ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s political communication has evolved into a major field of research in Western Europe. Two studies spearheaded this development. On the occasion of the 1959 General Election in Great Britain, Joseph Trenaman and Denis McQuail, both at that time affiliated with the Granada Television Research Unit of the University of Leeds, investigated the role of television for voters during the campaign. Their findings were published in 1961 under the title Television and the Political Image (Trenaman&McQuail, 1961). Although therewasno evidence for an influenceof television on voters’ attitudes toward the parties, the data indicated that exposure to electoral broadcasts helped voters increase their knowledge about party politics. Five years later, for the British election in 1964, Blumler, who had succeeded Trenaman as head of the Research Unit, and McQuail undertook another study on the role of television during election campaigns that was designed closely after the model of the earlier study (Blumler & McQuail, 1968). However, the 1964 study went beyond the predecessor in an important point, which was in applying a uses-andgratifications perspective by asking not only what the influence of television was on voters but also which motives guided voters’ use of television during the campaign. Both studies together can take credit for having brought themassmedia, and television in particular, (back) to the attention of European electoral research after their influence had been regarded as negligible since The People’s Choice (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1948) attributed them only minor effects on voters. In addition, the history of agenda-setting research, when localizing its beginnings in North Carolina, USA, has overlooked that both British studies had already revealed agenda-setting effects but referred to them as “developments in issue salience.”
