Political Public Relations and Mediatization: The Strategies of News Management

Abstract

In highly mediatized democracies, political parties and other political actors have to manage the news and adapt to the fact that news media have become largely independent and highly influential. In this chapter, the authors bridge theory and research on strategic party behavior, mediatization, and political public relations to analyze why and how political parties seek to manage the news to further their strategic goals. Based on a review of the literature, the authors suggest a typology of strategies and tactics that political parties can use to manage the news. One conclusion is that adaption to news media need to follow from the strategic goals of the party. Otherwise adapting to news media is not strategic but rather surrendering to news media and news media logic.

Full text

Edited by Peter Van Aelst and Stefaan Walgrave
A Functional Analysis of
the Media’s Role in Politics

63
CHAPTER 4
Political Public Relations and Mediatization:
The Strategies of News Management
Jesper Strömbäck and Frank Esser
introduction
While the history of political public relations is as old as politics itself,
dating back at least to ancient Rome when Quintus Tullius Cicero wrote
what was probably the rst publication on political public relations and
electioneering (Freeman and Cicero 2012), until the last few years there
was very little theory and research focusing on political public relations
(Strömbäck and Kiousis 2011a). Even though public relations as prac-
tice was pioneered in the context of politics (Cutlip 1995), and always
has constituted an intrinsic part of politics, theoretically there has been a
disconnect between research on politics, political communication, public
relations and adjacent elds (Strömbäck and Kiousis 2013). As a result,
our understanding of how mass media function as a source of informa-
tion and an arena for political actors (Van Aelst and Walgrave 2016), and
© The Author(s) 2017
P. Van Aelst and S. Walgrave (eds.), How Political Actors Use the Media,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60249-3_4
J. Strömbäck (*)
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
F. Esser
University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
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64 J. STRÖMBÄCK AND F. ESSER
how political actors attempt to act strategically to reach their goals in
democracies where politics has become highly mediatized, has suffered.
Against this background, this chapter will seek to analyze why and how
political actors attempt to manage the news media to further their stra-
tegic goals. To that end, the chapter will seek to bridge the gap between
theory and research on mediatization, political public relations and politi-
cal parties as strategic actors. With respect to political actors, we will focus
on political parties and their leaders in parliamentary systems.
Political actors as strategic actors
The starting point for our analysis is the notion that political actors are
rational and strategic actors, in the sense that they (1) have their goals,
(2) use available means and (3) choose their plans of action in attempts
to realize those goals. This notion is key, not only in research on political
party behavior (Downs 1957; Sjöblom 1968), but also on political public
relations. Broadly speaking, political public relations refers to the man-
agement process by which political actors seek to inuence and to estab-
lish and maintain benecial relationships and reputations with key publics
to help them achieve their strategic goals (Strömbäck and Kiousis 2011b,
Kiousis and Strömbäck 2014). In terms of political parties, these publics
can be internal as well as external, and more or less friendly or hostile to
the political party, but have that in common that they have a potential or
actual impact on the parties and their chances of realizing their strategic
goals. In order to achieve their strategic goals, political parties thus need
to manage the relationships they have with different publics (Kiousis and
Strömbäck 2014, 2015; see also Grunig and Hunt 1984; Ledingham
2006). As media intervenes in these processes, as we will see, news man-
agement is an essential part of political public relations.
In terms of overall strategy, these might vary between parties. A com-
mon distinction in this context is between vote-seeking, ofce-seeking, and
policy-seeking parties (Strøm 1990). Although simplied, the dening
characteristic of vote-seeking parties is that their main goal is to increase
or maximize their share of the vote. Ofce-seeking parties, in contrast,
seek to maximize their control over political ofce, whereas policy-seeking
parties seek to maximize their effect on public policy (Strøm 1990;
Müller and Strøm 1999). These are ideal types, of course, not only
because parties usually want to increase their votes as well as their control
over political ofce and their impact on policy-making, but also because
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4 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIATIZATION … 65
parties are no monoliths. Different actors within parties often have dif-
ferent views of what the priority between votes, ofce, and policy impact
should be, and one key challenge facing the leadership of political parties
is to reconcile different views within parties and in relation to the elec-
torate with respect to what the overall strategy should be.
The notion that political parties are no monoliths also lies at the heart
of Sjöblom’s (1968) theory on party strategies in multiparty systems.
According to that theory, the most general goal for any political party is that
it “shall make the authoritative decisions in accordance with its evaluation
system” (p. 73). Political parties are thus assumed to be goal-directed, to
want something beyond existing for its own sake, and in order to evaluate
different options they are facing, they need to have an evaluation system.
This is particularly important considering that political parties act in
several arenas, each accompanied by a specic strategic goal and with
constraints in terms of their members or key publics and decision types.
Following Sjöblom (1968), the arenas that political parties act in are
the electoral, the internal, and the parliamentary arena. In the inter-
nal arena, the strategic goal is to maximize internal cohesion; the mem-
bers are the party members; and the key decisions they have to make
are whether or not to support the party’s leadership and policies. In
the electoral arena, the strategic goal is to maximize the share of votes;
the members those entitled to vote; and the key decisions they have to
make are whether to vote and what party to vote for. In the parliamen-
tary arena, the strategic goal is to maximize parliamentary inuence; the
members are representatives for the different parties; and the key deci-
sions they have to make are related to when to seek collaboration or con-
ict with each other. Aside from this, a fourth arena that has become
increasingly important over the years should be added: a media arena.
We will come back to this.
The challenge for political parties is that there might often be conicts
and a need for trade-offs between the goals associated with each arena.
Too much emphasis on reaching the strategic goal in one arena might
even hurt the efforts at reaching it in another. In the electoral arena, a
party might for example increase its support by abandoning policies that
are unpopular among segments in the electorate, but to the extent that
these policies have support within the party, such a move might dam-
age internal cohesion. Another scenario might be that an opposition
party increases its inuence in the parliamentary arena by collaborating
with the government, but that might cause a backlash in the internal
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66 J. STRÖMBÄCK AND F. ESSER
and electoral arena if members and supporters think that collaborating
with the government amounts to selling out. Attacking the government
might on the other hand bolster support among members and support-
ers, but also decrease parliamentary inuence.
Virtually every day, political parties and their leadership thus face stra-
tegic challenges with respect to how much priority they shall give to the
strategic goals in the internal arena, the electoral arena and the parlia-
mentary arena; how they can reconcile the interests and demands from
members and publics in each of the arenas; and how much weight they
shall give to the overall evaluation system, including the interpretation
of the party’s ideology, when conicts appear with the wants and needs
of external publics. Important to remember are that political parties are
complex, and that the environments in which they operate include multi-
ple publics whose wants and needs often diverge but they cannot ignore
(Hughes and Dann 2009). If the only goal was “to maximize political
support”, as Downs assumed (1957, p. 11), the life of political parties
and their leadership would be much simpler.
Even more importantly, the life of political parties would be much
simpler if they did not have largely independent news media – alongside
other forms of media such as web-only and social media – to deal with.
But deal with the news media they have to. The key reason is the process
of mediatization that has taken place over the last decades.
strategic Party behavior and the Mediatization
oF Politics
One of the most transformative social change processes affecting politics
during the last decades is the mediatization of politics (Kriesi et al. 2013;
Strömbäck 2008). While there are different denitions, here we dene
the mediatization of politics as a “a long-term process through with the
importance of the media and their spill-over effects on political pro-
cesses, institutions, organizations and actors have increased” (Strömbäck
and Esser 2014a, p. 6).
Important to note is that mediatization is a structural process,
through which the media over time “have become an integral part of
other institutions’ operations, while also achieving a degree of self-deter-
mination and authority that forces other institutions, to greater or lesser
degrees, to submit to their logic” (Hjarvard 2013, p. 3; See also Asp
2014; Strömbäck and Esser 2014b; Strömbäck and Esser 2015; Udris
and Lucht 2014). From an institutional perspective, the differentiation
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4 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIATIZATION … 67
and institutionalization of the media in their own right is thus a precon-
dition for the media’s independent inuence in political and other pro-
cesses (Marcinkowski and Steiner 2014).
Also important to note is that media inuence is much broader than
media effects, usually conceived of as effects on the individual level of
analysis (Schulz 2004). Following from the notion that mediatization
is a process of structural change, media inuence refers to “all activities
and processes that are altered, shaped or structured by the media and the
perceived need of individuals, organizations and social systems to com-
municate with or through the media” (Strömbäck and Esser 2014a, p.
11). To the extent that political actors, organizations or institutions alter
their ways of thinking, organizing, or behaving because of media, it can
thus be conceived of as a form of media inuence and as a reaction of
political actors to their perception that media have become an inuential
factor in their environment.
While media is a broad term, the kind of media that matters most is
the news media. While it is undisputed that many consumers turn away
from established media channels, it is worth noting that traditional
news media—in their ofine or online formats—still constitute the most
important source of information about politics and current affairs for
most people (Mitchell et al. 2016). Most news that is shared on social
media also has their origins in traditional news media (Bright 2016;
Newman 2011). Important to note is furthermore that political actors
continue to perceive the news media as a powerful institution (Van Aelst
et al. 2008; Strömbäck 2011). Since perceptions of media inuence
have an impact on how political actors behave (Cohen et al. 2008), this
is important for an understanding of the news media’s actual inuence.
Research also shows that news media can have signicant effects both
with respect to the public and political actors (Nabi and Oliver 2009;
Van Aelst et al. 2014). In addition, the institutionalization of news media
logic—understood as a transorganizational agreement on news processes
and content (Cook 2005; Esser 2013)—means that it exerts an inuence
going beyond traditional news media themselves.
While the mediatization of politics is always a matter of degree,
and varies across countries as well as across political actors, organiza-
tions and institutions within countries, there is little doubt that politics
in contemporary advanced democracies is highly mediatized. Hence,
political actors, organizations and institutions cannot afford not to take
news media and news media logic into consideration. Not if they are
strategic actors.
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68 J. STRÖMBÄCK AND F. ESSER
how news Media intervene in Parties’ diFFerent arenas
Considering the mediatization of politics, it is evident that theories
on political parties as strategic actors that do not incorporate the vari-
ous roles and functions of news media are awed. As suggested by Van
Aelst and Walgrave (2016; see also Chap. 1), news media have two key
functions for political actors, such as political parties. The rst is as a key
source of information. Simply put, the news media “provide politicians
with information they would otherwise not have or not pay attention to”
(Van Aelst and Walgrave 2016, p. 499). The second is as an arena, used
by political actors to reach out to the public at large but also to inu-
ence intra-political processes. Both these functions are crucial, and by
“performing both functions at the same time […] the news media form
a formidable resource for politicians affecting the power balance among
political actors” (Van Aelst and Walgrave 2016, p. 501).
The media arena should thus be considered a fourth arena in which
political parties are active (Nord 1997) alongside the parliamentary, the
electoral and the internal arena. In the media arena, they strategic goal
is to maximize positive publicity; the members are journalists and edi-
tors, and the key decisions they have to make are related to which politi-
cal actors and issues should receive attention and how they should be
framed in the media coverage (Strömbäck and Van Aelst 2013).
Important to note though is that news media is not just an arena sepa-
rate from other arenas. Because news media function as information pro-
vider and arena for publics within each of the four arenas, the news media
have a dual and integral role in all political processes, including how par-
ties attempt to act strategically and manage their relationships with key
publics in the parliamentary, the electoral and the internal arena.
The Internal Arena
Beginning with the internal arena, the strategic goal is to maximize
internal cohesion. Among other things, this requires the parties to nur-
ture the relationships with their internal publics—of which there are
several. Among these are those who have leadership positions within
the party, those who are representatives for the party, those who are
employed by the party and those who are members within and volun-
teering for the party. In addition, within each party there are usually sev-
eral factions based on different opinions with respect to policy as well as
strategic matters.
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4 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIATIZATION … 69
The implication is that there are several publics within each party,
some more and some less happy with the leadership and how the party
is being run. From a strategic point of view and to strengthen internal
cohesion, it is thus crucial that the party leadership has an up-to-date
overview of the publics within the party and seeks to nurture the rela-
tionship with those publics that are critical and might turn hostile.
In these processes, the news media intervenes indirectly as well as
directly. First, even for party members, the news media have an informa-
tion function. How news media cover the party and how internal pub-
lics, based on the media coverage, perceive and evaluate how the party
is doing will thus have repercussions on the internal arena. While posi-
tive coverage is likely to stie dissent, negative coverage might trigger
it. Second, since conict and negativity belong to the most prominent
news factors (Esser et al. 2017; Harcup and O’Neill 2016), and inter-
nal conicts are usually deemed newsworthy, the news media are always
interested in nding—and thereby amplifying—critical voices within the
parties. Relatedly, publics within a party that are unhappy with the leader-
ship or direction of the party might use the news media to voice their dis-
sent. Regardless of whether news media actively search for critical voices
within a party or critical voices strategically use news media to voice their
dissent, when dissent is covered by news media, it might trigger further
dissent. Such processes present a serious challenge to internal cohesion.
To realize the strategic goal of maximizing internal cohesion, political
parties thus need strategies not only for managing the relationships with
internal publics but also for protecting the organization against public
attention to internal dissent and conicts. Following from this, the stra-
tegic goal for parties’ news management efforts with respect to the inter-
nal arena is to keep internal dissent out of the media coverage.
The Parliamentary Arena
Turning to the parliamentary arena, the strategic goal is to maximize par-
liamentary inuence while the members are elected representatives for
the different parties. While the most important determinants of a party’s
parliamentary inuence are factors such as the share of seats in parlia-
ment and whether the party belongs to the government, these are not
the only factors that matter. Of importance are also how effective the
parties are at placing their issues on the political agenda, at framing poli-
cies and policy proposals, and at negotiating. In this context, the news
media may play an important role.
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70 J. STRÖMBÄCK AND F. ESSER
First, the news media is one of political actors’ key sources of informa-
tion about what other political actors are thinking and doing (Van Aelst
and Walgrave 2016). This is an important part of the information func-
tion, as information about what other parties are thinking and doing
helps parties to plan their moves. Second, political parties can use the
news media to signal their preferences to other parties or backbench-
ers within the own party (Esbaugh-Soha 2007). Third, by acting to put
their issues on the media agenda, political parties may attempt to take
advantage of the fact that news media have an inuence on the agendas
of other parties, parliament and government (Walgrave et al. 2008). This
is part of the strategy of “going public”—appealing to news media and
public opinion in efforts to exert pressure on other policymakers (Kernell
2007). Fourth, inuencing how news media frame various issues, politi-
cal parties can try to force other parties’ to adhere to or position them-
selves in relation to the framing preferred by a party. Fifth, opposition
parties can exploit the fact that voicing criticism toward government
increases their chances of getting media attention; heightened sensibility
toward the news media also inuences the choice of questions opposition
politicians ask in parliament (Santen et al. 2015). Sixth, news media may
intervene in negotiation processes. Such interventions may complicate
negotiations, for example by prematurely demanding policy commit-
ments, focusing on conicts within or between parties or by bringing to
the front stage discussions that were meant to remain back stage (Spörer-
Wagner and Marcinkowski 2010).
While not exhaustive, these examples illustrate that news media are
one key resource of power in the relationship between policy actors
(Kunelius and Reunanen 2012) and how news media has become an
integral part of the parliamentary arena. To realize the strategic goal of
maximizing parliamentary inuence, parties thus need strategies for man-
aging the news so that they focus on the issues and frames preferred by
the party while not disrupting negotiations by bringing to public atten-
tion discussions that are meant to remain condential.
The Electoral Arena
With respect to the electoral arena, the strategic goal is to maximize the
share of votes while members are those entitled to vote. To realize that
goal, news media are crucial. The main reasons are that news media, for
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4 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIATIZATION … 71
most people, still constitute the most important source of information
about politics and current affairs (Mitchell et al. 2016), and that most of
what is discussed and shared in ofine and online networks originate with
news media (Newman 2011). Regardless of what publics in the electoral
arena the parties have a relationship with, their efforts at managing the
relationships with different publics are heavily inuenced by the news
media. This holds for their relationships with voters at large, specic voter
groups, various interest groups and non-governmental organizations.
Focusing on voters at large and setting more stable, sociodemographic
factors aside, research has shown that people’s vote choice is inuenced
by a number of factors. Among these are what issues people think are
the most important in conjunction with what issues are owned by dif-
ferent parties (Petrocik 1996); how people think about issues and prob-
lems, including in what direction the country is heading (van der Eijk and
Franklin 2009); how voters perceive the parties and their policies as well
as their leaders or candidates (King 2002); and strategic considerations
related to, among other things, possible government formations and how
to ensure that the vote is not wasted (Ocarsson and Holmberg 2016).
In all these respects, news media and their coverage have an inuence.
As shown by numerous studies, among other things the news media have
effects on the public agenda (McCombs 2014) and what issues people
consider when evaluating the parties (Iyengar and Kinder 1987), on
what issues voters perceive the parties to own (Thesen et al. 2016), on
how voters evaluate and understand different political issues (Lecheler
and de Vreese 2016) and how voters evaluate the parties and their lead-
ers (Balmas and Sheafer 2010). Or, phrased differently, the media can
have signicant rst- and second-level agenda setting effects, priming
effects, and framing effects. To a signicant degree, they shape the “pic-
tures in our heads” that we draw upon when forming our opinions and
casting out votes.
To realize the strategic goal of maximizing the share of votes, and
maintaining good relationships with different publics on the electoral
arena, the parties thus need strategies for managing the news so that
they receive as extensive and positive coverage as possible and so that the
news media focus on the issues and frames preferred by the party. While
news media do not decide elections, election campaigns are permeated
by news media. As a consequence, the strategic goal in the electoral
arena is closely intertwined with the strategic goal in the media arena.
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72 J. STRÖMBÄCK AND F. ESSER
The Media Arena
In the media arena, the strategic goal is to maximize positive publicity
while the members are journalists and editors, i.e. those who have an
inuence over the news media coverage. In this context, positive public-
ity is not restricted to publicity that is positive in tone. Rather, positive
publicity is publicity that aligns with the strategic goals that the parties
have for their news management efforts in the internal, the parliamentary
and the electoral arena: to keep internal dissent out of the media cover-
age, to keep the news media from to disrupting negotiations by bringing
to public attention discussions that are meant to remain condential, and
to inuence the news media to give the party and its leader or candidates
as extensive and positive coverage as possible while focusing on the issues
and frames preferred by the party.
The notion that the strategic goal on the media arena is closely inter-
twined with the strategic goals in the other arenas notwithstanding, it is
in the media arena that the parties’ news management efforts take place
and where they have to manage their relationship with journalists and
editors. It is also in the media arena where the tensions between the par-
ties’ interests and news media logic become most apparent.
Following news media logic, the news media are rarely interested in
providing the kind of news that political parties want them to. Rather, they
are interested in political news stories that on the one hand protect their
professional autonomy and legitimacy as information providers and watch-
dogs (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2014), while on the other hand they should
be inexpensive to cover (Hamilton 2004), adhere to news values such
as conict, drama, entertainment and visual attractiveness (Harcup and
O’Neill 2016), be conducive to storytelling techniques such as dramatiza-
tion and personalization (Hernes 1978), and be effective in the competi-
tion for audience attention. Hence, more often than not, news media tend
to focus on other issues and aspects than those that political parties would
want them to. And even if at least larger and/or governing parties may be
successful in terms of inuencing the media agenda, the news media always
have the last words in terms of deciding what sources to quote and how to
frame political actors or issues (Strömbäck and Nord 2006; Zaller 2001).
Of course, there are variations across countries and the degree to
which political news coverage is guided by news media logic versus polit-
ical logic (Esser et al. 2017). On a general level, it is nevertheless safe to
say that political news is highly mediatized and shaped by news media
logic (Esser and Strömbäck 2014; Strömbäck and Esser 2015).
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4 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIATIZATION … 73
To act strategically in any of the arenas in which political parties act
thus requires strategic news management and relationship building with
journalists and editors. Political parties might often be critical towards
the news media, but can in most cases not do without them. Political
parties need the news media, and often more than the news media need
them. That holds particularly true for parties that are out of power or
lack access to information that has extraordinary news value. That leads
to the question: how do political parties strategically attempt to manage
the news.
Mediatization and strategic news ManageMent
From a theoretical perspective, the most important mechanism behind
the mediatization of politics is adaptation to news media and news media
logic (Asp 2014; Hjarvard 2013; Strömbäck and Esser 2014a, b). From
an actor-centric perspective, the key driving force behind the mediatiza-
tion of politics is however not news media forcing themselves upon pas-
sive others. Rather, the driving force is political actors’ reacting towards
the importance of news media by adapting to news media logic with the
purpose of using the news media to reach their strategic goals. Sometimes
called self-mediatization (Esser 2013; Meyer 2002), this perspective high-
lights how political actors contribute to the mediatization of politics and
how mediatization is the result of the interactional relationships between
political actors and news media (Asp 2014; Strömbäck and Van Aelst
2013; Van Aelst and Walgrave 2016).
On a strategic level and as an organizational mindset, the most impor-
tant components of strategic news management are an informed under-
standing of how news media operate and of how to adapt to news media
logic as an integral part of all strategic and tactical discussions within
the party. This is important not only with respect to the top leadership
within the party, but should permeate the party organization at all levels.
Related to this, a second important component of strategic news man-
agement is to build an infrastructure within the party with the dual func-
tion of (a) directly managing the news media and responding to their
wants and needs, and (b) training those within the party on how to man-
age the news strategically as well as on a tactical level. At the end of the
day, the main competitors in the ght for news media attention are other
parties, and in that context, news media act as arbitrators (Van Aelst and
Walgrave 2016). By being better than competitors in strategically giv-
ing the news media what they are looking for—in terms of information
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74 J. STRÖMBÄCK AND F. ESSER
high in news value, packaged to increase its news value and scheduled to
t the news media’s production processes—political parties can gain the
upper hand in the struggle for media attention.
From a strategic point of view, adaptation to news media and news
media logic should however be perceived as a means towards reaching
the strategic goals of the parties. This calls for long-term thinking so that
the short-term quest for media attention does not divert from the long-
term strategic goals. Important to think about for political parties is thus
how they want to be perceived by the media. To illustrate the relation-
ship between strategic goals and operative tactics, we would like to pro-
pose a typology that distinguishes two dimensions (inspired by Benoit
2014; Pfetsch 2007):
• The rst dimension describes two types of strategic news manage-
ment, one that “promotes own policies and personnel” and another
that “deects criticism and attacks opponents”.
• The second dimension differentiates between two objects of news
management, namely policy (“issue as message”) and character
(“person as message”).
If the two dimensions are combined, they lead to a four-eld matrix, as
shown in Table 4.1, where various tactics can be allocated to styles of
strategic news management. The tactics listed in cells 1 and 2 of the table
illustrate a proactive incorporation of news media logic and are mostly
used for a party’s positive self-presentation. The tactics listed in cells 3
and 4 illustrate a reactive incorporation of news logic and are used, at
least in the case of attack politics, for negative other-presentation.
Before we describe some tactics in more detail it is worth noting
that journalists have shown to be receptive to tactics of news manage-
ment if they are carried out in ways that are not perceived as endanger-
ing the journalists’ integrity and professional autonomy, or undermining
the legitimacy of their coverage. These tactics can be expected to be
particularly successful if they help lowering journalists’ costs for pro-
ducing stories—with cost understood as investments in time, cognitive
effort and money. In this case, these tactics represent “news subsidies”
(Gandy 1982). As news subsidies, their value lies in the extent to which
they succeed in lowering the cost of covering the news while at the time
adding to a story’s news value without compromising the stories’ cred-
ibility and the journalists’ sense of autonomy.
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4 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIATIZATION … 75
Among the strategies to promote one’s own policies (cell 1), one
can differentiate between strategic agenda setting, strategic priming
and strategic framing (Esser and Spanier 2005). Strategic agenda set-
ting means promoting a party’s own issues vis-à-vis the media by taking
actions and staging events that are so compelling that reporters will feel
obliged to report them as news. This strategy is mainly targeted at shap-
ing the media agenda and therefore also referred to as agenda building.
Activities used to achieve this goal include gearing an issue to the news
values of conict and drama, using media contacts to discreetly leak an
issue to a consciously chosen journalist, or launching an issue publicly
at an effectively staged event (see, for example, Esmark and Mayerhöffer
2014). Strategic priming is aimed more at the public, less at the media.
It uses a broad set of messages (“signs”) in a wide range of commu-
nication channels to activate in the minds of citizens a set of criteria
(“schemas”) with which citizens will evaluate a political actor. Polling
is crucial to determine which issues (or values, candidate traits) should
be highlighted and how they resonate with voters. Ideally, voters will
be primed particularly on those issues that are to a party’s advantage and,
equally important, draw a dening distinction to the main opponent. This
theory of deliberate priming (Medvic 2006) is turned into practice by polit-
ical communication strategists who determine scientically what issues
their client should emphasize and how those issues should be framed.
Strategic framing refers to structuring the meaning and signicance of
a political message in order to inuence the version of the story that the
media will feature. This process of putting a favorable interpretation on
information is intended to determine the parameters of a debate before
it even begins. Oftentimes, however, politicians are drawn into situations
where they cannot only emphasize their own issues and frames but must
address issues benetting an opponent. Strategic framing can help in
these cases to position oneself in such a way that the opponent’s advan-
tage is minimized and the issue sufciently neutralized. All the tactics of
Table 4.1 Strategies and tactics of news management
Promoting own policies and
personnel
Deecting criticism and attacking
opponents
Issue as message (1) Strategic agenda setting,
priming, and framing
(3) Strategic agenda cutting and
message control
Person as message (2) Image and event management (4) Attack politics
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76 J. STRÖMBÄCK AND F. ESSER
cell 1 would be most effective for a party if the respective issues, cues
and frames saturated all available communication channels and captured
more attention than competing messages—by using channels under the
control of the party (websites, social media, YouTube, advertising) and
under the control of the media (news coverage, commentary).
Image management is intended to develop and improve a politician’s
positive image (see cell 2 of Table 4.1). The exploitation of personality
features caters to the human interest dimension and the media’s xation
on political stars. But—from a politician’s perspective—image and issues
must marry up and clarify, in credible terms, his or her overall prole and
campaign theme. Image management includes professional preparation
and training prior to important media appearances, often with the help
of consultants specialized in inuencing public perceptions. Effective
symbols, strong visuals and celebrity testimonials are used to emphasize
support, authority and leadership qualities. Image management is often
combined with event management, referring to planned events staged
primarily for the purpose of being reported. Because of their scripted
and often reality-obscuring character, these events are also called pseudo-
events (Boorstin 1962).
Oftentimes, the motivation for news management is not promoting
own strengths but deecting from weaknesses, for instance in response
to damaging news reports by a skeptical press corps. This brings us to
cell 3 of Table 4.1 and the tactics of agenda cutting and message control.
If it is not possible to control the ow of political communication pro-
actively, news managers may resort to the tactic of de-thematization, a
diversionary technique that tries to divert attention from a potentially
hurtful issue (Pfetsch 2007). Common tactics include not comment-
ing on the issue, playing down its newsworthiness, or creating another
newsworthy event that distracts media attention from negative issues and
proactively promotes positive issues (Bachl and Brettschneider 2011).
Related spin control tactics include deescalating a news cycle by reshaping
an emerging crisis frame and implementing a centralised message con-
trol mechanism to avoid an inconsistent, contradictory public image. It
is also important to provide a quick response with one’s own denition
of the situation and prevent the news media from lling the informa-
tion vacuum created by a crisis. In reputation-threatening situations, it
is important to be able to rely on dependable relationships with jour-
nalists and editors that have been cultivated over a long period of time.
Reputation repair strategies include denial, evading of responsibility,
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4 POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIATIZATION … 77
reducing offensiveness of the event, corrective action, providing justica-
tion, offering counterframes, or attacking the accuser (Benoit 1997).
The last point brings us to the tactic of attack politics in cell 4 of
Table 4.1. Attacking an opponent’s personality, record or opinion coin-
cides with the media’s preference for negative news. News managers—
sometimes with the help of outside groups—can use this inclination to
launch messages that lower an opponent’s public perception by empha-
sizing the allegedly decient nature of his or her qualications or political
character. Common negative campaign techniques include painting an
opponent as soft on crime, dishonest, corrupt or a danger to the nation.
It is a reliable tactic for capturing the news media’s attention, appealing
to their penchant for conicts (Pfetsch 2007).
Of course, this list of news management tactics is not exhaustive. As
the relations between media and politics changes, and as information
technologies evolve, new ways of trying to inuence the media will be
developed. Because of this, what is most important from the perspective
of managing the news in highly mediatized democracies is not the spe-
cic tactics used, but rather whether and how the tactics follow from the
parties’ strategies. We will come back to this in the conclusion.
conclusion
In highly mediatized democracies, managing the news is not optional.
Regardless of whether they do it reactively or proactively, political actors
have to manage the news and adapt to the fact that news media have
become largely independent and highly inuential.
This holds particularly true for political parties as strategic actors. In
contemporary, highly mediatized democracies, the news media perme-
ate all arenas in which political parties act and virtually all relationships
that political parties have with different publics. To cultivate their rela-
tionships with key publics in the internal arena, the parliamentary arena,
the electoral arena and the media arena, political parties thus need to
understand how these relationships are inuenced by news media and
have strategies and tactics for managing the news. And to achieve the
strategic goals in the internal arena, the parliamentary arena and the elec-
toral arena—maximize internal cohesion, parliamentary inuence, and
the share of the vote—they need strategies and tactics for managing the
news. In essence, to act strategically in any of the arenas in which parties
act requires strategic news management. It is and should be seen as an
integral part of contemporary political public relations.
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78 J. STRÖMBÄCK AND F. ESSER
On a very general level, the foundation of strategic news management
and the key mechanism of the mediatization of politics is adaptation.
Largely, it is by understanding and adapting to news media and news
media logic that political parties can try to use the news media for their
own purposes, by aligning the wants and needs of the news media with
that of the political party. As noted by Cook (2005, p. 163), by adapt-
ing to news media “politicians may then win the daily battles with the
news media, by getting into the news as they wish”, even if they at the
same time “end up losing the war, as standards of newsworthiness begin
to become prime criteria to evaluate issues, policies, and politics”. From
that perspective, it is by accepting that the territory has shifted toward
a mediatization of politics that political parties can become effective in
their political public relations and news management efforts.
Important though is that the parties’ news management strategies and
tactics and how they act in the media arena should follow from their stra-
tegic goals on the internal arena, the parliamentary arena and the elec-
toral arena. The very same news management strategies and tactics could
in fact contribute to as well as undermine how successful the parties are
at reaching their strategic goals, depending on how they are carried out
and the extent to which they are aligned with the strategies of the party.
If not, the tactics might be effective in a short-term perspective, but not
in terms of helping the parties reach their strategic goals. To illustrate the
relationship between strategy and tactics, we have proposed a typology
of political news management approaches that future scholars may nd
heuristically useful.
In sum, when politics has become highly mediatized, adapting to news
media and news media logic is a fundamental aspect of strategic news
management and political public relations, but adapting to news media
and news media logic without a purpose is not strategic. It is surrender.
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