Political reality

The actual reality of political events, the reality presented in political texts and their relationship have long been in the focus of political communication. Actual reality here denotes the political events as they happen, while presented reality comprises all the ways and means political reality is communicated through different channels and media. Certain political communication approaches to political reality and the presentation of reality centred around the ways political reality is reflected in the construction of news pieces (McQuail [1994]) or in agenda setting (McCombs [1996]), i.e. what political events are discussed in news pieces and what political events will be part of longer term political plans or agendas.

Besides this, certain other approaches focus on the notion that the majority of receivers, who are not present when certain political events take place and do not personally experience the political event in question themselves, are provided only with a linguistic realisation of it (Corcoran [1990], Edelman [1987], Oakeshott [2001], Szabó [2003]). This suggests that the

linguistic realisation of a political event may give a different impression of the event than experiencing the event itself. This latter approach to political reality has fuelled research on the effects presented political reality exerts on the receivers of such mediatised reality and the society concerned in the context of mediatised politics.

Investigating the relationship of the media and political events, based on Crespi’s (1994) account of the research of the Chicago School, and especially the work of Mead (1934) and Gurevitch and Blumler (1990), Mazzoleni (2002) appoints forming the social structure of reality to be the central role of the media. This term refers to “the ability to structure the system of meanings characterizing and guiding individuals’ actions in society”

(Mazzoleni 2002: 60, translation by the author), in other words providing a mediatised interpretation of political events. Obviously, characterizing and guiding in such a social and political context cannot result in unbiased presentation of political reality, especially that we are talking about the interpretation of political events by a person working for the media.

Given the role of the media in political communication and the fact that the media interprets political events, the presentation of such events is seen as manipulative in this context (Szabó 2003).

In connection with manipulation, in accordance with the constructivist approach to discursive political science, Mazzoleni’s (2002) Mediatised Political Reality Theory differentiates between three categories of the actual political reality presented by the media:

1. objective reality, which denotes events, people, activities related to a political event – e.g. a government and its decisions − without any presentation and distortion, i.e.

the actual events, people and activities exclusively;

2. subjective reality, which relates to the same objective reality but this reality is perceived from the perspective of the participants of this reality and the audience of such a political reality. Here participants basically means the people taking part and/or being affected by the political events in questions, e.g. voters, families, journalists, etc.;

3. constructed reality refers to those events which will be visible, perceivable and will make sense to non-insiders or non-professionals, i.e. to all others than politicians and politics scholars, only if the media, in its own interpretation, presents these events.

Presentation encapsulates establishing connections between political events and providing an explanation thereof.

It follows from the above that the political reality presented by a journalist will fall into the category of either subjective or constructed reality (or both, as these may overlap).

In our case this is especially so: the Hungarian journalists whose argumentative articles will be used as source texts are part of Hungarian political events and write about such events providing an explanation thereof. Argumentative texts, on the other hand, are most likely to offer explanations of political events as they describe political events and establish connections between such events as part of their argumentation.

Whatever is non-objective – let it be the subjective reality as perceived by the journalist or the constructed reality as a result of the journalist’s political explanations – is inevitably bias-prone, and nothing constructed can exist independently of its constructor(s).

Such a non-objective scenario will inevitably result in a subjective and therefore biased presentation of events, people and political activities. Besides, objective reality in itself can never be presented as it is impossible to give an account of events “as they are”: in the case of the press, political events are always presented through the mind of a journalist, who interprets the events in an article.

Another important factor in the presentation of political reality on the part of political text producers, including journalists and translators of political texts, is active audience (Mazzoleni 2002). Active audience describes how the journalist and the translator as citizens relate to the political issues that are currently on the political agenda. Journalists and translators may observe differences in stance between the various parties and may well sympathise with the party that best represents their views (Mazzoleni 2002) and consequently express their sympathy in texts through the presentation of constructed reality.

Similarly, when journalists and translators expose themselves to the effects of political messages, they may want to reinforce their own opinion on any given issue in any context:

that is, it may well happen that journalists produce articles and translators produce translations that reflect their own political views through the presentation of constructed reality.

In connection with the presentation of political reality, Noelle-Neumann (1984) and Losito (1994) observe that through the media powerful groups with high interest representation potential are able to give voice to their political opinion repeatedly and markedly, as a result of which the receivers of such political texts assume that these opinions are decisive. This effect can be expected to realise in the case of nationwide quality newspapers, from which the source language articles in the current research have been taken.