which is to say, into approximating control as nearly as possible in the
hope of determining which messages are gifted with this added, newsbased
credibility. We will address some of these efforts in a later discussion
of information intermediaries.
Because news management of this type is never fully effective, and can
be only minimally so, electoral campaigns also deploy direct communications.
During the television era, roughly 1960 to the present day, the bulk
of these efforts have taken the form of campaign advertising delivered
through the purchase of time on broadcast and, more recently, cable television.
Such purchases can be controlled in a number of ways—channel selection,
timing, frequency, duration, precise content, surrounding content,
audience demographics, audience size—that are beyond the capability of
even the most effective news management. This advertising can be effective
in some important ways, most notably reinforcing and mobilizing the
campaign’s supporters. But, because it is so easily identifi ed with the selfinterest
of the source campaign, it is usually of only limited value in
inducing the desired behavior change among undecided or opposing voters.
Most recently, these direct communications have begun to assume new
forms, primarily through a dramatically increasing reliance on digital
media, where the proliferation of available “news” channels, the enhanced
interactivity of many formats, the power of self-selection into the audience
and the related ability to zero in on individuals and on like-minded
clusters of individuals, and the emergence of user-generated or userenhanced
viral media, may be fundamentally altering the controlcredibility
equation.
In addition, when some campaigns have found themselves unable for
some reason effectively to manage news content, they have adopted
a strategy of undermining the presumed objectivity of the news
media, either in general or selectively. Here the objective is to limit
the infl uence of those channels that cannot be successfully controlled at
the required level by depriving them of their inherent credibility. In the
U.S. for example, conservatives often complain of the liberal bias of
the East Coast elite media, while liberals rail against the conservative
bias of talk radio. The reverse of this strategy, or perhaps more correctly,
its natural companion, is to promote the virtues of those “independent”
channels that comfort a given campaign while attacking those that
affl ict it.
Channels and channeling strategies can also differ in terms of their:
• vividness, or the extent to which a given channel conveys rich
imagery;
• intrusiveness, or the degree to which members of the intended
audience can escape exposure;
• immediacy, or their timeliness, the extent to which they are “of the
moment”;