ABSTRACT
How do contemporary ‘mass’ media influence practices of persuasion? This question has surely been at the heart of social and political debate for over a century. While there is still little agreement as to the precise effects on its audience of media such as the press, radio and television, there is wide acknowledgement that they have profoundly altered the ways politics is communicated. Today democratic representation is so deeply interwoven with mass media that it is difficult to make a clear distinction between the two — when events occur, they often seem designed to have an impact in and through media. Political news and information, the activities of governments, leaders' speeches, party announcements and political commentary, cultural values and aspirations, debate and scandal, are all now regularly communicated via the technologies and organizations of mass media. Not surprisingly, perhaps, politicians cultivate close relations with newspaper editors and journalists, they have media advisors, they hire PR companies to market their policies and they offer themselves as celebrities and pundits to court publicity as well as sell their policies.
