Introduction: Communication and Civic Engagement in Comparative Perspective

The present era is defined by sweeping changes in economies, social institutions, political party systems, and communication processes in many nations. These changes go by various names from globalization to poststructuralism. The impact of these tectonic shifts in the political foundations of nations is greatly debated. In particular, considerable uncertainty surrounds the effects of various changes on the importance of politics for individual citizens and for the kinds of civic activities that people engage in and even regard as political. This is an important time for communication scholars to develop comparative frameworks that bring conceptions of social change together with how people located in various cultural, demographic, and audience groups define their relations to government and, more broadly, to civil society. At stake is our understanding of the role of communication in shaping these political relations, and in shaping the attitudes of citizens about politics, government, and society itself.     

A Model Linking Community Activity and Communication With Political Attitudes and Involvement in Neighborhoods

Although people tend to mobilize around local problems and restrict their political involvement at other times, the political communication literature generally has focused on national politics and elections. This is particularly surprising in investigations of political involvement since it is at the community level that people should feel more efficacious. Also, both mass and interpersonal communication should be more significant locally given their importance in strengthening community ties. The study reported here focuses on these relationships in a community context, with a survey of six inner-city neighborhoods and six suburbs classified on status using location and census data. Results point to a much more positive role for the media in community politics. Those most likely to rely on neighborhood newspapers as sources are less disillusioned with government, suggesting that the most "grassroots" of print media are more efficacious in their impact than the other channels. Also, readership of a daily newspaper is particularly strong as a predictor of both community political involvement and faith in community civic involvement. Results of the macro analysis suggest that urban sprawl may have consequences for how media affect political involvement. In the data here, distance from the center city and stratification are closely tied--the further out the community, the higher its status. Results by neighborhood structure indicate media specialization as well as a greater dependence on media versus interpersonal influence in the political arena. Thus, we see that political involvement and attitudes are more strongly related to reading the daily newspaper in the more distant suburbs than in the center city.     

Values,Communication Behavior,and Political Participation

This article examines how communication patterns mediate the influences of values on political participation. We find that the positive effects of postmaterial values on participation are mediated through reading public affairs content in newspapers. In contrast, materialist values negatively affect participation through watching television entertainment. Interpersonal discussion in which disagreement occurs mediates both the positive effect of reading public affairs and the negative effect of materialism on political participation. We also provide what may be a better explanation of the influence of communication patterns on political participation by going beyond acquisition of factual political knowledge. We show that individuals' efforts to think about news and search for additional information and perspectives modify what people "get from" media. Reflecting about news and integrating information from various sources promote better understanding of the political world and may provide a stronger cognitive base for political participation than factual political knowledge.     

History and Political Communication: An Introduction

This essay introduces a series of articles that explore the relation of history to political communication research. It is shown that as a field of study political communication has tended to ignore historical methods and sensibilities. This tendency is traced to the field's roots in social psychology, political science, and early mass communication research. However, although political communication tends to ignore historical research, it often depends upon implicit, unquestioned historical narratives. Thus, a more robust historical imagination is encouraged not only because it may produce more and better historical research, but also because it may assist in the development of tools for reflecting on the way political communication already deploys historical narratives.     

From Top-Down to Trickle-Up Influence: Revisiting Assumptions About the Family in Political Socialization

A growing number of theorists are calling for a revival of research on political socialization based on the premise that children are active in their own civic development. We advance this argument a step further by proposing a model of family communication that reverses the roles of parents and children as conventionally understood in political socialization. Adolescent children are not merely receptive to political stimulation; they possess the power to transform patterns of family communication in ways that benefit themselves and their parents. We first challenge a series of interrelated assumptions about the nature and direction of influence in the family. We then document evidence of "trickle-up influence," in which child-initiated discussion--stimulated by a civics curriculum--prompts the parent to increase her civic competence via increased news media use, knowledge gain, and opinion formation. The parent's response reflects her desire to maintain a leadership role in the family, and more important from a theoretical perspective, it reveals the intrinsic forces of family adaptation that can make the home a powerful incubator of citizenship. Political growth occurs when the family system adjusts to reestablish equilibrium in response to exogenous factors or developmental needs that propel change. The ultimate purpose of this essay is to propose a functional model of family political communication. We apply theoretical perspectives from developmental literature to illustrate how political communication serves the family goals of autonomy and cohesion during various stages of the family life cycle.     

Political Communication on Arab World Television: Evolving Patterns

This article identifies political communication patterns taking shape on Arab world television. Three distinct patterns of political communication are described. In the traditional government-controlled television pattern, official government policies seem to inspire the form and substance of TV's framing of events and issues. In the reformist government-controlled television pattern, while official stands set the parameters of news coverage, professional newswork practices unfamiliar in traditional government-controlled television are well noted. In the liberal commercial pattern, American-style journalism seems to define television's handling of events and issues. To shed light on these patterns, the writer conducts a supplementary analysis of how three television broadcasters representing the three political communication patterns - Syrian Satellite Channel (SSC), Abu Dhabi Satellite Channel (ADSC), and Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel (JSC) - frame national and regional politics in their news programs.     

Steven Chaffee and the Future of Political Communication Research

This article discusses four basic characteristics of Steven Chaffee's research: going beyond the "common research wisdom," careful explication of concepts, avoiding unsubstantiated charges against the media, and investigation of the social aspects of communication. The evolution of political socialization research is used as an example of how these characteristics have strengthened Chaffee's contribution to that area and to the larger field of political communication. It is argued that the future of this field would benefit from emulation of these characteristics. Continuing problems of political communication research are noted, and various emerging problems are discussed.     

试论泰国的政治稳定问题

2006年9月19日，继1991年军事政变15年之后泰国再次发生了军事政变，一时间，泰国的政治稳定成为了人们关注的问题。但是，从政治稳定的四个层次即国家政权体系的稳定、权力结构的稳定、政治过程的稳定和社会政治心理的稳定来分析，不难发现泰国政治上的这次变动仅仅只是政局动荡，泰国的政治总体上说仍然是稳定的。     

The Homologous Evolution of Political Communication and Civic Engagement: Good News,Bad News,and No News

We examine the speed and extent to which members of the U.S. House of Representatives adopt emerging Web-based communication technologies. Given the growing centrality of communication for governance and the Web's growing role in effective public outreach, a rational actor approach would suggest that members of Congress should aggressively exploit online communication technology. And this should especially be true for freshman members. We test these expectations using two waves of data coded from the official Web sites of the U.S. House of Representatives, for the years 2006 and 2007. We observe that incumbents show considerable path dependence in their Web site technology adoptions, while the sites of the freshmen who won election in 2006 are largely independent of the Web designs of their corresponding predecessors. This independence does not mean, however, that freshmen are fully exploiting communication technology. Instead, the Web design practices of freshmen appear to be governed by the distribution of existing practices among incumbents, a process we label “distributional path dependence.” This surprising null finding suggests that members have Web-based communication practices that are governed by informal norms socially constructed among congressional offices and that the institution is slow to adapt to emerging communication technologies.     

Elections and political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article examines attempts to use electoral politics to promote substantive political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 1990 elections have been a key part of virtually all negotiated agreements to end civil wars. The utility of democracy for building peace is often asserted but rarely backed with long-term commitment and resources on the ground. Bosnia since 1996 is a rare exception. There, international actors sought not only to establish a democratic political system but to use electoral democracy as a tool with which to transform the nature of politics in Bosnia in short order. This article focuses on efforts to shape the development of political parties and the party system, assesses the degree to which it has succeeded and examines the broader implications of Bosnia's experience for other state-building efforts of its kind.     

菲律宾政治家族的经济基础分析

政治家族是菲律宾政治的主导力量,而这些政治家族依赖的是其强大的经济基础。菲律宾政治家族的经济利益最初来源于以农业为基础的行业,如今已向其他行业延伸,几乎各行各业都有政治家族的印记。相应地,菲律宾政治家族拥有远非普通家庭能比的巨大财富,多数政治精英凭借家族财富而身居高位,因此菲律宾政治带有明显的富人特色。     

The Practice of Deliberative Democracy: A Study of 16 Deliberative Organizations

This article investigates 16 organizations that attempt to foster better public deliberation in local and national communities. It develops a typology of these organizations and discusses them in the context of the scholarly literature on deliberative democracy. It particularly focuses upon the contributions these organizations may make to debates within the literature between advocates of relational and rational modes of deliberation. It finds that, much like the literature, practitioners of deliberative democracy wrestle with the competing demands of inclusiveness and group cohesion. Organizations attempt to solve this dilemma by stressing group action. However, this emphasis on action raises another dilemma associated with the relation between deliberative and representative models of politics. The essay concludes by suggesting that these organizations have accepted the challenge of improving public life through discourse that has been laid down by deliberative democratic theory. As such, they represent a natural experiment in deliberative democracy that deserves the serious attention of the scholarly community.     

东亚政党与民众的政治沟通及其启示——以韩国和新加坡为例

政党与民众的政治沟通是衡量一个国家政党政治运行状况的重要指标。探索东亚政党与民众的政治沟通,有助于我们了解东亚政党政治的运行过程和发展规律。韩国和新加坡两国政党与民众的政治沟通模式虽各具特色,但其基本涵盖了东亚政党与民众沟通的主要模式,从政治沟通的整个过程来看,也有一定的规律和经验可循。如充分发挥政党的能动作用、采取灵活多样的沟通方式、积极主动地拓宽沟通的渠道等。借鉴东亚政党与民众沟通的经验对于完善我国执政党与民众的政治沟通模式十分必要。     

泰国的互联网发展及其政治影响

泰国的政治危机自他信执政后期起便始终未能平息,国内外社会就其原因展开了广泛的探讨。本文在简要回顾这些讨论的基础上,分析了互联网作为一项新的变量对泰国政治产生的影响。本文认为,互联网技术的发展与普及不仅使后政变时代的社会运动扩大化与持续化,造成了社会意识形态的割裂与对抗,而且严重威胁着泰国的传统政治和社会秩序,并指出泰国政府的主要应对举措及其局限性。     

‘Communication’ in the era of ‘Empire’ and ‘multitude’

SUMMARY

Politics has been described as “an aggregate of persons in a power perspective of elaborated demands and expectations”. From this the collective nature of politics can be clearly seen. Without communication, however, no collective action is possible and consequently no political action. Based on this politics can be seen as the continuous defining of collective action in the context of mutual power relations in which there are differences (inter alia of objectives and methods) and consequently conflict over the allocation of scarce resources. Even though there has been an early interest in the relationship between politics and communication, e.g. Aristoteles and Julius Caesar with his Acta Diurna, systematic study of the relationship between communication and politics and the generation and regulation of conflict is of recent nature. A review of the literature on the theory and research in the field of political communication indicates it to be of original interest to researchers from fields such as journalism, mass communication, political science and speech communication. Recently, however, political communication emerged as a field on its own worthy of its recognition as a subdiscipline of communication science: it is recognized by professional bodies like the International Communication Association it is a separate area for research, teaching and for publication of journals devoted to it.     

The Effects of Political Talk Radio On Political Attitude Formation: Exposure Versus Knowledge

The effects of political news on the mass audience are usually difficult to establish empirically. Recent models of mass communication effects have held that political knowledge is a better indicator of media reception than traditional measures of exposure. This claim is tested in two studies of attitudes toward Democratic and Republican leaders during the 1996 U.S. presidential primary campaigns. The impact of messages from three types of political talk radio (PTR) is examined: Rush Limbaugh, other conservative hosts, and liberal/moderate hosts. Political knowledge and exposure to talk radio are found to be equally good predictors of attitudes toward political leaders when studied separately. However, when tested against one another, exposure is the more effective measure. Agreement between Rush Limbaugh's messages and his audience's attitudes toward political figures is consistent and strong. Biased processing of PTR content by audience members with partisan predispositions contrary to those of the host is also examined.     

Modern Mass Media and Traditional Communication in Afghanistan

This article explores the bipolar structure of communication in Afghanistan, where the latest technological advancements in media coexist with a complex system of traditional communication. After 22 years of civil war and the destruction of most modern media facilities, Afghanistan's traditional channels of communication have become even more significant. This article examines the history of the press in Afghan politics and society and asks what roles modern and traditional communication systems and values may play in the future.     

从苏/俄政治转型看现代政党政治的发展趋势

俄/苏在特定的历史条件下建立了多党联合政权,又在特定的历史条件下走向了一党统制。但这条路终究没有走通。苏共随着前苏联的解体而走到其历史的尽头,俄共则随着俄罗斯多党制的确立而浴火重生———虽然处境艰难,却也不失为俄罗斯政坛的一支重要力量。苏/俄政党政治的演变说明,只有基于合法竞争的适应政治民主潮流的政党政治,才有生命力;政治权力的垄断不仅会侵犯作为权力所有者的人民的根本利益,而且对权力的垄断者也是绞索。     

Setting the Public Sphere in Motion: The Rhetoric of Political Bumper Stickers in Israel

Most members of the public have little opportunity to express political opinions via a mass medium. Political automobile bumper stickers provide such a possibility and can constitute a revival of Habermas's notion of the public sphere. This article examines how such bumper stickers function in the case of Israel, where political bumper stickers have become a ubiquitous medium of communication, expressing complex national-ideological messages that reflect individual opinions on a mass scale. Four elements have combined to bring about the development of this openly accessible political medium for the expression of public opinion: Israel's volatile political situation, a cultural predisposition to verbal expression on political topics, dramatic changes in the communication climate, and the particular status of cars and attitudes toward driving in the country. This mobile rhetoric has been used to set the public sphere in motion, reflecting five factors that account for the dynamism of the medium: the physical circulation of the messages on cars; the dialogic interaction and renegotiation of previously established ideological premises; the reflection, introduction, and maintenance of topics on the public agenda; the taking of power by the people; and the performative act of public expression.     

Political communication and meaning in a climate of cultural contestation: A critical analysis of Zapiro's cartoon of the rape of Justicia

Abstract

Political communication and its relationship to meaning has become a prominent subarea within the subfield of politics and culture. A further development is that in political communication, academic interest has shifted from the production of meaning to the reception of meaning. This emphasis shift requires that future investigations will have to place more emphasis on the receiver of political communication, specifically as regards the reaction to and the interpretation of meaning. Max Weber's conceptual model is used to structure this article and to theoretically define the different cultural environments. The contested Zapiro cartoon of Jacob Zuma is then analysed in relation to political communication within the two contrasting cultural environments. The aim is to demonstrate how different cultural environments in South Africa react differently to the same political communication and its meaning.