Experts in political communication

The construal of communication expertise in prime time television news

Anders Horsbl
Aalborg University

A central journalistic counterstrategy to the communicative professionalization of politics consists in a use of political communication experts who comment on political moves and analyse the strategies behind them. This study investigates how the media uses political communication experts in prime time news programmes from the 2005 parliamentary election campaign in Denmark. To this aim, the knowledge positions ascribed to the experts as well as the articulation of the expert voice with the news genre is analysed. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis is combined with quantitative data on the amount of political communication experts and their professional background. The study situates the analysis within a public sphere perspective on the power relations between politics and media, and discusses implications of the findings for a well functioning public sphere.

Keywords: political communication, public sphere, communication experts, pundits, spin, discourse analysis, knowledge positions, news genre

1. Introduction The influence on politics by communication and media specialists has been the subject of much attention in academia and the general public over several decades. It has been referred to as a professionalization of political communication, i.e. an increase in the extent, position, and degree of specialization of media and communication experts in the political process (Blumler/Kavanagh 1999, Lilleker/ Negrine 2002). Though communication advicers are nothing new in politics, there has been an increase and sophistication in the use of communication expertise otherwise associated with PR and marketing, including the use of media monitoring, opinion polls and focus group interviews, targeting of specific audiences, television training, and news management. Recently, the terms spin and spin-doctor
Journal of Language and Politics 9:1 (2010), 2949. doi 10.1075/jlp.9.1.02hor issn 15692159 / e-issn 15699862 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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have become a popular way to refer to efforts by political players to influence the media agenda by the use of communication expertise (Louw 2005, Lilleker 2006, Kpl 2007).1 However, less attention has until now (autumn 2007) been given to the way in which journalists and the mass media have countered the communicative rearmament and professionalization of politics. One counterstrategy consists in the media use of experts in political communication, who comment on political moves and analyse the spin strategies behind them. The use of these experts is the topic of this article. These experts may have different backgrounds, typically in academia or journalism, but what distinguishes them is that they are construed by the media as experts, i.e. as having a special knowledge of political communication. They appear in different genres (news, commentaries, debates) and media types (television, newspapers, internet) and are associated with widespread media scepticism towards spin-doctors and their dark arts (Gould 1998). This article will focus on the use of political communication experts in news programmes during the 2005 parliamentary election campaign in Denmark. Spin has been a media issue in Denmark at least since the 2001 parliamentary election campaign, in which the winning party was inspired by campaigning principles from the British New Labour. The data consists of prime time news programmes from the two most viewed national channels (DR1 and TV 2), collected over three weeks. The focus on the journalistic use of experts in political communication brings together two recent developments in political journalism. One development is an increased and altered media use of experts. Instead of presenting their own research, experts are increasingly asked to interpret events related to their area, thereby making these events meaningful or adding a wider perspective to them (Albk et al. 2002, Arnoldi 2005). Experts, in that way, are asked to transgress their specialist or disciplinary competence (Nowotny 2000). Furthermore, expertise is not necessarily an academic privilege, but may be journalistically ascribed to people with other backgrounds. The second development, which can be traced further back, is an increase in strategic coverage of politics, i.e. a tendency to report on politics as strategic political communication rather than as a struggle over issues and/or between interests (Patterson 1993, Jamison/Cappela 1997, Esser et al. 2001, de Vresse 2005). The second development has been identified and discussed by political scientists and scholars of political communication, but with few exceptions (for instance Brewer/Stigelman 2002) the two developments have not been studied in combination. For a discourse analysis of the delicate relation between media and politics, this represents an obvious area of study. The journalistic use of political communication experts is a complex issue and cannot be sufficiently addressed by a single analytical strategy. The approach in

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this article will combine three analytical strategies. Quantitatively, the amount of political communication experts, their background and appearance in the news item will be described. Qualitatively, the concept of discourse will be used as an analytical concept (Foucault 1969, Fairclough 1995) over three interrogative steps:2 Which are the knowledge positions ascribed to or assumed by the experts? How are the individual knowledge positions interrelated? And how are they (intertextually) related to ordinary political discourses? Finally, the last (qualitative) analytical strategy will focus on the way in which the experts are situatively construed as experts in the news genre, including how the expert voice is related to other voices due to the journalistic organisation of the news-item. These strategies are instances of discourse analyses in the sense that they investigate a social practice as it is mediated discursively, i.e. through language and other semiotic means. Language is seen neither as a neutral medium for transportation of pre-discursive messages, nor purely as language (as opposed to action). Instead, language is studied as a constitutive element of a journalistic practice, which recontextualizes political practices and has political implications. This journalistic practice is realized in a multimodal interplay between different semiotic means (Kress/Van Leeuwen 2001, Scollon 2001), most densely spoken language and visual image. The current analysis will focus on language, but with occasional reference to the interplay between language and other semiotic means. The analysis is critical in the sense that it addresses power relations between politics and media, and the implications of these for a democratic public sphere. These relations are complex, changing and vary nationally/regionally, and can in many cases not be reduced to one-dimensional dominance in favour of either media or politics. The strength of discourse analysis lies in the ability to illuminate aspects of these relations by focusing on the way they are realized (reproduced, negotiated, contested) discursively. One risk of discourse analysis is to over-emphasize the single text. In the current study, this risk is met by the use of a larger corpus of texts and the corresponding introduction of quantitative analysis. A further step, which goes beyond the scope of this article, would be to include institutional production conditions, distributional chains and networks, and audience reception and recontextualization in other practices (Fairclough 1995, Kress/Van Leeuwen 2001). The composition of the article will reflect the three analytical strategies in the above mentioned order, and the strategies will be elaborated along the way. Before the analysis, I shall sketch out the problem complex, as implied above, in a mass media and public sphere perspective as well as provide some short information on the local Danish context and the collected data. After the analysis, I shall return to the broader problem complex with reflections on the public space implications of the analytic results.

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2. Journalism and politics in a public sphere perspective I consider (critical) discourse analysis an inherently interdisciplinary approach (Wodak/Chilton 2005, Weiss/Wodak 2003), in the sense that it addresses social (as opposed to purely linguistic) issues, and aims to be informed by disciplines working with these issues. Discourse analysis is inherently interdisciplinary because discourse is not at an area, representing a limited group of social practices (like education, business, or law), but a way of looking at (any) social practices as mediated by semiotic means. The current study aims to connect with questions within media studies and political science at different levels of abstraction. At the highest level of abstraction, it relates to questions of a functioning deliberative public sphere in modern democracies. At a middle level of abstraction, it relates to questions of (power) relations between journalism and politics. And at the lowest level of abstraction, it relates to questions of spin coverage and use of experts in the news media. The horizon of the study is a deliberative understanding of democracy and public spaces, in which the exchange and examination of arguments are the decisive criteria for a well functioning public sphere.3 This stands in contrast to an economic or aggregative understanding where the reflection of preferences in the electorate is the primary objective for a public sphere. A deliberative understanding, in contrast, stresses the process of public reasoning in which positions and arguments are challenged and judgements of decision makers and citizens qualified, even when this does not lead to consensus. In that sense, public opinion formation is seen as a critical, ongoing, and open-ended process. On the other hand, the deliberative understanding differs from a communitarian approach, which takes for granted a common value system that public communication can appeal to and explore. A deliberative understanding, in contrast, takes plurality of values as a starting point for public discussion, but, again, a plurality that should be argumentatively challenged rather than just taken into accord. In modern societies the journalistic mass media represents the main arenas for public discussion. The early Habermasian understanding of the public sphere saw modern media primarily as a mere transportation medium for political public relation strategies, and as part of the decline and refeudalization of the public sphere (Habermas 1962). This is clearly insufficient and neglects the development of journalistic media into a (semi)independent news institution which is not simply governed (although possibly influenced) by political or market logics. This (semi)independency is expressed in the development of news criteria (Galtung/ Ruge 1965, Luhmann 1996, Machin/Niblock 2006), specific journalistic genres, educational institutions for journalists, and press councils for evaluating journalist practice. For political actors, one consequence of the media (semi)independency

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is a new condition of media visibility, i.e. a transition from traditional publicness of co-presence to mediated publicness (Thompson 1995). The new visibility implies an increased vulnerability for political actors in the sense that [a] few sentences that initially appear on the back of a local newspaper can be picked up by a national press and turned in to a major story [..] and the consequences of these and similar processes cannot be determined in advance (ibid.: 247). The media use of political communication experts represents a new element of this mediated publicness. Recent research in media studies has pointed to national differences in the power relations between media and politics (Hallin/Mancini 2004) as well as to differences resulting from the type of news production, i.e. between routine journalism and focus journalism (low versus high level of time and journalistic resources, Lund 2002). In principle, journalism can select and ignore political events as newsworthy and to some degree organize different (and contradicting) political voices into meaningful media texts. And journalism can seek to initiate political events by giving actors outside the political system a voice (for instance experts), and thereby stimulate political reactions and counter-reactions. Moreover, politicians depend on media attention and will most likely adjust to and anticipate news criteria and time rhythms of journalism in order reach the news agenda. On the other hand, journalists depend on politicians for interesting news material, and may not have the resources (in terms of time and money) to match cleverly designed and delivered political initiatives. The exact relation and interplay between media and politics, therefore, remains an open question to be continuously answered by concrete empirical research. A central media strategy in this interplay consists of an increased strategic coverage (Patterson 1993) of politics, focusing on public relation efforts or process stories (Esser et al. 2001) rather than political substance. This strategy has been seen as a journalistic fight-back (Blumler/Gurevitch 1995) or counterstrategy to the communicative rearmament within politics: Where political PR and marketing practices have developed a high degree of professionalism, journalism is developing counterstrategies to prove its independence (Esser et al. 2001:41). Cappella/Jamieson (1997) contend that the interplay between conflict-driven sound-bite-oriented discourse of politicians and conflict-saturated strategy-oriented structure of press coverage forms a mutually reinforcing process [which] creates what we will call a spiral of cynicism (ibid.: 910). Others have problematized the causal connection between media coverage and cynicism among the general public (de Vresse 2005), holding that coverage of the political process is an important part of en expanded public sphere, and an expanded political journalism, adding to rather than detracting from the breadth and scope of public debate (McNair 2000:50).

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The media use of experts in political communication represents a further step in the strategic coverage of politics. In this study, expertise is considered a social construction, achieved in situ. An expert is someone who is socially and situatively constructed as having a special knowledge in a certain respect (Glich 2003:254). Consequently, the experts studied in the following are those constructed in the media coverage as experts in political communication, whether or not they possess expert status outside the media. The current study will explore how this expertise is constructed and what it more precisely consists of. In a media and public sphere perspective, the question is what this construction adds to the interplay between media and politics, and what it implies for a deliberative public sphere. 3. The data and the Danish context The data analysed are taken from Danish television news programme during the 2005 election campaign. The election coverage has been chosen as this covers a major political event in a representative democracy and ideally, i.e. from a deliberative point of view, should help qualify the political judgement of the electorate. Spin as a topic entered the Danish public debate especially in the wake of the 2001 election, which brought a liberal-conservative government into office, replacing the social democrats after eight years of government. It has been widely noticed and described that the new prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was inspired by the British New Labour campaign in 1997 and the Labour media strategy in general. For instance, Fogh Rasmussen read The Unfinished Revolution by the New Labour spin-doctor Philip Gould and adopted several of the New Labour communication and campaigning principles (Kragh 2004). Also, it has been widely acknowledged that Venstre conducted a, for Danish circumstances, very professional campaign in terms of for instance media appearance, election promises, reassurance of the electorate, and (anticipated) countering of opponent claims (Jnsson & Larsen 2002). In the 2005 election the government was re-elected after a campaign with a strong emphasis on the trustworthiness of the prime minister (Horsbl 2006). By then, spin had become an object for media attention, and what could be termed as spin detectives appeared in a range of genres, including specific television programmes dedicated to spin analysis, ordinary news and debate programmes, and newspaper news and commentaries.4 The data for the current study are taken from prime time television news from the two mostly viewed public service channels, DR1 and TV 2.5 The data covers all prime time news programmes from the 19th of January, the day after the call for the election, until the 7th of February, the day before the election, with the exception of the news reduced Saturdays and three TV 2 programmes which could not

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be retrieved. This amounts to a total of 31 programmes, 17 from DR1 and 14 from TV 2. 4. Analysis 4.1 Quantitative results The goal of the quantitative analysis is to assess the extent of the media use of experts on political communication in the election news coverage as well as the professional backgrounds of the experts. Analytically, someone is identified as an expert not due to his/her media external status, but when (s)he is construed in the news programme as having a special knowledge on political communication. The expertise on political communication the content of which will be elaborated in the qualitative analysis is understood in contrast to issue oriented expertise on political ideas, values, programmes, promises, and ideologies. Concerning the extent of political communication experts, utterances from experts on political communication were found in 29 news items within the 31 news programmes studied. The 29 items cover 37 expert appearances distributed over 21 news programmes, i.e. more than two thirds of the total number of programmes, with a slightly higher frequency in DR1 (13 out of 17) than TV 2 (8 out of 14). The utterances range from short one-utterance-cuts to studio interviews over several minutes, among which the studio interviews make up 15 of the expert occurrences. On that basis, one may conclude that the use of political communication experts is common in the election news coverage, without constituting an indispensable element in the coverage. Concerning the professional background of the involved experts, one can distinguish between different backgrounds as these are represented by the media, mostly in the form of a written bar on the screen while the expert is shown. On the basis of this media representation, the experts can be divided into three main groups: academics (identified by university affiliation), journalists (including (chief)-editors and media commentators) and communication advisers (identified as employed in the communication sector, for instance in an advertising agency). The journalist group turns out to be far the largest, amounting to 19 out of the 37 experts appearances. Academics account for 9 appearances, and communication advisers for 6, whereas 3 do not fall into any of the main groups. A few (3) of the journalist appearances have a double status, in so far as they are also presented as former communication advisers, which, if added, would raise the number of appearances for this group to 9. Among the journalist experts, a majority (13 out of 19) are external, i.e. not presented as employed by the media institution using

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them as experts. By and large, it can be concluded that the experts in about 50% of the occurrences are presented as journalists, in about 25% as academics, and in the remaining 25% as communication advisers. In the context of expert presence in the media in general, the relative proportion between academic experts and others is worth noticing. Expertise, in the current case, is clearly not a privilege of academics. Rather, experts constructed in the mass media are to a high degree also experts from the mass media. Finally, there is a considerable variation in the use of political communication experts in the sense that the 37 appearances are distributed among 25 persons. Those who appear more than once belong predominantly to the journalist group. Incidentally, the proportion between male and female experts is uneven; in only 6 of out the 37 appearances the expert is a woman. 4.2 Knowledge positions The first part of the qualitative analysis will explore in more detail the content of the constructed expertise in political communication. I shall do so by analysing what may be termed the knowledge positions of the experts involved. By a knowledge position I understand the specific knowledge ascribed to the expert in the course of the interaction between expert and journalist. A knowledge position is an instance of a subject position as sketched out by Foucault (Foucault 1969/1972). A knowledge position enables the involved expert to be an expert at all, i.e. to act and be enacted as someone who has a special knowledge in a certain respect. The ascription of expert knowledge may be asserted, or simply assumed. In the current material, the knowledge positions are in most cases assumed in the questions asked by the journalist, as well as in the answers given by the expert. More precisely, knowledge positions are co-constructed in the interaction between expert and journalist, since ascriptions of knowledge by one of the participants could be challenged or rejected by the other. But, significantly, the ascribed knowledge positions are not challenged in the current material.6 This stands in contrast to critical expert interviews, in which the experts knowledge is (partly) contested. And it stands in contrast to television debates with different and sometimes competing experts, in which the knowledge position of one expert may be challenged by another (see for instance Kotthoff 1997). Since the knowledge positions are not challenged in the current material, I shall focus on the knowledge positions enacted through the questions asked by the journalist to the expert, primarily the opening questions of the expert interviews. Though Foucault did not rely on linguistic or textual analysis, it is possible to substantiate the analysis of knowledge positions with linguistic observations. In the following, a list of questions, representing significant knowledge positions in

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the material, will be presented.7 Each question will be introduced by contextual information, and the knowledge position enacted in the question and the following expert answer will be analysed, drawing on linguistic categories from pragmatics and systemic functional linguistics (see for instance Levinson 1983, Fairclough 2003, and Martin/Rose 2003). One form of knowledge ascribed to the experts concerns the strategic motive(s) behind the political move(s). For example, following a news item about a new political initiative from the Radical Party, the journalist addresses the expert with the following question:
(1) Hvad vil De Radikale egentlig opn med den her udmelding? (DR, 21.1.) (What does the Radical Party really want to achieve by this announcement?)8

The question presupposes that there is a motive (or several motives) behind the political initiative, i.e. a motive which can not be inferred from the stated political initiative. And the question assumes that the addressed expert has some sort of knowledge about the underlying motive(s). The expert answers the question with reference to the higher degree of independency, and room for manoeuvring in the election campaign that the initiative will provide for the Radical Party. The underlying motive is thereby interpreted as a strategic motive vis--vis the other political players. This short interactional sequence, thus, enacts a knowledge position on the strategic motive(s) behind the political move(s). A second knowledge position has to with the strategic options for the political players. For example, in a news item on an upcoming debate between the prime minister and the leader of the Social Democrats, the journalist asks the expert:
(2) Hvad kan Lykketoft gre nu for helt at indhente det han jo stadigvk mangler? (TV 2, 1.2.) (What can Lykketoft [the leader of the Social Democrats] do now in order to fully catch up with what he still is missing?)

The question focuses on the catching up (i.e. on the election as a (horse) race), as well as on the personal ability of Lykketoft to accomplish that. Furthermore, the subject of is missing is Lykketoft, not the Social Democrats. Thus, the question personalizes politics not only in the sense that Lykketoft has to catch up (for the Social Democrats), but also in the sense that he has to catch up for himself. And the question positions the expert as knowledgeable in that regard, i.e. with regard to the strategic options for individual players in the political race. In the following conversation several football metaphors (offensive, midfield) are employed in order to describe the options for and expectations to the coming debate.

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A third knowledge position concerns the sentiments and motives of the electorate. An example can be taken from a news item showing the latest opinion poll. The journalist gives the floor to the expert by asking:
(3) Hvordan forklarer du den her ret massive radikale fremgang? (TV 2, 25.1.) (How do you explain this rather massive gain [in the recent opinion poll] for the Radical Party?)

The content of the explanatory knowledge ascribed to the expert in the question is rather vague, but is further specified in the experts answer. He states that there is one explanation, namely that the eloctorate likes that Radical Party goes against the common discourse on foreigners. The use of a mental process (likes), presented in a categorical statement, assumes access to the sentiments of the electorate. Though the expert elsewhere in his turn does refer to opinion polls, this specific statement is neither argumentatively backed, nor challenged by the journalist. A fourth knowledge positions has to do with the performance of individual political players with regard to the winning and loosing of political confrontations. In a news item on the latest development in the election campaign shortly before the election, the journalist addresses the expert with the following question:
(4) Det tegner jo til at blive lidt mere spndende end det har gjort. Er det Lykketofts eller statsministerens fortjeneste? (DR, 7.2.) (It looks as if it will become a bit more exciting than it has done. Is that due to Lykketoft or the prime minister?)

The question, like (2), focuses on the excitement quality of the election, and presupposes that the latest development is due to either Lykketoft or the prime minister, i.e. to the performance of individual political players. In his answer, the expert accepts these premises and gains time by replying that is a good question, and later lists recent mistakes and problems related to the prime ministers performance. A fifth knowledge position concerns the internal party arena. Following a news item on a conflict within Venstre, the party of the prime minister, between politicians in Copenhagen, the journalist asks:
(5) Med dit kendskab til Venstre vil du s sige at det er usandsynligt at der har fundet trusler sted og sdan noget? (DR, 4.2.) (Given your knowledge of Venstre, would you then say that its improbable that there have been threats and such?)

The question differs from the others above by asserting, not just assuming, that the expert has a specific knowledge. Earlier in the interview, the expert was introduced as a former adviser for the prime minister (and was probably already well known

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to many viewers as such), and the journalist makes that characteristic relevant by her preface to the actual question. The question also differs by asking about (im) probabilities, i.e. by framing the knowledge asked for as less than sure. This is continued in the experts answer where he reiterates would say and improbable. In other cases in the material, though, in which this knowledge position is enacted, the knowledge on the internal party agenda is not modalised. For example, commenting on the same incidents, another expert utters: And the fact of the matter is that the leadership of Venstre hates this situation. The use of a mental process (hates) even assumes access to emotions on the internal party arena. Finally, a sixth form of knowledge ascribed to the experts, concerns the future political agenda. For example, early in the election campaign, following up on news about a large dismissal in Northern Jutland, the journalist asks:
(6) Bliver det her et stort tema? (TV 2, 19.1.) (Will this [employment] become a big topic?)

The question assumes a capacity on behalf of the expert to read the future agenda; taken by its non-modalised form even a capacity without reservations. The expert gives a conditioned answer, but within the condition (more dismissals during the election campaign) he leaves no doubt that employment will become the key issue. 4.3 The discourse of strategic political communication Above, the knowledge positions are represented individually, but, as indicated, they are also interconnected. By this I do not mean that they are related in a logical sense, but that they are being related in the actual expert interviews. The performance of politicians (4), for instance, is often assessed with explicit or implicit reference to the impact on the electorate, i.e. drawing on knowledge of their preferences and inclinations (3). Similarly the future political agenda (6) is anticipated on the background of the strategic options for the political players (2) and the internal party political arena (5). The individual knowledge positions, thus, form a web of mutually related positions which refer to and are made meaningful in the context of each other. This interconnectivity at the level of knowledge positions is accompanied by a regularity of concepts in the expert interviews, which are centred round performance, strategy and effect. One may therefore argue that the expert interviews are characterized by a discourse of strategic political communication, in the Foucaultian sense of a discourse as an empirical regularity which constitutes a space in which new utterances can emerge (Foucault 1969/1972). This discourse represents politics as strategic moves by players who are oriented towards maximising voter support and operate in a competitive field with other strategic players.

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The discourse helps to explain how experts on political communication are used by the media to interpret events and make them meaningful to a wider public. It forms the lens, so to speak, through which these interpretations are made visible. The discourse of strategic political communication transcends the face value of political initiatives and gives access to what is assumed as the real (strategic) motive behind it. In that sense it stands in a transformative relationship with issue oriented ordinary political discourses (whether they are liberal, social democratic, socialist, nationalist etc.). It transforms or recontextualizes (Chouliaraki/ Fairclough 1999, Iedema 2001) political discourses about programmes, promises, statistics, values, ideologies etc, uttered in political practices such as press meetings, interviews, and discussions, into incidents of strategic communication, which then may be evaluated according to their assumed electoral appeal and implications for the other competing players. This transformation is discursive, not chronological; it may relate to former as well as to future, anticipated events. The discourse of strategic political communication is (in a non-valorising sense) parasitic upon ordinary political discourse, in the sense that it depends on these for material. Furthermore it is critical to and in fact incompatible with ordinary political discourses, since strategic considerations are not regarded as legitimate reasons for political initiatives; a politician who says (s)he means something for the sake of winning an election, will most probably have lost it. Finally, that the discourse of political communication is prevalent in the talk of political communication experts, does not mean that they exclusively speak or are addressed within this discourse. Other perspectives (for instance concerns about democracy) do appear as well, but play a less prominent role. Neither does it mean that the discourse of strategic political communication is limited to experts in political communication; for instance, it is far from unusual among politicians to denounce opponent initiatives as spin, only this will normally not remain uncontested. 4.4 The news genre So far I have laid out the discourse of strategic political communication typical for political communication experts in the analysed material. I have described this discourse as a phenomenon in itself, extracted from the journalistic practice in which it is articulated. But the discourse does of course not occur in itself, it appears, in the current case, on television news, and it is articulated with the news genre. The news genre, correspondingly, is not identical with the discourse of political communication, but is in fact full of other discourses, all turned into news.9 I have argued that the discourse of political communication appears in the television news, but it remains to show how it is integrated into the news genre. In

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order to understand the media use of political communication experts, one also needs to investigate how the expert utterances in the discourse of strategic political communication are integrated journalistically into a meaningful news text. In answering that question, I shall especially focus on how the expert talk is interwoven with other voices in the news items, and how it contributes to the newsworthiness of the news item. In the current data, the journalistic integration of communication expert talk takes on many forms, but it is nevertheless possible to identify a limited number of recurrent genre patterns. I will point to four such patterns (which altogether account for two thirds of the analysed news-items), including short examples of the two most complex patterns. At the end of the election, a conflict broke out in the Copenhagen section of the governing party Venstre. The conflict involved the political spokesman, Jens Rohde, and accusations of attempts to threaten fellow candidates into withdrawing their candidature were in the air. This was, of course, obvious material for the media, and DR, and to a lesser degree TV 2, covered it at considerable length. On the 3rd or February, DR ran a 5 minute news-item on the conflict as their top story: The situation is introduced by the host as open war in Venstre, where after the news item unfolds over an array of pre-edited interview-clips with the conflicting parts, supplied and linked with voice over. After the interview-clips, the news-item returns to the live studio, where an expert in political communication appears as guest. The host turns to him with the question: Well, Thomas Larsen [name of the expert], let us now hear what is going on here what on earth is happening?. In the following interview, the expert quite eloquently and extensively estimates the situation in Venstre (a bitter, bloody clash) and assesses the impact of the conflict (a matter with larger political consequences), only supplemented by a few non-confrontational, elaborative questions from the host. The expert reiterates the metaphors of war, used earlier by the host and in the voice over. A short interviewsequence with a Venstre-minister, who could not make it to the edited part, is cut in and linked back to the live interview by the host with the words: Well, thats a flat refusal, could he say otherwise?, which occasions the expert to describe what the leadership in Venstre really thinks. This may stand as an example of a common genre pattern in which the expert is interviewed live (often in the TV-studio and at some length) at the end of a news item, following pre-edited clips with a wide range of voices (politicians, vox pop, voice over, graphic representation of opinion polls). These preceding, and in the case of politicians often conflicting voices, are thematised in the expert interview, occasioned by the interviewing journalist. The journalist may initiate the interview, i.e. link the preceding array of voices to the expert talk, with general questions like what is happening here?, or (s)he may ask the expert more specifically

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to assess the importance of an event or the background of a conflict. The expert, thus, is asked to interpret the preceding voices and help the viewer make sense of and find her way around them and in that sense make the news worthier. The expert assessments are realised by drawing on the discourse of strategic political communication, i.e. by transforming the preceding (political) voices into strategic moves, revealing their real motives and evaluating their impact and (lack of) success. The journalists questions are non-confrontational, and thus the discourse of strategic political communication stands unchallenged as a framing device for the other voices in the news item. This genre pattern can be summarized in the following model:
Visual and auditive representation Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Live-introduction by studio host Pre-edited clips with conflicting voices, linked with voice over Live-interview between studio host and expert Genre function Introducing the conflict Elaborating the conflict Interpreting the conflict

Figure1. Genre pattern 1.

A second genre pattern, in which the expert is used in a quite different way, can be illustrated by a news-item from TV 2 on the 27th of January, about a week within the (official) election campaign. The long item (approx. 8 minutes) takes the bad opinion polls for the Social Democrats as starting point and focuses on the communication problem of the party leader, Mogens Lykketoft. In the first pre-edited part, interview-clips with political backers are shown, each voicing friendly advice to Lykketoft on how to improve the campaign. Between two of these voices, a clip with a communication expert is inserted, linked with journalist voice over saying: The political observers talk about an election campaign that is about to be lost for Lykketoft. The expert clip consists of only one utterance: Not that he has done particularly bad, but he [..] just doesnt have what it takes at the moment to capture this big group of voters in the centre who wants short sentences and clear messages. The second part of the news item reports from a repair shop, including interview-clips with voters who utter their doubts in the communication abilities and trenchancy of Lykketoft. Finally, in last part, Lykketoft himself is interviewed live from the studio. The host turns to him asking: Yes, Mogens Lykketoft, this is a direct criticism of you and your general appearance. Will you follow the appeal we hear here and change your way of campaigning?. Lykketoft answers that there is enough time to present the political programme of the Social Democrats, and then goes into this programme. In the remaining part of the interview, the host keeps confronting Lykketoft with his general appearance, lack of voter support and need to change strategy, but nevertheless lets Lykketoft get

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away with elaborating on political programmes and differences to the government over rather lengthly turns. In the above news-item, as in the second genre pattern in general, the expert voice plays a less prominent part. It occupies significantly less time, is pre-edited and non-studio, and is not used to conclusively frame the preceding voices at the end of the item. Instead, it is brought in along with, and enunciatively at the same level as, a range of other voices; the expert does not comment on the other voices in the item, but on the same subject as commented on by these other voices. The single expert represented is often introduced by voice over as representative for a larger group of experts (political observers in the above example). The different voices, including the experts, are not conflicting, but all support the general story line of the news item. This story line (for instance that a politician has a communication problem) draws on the discourse of strategic political communication, and leads to a concluding, confrontational live interview in or from the studio with an affected, i.e. accused, politician. For the politician, the interview is double-edged; on the one hand (s)he is confronted with a massive critique from a range of sources that the journalist can resort to, but on the other hand the interview offers a rare opportunity for direct prime time broadcast at some length, including opportunities for navigating away from the discourse of strategic political communication. The concluding politician interview therefore often represents a struggle between two incompatible discourses; the discourse of strategic political communication, put forward by the journalist in resorting to the previous pre-edited voices, and ordinary content-oriented political discourses, put forward by the politician. The second pattern can be summarized in the following model:
Visual and auditive representation Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Live-introduction by studio host Pre-edited clips with mutually supporting voices, among them an expert, linked with voice over Live-interview between studio-host and affected politician Genre function Introducing the problem Elaborating the problem Confronting the problem

Figure2. Genre pattern 2.

The last two recurrent genre patterns are less complex. One is focused on making sense of numbers, i.e. of opinion polls. Here, the news-item starts with a presentation of the latest polls, and instead of leaving the viewers with the numbers these are interpreted by an expert. The interpretation may exploit different of the earlier mentioned knowledge positions, especially of course on voter sentiments, but also strategic options for the political players or the future political agenda. The discourse of strategic political communication is thus used to enrich the hard

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news of the opinion poll. Apart from a short studio host introduction, these two steps presentation of numbers in graphics, and subsequent interpretation by the expert make out the whole genre pattern. The third pattern can be summarized in the following model:
Visual and auditive representation Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Live-introduction by studio host Representation of opinion polls with graphics and voice over Live-interview between studio-host and expert Genre function Introducing the new polls Elaborating the polls Interpreting the polls

Figure3. Genre pattern 3.

The last pattern is more loosely defined and deviates by not having a specific, current event as its focus. Or, put differently, spin itself is the event, i.e. not a particular spin incident, but political spin as such. This more general topical scope also implies a wider time horizon; spin as such is news within a larger timescale than the news in the other genre patterns. In this fourth pattern, the discourse of strategic political communication is made newsworthy by offering a back stage view into the general machinery of modern political communication. This may be realized as a longer interview with one political communication expert, or composed as a set of expert-voices, possibly supplied with intersected examples of spin. The fourth pattern can be summarized as follows:
Visual and auditive representation Step 1 Step 2 (facultative) Step 3 Live-introduction by studio host Examples of spin and/or pre-edited clips with experts Live-interview between studio-host and expert Genre function Introducing the spin issue Elaborating and interpreting the spin issue Elaborating and interpreting the spin issue

Figure4. Genre pattern 4.

The four patterns show that the political communication experts are used quite differently in the news programmes, including differences in length of talk, placement, enunciative level, and live vs. pre-edited talk. Also, the discourse of strategic political communication is articulated with the news genre in different ways, including different co-articulation with incompatible issue-oriented political discourses. If these findings are combined with the quantitative results, significant correlations between the different expert types and the different genre patterns become visible. Concerning the last two patterns, one correlation is that the experts in the third pattern are primarily in house journalists, whereas the experts in the forth

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pattern are a rather mixed external group. Perhaps more interestingly, concerning the first two patterns, the experts in the second pattern are mainly (represented as) academics, whereas the experts in the first pattern all are (represented as) journalist. Thus, the position of interpreting and assessing previous and conflicting voices are, in the current material, given only to journalists, whereas academics (who also appear in the fourth pattern as experts on spin in general) are inserted in a less prominent position, as one voice among several others, all supporting the main story line. Apart from being used as experts on political communication more often, journalists therefore also occupy a more prominent position when being used as experts. 5. Conclusion and perspectives The analysis has shown that the use of political communication experts is common, although not indispensable, in the prime time news election coverage analysed. Approximately 50% of the experts are represented as journalists, 25% as academics, and 25% as communication advisers. The expertise of the political communication experts is construed situatively by a series of connected knowledge positions, which form a discourse of strategic political communication. In this discourse, political events are transformed into strategic moves by players oriented towards maximising voter support in a competitive field with other strategic players. The discourse of strategic political communication is articulated with the news genre via different patterns which differ in the way the expert talk is related to other (political) voices and contributes to the newsworthiness of the news item. Experts with a journalist background occupy the most prominent position in terms of enunciative level and length of talk in these patterns. The current data are taken from an election coverage in Denmark, and the results can of course not be generalized as the use of political communication experts. Further studies may show how they relate to other national contexts and political situations. From a deliberative point of view, a critical media is crucial to a functioning public sphere. Yet, the analysis raises some critical questions concerning the media use of political communication experts: Firstly, the knowledge ascribed to the experts is rather extensive, and one may ask to what extent it is warranted, not at least since it remains unchallenged in the news item. Secondly, the discourse of strategic political communication implies a distance to the values, programmes, and ideologies of ordinary issue politics, which makes it appear politically neutral, resonating with journalistic ideals of impartiality. Nevertheless, the de-politicization does not exclude a political impact. Thus, experts contribute to talk specific

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topics up or down on the media agenda, which may well be advantageous to some parties or candidates and disadvantageous to others. Also on a more general level, it may be advantageous to some parties if the coverage blurs issue differences by being more focused on strategic performances. However, this political impact is not discussed in the coverage, reflecting a significant lack of self-reflection in the use of political communication experts. Finally, though it of course would be naive to assume that political initiatives during an election are not influenced by strategic considerations, journalism still has a choice between two approaches: to focus on the strategic considerations behind the arguments put forward, or to examine and explore these arguments, i.e. to acknowledge them as argument without neither ignoring nor accepting them. Here, it is worth noting that the discourse of strategic political communication is but one way of using experts to interpret political events. There are other ways, for instance by letting communication experts analyse and evaluate the forms of arguments put forward by politicians, not at least with regard to argumentative fallacies. Or by letting (other) experts add historical perspectives or overlooked issue information, which may open or fuel, rather than block, issue debates.

Notes
1. According to Louw, spin-doctor was first used with reference to Reagans media-team in a 1984 New York Time editorial (Louw 2005:156, see also Lilleker 2006:194). Spin and spindoctor are sometimes used as catchall terms, probably more popular among journalists (Kpl 2007:131). Street even describes spin doctor as a cultural icon, a symbol of the new cynicism of modern journalism (Street 2001:145). 2. Discourse is a complex and contentious term, but generally one may distinguish between two ways of using the term. Firstly, discourse can refer to language-in-use, i.e. to language as an element of social life, as opposed to language as a purely linguistic entity, and, secondly, discourse can refer to an abstract meaning system that constitutes ways of representing and knowing about the world. Gee (2005) refers to this as a distinction between discourse with a little d (i.e. language in use) and with a big D (i.e. meaning system), whereas Iedema (2003) speaks about Discourse I and Discourse II. In the later sense, which goes back to Foucault (1969/1972), discourse is used as a count noun (Fairclough 2003) and one may analytically describe a discourse and its relation to other discourses. 3. The deliberative view outlined here is basically Habermasian (Habermas 1962 and 1992). For elaborations on the differences between deliberative and other understandings of democracy and public sphere communication, see Habermas (1992), Gutmann & Thompson (2004), Horsbl (2004), and Loftager (2004). 4. An indicator for the proliferation of spin as a media topic is the strong increase in the use of the word spin in Danish print media: from a total of little over 300 times in 2000 to almost

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1400 in 2006. If one takes into account the increase in (free) news papers, the number has almost tripled (source: InfoMedia). 5. One may notice that the Danish audience share of public service broadcasting is among the highest in Europe (Hallin & Mancini 2004:42). 6. An exchange from a news programme prior to the prime time news analysed here, may serve as an example of a contested knowledge position. Asked by the news studio host: well, Lars Bille [name of the expert], at this late point, what can move these doubters, the expert replies: well, the most veracious answer is that no one actually knows (DR, 7.2.). Here, the expert negates the knowledge position offered him by the journalist by assuming yet another knowledge position, namely that of knowing what is known and unknown among the knowing. 7. There is no definite way to decide which knowledge positions are significant or important in a material covering 31 news programmes. The knowledge positions selected and analysed here, all appear several times in the material as well as in different expert interviews. 8. All translations from Danish are my own, but have been looked through by a second reader, competent in both Danish and English. Except from the questions 16, the Danish quotations have been omitted due to space considerations, but are available from the author. 9. I am drawing on the distinction between discourse and genre put forward by Fairclough (for instance 1995 also elaborated in Horsbl 2004).

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Authors address
Anders Horsbl Department of Communication and Psychology Aalborg University Kroghstrde 3 9220 Aalborg st Denmark horsboel@hum.aau.dk

About the author

Anders Horsbl studied communication, philosophy and applied linguistics at different universities in Denmark, Germany, Austria and Great Britain. He is associate professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University (Denmark). Apart from a doctoral thesis on the discursive construction of a political presidential candidate (2003), he has published especially in the fields of (multimodal) discourse analysis, political communication and mediated organizational communication. Currently, he is guest lecturer at the University of Flensburg (Germany).

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