Presentation to Centre for Applied Communication Studies, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China, 28 October 2016

1. Social Media and the Transformation of
Political News Reporting: Commentary on
Recent Developments in Australia”
Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communication
Creative Industries Faculty/Digital Media Research Centre
Queensland University of Technology
Presentation to Center for Applied Communication Studies, Sun Yat-Sen University,
October 28 2016

2. Global Media Consumption 2010-17

3. Australian Media Consumption
2010-17

4. Studying Digital and Social Media
Artefacts
•infrastructrues
•devices
•services
•platforms
Practices
•activities
•uses
•communication
•information/knowledge
Social arrangements
•institutions
•organisations
•laws/policies
•politics/economics
From Leah Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone (eds.),
Handbook of New Media (SAGE, 2006)

5. Media, Technology and Politics
Artefacts
•infrastructrues
•devices
•services
•platforms
Practices
•activities
•uses
•communication
•information/knowledge
Social arrangements
•institutions
•organisations
•laws/policies
•politics/economics
Journalists, politicians,
political communicators
and strategists
Media institutions,
Political parties
Media platforms
and technologies

6. From mass media to social media?
Mass communications media
(20th century)
Convergent social media
(21st century)
Media distribution Large-scale; high barriers to entry Internet dramatically reduces barriers
to entry
Media production Complex division of labour; media
content gatekeepers;
professional ideologies
Easy-to-use Web 2.0 technologies;
multi-skilling; small collaborative teams
Media power One way communications flow Greater empowerment of
users/audiences
Media content Tendency towards standardised mass
appeal content to maximise
audience share
‘Long tail’ economics; de-massification
and segmentation of media content
markets
Producer/consumer
relationship
Impersonal, anonymous and
commoditised (audiences as target
mass market)
Potential to be more personalised and
user-driven (user created content –
UCC)

7. Australian Case Study
• Politics, Media and Democracy in Australia: public
and producer perceptions of the Australian public
sphere
• Brian McNair, Stephen Harrington, Terry Flew and
Adam Swift
• To be published by Routledge, 2017

8. Research Methodology
• Australian Research Council
project 2013-16:
• Interviews with political
leaders and journalists
• 24 focus groups in eight
Australian cities
• Content analysis of political TV
shows
• Broad interpretation of
“political television” –
included comedies and
“infotainment”

9. The Australian Political Mediasphere
Mainstream Political
Media (major
newspapers, Insiders,
7.30 Report)
Innovative formats
(Q&A, The Project)
Satire and
Infotainment (Mad as
Hell, Kitchen Cabinet,
Gruen Nation)

10. Insiders
• Traditional panel
program on ABC TV
• Interview with leading
politicians
• Senior journalists
discuss current political
issues
Digital Media Research Centre

11. Q & A
• Interactive panel
program with live
audience
• Viewers can send video
questions
• Live Twitter feed on air
during the program

12. Kitchen Cabinet
• Journalist Annabel
Crabb goes to a
politician’s home and
they cook her a meal
• Most popular programs
during 2013 and 2016
elections have been
Kitchen Cabinet with
political leaders

13. Stable electoral democracy: the two-
party model

14. Stages of the Politics/Media
relationship
"Golden Age"
• Stable party
system
• Specialist
political
reporting
• Dominance of
print media
Mediatization
of politics
• more fluid political
allegiances
• 'Presidential' mode of
campaigning
• Dominance of broadcast
media
• Rise of political 'spin'
A new age in
politics/media?
•Resurgence of
political
populism
•Growing
importance of
social media
•Political 'neo-
tribes'?

15. Mediatization of politics
• ‘If you're the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, it’s a media job.’
(Russel Howcroft, Gruen Nation, 4 September 2013).
• ‘Guess what? There’s a whole bunch of people out there who you may be
surprised to know don't watch Insiders but do listen to FM radio. And my job
as the alternative prime minister is to communicate with the entire country’
(Kevin Rudd, quoted in Wilson, 2010: 98).
•
‘You know that old line when Daniel Schorr, a prominent American journalist
who came up through print, decided in the early years of television decided he
was going to move across. And at his first job at CBS he said to the producer,
“You know, I understand print fine, but television has got me a bit puzzled,
what’s the secret?” And the producer said to him, “Well, the key to success on
television is sincerity, and if you can fake that you’ve got it made.”’(Kerry
O’Brien, interview, 29 August, 2014).

16. Mediatization of Politics

17. Mediatization of Politics (Mazzoleni &
Schulz, 1999)
• Growing influence of “news values” over political actors
• Political agenda increasingly shaped by needs of media
institutions
• Politicians compete for attention, not just with other
politicians, but with all other priorities of the media
• Political communication needs to be conducted by media
experts
• Political institutions and media institutions deal with
each other instrumentally

18. Problems with mediated politics
• Politics becomes a branch of promotional culture, where
‘politics, markets, popular culture and media, civil
society, work and individual social relations have all
adapted to promotional needs and practices’ (Davis,
2013, p. 4)
• Elite source dependency of journalists (“political
insiders”)
• Managed communication with the media (“spin”)
• Limited array of forms of reporting politics – soundbites,
pseudo-events, “horse-race” journalism

21. #faketradie

22. “Political leaders are beginning to resemble seaside comics who have
failed to recognise that the deckchairs are empty. Repertoires that had
them rolling in the aisles in the era of Churchill and Roosevelt – or
even Nixon and Wilson – now look like mediocre impersonations.
Not only are political speeches replete with linguistically risk-averse
clichés borrowed from middle management – “facing important
challenges”, “we’re listening very carefully”, “moving forward”, “all in it
together”, “people who do the right thing” – but the semiotic
production has been reduced to a constant replay of metaphors
designed for idiots.
Politicians wear hard-hats and orange protective jackets, as if to prove
they thrive on the shop floor. Leaders have a routine habit of making
speeches surrounded by “ordinary people” who look like involuntary
participants in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
The surprise is surely not that whole sections of the population are
turned off by these preposterous rituals, but that some people are
still paying any attention.”
• Stephen Coleman, “Donald Trump: Both the old crazy and the new
normal”, The Conversation, May 14, 2016

23. Political “spin”
• And through history we’ve never had so many information like
now, and so little truth. (male and female participants, Focus
Group #24, Brisbane, 18/5/15)
• I tend to take about ninety percent of what the politicians say
as Chinese whispers. You know they’re not going to tell you
the truth no matter what. Their job is spin. (Male participant,
Focus Group #10, Lismore, 18/6/14)
• The spin machine is out there. These guys get their speeches
written for them. (Female participant, Focus Group #9,
Lismore, 17/6/14)

24. Spin and its Discontents
• What is now universally derided as “spin” is, in fact, a whole range of
techniques that have evolved among politicians in response to changing
media dynamics. In essence, these techniques, though highly
manipulative, are inherently defensive. The more the media set out to
trap politicians in order to generate entertainment content, the more
politicians have to resort to dubious artifice to do their jobs (Tanner,
2011: 93).
•
Journalists love to bag spin doctors. Bewailing the growth of the PR
industry is one of our favourite pastimes … The incredible proliferation
of spin, we tell ourselves, is a threat to journalism and to democracy.
We’re right – but let’s now wallow in self-righteous despair. We in the
media are key players in the spin cycle, not passive, powerless observers
of it. At our best, we disrupt spin; at our worst, we encourage it (Knott,
2012: 53).
•

25. Focus groups on spin
• And through history we’ve never had so many information like now,
and so little truth. (male and female participants, Focus Group #24,
Brisbane, 18/5/15)
• I tend to take about ninety percent of what the politicians say as
Chinese whispers. You know they’re not going to tell you the truth
no matter what. Their job is spin. (Male participant, Focus Group
#10, Lismore, 18/6/14)
•
The spin machine is out there. These guys get their speeches
written for them. (Female participant, Focus Group #9, Lismore,
17/6/14)
•

26. Spin-doctors and the media in
Australia
• The biggest problem is just an outnumbering of spin-doctors versus
journalists, which simply means that it’s harder for journalists to get to the
bottom of what’s really happening, rather than reporting a version,
however mild it might be, of the spin that they’re given. But this has been
going on for decades. (Peter van Onselen, interview, 20 June, 2014)
• I think it’s overdrawn for theatrical effect [in programs such as The Thick
Of It and The Hollowmen] but political and communications directors tend
to be very powerful people in government, and they are certainly as a
general rule more powerful than anybody in government except the Prime
Minister, the Premier, or one of two senior ministers. (Bruce Hawker,
interview, 19 June, 2014)
•

27. The populist challenge to the
politics/media establishment
Digital Media Research Centre

28. “I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly
disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard
politicians as frauds and liars and the current political
system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for
furthering the augmentation and advantages of
economic elites …
As far as I’m concerned there is nothing to vote for. I
feel it is a far more potent political act to completely
renounce the current paradigm than to participate in
even the most trivial and tokenistic manner, by
obediently X-ing a little box”. (Russell Brand, New
Statesman editorial, October 2013)
Digital Media Research Centre

29. Crisis of representative democracy?
(UK General Election Voter Turnout)
Digital Media Research Centre

30. Decline in major party voting
Australian Senate election Combined Liberal/LNP &
Labor Senate vote (%)
1983 85.4
2013 66.6
2016 63.6 (provisional)

31. The new politics of the street

32. Connective action
• Connective action networks are ‘typically far more individualised and
technologically organised sets of processes that result in action
without the requirement of collective identity framing or the level of
organisational resources required to respond effectively to
opportunities’ (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012, p. 750).
• “In this connective logic, taking public action or contributing to a
common good becomes an act of personal expression and recognition
or self-validation achieved by sharing ideas and actions in trusted
relationships … This ‘sharing’ may take place in networked sites such as
Facebook … Twitter and YouTube … Action networks characterised by
this logic may scale up rapidly through the combination of easily
spreadable personal action frames and digital technology enabling
such communication. This invites analytical attention to the network as
an organisational structure in itself” (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012, pp.
752-53).

33. Collective action and connective action
Collective Action Connective Action
Logic of formation Institutions/organisations to
enable action around shared
concerns (e.g. political
parties)
Networks based around social
media and “weak ties” –
importance of “personal action
frames”
Resource
mobilisation
High – requires aggregation
of resources to achieve
political goals
Low – participants can “piggy
back” off digital infrastructure of
social media
Decision-making Formal and membership-
based; office holders;
elections
Informal: consensus sought
through sharing of actions and
ideas – allows for rapid “scaling
up”
Alignment and
identity
Individuals collectively agree
to adopt a shared communal
identity
Affective publics (Papacharrissi) –
people choose to have a shared
affinity with particular groups

34. Connective action and the new
populism
Bernie Sanders – US Democratic Party
Presidential contender
Jeremy Corbyn - UK Labour Party leader

35. The New Populism and the Media
• Populists typically construct an opposition between
“the people” and “the elites” or ‘the political class”
• Mainstream media are a part of “the elites”, so they
are distrusted as information sources
• Populist politicians and mainstream media have an
ambivalent relationship to each other – most
populists want to be in the media
• Social media can and do provide alternative outlets
for populist politics

36. The New Populism
Donald Trump – US Republican
Party Presidential candidate
Nigel Farage –UK
Independence Party
founder
Roberto Duterte, new President
of the Phillippines

37. Populism in Australian politics
Pauline Hanson
Nick
Xenophon
Clive
Palmer

38. Post-truth politics?

39. Populism and “post-truth politics”
• Political polarisation and the rise of “echo chambers”
and “filter bubbles”
• Commercial success in media more about “niches”
than mass audiences
• Social media data analytics can identify political
preferences and deliver preferred news to you
• Populism tends to promote candidates representing
extremes (“the base”) rather than the political centre

40. Focus group responses on social media
• Through social media, the underdog, the public, they can
express what they’re saying and the corporate world has
really no place in social media. It’s really kind of the
public that push their opinions forward (R1, Focus Group
1, 6 March, 2012, Brisbane).
• Social media probably makes political debates more
transparent, and puts more opinions out there. Then
everybody’s a little bit more informed, they can see
subjects from different points of view and angles. So
there’s just more information (Focus Group 8, 3 June,
2014, Toowoomba).
•

41. Focus group responses on social media
• Used correctly, social media and the debates that the public have
between the public, they can be very educational because you get
lots of people’s points of view … [but] I’ve seen a lot of political
discussions on social media spin out of control into just, insults, and
kind of like it actually happens in politics. But, there’s a good and a
bad. I mean, you’re never going to have a system that’s completely
correct. But I think there can be some use to it if we find some way
to make people stop and think before they post (R9, Focus Group 6,
Brisbane, 24 May 2014).
• Social media is an infant market still. You know, it’s got a lot of
maturing to do, and it is gradually, and I think maybe that’ll be a
force to be reckoned with, we’ll democratise things (R6, Focus
Group 15, Geelong, 25 February 2015).

42. Main Findings from Australian Case
• Australian public are engaged with political process
• Social media do not replace traditional media –
relationship is a more complementary one
• Rise of hybrid formats to engage audiences in politics
that co-exist with more “serious” programs
• Opinion journalism is increasing as the number of
political journalists employed in newsrooms declines
• Public service media become important to counter
growth of “filter bubbles”