The Elephant Trap: Politicians Performing in Television Comedy

Abstract

of politicians today: the ability to communicate effectively in a range of mediated contexts through a diversity of appropriate and effective styles. While one might argue that political communication scholarship does not exist in order to advise politicians how to become more culturally relevant, there are also more pressing academic reasons for analysing the experience of politicians as media-performers. The increased convergence of politics and media has been referred to as 'media logic', which, according to many scholars and critics, leads political actors, parties and institutions to neglect structural political and policy issues and focus instead on short-term, individual media success. A study of the performance of politicians in the media therefore directly addresses whether and how such media logic is indeed experienced as an ines capable force that hinders the discussion of politics. Moreover, the changing communicative environment raises more general issues about the nature of 'representation', in its meaning as delegation on behalf of citizens and in its meaning as a mimetic reflection of citizens, especially with respect to the question of whether a different kind of representation is enforced by media logic. We address these issues in this chapter by analysing and comparing the participation of politicians in the British satirical television show Have I Got News for You and its Dutch adaptation Dit was het Nieuws. 1 The research articulates, in the first instance, an example of changes in political communication taking place on the horizontal dimension identified by the editors of this book. It concerns the changing media environment and the way politics and politicians accommodate and appropriate this. Yet, as we will see on the basis of our data, this has repercussions for the relation between politicians and citizens (the vertical dimension) as well, especially with respect to the desire of politicians to reach their constituency through a variety of communicative means. Pleasure and danger Have I Got News for You (Hignfy) is a satirical BBC television show that has run twice a year since 1990 and will be entering its 39th season in 2010. The format consists of a host and two teams comprising a captain and a different guest each week, all of them sitting behind a news desk and discussing current affairs in ironic and satirical ways. The show is recorded live before a studio audience, then edited. Hignfy has been the subject of public controversies in the UK, the most notable of which occurred when its original host was 'outed' by the press for visiting prostitutes and using drugs (ever since, there has been a different guest