Political Communication: The Construction of a Model

Abstract

Political communication introduces in the sphere of politics a change that is equal in scope to those introduced by the mass media in the field of information and by polls in that of public opinion. It essentially constitutes a locus for the exchange of conflicting discourses between three main actors, all endowed with legitimacy: political leaders; journalists; public opinion as expressed by polls. This restricted definition has the advantage of showing that the originality of political communication consists in dealing with contradictory and complementary elements of mass democracy: Politics, Information and Communication. Stressing the importance of communication in politics does not imply an erasure of conflict, which would be absurd, given the consubstantiality of conflict and political life. It merely serves to underline the fact that in democratic systems conflict can also be expressed through communication. Thus communication is both a fact of everyday life, and a necessary concept to the understanding of pluralistic mass democracies.