In the fourth seminar in our Media and Politics Group (MPG) seminar series, we are delighted to introduce Professor Darren G. Lilleker's (Bournemouth University) paper co-authored with Dr Anastasia Veneti (Bournemouth University), "Overcoming the Crises and Reversing the Crisis of Political Communication: Towards a More Three-Dimensional Model". This seminar is in a Q&A format with Dr James Dennis, with opportunities for audience members to also ask questions.

Abstract: Crisis is a term that is perhaps overused, however it seems we live now in a time of permanent crisis. The pandemic, meat and gas shortages, and increases in the cost of living are likely to have significant impacts over coming months. Our politics appears locked into a mode of communication involving simplistic messaging and emotional manipulation with media offering ideologically-driven blaring headlines hectoring parties of the opposite political colour. This highlights the challenges Jay Blumler identified as symptomatic of the worsening of the crisis of public communication.

I argue from a normative standpoint that political communication and those who communicate politics need to adopt a different mindset. How I believe politics should be communicated centres around three principles. Firstly, at its heart politics needs to adopt a service ethos. Political leaders need to demonstrate their policies are driven by morality, authenticity and understanding and policies need to benefit all. This leads to the second principle, inclusivity. All citizens must feel politics works for them and that they have a role in civil society, they must also feel they are being appropriately informed about their responsibilities and how they are enabled to play their role in society to the best of their abilities. Thirdly, political communication requires an injection of empathy, no faux understanding of the general will but a true understanding of the struggles ordinary women and men face.

Currently we find political communication not only lacks these principles at its heart but that as practiced it is moving further from these principles. Hence we find increasing levels of mistrust, apathy and support for populist positions that pit ordinary people against the elite and target ‘others’ within society. The talk, based on a global review of government’s communication during the pandemic and a conceptual chapter to be published in the IGI volume ‘Contemporary Politics, Communication, and the Impact on Democracy’, we hope to be a conversation starter on how these principles can be implemented.

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