For as long as there have been mass media they have reported political events, but across most of the globe the central role of the media in elections is a very recent development.
In many countries, free elections are themselves a new phenomenon. For large parts of Asia and Africa that were once under colonial rule, free and sovereign elections are a development of the second half of the twentieth century, while for those countries in the former Communist bloc they are even more recent than that. Even the countries of Western Europe and Latin America only fully democratised in the years shortly before or after the Second World War with the extension of the franchise to women. The United States only finally ended limitations on the franchise in the 1960s. Latin America's democratic tradition was blighted by a history of military dictatorship, particularly from the 1960s to the 1980s, a development that was echoed in many countries of Africa and Asia. Some countries, particularly in Europe and North America, had a vigorous free press even when the franchise was limited. Others developed independent media only as they were struggling to install a system of elected government.
Europe, North America and Latin America evolved a theory of the media as a 'Fourth Estate', offering a check on the activities of governments. This approach has increasingly been incorporated into international law, although the practice has fallen short of the ideal. Generally, an independent press evolved in parallel with the more general development of political freedoms.
Until relatively recently, the printed press was the sole mass medium. It had a limited reach, simply because functional literacy only extended to a minority. Thus the development of broadcasting was potentially revolutionary in communicating political ideas to a mass audience. Yet in many instances the very potential of radio and television was frightening to those responsible for administering broadcasting. The British Broadcasting Corporation operated a '14-day rule' that prohibited coverage of any issue within two weeks of it being debated in Parliament. It was not until 1951 that the first party election broadcasts were screened. The compulsory blackouts of coverage in the days before an election that continue in countries like France are a relic of that period - when the media seemed to go out of their way not to influence the outcome of an election.
Times have changed. Received wisdom is that contemporary elections are dominated by television, a development that can be traced back to around 1960 - the date of the historic first television debate between United States presidential candidates. But this view is only partly accurate. The majority of the world's population do not watch television - they do not have electricity or they could not afford the set. Nor is this only a phenomenon of dictatorships - the world's largest democracy, after all, is India. For such countries radio remains the most important medium.
But even in countries where television dominates political debate, this has been a fairly recent phenomenon. In many West European countries, commercial broadcasting was only legalized in the 1980s and television coverage of elections remains highly regulated, as a legacy of the long years of state control of broadcasting.
For all the talk of 'spin doctors' and 'globalization', much of what passes through the media at election times would be readily recognizable to a previous generation of voters, accustomed to a style of political campaigning through public meetings and hustings. The American tradition of paid television advertising, drawing upon the most sophisticated techniques of Madison Avenue is an important one, but not dominant worldwide. The more regulated tradition of European broadcasting still enjoys wide adherence, at election time more than at any other. This tends to favour lengthier policy messages and debate over quick sound bites.
The 'medium is the message' according to a celebrated media theorist. But there is no doubt that during elections a variety of different types of message are communicated through the same medium. The most celebrated debates in American campaign history were between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 and between Lincoln and Douglas a century earlier. The former was the harbinger of the age of television elections. But the striking thing is that the similarities between the two exchanges were greater than their differences.
