Process of political communication

Answer 1

Political communication:

Its is basically the relation of medium of masses. When you design political that is political communication.

The Political Communication Section

The American Political Science Association advances the study of political communication within the discipline of political science. Political Communication encompasses the creation, shaping, dissemination, processing and effects of information within the political system-both domestic and international - whether by governments, other institutions, groups or individuals. Through research in such areas as media in the political process, new media technologies, societal and individual-level effects of the media, public diplomacy and international communication, political scientists bring important perspectives to understanding the role of communication in political life.

Definition of Political communication

From the beginning, media studies are closely related to politics and wars (Guo & Wu, 2005, p. 276) such as campaign research and war propaganda. Political communication mainly studies the connections among politicians, voters and media. It focused on the media effects. There are four main media effects theories: magic bullet, two-step flow of communications (Lazarsfeld, 1948), limited effects (Lang & Lang, 1953), and the spiral of silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1984). Also, many scholars studied the technique of political communication such as rhetoric, symbolism and etc. Much of this research has been developed in journals of mass communication and public opinion scholarship.

Democracy

Democracy is a frequently used word but its meaning is rarely fully understood. A democratic political system is one in which the ultimate political authority is vested in the people. The word democracy comes from the Greek words "demos" which means the people and "kratos" which means authority.

Democracy may be direct, as practised in New England town meetings, or indirect and representative. In the modern pluralistic democratic state, power typically is exercised in groups or institutions in a complex system of interactions that involves compromises and bargaining in the decision process. The democratic creed includes the following four concepts:

Individualism; which holds that the primary task of government is to enable each individual to achieve the highest potential of development.

Liberty; which allows each individual the greatest amount of freedom consistent with order.

Equality which maintains that all persons are created equal and have equal rights and opportunities.

Fraternity; which postulates that individuals will not misuse their freedom but will co-operate in creating a wholesome society

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy is frequently used to describe the political philosophy of America. Though books may argue about how many governments America has, each sector of government would claim to base itself on liberal democracy. Indeed the basis of governments having to go to the electorate on a fixed and frequent rate is part of this democratic process whereby government is done for the people rather than an exercise that leads to the creation of policies but at the exclusion of public debate.

Plano and Greenberg point of views:

They believe that for democracy to work in its purest form it needs to have certain pre-requisites. Society has to be educated and responsible. The state must have a degree of economic stability. Social cohesion and social consensus must exist. Above all, it requires the acceptance of the democratic "rules of the game";

That there should be frequent and fair elections. That the losers must accept the verdict of the public and allow the majority to govern. That the majority will respect the right of the minority to provide the government with opposition if the minority wins a future election, it will be permitted to take over the reins of government.

Non-governmental

Aside from the public sphere, similar democratic principles and mechanisms of voting and representation have been used to govern other kinds of communities and organizations.

• Many non-governmental organizations decide policy and leadership by voting.
• Most trade unions choose their leadership through democratic elections.
• Cooperatives are enterprises owned and democratically controlled by their customers or workers.

Voter irrationality

Economists since Milton Friedman have strongly criticized the efficiency of democracy. They base this on their premise of the irrational voter. Voters are highly uninformed about many political issues, especially relating to economics, and have a strong bias about the few issues on which they are fairly knowledgeable. For example, members of labor unions are most passionate and informed about labor policies. They will organize themselves and lobby the government to adopt policies beneficial to labor unions but not necessarily to the rest of the population. As a result, politicians are unaware of voters' actual desires.

Furthermore, some have argued that voters may not be well educated enough to exercise their democratic right. A population with low intellect may not be capable of making correct decisions. While this view today is increasingly regarded by advocates of democracy as an attempt to maintain or revive traditional hierarchy in order to justify autocratic rule extensions have been made to develop the argument further. One such variant of the argument is that the benefits of a specialized society may be compromised by democracy. As ordinary citizens are encouraged to take part in the political life of the country, they have the power to directly influence the outcome of government policies through the democratic procedures of voting, campaigning and the use of press. The result is that government policies may be more influenced by non-specialist opinions and thereby the effectiveness compromised, especially if a policy is very technically sophisticated and/or the general public inadequately informed. For example, there is no guarantee that those who campaign about the government's economic policies are themselves professional economists or academically competent in this particular discipline, regardless of whether they were well-educated.

Chicago economist, Donald Wittman, He argues democracy is efficient based on the premise of rational voters, competitive elections, and relatively low political transactions costs. Economist Bryan Caplan argues, while Wittman makes strong arguments for the latter two points, he cannot overcome the insurmountable evidence in favor of voter irrationality. It still remains the Achilles heel of democratic government. The problem is not mere lack of information; it is that voters badly interpret and judge the information they do have

Political instability

More recently, democracy is criticized for not offering enough political stability. As governments are frequently elected on and off there tends to be frequent changes in the policies of democratic countries both domestically and internationally. Even if a political party maintains power, vociferous, headline grabbing protests and harsh criticism from the mass media are often enough to force sudden, unexpected political change. Frequent policy changes with regard to business and Immigration are likely to deter investment and so hinder economic growth. For this reason, many people have put forward the idea that democracy is undesirable for a developing country in which economic growth and the reduction of poverty are top priority

Elements of democratic states:

The six elements that follow can be regarded as being at the core of all democratic states, with all six core elements being closely connected. Any one of these elements is not conceivable without the others. For a democracy to work, there also has to be a democratic society.

· Constitutional state

· Elections

· Parliament

· Government

· Opposition

· Separation of powersHabermas' Public SphereThe claim that the Internet can lead to a greater democratization of society is founded on tenets of unlimited access to information and equal participation in cultural discourse. But will this inundation of texts and voices lead to anarchic, rather than democratic, forms of communication? To put it another way, does discourse on the Internet lead to a completely postmodern world in which multiple centers compete with one another in a debate which can only lead to complete divergence and fragmentation?Like the postmodernists, Jurgen Habermas hopes to create a dialogue which occurs outside of the realm of government and the economy. But Habermas' public sphere model attempts to thwart postmodern, chaotic dissipation by reinstalling Enlightenment values of reason and freedom into a modern discourse which aims at pragmatic consensus. In the public sphere, Habermas says, discourse becomes democratic through the "non-coercively unifying, consensus building force of a discourse in which participants overcome their at first subjectively biased views in favor of a rationally motivated agreement." By looking to rationality, he hopes to produce democratic judgments which can have universal application while remaining anchored within the practical realm of discourse among individuals.

Habermas posits that the participants in his political sphere shall share shared assumptions about communicative practice. These assumptions are produced by an Enlightenment notion of reason which is characteristic of democracy- it is this rationality which makes decisions formulated in discourse binding. In addition, Habermas lists certain criterion of freedom and equality which are necessary for an "ideal speech situation" to occur in a democratic polity.

Media and democratic state:

Importance of media in any democratic state:

· Important information

· Their political activities

· News also guide public discussion

· News also guide your discussion

Africa today:

Isaac Phiri - Media in "Democratic" Zambia: Problems and Prospects - Africa Today 46:2 Africa Today 46.2 (1999) 53-65 Media in "Democratic" Zambia: Problems and Prospects Isaac Phiri Abstract: Zambia's transition to multiparty politics in 1991 has not led to significant changes in state-media relations. There was a brief period (just before and soon after 1991) when it appeared that the media would become an independent influence in a democratic environment. But any movement in that direction has been thwarted by the continued state control of the country's major news establishments. The index-pendent media is weak due to a hostile political and legal environment and severe economic conditions. The ability of the independent press to contribute effectively to democratic discourse is further constrained by its failure to live up to the professional role of the press in pluralist politics. This paper examines the factors that have incapacitated the media and proposes that the same local and international civil society organizations that precipitated the 1991 transition to multiparty politics must again be mobilized to bring about a lasting transformation of state-media relations in Zambia. In most surveys of international journalism, sub-Saharan Africa provides easy case studies of political systems in which print and broadcast media are severely repressed by the state (Martin 1991:155-204). This is not surprising. Most postcolonial political systems...

Effects of political communication

There major areas of study:

• Political advertising can change the behavior of the voter.
• To examine the political process of democratic societies, their procedures and practices has been effected by growing importance with them of Mass Communication
• You see the impact of political communication on capital societies. We can consider the systematic impact of the rise of political communication on advanced capital societies.

Popular Campaign Advertising Products

• Auto Magnets
• Balloons
• Pens
• Pencils
• Buttons
• Totes
• Plastic cups

Mediated Reality

Mixed Reality exists in many forms along a continuum from Augmented Reality (reality enhanced by graphics, such as Sutherland's work from more than 30 years ago) to more recent efforts at Augmented Vitality (graphics enhanced by reality, graphics enhanced by video, etc.). Mixed Reality provides numerous ways to add together (mix) various proportions of real and virtual worlds.

1. the idea of constructing special eyeglasses to modify how he saw the world; and
2. The ecologically motivated approach to conducting his experiments within the domain of his own everyday personal life.

Communication process:

Communication can best be summarized as the transmission of a message from a sender to a receiver in an understandable manner. The importance of effective communication is immeasurable in the world of business and in personal life. From a business perspective, effective communication is an absolute must, because it commonly accounts for the difference between success and failure or profit and loss. It has become clear that effective business communication is critical to the successful operation of modern enterprise. Every business person needs to understand the fundamentals of effective communication. Successful and effective communication within an organization stems from the implementation of the communication process. All members within an organization will improve their communication skills if they follow the communication process, and stay away from the different barriers. It has been proven that individuals that understand the communication process will blossom into more effective communicators, and effective communicators have a greater opportunity for becoming a success.

Process of effective communication

Communication is the process of sharing thoughts, ideas, and emotions with others, and having those thoughts, ideas, and emotions understood. You need a sender, a message, and a receiver for communication to take place. Here are some other things that help communication to be effective:

• Attention - the sender needs to pay attention to what he/she is trying to communicate, and choose the best words and body language to communicate with; the receiver needs to pay attention to what is being communicated by listening and watching.
• Attitude - both sender and receiver need to have a positive (and respectful) attitude. They should want to communicate, and be willing to work to see that communication can take place. Using negative or blaming words shows a poor attitude - using "I" messages and trying to understand the other's point shows a good attitude
• Feedback - both sender and receiver can give feedback to each other, either by using words or by body language. This helps to show whether the communication is being understood correctly or not.

Shannon's Model of the Communication Process

Shannon's (1948) model of the communication process is, in important ways, the beginning of the modern field. It provided, for the first time, a general model of the communication process that could be treated as the common ground of such diverse disciplines as journalism, rhetoric, linguistics, and speech and hearing sciences. Part of its success is due to its structuralist reduction of communication to a set of basic constituents that not only explain how communication happens, but why communication sometimes fails. Good timing played a role as well. The world was barely thirty years into the age of mass radio, had arguably fought a world war in its wake, and an even more powerful, television, was about to assert itself. It was time to create the field of communication as a unified discipline, and Shannon's model was as good an excuse as any.

Interpretation of message depends on:

• Political affiliation
• Age of audience
• Ethnicity
• Gender type
• Type of message

Dominant decoding:

Who really believes in fact and figures. They create their own opinion by their own mind power.

Negotiated decoding:

Those type of receivers which are not strong enough which don't have party relation\background. They don't have strong political affiliation.

Oppositional decoding

Via the oppositional strategy, the viewer may understand the literal and the connotative inflection given by the discourse, but decode the message in a contrary way . The viewer (say) listens to the debate on the need to limit wages (in order to combat inflation) but "reads" every mention of "the national interest" as "class interest."

"Improving communications" or "making communications more effective" (as an educational goal say) is difficult when moving beyond the strictly denotative level of the message. To conclude, denotative "misunderstanding" is not important; however, connotative (contextual) misunderstanding can be of the highest structural significance. Making hegemonic codes of dominant elites more effective (transparent) for the majority audience is a political matter--not a technical one.

Evidence

recent empirical evidence that shows political campaigns are more potent than widely believed, focusing on the conceptual and methodological advances that have produced these findings. Conceptually, a broader definition of effects-that includes learning and agenda-control, as well as vote choice-characterizes contemporary research. This research also features two kinds of interactive models that are more complex than the traditional hypodermic (message-based) approach. The resonance model considers the relationship between message content and receivers' predispositions, while the strategic model highlights the interactions between competing messages. Finally, we attribute the emergence of stronger evidence in favor of campaign effects to the use of new methodologies including experimentation and content analysis, as well as the more sophisticated use of sample surveys.

Survey

• It should be simple
• It should be carefully written\made
• Result of election should be on time
• It can also effect who have not voted
• You should give the result after voting

Voting behavior

• Turn outs(how many people went to cast vote)
• Experiment the impact of people relating to political communication

Media reports

This issue of Political Communication Report opens with a Commentary on the participatory potential of new media formats. They basically analysis political activities which are going on.

It is also source of information for political actors. We have no direct access to the person but we do get information from media.