The Future

I’ve now managed to get quite a broad range of opinions on current trends in political communications and how these might affect political pr in the future. Obviously it’s by no means a complete picture but the fact that I have had access to the views of politicians, communications co-ordinators for politicians, journalists and individuals involved in political communications means that I am in a position to draw some speculative conclusions.

The first of these is that new media will not radically change the way in which current political communications strategies are developed. The marketing oriented style where messages are tailored for specific audiences will in my view only become more pronounced.

Of course I could be wrong and the view that online media will give people a sense of power, a feeling that their views matter, could prevail. This would reinvigorate our democracy. This is the view put forward in the comment left by Ophelia Nge. It would be wonderful if her optimism about the impact new media could have on democracy in Africa became reality.

But, as has already been mentioned previously the internet is actually a very fragile thing. The Chinese government has moved quickly to curtail its potential for political debate and I have no doubt that other undemocratic regimes will quickly follow suit.

In the UK, and in other complex economies, the ability to track people’s online movements and therefore build profiles of individuals will prove too tempting for both commercial enterprises and political organisations.

The creation of targeted messaging will increase driving people further down the road of caring about single issues that affect them only rather than taking a more global perspective of the common good.

My concern actually is that new media will actually result in membership of political parties falling further and that political communications will look more and more like consumer PR and advertising rather than serious debate.

In addition the fact that the political messages can now go straight to the audience without the mediation of journalism might aggravate the situation. Political communications has over recent years increasingly sought to avoid hard news programmes where tough questioning is guaranteed. New media offers political communicators the opportunity to intensify this shift.

In this respect though, I am not so pessimistic. The definition of a journalist and of a media outlet may have to change to include practically everyone who publishes material online. But there is no doubt that there will be plenty of sources available to challenge any views put forward by political communicators.

Like every other human invention some will use new media in a genuine attempt to engage the public in a more widespread debate on the issues of the day. But at the end of the day politicians have to win elections and I think the tools that new media offer for further segmenting and specifically targeting audiences will prove too attractive.

It seems to me that political communications, like everything else, is becoming more complex and sophisticated. But in the end I don’t see any great changes to the way political pr works nor to the way in which the wider public responds to it.