ABSTRACT

Concerns over the relationship between media and politics have echoed over much of the last century. Remarking that ‘if Stalin smiles at a visitor, the news is flashed to the world before the smile has left his face’, Gorman (1945, p. v) alludes to a quickening effect of mass media on the fortunes of politicians and to its supposed preference for demeanour over matters of substance. Jamieson (1996) and Franklin (2004) describe an emerging dynamic between the politicians, their communications advisers, industry lobbyists and media organisations, all vying to influence the ‘packaging’ of politics for public consumption. These efforts to reshape politics are a partial response to broader social and cultural changes, including the development of media platforms, as well as changing public attitudes. Corner and Pels (2003) describe the increasing roles of ‘consumerism, celebrity and cynicism’ in the mediation of politics, where voter disengagement and disillusionment is countered using the techniques of political marketing (Savigny 2008) and the political realm is left beholden to popular culture (Street 2004). In surveying this mediated politics, Corner (2003) points to the foregrounding of the politician as a ‘mediated persona’, schooled in performances that align with dominant political values and trained to pander to expectations around popular appeal (Langer 2012; Street 2011).