The Rise of a Proactive Local Media Strategy in British Political Communication: clear continuities and evolutionary change 1966-2001

Abstract

Literature on electioneering, political communication and political marketing all suggest that political campaigns are nationally orchestrated, centrally controlled and highly professional; all of which highlight a strong contrast with studies of similar areas thirty years ago. However, evidence based on interviews with current and former MPs and candidates tell a very different story; instead there are strong continuities between the activities pursued during elections in the period 1966-70 and those in the period 1997-2001. There is a greater level of technological support as well as changes in the way the media handle political stories. But the ways that candidates build a profile and gain media coverage are almost identical across this thirty-year period. The key questions this paper poses are: Can we describe political campaigning as a purely centralised activity? Can we describe current electoral candidates as more professional? Is there a clear dichotomy between the activities engaged in thirty years ago and those of the present time?

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 20 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.