The Stabilization Process Then and Now

Author(s):  
Ben Epstein

This chapter shifts the focus to the third and final stabilization phase of the political communication cycle (PCC). During the stabilization phase, a new political communication order (PCO) takes shape through the building of norms, institutions, and regulations that serve to fix the newly established status quo in place. This status quo occurs when formerly innovative political communication activities become mundane, yet remain powerful. Much of the chapter details the pattern of communication regulation and institution construction over time. In particular, this chapter explores the instructive similarities and key differences between the regulation of radio and the internet, which offers important perspectives on the significance of our current place in the PCC and the consequences of choices that will be made over the next few years.

Author(s):  
Ben Epstein

The Only Constant Is Change presents and tests the political communication cycle (PCC), a model describing how political actors and organizations make decisions about if, how, and when to innovate their political communication practices. Generally speaking, political communication goals have remained largely stable over time, but the strategies used to accomplish these goals have changed a great deal. The PCC describes the recurring process of political communication innovation through American political history. This model incorporates the technological, political, and behavioral factors influencing how and when changes in political communication activity take place. The PCC is made up of three phases that also serve as an organizational structure for the book. First is the technological imperative, which focuses on how new information and communications technologies (ICT) are developed and what types of ICTs may be more or less likely to be used to innovate political communication. Next, the political choice phase incorporates the behavioral processes embedded in how different types of actors choose whether to innovate or not. This phase is the most critical and is analyzed through case studies evaluating how campaigns, social movements, and interest groups have or have not changed their political communication activities over time. Finally, the stabilization phase encompasses the process of how once innovative techniques become the new status quo though the establishment of new norms, regulations, and institutions. The book explores these changes through historical and contemporary analysis, which offers important context and tools to understand political communication through history and today.


Author(s):  
Milka Marie-Madeleine Malfait

Throughout its history, Artsakh had to guard against the external threats of Neo-Ottomanism. At the present time it is especially relevant. September 27, 2020 marks escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh – which means Artsakh in Armenian. This led to six weeks of cease fire, humanitarian disaster, which killed many people and destroyed cultural and religious heritage of Artsakh. The mountainous region is surrounded by Azerbaijani land, although populated by Armenians. Due to the political novelty of this issue, the author employed analytical and descriptive method. The acquired results demonstrate that the history repeats itself in Neo-Ottomanism, which has been a threat to Artsakh and Armenia since its emergence until the present day. In recent years, the concept of reunification with Armenia, as well as the independence of Artsakh, outlined the prospects for the future. The third solution to the conflict became the ceasefire agreement of 9 November 2020, nobly negotiated by Russia to save Armenia from military collapse. However, this solution is more painful than the status-quo. The main conclusion consists in the statement that the international community should be more vigilant and prevent the expansion of such threats.


Author(s):  
Olena Ilienko ◽  
Liudmyla Shumeiko

The rapid spread of Internet communication nowadays has changed the conditions under which political communication takes place, although its purpose remains the same – influence for the sake of power. The article analyzes and summarizes the directions and trends in the study of political discourse, which is the context of political utterance, utterance itself and its perception. It is noted that the Internet has proved to be a new effective way of informing, persuading, arguing and manipulating the mass consciousness, accelerating the process of providing information and changing its format, including for manipulative purposes. It is revealed that the Internet has formed new genres and forms of political communication, providing an opportunity to get feedback from the political message and creating the appearance of direct communication between politicians and the public. The study of political discourse by researchers today is multi-vector: in a purely linguistic direction (the language of political statements); in linguistic and pragmatic direction (how the functions of political discourse are realized); anthropocentric (political personality); sociolinguistic (society’s reaction to the political activities of the subjects) and others. As the field of politics is constantly changing, responding to global, socio-political, economic circumstances, its analysis, including by linguists, provides and will always provide new material for further research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-170
Author(s):  
Darya I. Judina ◽  
◽  
Sergei A. Ivanov ◽  

The Internet as a special space for political activity and political communication is becoming more and more attractive to political actors. The intensification of political activity on the Internet leads to the increase of researchers’ interest. One of the prominent areas of this research is the analysis of the efficiency of communication strategies used by politically oriented communities on the Internet. The results of such assessment contribute to, in particular, characterizing the level and features of the political engagement of Internet users into political processes. To study these processes, a telephone survey of residents of St. Petersburg was conducted. St. Petersburg was chosen because it is one of the largest cities in Russia with high Internet coverage and a high level of political activity compared to other regions. The results showed that politically oriented communities effectively implement primary communication strategies — information and presentation. More than two-thirds of politically active Internet users in St. Petersburg noted that visiting the relevant resources helped them to understand the political situation, to define their attitude toward parties, politicians, social movements and organizations. At the same time, the strategy of supporting political identification has not yet worked for the majority of users. Perhaps this is a consequence of the fact that the majority of St. Petersburg citizens have not yet found appropriate political leaders and organizations. The authors found that the majority of Internet users display an interest in politics permanently, and not only during the pre-election period. The hypothesis that one of the factors of an efficient strategy of politically oriented communities is emphasizing anti-power positions was confirmed. The survey results also confirmed the high level of opposition views among Internet users.


Modern Italy ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franca Roncarolo ◽  
Marinella Belluati

This article analyses the experience of the second Prodi government from the standpoint of its political communication. The opening part contextualises the case by placing it within the broader framework of coalition governments generally, and briefly outlines the critical elements that, in Italy, prevent any majority from making a genuinely strategic use of communication in the policy-making process. The second part focuses on Prodi's poor communication, highlighting both its limits and the attempts at improvement made by the leader and his staff in 2007. Finally, the third part examines the journalistic coverage of the centre-left majority and considers the trend in public approval for the premier and the government, emphasising the problems that emerged on each side.


Author(s):  
Eduardo Araya Moreno ◽  
Diego Barría ◽  
Gustavo Campos

Due to the importance that the Internet has gained as a means of communication, literature on political communication has incorporated it as one of its preferred topics of focus. Literature stems almost entirely from Europe and the United States. Very little is known about the political use of new information and communication technologies (NICTs) in other parts of the world. The present chapter aims to provide evidence in that line, starting from the study of the incorporation of the Chilean political parties to the Internet. In specific, the following questions are answered: In what extent do factors such as the organizational characteristics of the political parties explain their greater or lesser adoption of NICTs? What do parties use NICTs for? Furthermore, although briefly, the authors will try to answer the question whether the parties have experienced change in their interaction with the citizenry and their bases because of the usage of NICTs.


Res Publica ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-527
Author(s):  
Marc Hooghe ◽  
Patrick Stouthuysen

The proliferation of the use of Internet has led to speculations that the interactive possibilities offered by this technology will lead to a democratisation of political communication. It is argued that citizens will enjoy more opportunities to discuss polities with other citizens and to express their opinions toward the political system. In this casestudy, we examine the political  use of internet at the time of the Belgian local elections of 8 October 2000. Building on the coding scheme developed by Pippa Norris, we distinguish interactive and institutional communication through the Internet, in which we expect that interactive communication has a democratie potential, while the institutional communication shows atendency to strengthen existing power relations. The data show that during this election campaign the Internet has been used mainlyfor institutional purposes, not for interactive applications. Therefore our conclusion is that, especially in small languageareas, the democratic potential of Internet remains limited.


2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (21) ◽  
pp. 15-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Hart

What might an anthropology of the internet look like? It require a combination of introspection, personal judgment and world history to explore the universe of cyberspace. This world is not sufficient to itself, nor is it 'the world'. People bring their offline circumstances to behaviour online. The virtual and the real constitute a dialectic in which neither can be reduced to the other and 'virtual reality' is their temporary synthesis. Heidegger's metaphysics are drawn on to illuminate this dialectic. Before this, the internet is examines in the light of the history of communications, from speech and writing to books and the radio. The digital revolution of our time is marked by the convergence of telephones, television and computing. It is the third stage in a machine revolution lasting just 200 years. The paper analyses the political economy of the internet in terms of the original three classes controlling respectively increase in the environment (land), money (capital) and human creativity (labour). It ends with a consideration of Kant's great example for a future anthropology capable of placing human subjectivity in world history.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1545-1563
Author(s):  
Philip Schlesinger

The idea of a public sphere has long been central to discussion of political communication. Its present condition is the topic of this essay. Debate about the public sphere has been shaped by the boundary-policing of competing political systems and ideologies. Current discussion reflects the accelerating transition from the mass media era to the ramifying entrenchment of the Internet age. It has also been influenced by the vogue for analysing populism. The present transitional phase, whose outcome remains unclear, is best described as an unstable ‘post-public sphere’. This instability is not unusual as, over time, conceptions of the public sphere’s underpinnings and scope have continually shifted. Latterly, states’ responses to the development of the Internet have given rise to a new shift of focus, a ‘regulatory turn’. This is likely to influence the future shape of the public sphere.


Slavic Review ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 762-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikhail Loukianov

The article analyzes the relationship of conservatives to the political order that arose after the 1905 revolution. It suggests that by the start of World War I, a dissatisfaction with the status quo had become a characteristic feature of Russian conservatism. The archaic formula “orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” was the quintessential conservative discourse, both for nationalist supporters of conservative reforms and for opponents of any innovation such as Dubrovin’s All-Russian Union of the Russian People. But this formula existed in sharp contradiction to the realities of “renewed Russia.” Conservatives continually underscored the lack of correspondence between reality and their conservative dogma. In conservative circles, the growth of social tensions on the eve of the war was also understood as evidence of the inadequacy of the new political order. Because of this, Russian conservatives did not aspire to preserve the Third of June system and did not try to restore it after February 1917.


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