The sound bite society

Thanks to social media, political communication has evolved into a fine art, with budding and established politicians continuously honing their skills to ensure success with the electorate. Still, more and more people are growing sceptical about the relevance of political rhetoric. Does political communication need a rethink to help bridge the widening gap between the rulers and the ruled?

In his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell argues: “Political language and variations, this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists, is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Political communication today is filled with sound bites, buzzwords and repeated slogans ad nauseam. For the sake of clarity, let me define these terms.

A sound bite is a short clip or phrase representing a larger message. Sound bites are usually extracted from a speech and stand in as a distillation of that speech. Sound bites are getting shorter. According to an article in the Journal of Journalism Studies, the average sound bite on US television dropped in length from 43 seconds to nine seconds over the two decades between 1968 and 1988.

Political slogans are stand-alone phrases coined by political parties to represent a bigger idea. Perhaps most people are familiar with the most recent political slogan, Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’.

In a political context, buzzwords are words or phrases that act like slogans for specific ideas. ‘Fake news’ is arguably the most abused buzzword often used by politicians when confronted with embarrassing revelations by their adversaries.

All these tactics have one thing in common: they work by lodging themselves in your brain as they are repeated over and over again. They are meant to provoke emotions like fear, anger or disgust, causing people to fall back on an “us vs them” mentality. We are living in a sound bite society.

Behavioural research shows that if you repeat something often and present the message in a consistent format, people tend to believe it, even if it is a blatant lie. Even when false news headlines are refuted, they tend to be believed if they have been repeated often enough, regardless of a person’s political views.

Keir Starmer has not had a good start as the UK prime minister. Despite his landslide victory a year ago, he has rubbed many of his supporters the wrong way by targeting pensioners and farmers with his deficit-fighting tactics. He believes his eloquence and rhetorical skills, honed as a lawyer, could help him turn the tide against his growing unpopularity.

No one knows how to make a perfectly effective political sound bite

He promised to ‘reset’ the political agenda in a speech at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. One tabloid journalist, who admittedly is not a Starmer fan, described his speech as a “bingo hall parade of buzzwords and political nerd speak”. For instance, he spoke of seven “pillars of the growth mission”, and six “measurable milestones”. To add to the bewilderment of his audience, he announced that “the milestones all ladder up” – an incomprehensible phrase that hardly anyone can understand.

The Italians are just as fond of political buzzwords, some of which have spiralled through international media.

‘Bunga Bunga’ – a ‘mysterious sexual ritual’ enjoyed by deceased former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and his acolytes, probably contributed to the collapse of both his reputation and the financial markets’ trust in Italy’s ability to repay its debt. Today, this buzzword is still used by some politicians to attack the perceived lack of decency in their adversaries’ behaviour.

In 2012, financial markets were fretting about Italy’s growing debt. Berlusconi coined a sound bite: “Basta con questo imbroglio dello spread” – “Enough with this talk of the spread”, adding “we lived happily for years without worrying about it. It is an invention of two years ago”. 

While sound bites and political slogans will continue to be used by the political class, no one knows how to make a perfectly effective political sound bite. Democratic elections and their associated campaigns are highly complex, with many confounding factors. Planning a political campaign based on previous, apparently successful models is difficult. 

Voters will continue to be bombarded with sound bites, clichés, platitudes and slogans. Most politicians are afraid to speak the authentic language that ordinary people understand. However, they still believe that, if repeated often enough, their claims can be accepted as truth without providing compelling evidence.

Next time you hear a political sound bite repeated over and over, ask yourself: is there any proof that it is true?