[ecrea] New Book On Political Communication

New book on Political Communication in Ireland
Political Communication in the Republic of Ireland
Edited by Mark O’Brien and Donnacha Ó Beacháin
Liverpool University Press (2014)

This book presents an overview of political communication in the 
Republic of Ireland from a multiplicity of perspectives and sources. It 
brings together academics and practitioners to examine the development 
and current shape of political communication in modern Ireland. It also 
examines what the future holds for political communication in an 
increasingly gatekeeper-free media landscape.

The field of political communication, where journalists, public 
relations professionals and politicians intersect and interact, has 
always been a highly contested one fuelled by suspicion, mutual 
dependence and fraught relationships.

While politicians need the media they remain highly suspicious of 
journalists. While journalists remain wary of politicians, they need 
access to them for information. For most of the time, what emerges is a 
relatively stable relationship of mutual dependence with the boundaries 
policed by public relation professions.

However, every so often, in times of political crisis or upheaval, this 
relationship gives way to a near free-for-all. Politicians, 
spokespersons and sometimes even journalists, become fair game in the 
battle for public accountability and support. The determination of 
public relations professions to avoid this and keep the relationship 
based on mutual dependence has become a central component of modern 
statecraft and systems of governance. The need to keep politicians and 
the media ‘on message’ and use the media to inform, shape and manage 
public discourse has become central to the workings of government, 
opposition and interest groups.

On the other hand, the packaging of politics has potentially troublesome 
implications for the democratic process. In the era of the instant news 
cycle, new technologies and constant opinion polling, just where does 
information end and misinformation begin? With millions being spent 
annually on advisors and ‘spin-doctors’, just where does media access 
end and media manipulation begin?

Contents

Intorduction

PART ONE: POLITICAL COMMUNICATION AND POLITICIANS
1. Farrel Corcoran - Political communication: an overview
2. Donnacha Ó Beacháin - Elections and political communication
3. Sarah Kavanagh - A pragmatic partnership? Politicians and local media
4. Bryce Evans - Political communication and the ‘loony left’

PART TWO: POLITICAL COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM
5. Mark O’Brien - ‘Sources say . . .’ Political journalism since 1921
6. Mark Byrne - In sickness and in health: politics, spin and the media
7. Tom Clonan - Media advisors and programme managers
8. Declan Fahy - A limited focus? Journalism, politics and the Celtic Tiger

PART THREE: POLITICAL COMMUNICATION AND THE PUBLIC
9. Gary Murphy - A private affair? Lobbying and transparency in modern 
Ireland
10. Colum Kenny - Equal Time for Judas Iscariot? Broadcast treatment of 
political contests in the Republic of Ireland
11. Kevin Rafter - ‘There now follows . . .’ The role of the party 
political broadcast and the 2007 ‘peace broadcast’
12. Martin Molony - Social Media and political communication
13. Eoin O’Malley et al - Mediating elections in Ireland: evidence from 
the 2011 general election

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index



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