks with a similar political lean as their own, as a Rasmussen Report indicates, that in theory would mean the attitudes of viewers are most often influenced to think negatively about the political parties they are already inclined to oppose.

So as presidential candidates talk about bipartisanship and “reaching across the aisle,” one has to wonder if the conflict-laden, uncivil media discourse is widening the two-party gap.