How Is the Australian News Media Reporting the Liberal Leader Tony Abbott - Case Study Example

How is the Australian news media reporting the personality/ies and style/s of either, or both, the Liberal Leader Tony Abbott and Prime Minister (ALP Leader) Julia Gillard in this election? Media has always been a mirror of the social conditions and trends and reflects the changes that are taking place in the world around us The emergence of globalization in the 20th century has affected the world political and social phenomenon, and the effects of these changes can be observed in the all spheres of life be it social, economic, cultural or political. The media has today emerged as a strong tool in the hands of those who are in power as a mode through which they can reach out to the masses. The role of the media is of great significance as it has emerged as the primary mode that links the people to those who are in power. In the recent times there has been observed that the media has become a channel through which mass opinion is generated and the concerns of society are voiced. The influence of the media on the people and their opinion has become of great consequence given the scope of IT development that has taken place in the society. Given the scope of the media in the social scenario, the politicians are turning towards utilizing these means to garner support for themselves in society. The trend has become increasing popular in the past few decades. Over the past few months there have been a number of discussions held over the government spending on advertisement that promote the government’s planned industrial relationship changes. The range of the budget at its minimal is about 20 million dollars and may even go up to a hundred million dollars. There have been various theories that have been developed in relation to the close relationship that has become increasingly important in the society today between politics and the advertisement sector. These theories have been developed in different field including political science, legal studies, media, journalism and other fields. In the following paper there shall be conducted a detailed analysis of the utilization of the media in the recent political and electoral debates that have taken place in Australia. The political and the legal perspectives will be utilized where the emphasis will be analyze advertisement as a political instrument, and also examine the lack of legal regulations of the phenomenon in Australia. The paper will look at the various problems that are present in the country in relation to the use of advertisement in the political field, where examples will be drawn from the recent examples of the electoral campaigning in the country to ensure that the practicality of the paper is not compromised. There have been a number of theories built on the increasing use of media by the political parties to ensure support at the times of election. These theories look at the utilization of the media in the politics at the times of campaigning. There has been observed that although media has always played a significant part in campaigning, changes in the governments advertising has been taken to another level since the Howard government came to power in office in the year of 1996. There has been a noticeable change that has taken place in the advertising and campaigning strategy of the various parties in the recent times, where there has been observed that the emphasis of the campaigning and the media focus is being increasing diverted towards one leader or politician of the party, in contrast to the earlier scheme of campaigning where the focus had been on the agenda of the parties. There have been a number of theories that have been developed in relation to this, and in the following paper there shall be conducted a detailed study on the increasing emphasis on personality and style of the politician and less on their political agenda, and try to analyze these changes on the basis of the various theories that exist on the matter. The examples that will be utilized in the paper will be drawn from the recent electoral campaigns that are taking place in Australia, between Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard where the focus of the campaigns had been on the personalities and the style of each of the two leaders. The paper will look at identifying the reasons behind these changing trends, and also look into the role of the media in the electoral campaign based on the theories (Haseman, Bradley C. 2006). The theory that most of the scholars believed was apt for describing the relationship earlier was the agenda based approach, where the mode of advertisement was utilized by the politicians to garner support for their parties and agenda (Van Zoonen 2005). The politicians relied on the media to communicate to the people the importance of their agenda, and to point out to the major issues that they were aiming to address through the development of the campaigning. But with time there has been observed that the agenda that is being developed by both the parties is almost similar, and therefore a campaign based on the agenda is not appropriate, as most of the issues that the agenda addresses are common to both the agendas. For example, in the case of the recent elections that took place in 2010, the agenda of both Julia Gillard as well as of Tony Abbott were based on some similar issues where both stated that border protection, economy and global warming were the main areas of concern. The campaign that took place in Australia this year was based more on the personality and styles of the two politicians than on the agenda of the two parties. The media played a significant role in bringing out these personalities into the limelight with the public, and both relied heavily on the media to ensure that they reached out to the masses. According to Flew Terry, who has written quite explicitly on the topic in his journal article, the role of the media has increased significantly in the recent times. In his paper Terry looks at the federal elections that have taken place in Australia in the year of 2007, where both the Labor party as well as the Liberal party utilized the media to campaign for the elections (Keane, Michael A. 2002). In the article Terry has discussed the fact that the campaign that was carried out by the Labor party was considerably more successful, where they utilized the social media as well as the internet actively to communicate to the voters of the country on the basis of the ‘Kevin 07’ campaign that they had planned out. The campaign as the name suggests was focused mainly on the Prime Minister at the time, Kevin Rudd, and his personality. Although the campaign discussed various issues that were being faced by the country, the medium that was used was the image of Kevin Rudd to ensure that the campaign that was developed was more personalized which caused the campaign to be a success as the voters were able to associate with the campaign and therefore the impact was greater than the impact of the campaign of the Liberal party, which utilized the medium of You Tube to communicate to the voters the policy announcements which was not as effective as the Kevin 07 campaign that was launched by the Labor party. Terry has clearly stated that there is a greater amount of diversification in the media- politics relationship that is in place in society and there is a strong trend that was emerging where the two are so deeply connected that the entire phase can be described as the ‘third age’ of communication . The media has today become a necessary tool in the hands of the politicians to communicate to the voters, not only at the time of the elections but also during the years when the government is in office. It is the medium through which the government garners support, spreads information about the policies of the government and ensures an overall engagement of the public with the working and the functioning of the government and its various policies and activities. There has to be realized that the politicians of Australia lay a great amount of emphasis on advertisement and the use of media to highlight and communicate to the public. The elections that took place in the country in the year of 2010 only reassert the importance of the relationship that exists between the media and politics (Lewis, Kieran J. 2004). During the elections both the parties utilized the media as well as the internet to reach out to the masses where each utilized different strategies to ensure that they received media coverage. The electoral debate that was held between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott was a highly publicized and media covered event where both the parties took advantage of reaching out to the people. Many are of the belief that although the race was close, it was the personality of Julia Gillard during the campaigning period, and her calm presentation during the debate that won the Labor party the elections in 2010. In the elections the media played a key role during the campaigning period to ensure that the personalities of both Julia as well as of Tony Abbott came forward, and both parties laid emphasis on the personality of the two leaders of the parties to run the campaigning of the Labor and the Liberal parties respectively. As has been highlighted by John Corner in his article the persona of the politician in the media and the mediated communication throughout the election period play a key role in the electoral process (Keane, Michael A. and Spurgeon, Christina L. 2004). He writes about the fact that the media has today become highly significant, where the internet polls, the discussions in the mass media, all effect the persona of the politicians in the society, and the voters respond to the image of the politician as portrayed in the media, and although the political agenda of the politicians are of great significance, the role of the persona of the politician when communicating to the masses through the medium of the electronic media as well as through mass media is important. In the elections that took place in 2010 there was observed after the elections had been announced, there was a poll taken by the government to assess the position of the Labor party in the society, which reflected that the party had a majority support of 52 percent of the people, while the Liberal party had the support of 47 % of the voters. Since the electoral campaign was a close neck to neck game, where both Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard had a fair chance of wining, the role that was played by the media was highly significant (Louw, Eric 2010). There was observed that in each step of the elections that took place, the media and the use of its resources by the politicians was critical. Julia Gillard utilized Twitter to communicate to the people, where she tweeted every few hours of a vast variety of topics which were inclusive of the political stand that she was taking, the donations to the various charities that she and her party had made and also of her campaign promises. Julia also utilized the medium of her Twitter account to address the various concerns of the electorates that were posted on her account. On the other hand there has been observed that although Abbott had a twitter account which was active, he failed to tweet after July 17th, which was the day after the formal elections were declared. He thus lost a significant means through which he could have reached out to the voters, which had been utilized by the opposition. The method that was utilized by Gillard allowed her to reach out to a large electoral group (McKee, Alan 2006). Another important mode of communication that was utilized by both parties is the medium of You Tube. There was observed that again, the main focus was on the personalities of both the leaders where they ensured that the personalities were so presented that the electorate could relate to the presentations. The site of the Labor party uploaded a video of Julia Gillard, who was speaking directly to the camera, thus, directly to the people where she spoke about her agenda and highlighted her accomplishments after she had gained office. The Liberal party on the other hand uploaded a caricature of Tony Abbott as a cartoon with the tune of ‘Let’s Do the Time Wrap Again’, and this proved to be highly popular among the people, where the video received 47, 065 views within the first four days of uploading the video on the site of You Tube. The campaign of Julia Gillard was more effective mainly due to the fact that the video that she uploaded was a more personalized one where the emphasis was on her personality, her accomplishments and she was able to communicate to the viewer in a more effective manner (Humphreys, Sal and Fitzgerald, Brian F. and Banks, John A. and Suzor, Nicolas P. 2005). In the case of the campaign that was undertaken by Tony Abbott there were a number of videos that were uploaded by the Liberal party were humorous and they did have the interest of the viewers but it failed to rouse the interest of the electorate in the agenda and the personality of the Tony Abbott as it was not a personalized experience, whereas through the video that Julia Gillard uploaded she was able to establish a direct relationship with her viewers. The two examples that have been stated in the section above clearly reflect that the role of the media has been of great significance in the last two elections that have taken place in the country. It was based on the polls of the media that the elections were called for by the Gillard government, and it was only through the effective utilization of the media sources that the two candidates for the office of the prime minister were able to communicate with the electorate and communicate not only their respective agendas to the people, but were also able to establish a more individual relationship which was based mainly on the personalities and style of communication of the candidates. The third area of communication through the media that was adopted by both Julia Gillard as well as Tony Abbott was that of Facebook, where both the candidates had pages for themselves, which each tried to personalize and through which they tried to communicate to the people. The page that was created by Julia Gillard was updated everyday, and was inclusive of the You Tube links of the candidate, and also of the tweets that she had made during the day. This ensured that a holistic page was formulated that reflected her personality, her thoughts on various issues and through which the people could reach her. On the other hand the page that was uploaded by Tony Abbott was one which had not been updated since the 30th of June, and were more inclusive of the family pictures instead of the political appearances, making it a more personal site than a personal one, which was essentially a failure on the part of the candidate as the candidate failed to take advantage of the opportunity that was present to communicate to the people (Keane, Michael A. and Moran, Albert 2005). There can be observed that Facebook is an important part of the global media community, and through it a person can reach out to a vast poll of people, and can effectively communicate to the people. The role of the media is of great significance, and there has to be realized that given the fact that the agenda of the candidates today are almost similar, and therefore that campaigning of the parties focuses on the brining out the personalities of the candidates and bringing out the view points of the candidates. In the case of the elections that took place of 2010 was decided on the basis of the media electoral campaigning that took place where both the camps utilized the medium of media that were at their disposal. In retrospect there can be seen that the role of the media is of great significance through which the personalities of the candidates can be communicated to the people (Tacchi, Jo A. 2002). The role of advertisement is of great importance not only at the time of the elections but also throughout the years when the government is in place. There has been observed that the government utilizes the process of campaigning to ensure that they can maintain a continuous communication channel with the people. As has been specified by Sally Young there is a large amount of the tax payers money that is invested in the advertisement spear by the government (Street John 2001). Herman and Chomsky highlight how the media, government and business have common interests and they argue that money and power filter out the news deemed ‘unfit to print’. ‘Dissident ideas are not legally banned; they are simply filtered out quietly and unobtrusively’ and this is highly significant for the government. In conclusion it can be said that the relationship between the politics and the media in the country of Australia is very important, where the candidates utilize the media to communicate to the people their ideas, and it can be seen that the personalities of the politicians play a significant role in the process of campaigning through the use of the various media channels. Reference: Street John 2001, "Telling tales: the reporting of politics" Ch 2 from mass media, Politics and Demorcracy, Houndmills, Palgrave, pp 36-59 Louw, Eric 2010 "What is media-ized politics?" excerpt from chapter 2 & News as an entertaining spectacle" excerpt from Ch 4 in The Media and Political Process, London, Sage pp 23-26 and 53-58. Young Sally 2004 "Political advertising styles" & "News emphasis on negative advertising", The Persuaders: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising, Sydney, UNSW Press, pp 110-114, 164-167, 262-278. Corner, John 2003 "Mediated persona and political culture" in Corner and Dick Pels eds, Media and the restyling of politics, London, Sage, pp 67-84 Van Zoonen 2005, "Feminization? Female politicians, family and celebrity" Entertaining the citizen: When politics and popular culture converge, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, pp87-103. Louw, Eric 2010 "Selling politicians and creating celebrity" excerpt from Ch 6 in The media and the Political Process, London , Sage pp. 109-118. Flew, terry 2008 "Not yet the internet election: online media, political commentary and the 2007 Australian Federal Election" Media International Australia, No. 126 pp.5-13 Haseman, Bradley C. 2006 A manifesto for performative research. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: quarterly journal of media research and resources(118). pp. 98-106. Humphreys, Sal and Fitzgerald, Brian F. and Banks, John A. and Suzor, Nicolas P. 2005  Fan based production for computer games: User led innovation, the 'drift of value' and the negotiation of intellectual property rights. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: quarterly journal of media research and resources(114). pp. 16-29. Keane, Michael A. 2002 Facing off on the final frontier: the WTO accession and the re-branding of China's national champions.Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: quarterly journal of media research and resources, 105. pp. 130-146. Keane, Michael A. 2005 Television drama in China: Remaking the market. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: quarterly journal of media research and resources(115). pp. 82-93. 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Tacchi, Jo A. 2002 Transforming the Mediascape in South Africa: The Continuing Struggle to Develop Community Radio. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: quarterly journal of media research and resources(103). pp. 68-77. Read More