ABSTRACT
One of the most fruitful approaches to the study of politics is to see it as a system of communications involving a network of channels of information and institutions for transmitting ideas, demands, and orders. Political communications in advanced countries like Ireland consist of 'a fusion of high technology and special, professionalized processes of communication with informal, society-based and non-specialized processes of person-to-person communication'. Obviously, in a modern society, television, radio, newspapers, and to a lesser extent other printed material are powerful means of wholesale vertical communication - thus the term 'mass media'. The effect of the mass media upon political attitudes and behavior is a subject that is widely recognized as among the most perplexing in politics. The Radio and Television Act 1988 provided for the establishment of the Independent Radio and Television Commission to arrange for the setting up and surveillance of private sector broadcasting.
