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NOTES
3 THE EFFECTS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
1 For an overview of the issues, see McQuail, 1987. For a more readable summary
of the problems, and the different approaches which they have generated, see
Morley, 1980.
2 Hall’s three decoding positions, which he argues to have been empirically tested,
are: (a) the dominant–hegemonic position, when a message is decoded entirely
within the encoder’s framework of reference; (b) the negotiated position, which
‘acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the ground
significations, while, at a more restricted, situational level, it makes its own
ground rules’ and (c) the oppositional decoding, ‘the point when events which are
normally signified and decoded in a negotiated way begin to be given an
oppositional reading’ (1980, p. 138).
3 In 1992 the final ‘poll of polls’ indicated a Labour lead of 0.9 per cent. In fact, the
Conservatives won the election by 7.6 per cent, giving a polling error of 8.5 per
cent, the largest ever in British polling history. Butler and Kavanagh believe that
‘there is no simple explanation for this massive failure in what had become a trusted
instrument in election analysis’ (1992, p. 148), but propose the following
explanations for the size of the error: (a) the sample of those polled was
disproportionately working class (thus skewing the outcome in favour of Labour);
(b) due to such factors as poll tax evasion, many of those polled were not included
on the electoral register; (c) Tory voters were less likely to reveal their voting
intentions; (d) fewer Labour than Tory voters actually voted; (e) there was a late
swing to the Conservatives in the final few days of the campaign.
4 Butler and Kavanagh suggest that polls taken on 1 April indicating Labour leads
of between 4 and 7 per cent were implicated in the party’s electoral defeat, because
they ‘encouraged the triumphalism of the Sheffield rally and it helped to waken
the public to the real possibility of a Labour victory’ (1992, p. 139).
5 So named because of its high production values, and artistic direction by awardwinning
feature film-maker Hugh Hudson.
6 For a discussion of the implications of these trends for the democratic process see
McNair, 1998a.
7 The American political scientist Roderick Hart, for example, in his discussion of
contemporary US presidential speech-making, argues that ‘the mass media have
caused presidents to seek security in discourse, not challenge, and have made the
perception of assent, not assent itself, the valued commodity. What used to be a
broad, bold line between argument and entertainment, between speech-making
and theatre, now has no substance at all’ (1987, p. 152).
8 The political cartoon created by American artist Garry Trudeau.
9 The satirical puppet show produced by Central Television for the ITV network.
4 THE POLITICAL MEDIA
1 For a detailed discussion of the current state of the British journalistic media,
press and broadcasting, national and regional, see McNair, 2009c, especially
Chapters 5–9. See also Watts, 1997.
2 M. Woolacott, ‘When Invisibility Means Death’, Guardian, 27 April 1996.
3 Robert Worcester’s study of the 1992 election indicates that, at the time, only 32
per cent of the Star’s readers supported the Conservatives, as opposed to 53 per
cent who supported Labour (1994, p. 25).
4 Lord McAlpine stated his view that ‘the heroes of this campaign were Sir David
English, Sir Nicholas Lloyd, Kelvin MacKenzie and the other editors of the
grander Tory press. Never in the past nine elections have they come out so
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