Two ‘Js’, Quotable Quotes, De-stigmatize and re-stigmatize an individual Cherry-picking launching through sanitization or rationalization. POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE OF POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS,

Two ‘Js’, Quotable Quotes, De-stigmatize and re-stigmatize an individual Cherry-picking launching through sanitization or rationalization. POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE OF POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS, By Dr. Sohail Ansari

Conceived and worded by DR Sohail Ansari (originality of concepts and originality of words).

He believes that there can never be a zero scope for improvement and appreciates criticism if it is not for the sake of criticism.

Two ‘Js”: Judges & Journalists

·       Judges are to be detached from the overall society so to be objective in cases they get from society; however the saying: ‘I do not care if my reporters are making love to the elephants, but if they are, they will not be assigned to report on the circus’ does not make any sense to me; though it is as much important for journalist as it is for a judge to have detached neutrality to matters they are to examine, it is a false analogy anyway. Journalist has to swim without getting wet; he has to paradoxically be very much a part of happenings with out being a part of it to gain the deeper insight without being biased. Without making love to the elephant, the inside of circus might be a virtual impossibility and even we suppose that gaining inside from outside is possible so then we need thousands of journalists; each assigned to one aspect of a social life, restricted to a particular activity that actually is the forbidden area for him; for example, Journalist is allowed to be the active participant of a sport provided he never reports on sport.  There is another problem with this approach; journalist that covers a circus must tend toward greater selectivity; he needs to sift out his childhood friend and blood relative from his circle if they happen to be the part of a circus.

Judges are ‘the judge’ to cases brought to them: ‘cases go to judges’. Journalists are ‘the judge’ to cases they bring to them: journalists go to cases. Journalists witness the event as it unfolds and recaptures it in his writing; judicial verdict is on the event that has unfolded itself. Journalists and judges are objectively judgmental, however, the objectivity of journalist is harder to come by, therefore, it must be more treasured and must be prized above the objectivity of a judge.

Quotable Quotes

·       Marriage is for the perfect erotic reasons but becomes perfect for the platonic reasons as it is believed that ‘perfect love does not come till the first grand child’ husband and wife are more brother and sister by then.

·       Whoever wants you to believe there are not two sides to a certain argument wants you to be in one because he either loves you and wants you to be in the best one or hates you and wants you to be in the worst one.

How to de-stigmatize and re-stigmatize an individual.

·       Unraveling the contexts of stigma occurs by redefining stigma not as a ‘fixed or inherent attribute of a person’ such as affiliation with a specific religion that constitutes a deviation from the normative but ‘rather on the experience and meaning of difference’. The analysis of stigma and of the behaviors adopted by the stigmatized individual to manage his identity is important for selecting information such as known deviations in personal traits or association stigma to construct the context of stigma so that stigma get in the way of social interactions by the factors stigmatized can not control; and consequently disruptiveness occurs and discreditable gets discredited and managed identity is damaged by Aesthetics__ other’s reaction to the stigma.

Political marketing through Cherry-picking

·       Political Marketing consultant gathers favorable evidences and picks only the most favorable ones so to give impression that he has ‘looked at all evidence, controls for variable so he can identify what is actually working, uses blinded observations so as to minimize the effects of bias, and uses internally consistent logic’ but as a matter of fact he is cherry picking only favorable evidence.

Launching through sanitization or rationalization.

·       Political Marketing consultant launches the tainted individual as the one who has the ‘dubious honor of being the lesser evil’ so that society can accept the individual as ‘honorable member of the stigmatized’ or present the member of the stigmatized group as wise to his condition so that individual with a fault needs feel no shame nor exert self-control and is seen as an ordinary other in spite of his failings.
POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE OF
POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS:

Pervasiveness of political communication underlines the continuing need to understand reasons that not only brought political communication at the first place but also kept it at the very heart of the process of dynamic change in our political culture.

Industrialization marked a watershed in human’s history. Job beckoned multitude of people; and as people gravitated to where the industries were, cities sprang up. In industrialized societies, people had imperfect information about the problems and people who could solve them. In contrast, a small scale community had no need for media advertising; because the sources of solutions (tribal chiefs) were nearby and word-of-mouth communication was adequate to enlighten and galvanize people: familiar problems were solved by familiar people.

The coming of a market industrial society introduced a radical change. For the first time, the majority of the population was surrounded by problems occurred in settings that were no longer familiar, although initially most problems resembled those at home.

But gradually the consumer society became flooded with problems that could not be solved by the inhabitants’ unaided senses and intellect alone. As unfamiliar problems appeared, political communication stepped in to establish link between problems and their solvers; for people either had no information regarding issues like global warming or no idea how to resolve unemployment and corruption issues. Through political advertising; political marketing; and political debates; candidate marketed themselves and competed to prove better.

In industrial societies, therefore, all components of political communication have become almost the only vehicles of communication between leaders and voters. Regarded superficially, political communication promotes, justifies and condemns parties and leaders. Looked in depth, the ways in which messages are presented in political ads; political rhetoric; political debate; political news and in political language reach deeply into our most serious concerns: interpersonal and family relations, the sense of happiness and content; the fading away or dilution of cultural traditions; the economy of country; personal or provincial autonomy; and many others.

Political communication represents a “privileged form of discourse” about such concerns in modern society__ meaning simply that we accord what it says a place of special prominence in our lives. In pre-industrial age, the forms of privileged discourse that touched the lives of ordinary persons were church sermons, political oratory of patriarch, and the words and precepts of family elders. Such influences remain in rural and tribal areas of the modern world, but their prominence within the affairs of urban life and the rhetorical force and moral authority that they carry are generally sharply diminished to nothing.

The space left as these influences have diminished has been filled largely by the ‘discourse through and about parties’. This phrase is intended to convey the idea that communications among persons, in which individual send ‘signals’ to others about their beliefs; inclinations and expectations, are strongly associated with_ and expressed through_ patterns of preferences for certain leader to certain leader manifested in upholding (by voters) of upholder (leaders) of values _ values that conform to voter’s expectation. This phrase is intended to convey that a significant portion of our political ‘talk’ and ‘action’ is about leaders and about what they can do for us.

Industrialization had great impact on the predominant set of images, values, and forms of communication of pre-industrial age and provided a new ‘cultural frame for satisfaction and model of communication’. We, therefore, need to draw upon socio-cultural perspectives in seeking to understand how cultural, social and economic changes mediated by industrialization influenced the way in which people related to political parties or leaders.

Cultural forms that gave meanings to the world of things underwent a drastic repositioning, such that in the consumer society parliament and municipal institutions came to replace the patriarch of extended families or tribal chiefs or religious institutions that were important in agricultural societies.

Economic changes resulted in lifestyle groupings that were the outcome of taste culture independent of ethnic differences. ‘one had to live with who’ was governed by what one earned. Difference in income not in ethnicity dictated the formation of middle; lower and upper class and each class represented distinctive preference patterns and that led to distinctive taste culture and lifestyles and as industrialization had great  impact upon general understanding of oneself and what one deserved to have goods had to be  integrated into the process of satisfaction and ways (components of political communication) through which they were assured (to voters) to be delivered (by parties) had to be  integrated into election campaign communication.  

The developed phase of the market-industrial society is the consumer society.  The dramatic rise in real incomes freed most individuals in the consumer society from concentrating on the bare necessities of life. Freedom from concentrating on the bare necessities of life; rise in discretionary spending, and leisure time led to other ‘freedoms’:

(a)     Freedom to think about issues other than bread and butter.

(b)     Freedom to pursue human wants not directly tied to basic necessities.

These freedoms developed new expectations in people. Newly found independence asserted in readiness to endorse anyone who could prove to be capable in effecting meaningful change in the quality of life by matching up to these new expectations.

‘Gradually the older patterns of life and culture fell apart. The unity and continuity of daily life in village settlements could not be sustained amid increasing urbanization, especially when workplace, domicile, and commerce were separated. And the highly restrictive codes of personal behavior shaped by the closed worlds of religious values and distinct ethnic communities could not survive the more subtle blows of industrialism: the cultural relativism resulting from the quick amalgamation of so many different groups; the erosion of the economic function of the extended family; and the drawing of a new type of leisure time highly individualized in nature and no longer bound to the traditional collective forms of popular entertainment or domestic routine”.

In the new basis of civilization lay expansion not renunciation of consumption. From the culture of consumption “emerged a new type of personality and ‘social self’ based on individuality. Gradually set loose from restrictive behavior codes by the crumbling of older cultures that measured persons against fixed standards of achievement and moral worth, this new social self was set against an open-ended scale of success set to whatever criteria happened to be applicable at the time”.

                            

In early twentieth century older extended family and ethnic community bonds were unraveling; urbanization and the personal anonymity it confers were proceeding apace. Tendency to other-directedness inevitably arose as the consequence of the dominants characteristics of this new social milieu in which entirely new social framework for need satisfaction specifically tailored to a market orientated society was constructed by consumer culture.

Every component of political communication is superfluous in societies of ‘inner-directed’ characters but the shift to the ‘other-directed’ characters as the predominant character type in modern society paved the way for political communication. The restraint on worldly desires preached for so long made less and less sense as the factory system’s astonishing productive capacities became apparent. People needed more and more money to buy ever widening array of goods. They needed good jobs; conducive environment for business and security for their wealth. . Political communication was born based on the realization that individuals required help in learning how to find right leader who could help satisfy ever changing needs.

         

Ads of political marketing and political advertising; political debates; political rhetoric and oratory began invariably featuring all those concerns along with the pledge to address them. With the transition from industrial culture to consumer culture; the function of older cultural traditions in shaping perception of led for leader was taken over by media-based messages through which circulated a great assortment of cues and image about the relationship between leaders and expectation of people. 

                            

In other words, through messages about manifestoes and their possible meanings for an individuals, parties gradually absorbed the functions of cultural traditions in providing guideposts for social/cultural identity_ telling one ‘who one is’ and ‘where one should belong’ was no longer  associated with ethnic identity of leader and led.

‘The market-industrial society led to dissolution of the distinctive and relatively stable forms of need satisfaction created by traditional cultures. Industrialization uprooted great numbers of people from age-old rural settlements and relocated them in cities”.

Thus urbanization pulled individuals away from traditional leaderships The more the tradition-bound forms of need satisfaction disintegrated; the more traditional leadership disintegrated; and the more firmly political communication assumed the tasks of instructing individuals how to match their needs and wants with the available stock of leadership. Quite simply, individuals need guidance on what party to choose and how to assess them, and on innumerable other points before forming final judgment.

Evolution of political communication owes everything to weakening of traditional cultures. The gradual fading of traditional leadership gave gradual rise to the number of unfamiliar faces on political landscape. The ever-changing breed of unfamiliar faces necessitated furnishing of ‘political cues’ in better and better way.  

In the consumer society, political marketing and political advertising assumed the role once played by cultural traditions and became the privileged forum for the transmission of such political cues.

The need for political cues exists in the industrial societies because the definition of good life comes under constant assault by the avalanche of ever increasing and ever changing goods. As the standards of living/situation change quickly and continuously, the needs through which individual relate to leaders must also be in a state of permanent fluidity. This permanent fluidity accounts for the defeat of war-hero Winston Churchill in post war period and popularity of slogan ‘Man with out vision’ for popular leader of cold war (Bush senior) once cold war was over.

When permanence is absent; judgments about the suitability of particular leader, so to speak, destabilized.