Title: Political Communication and the Study of Politics
Abstract: Political communication as a field of inquiry means the study of politics as communication and of political systems as networks of communication. The assumption here is that communication is the infrastructure of politics. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate the communication approach through: (1) the presentation of selected variables of political development in communication terms; (2) to aggregate these variables in order to distinguish between political development and democratic political development; (3) to suggest the comparative potentiality of such an approach. The communication variables (in parenthesis their more common counterparts) are— I. General Prerequisite: (1) common political contents (social integration, cohesion, nation-building).II. Political Development: (2) network. (3) channels, and (4) information flow (institution-building, state-building, coercion); (5) channels' penetration (political socialization, mobilization); (2) through (5) aggregated to (6) steering (governing capacity).III. Democratic Political Development (1) through (6) plus: (7) access (political mobility); (8) channels' utilization (political participation); (7) and (8) aggregated to (9) feedback, openness, and impact on steering (democratization).
Publication Year: 1980
Publication Date: 1980-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 5
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