IAMCR 2013 CONFERENCEEmerging Scholars Network
PR, positioning & a carbon tax: applying a new conceptualframework to the analysis of polarised political positions
Deborah WiseSchool of Design, Communication and IT
University of NewcastleCallaghan NSW 2308
Australia
Abstract
This paper examines the role of public relations in constructing mediated forms of communication. Specifically it looks at the useof the social media site, YouTube, by the Australian Government and the Opposition to position the introduction of a carbon price. The study applied James’ public relations positioning framework as a method for conducting a positioning discourse analysis of these texts. It was found that both parties used YouTube to support their positions that a carbon price was good for Australia (Government), or bad for Australia (Opposition). The Government’s supporting storylines were embedded in visionarydiscourses that centred on the financial opportunities that the scheme would offer in terms of new energy technologies. Contrastingly the Opposition’s storylines were embedded in fear discourses that played into community concerns about the global financial crisis, with the crisis used as a rationale for not introducing a carbon tax. These storylines/positions were strongly supported by visual communication, with both Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, self-positioning as authority figures. The Opposition position oftying the carbon tax to the GFC was hugely successful - numerous polls indicating that if an election had been held the Oppositionwould have won convincingly, with a mandate to repeal any carbon price legislation. This project is a work in progress and is
original in that it brings together the complexities inherent in positioning theory and overlays them with public relations perspectives. Research undertaken to date suggests that using thepositioning framework approach to conduct a discourse analysis demonstrates the dynamism of positioning efforts of both sides ina debate, as they each seek to strengthen their own position while destabilising the opposition’s position. From a public relations /strategic communication theoretical perspective, the framework offers a hybrid method of mapping the discourses used in public policy debates, and for conducting a discourse analysisof public relations texts.
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Introduction
Australia has the highest per capita carbon emissions in the OECD
and is one of the highest carbon emitting countries in the world
(Garnaut, 2008). This dubious distinction, together with the
increasing unanimity by governments around the world that action
on climate change is a real and pressing issue, has led to the
two major Australian political parties agreeing that Australia
should reduce its carbon emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.
Nevertheless, despite their apparent bi-partisan agreement, how
to achieve this commitment has been, and remains, a highly
contested political issue.
The dispute over climate change policies came to a head when, in
“the world’s first climate change election” (Burgmann & Baer,
2010), both the Australian Labor Party (ALP) opposition leader,
Kevin Rudd, and the Liberal National Coalition Opposition Prime
Minister, John Howard, took a carbon emissions trading scheme
(ETS) to the electorate at the 2007 Australian Federal election.
Although it was Rudd who (arguably) copied Howard’s election
policy pledge, it was Rudd’s positioning of the ALP as the party
of reform “willing to take climate change seriously…and to place
global interests above short-term national ones” (Macintosh,
Wilkinson, & Dennis, 2010) that captured the electorate’s
imagination. This narrative was not only influential in providing
Labor with a convincing win (and bringing with it an end to
eleven years of conservative government), it also gave the ALP a
clear mandate to act on climate change. Despite this, and since
that time, numerous polls indicate that support for an ETS has
steadily declined, and moreover this trend accelerated when the
current ALP Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced her decision
to introduce a carbon pricing scheme to commence in July 2012.
Currently there is little research that explicates why this
dramatic shift in public opinion over action on climate change
has occurred. This paper seeks to contribute to the emerging
literature on this phenomenon.
Aims and objectives
This paper is set against this contextual backdrop of
contemporary Australian politics and examines the use of the
social media video sharing website ‘YouTube’ by the ALP
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Government and the Opposition to position the introduction of an
Australian carbon price or tax. This paper also reports on the
use of the conceptual framework for intentional positioning in
public relations (James, 2010, 2011a; Wise & James, in press) as
a method to guide a discourse analysis of strategic positioning
tactics. It is argued that analysis of this phenomenon using the
positioning framework will provide a better understanding of why
some political communication campaigns and supporting discourses
gain greater traction over others. The study is guided by the
following over-arching research questions:
RQ1 How was a carbon price/tax positioned by Gillard and
Abbott?
RQ2 How was the social media video-sharing website YouTube
used as part of this positioning strategy?
Overview of the introduction of an Australian emissions trading scheme/carbon pricing mechanism
When the ALP defeated the Opposition at the 2007 Federal election
the first commitment made by the incumbent Prime Minister, Kevin
Rudd, was that Australia would act on climate change by
introducing a carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS). In 2010,
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after several failed attempts to get the ETS legislation passed
through the Senate, and after the Copenhagen climate change talks
failed to reach an agreement, Rudd announced the ETS would be
postponed for at least three years. This decision contributed to
a dive in the polls for both the ALP and for Rudd personally,
with a Nielsen poll conducted in June 2010 ("Kevin Rudd's polling
since 2006," 2010) placing the Opposition ahead of the Government
for the first time in more than four years. Shortly thereafter,
in a move that took the nation by surprise, Rudd became one of
the few leaders to be removed by their own party during their
first term as Prime Minister. Australia’s new (and first female)
Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, immediately called a Federal
election seeking an electoral mandate for her Prime Ministership.
Crucially, five days before the Federal election on August 21,
2010, Gillard stated on national TV that: "There will be no
carbon tax under the government I lead."
While it is unclear if Gillard’s statement influenced voter
intentions the 2010 Federal election resulted in a hung
Parliament. Over the following week both Gillard and Abbott
started negotiations with the Greens and independent MP’s in a
contest to form government, however it was Gillard who ultimately
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triumphed by gaining the support of a Greens MP and three
independent MP’s. Central to the agreement with the Australian
Greens Party was the securing of numerous concessions sought by
the Greens that included the formation of a climate change
committee (Rodgers, 2010), and acknowledgement that “reducing
carbon pollution by 2020 will require a carbon price” (Agreement,
n.d.). Shortly thereafter, in September 2010, and against her
earlier vow not to introduce a carbon tax, Gillard established
the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee [The Committee] with the
aim of exploring “options for implementing a carbon price”
(Multi-Party Climate Change Committee). In February 2011 the
Committee announced details of its Climate Change Framework, and
on 10 July 2011, in a nationally televised ‘Address to the
Nation, Gillard outlined her Government’s carbon pricing scheme.
Two months later, on September 13, 2011 the Clean Energy Bill 2011 was
introduced to the Federal Parliament and almost twelve months
later, on July 12, 2012, the carbon price commenced.
YouTube within the mainstream media landscape
YouTube was launched in June 2005 (Burgess & Green, 2009) and
since then has established itself as the world’s third most
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popular website (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/youtube.com#),
with an estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide watching an
average of 162 YouTube videos per month
(http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations_and_Whitepapers/2
013/The_Past_Present_and_Future_of_Online_Video). In Australia 40
– 56.9 per cent of people regularly connect with YouTube (Chia,
2012) where they spend an average of 2.7 hours per month (across
international markets the average is 4 hours per month)
(http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2010/09/youtube-viewing-hours-
across-markets). The significance of YouTube as a site of
participatory culture, and its centrality within the mainstream
media landscape means that YouTube has become both a conduit
between “individual and collective creativity and meaning
production” and a “mediator between various competing industry-
oriented discourses and ideologies” (Burgess & Green, 2009, p.
37). It is this ‘struggle over authority and control’ (Burgess &
Green, 2009) that is the focus of this research paper.
The role of public relations in constructing mediated forms of communication
Such struggles are also a central concern of public relations
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practitioners who, in their role as “discourse technologists”
“participate in discursive struggles by shaping texts and by
strategically deploying texts which facilitate certain
sociocultural practices and not others” (Motion & Leitch, 1996,
p. 299). Texts in this context are “the spoken or written
artefacts of discursive practices” and can include, amongst
others (and here we might include video recordings), “books,
speeches, interview transcripts, and policy documents” (Motion &
Leitch, 1996, p. 299). Perhaps one of the most obvious usages of
these tactics is in the political sphere where public relations
practitioners’ use audience research to “strategically modify the
discourse practices of targeted discourse consumers” (Roper,
2005, p. 141). The success of these tactics in Australia, and in
many westernised democracies, means that each of the major
political parties fully understands the importance of effective
public relations strategies in gaining public acceptance of their
policies, with public relations practices playing an important
role in terms of managing and shaping political debates (Young,
2007).
However, while video recordings have always been “an important
and specific field of created…public relations media” and were
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once quite distinct from commercial media (Jefkins, 1994, p. 246)
the advent of Web 2.0 and social media sites such as YouTube have
resulted in video recordings becoming a ‘mass’ medium with a
potential global audience. As a result various social media
platforms are increasingly being used by public relations “to
communicate directly with target publics as part of their overall
communication strategy” (Chia , 2012, p. 40). Likewise, in the
political sphere (both in Australia and elsewhere), political
parties are using social media sites as part of their overall
marketing mix (Chen & Smith, 2010). To date there is little
information from a public relations perspective about the
strategy behind the use of these sites by Australian political
parties, or about their specific use of the social media video-
sharing site YouTube.
Positioning and public relations
Positioning was historically associated with military campaigns
(Baert, 2012) and is also often referred to in marketing
literature where it is used in connection with the four ‘P’s’ of
price, product, placement and promotion (see, for example, Ries
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& Trout, 2001). Positioning theory (as opposed to positioning) is
a social constructionist perspective (Harré & van Langenhove,
1999; Slocum Bradley, 2010a; Wood & Kroger, 2000) that originated
from Foucaldian influenced feminists where the concern was
“altering the positions of women in society” (Boxer, 2003). More
recently the social psychological research of Harré and van
Langenhove (1999), Harré (2004, 2009, 2012), Moghaddam, Harré and
Lee (2008); and Slocum- Bradley (2008, 2010, 2010a) has been
highly influential in furthering understanding of positioning in
social interactions between individuals, groups, and even
nations. At the core of positioning theory, and central to these
authors’ understanding, is the concept of a dynamic positioning
triangle as an analytical framework from which to map the
transient nature of positioning in terms of the “actors
positions, the social force of what they say and do, and the
storylines that are instantiated in the sayings and doings of
each episode” (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999, p. 10). James’
(2010, 2011a) conceptual intentional positioning framework for
public relations similarly adopts a positioning triangle model
but the framework has been developed to take into account the
strategic nature of public relations campaigns.
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(See appendix ii: Positioning triangle domain)
James defines positioning in public relations contexts as “the
strategic attempt to stake out and occupy a site of intentional
representation in the contested space where meanings are
constructed, contested and reconstructed” (2011a, p.7). In
addition to the positioning framework, positioning theory also
stresses how individuals or individual exemplars have rights and
duties that are jointly constituted through discourse (James,
2011; Wise & James, in press). Discourse in this sense is taken
to mean “the use of language and other symbols and signs to
generate meaning, such as through talk, gestures and images”
(Slocum-Bradley, 2010b, p. 80) and is related to public relations
in that an entity undertaking a public relations program must
have the right, or construct the right, to discursively take a
particular position (Wise & James, in press). From a public
relations perspective this concept is critical as it suggests
that an individual (or an individual speaking on behalf of an
organisation) must first construct the right to position in a
particular way if the positioning strategy is to succeed.
Data selection
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The sampling procedure used in the study is purposive in that the
samples were selected on the grounds they were illustrative of
the phenomena the researcher was seeking to examine. Primarily
this centred on the premise that the use of a social media video
sharing service such as YouTube by the ALP and the Opposition,
whether the purpose was to air a policy/position and/or a
response about a proposed policy or position, was a strategic
decision likely made by a public/relations/ corporate
communications professional. These specialists would have a key
input in a) decisions about filming the speech in the first
instance and b) any decisions about the channel(s) selected to
air these video recordings in the second.
Only those video recordings that were delivered between 9 July
2011 (when Prime Minister Gillard formally announced her
government’s intention to put a price on carbon), and 13
September 2011 (when Gillard introduced the Clean Energy Bill
2011 to the Federal Parliament), were included in the study. This
time frame was considered appropriate because it was during this
period that both parties publicly established their respective
positions regarding the introduction of a carbon price/ tax. The
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search criteria was then narrowed to only include video
recordings that a) had been uploaded to either Gillard’s,
Abbott’s, the ALP or Opposition website, or a YouTube channel
linked to either of these sites and b) a corresponding transcript
that had been uploaded to either Gillard’s or Abbott’s official
website (http://www.pm.gov.au; http://www.tonyabbott.com.au).
These websites were selected on the grounds that as the official
sites and YouTube channels of the two major Australian political
parties/politicians, a public relations/corporate communication
practitioner would have likely played a key role in any decisions
regarding the uploading of video recordings and/or transcripts to
these sites.
Data sample: Julia Gillard
A search of the Prime Minister’s official website
(http://www.pm.gov.au) for speech transcripts returned three
speech transcripts for July, three for August, and four for
September (n=10). A further search (to only include video
transcripts) returned one transcript for the month of July, none
for August, and one for September [n=12]. Of these (n=12) three
fell outside of the study period and were not included in the
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study. The remaining (n=9) speech and video transcripts were then
used to guide a search of the Prime Minister’s official website,
the linked YouTube channel ‘PM Gillard’
(http://www.youtube.com/user/PMGillard), and the Australian Labor
Party YouTube channel
(http://www.youtube.com/user/australianlabor).
The Prime Minister’s official website and the ‘PM Gillard’
YouTube channel both contain 47 video recordings. A search the PM
Gillard channel using the search term ‘carbon’ returned eight
videos. Of these only one (‘A plan for a clean energy future’)
fitted within the study’s research parameters. A search of the
Australian Labor YouTube channel using the search term ‘carbon’
returned 123 videos. Of these ‘Julia Gillard Address to the
Nation: Securing a Clean Energy Future’ (Gillard, 2011b); ‘Julia
Gillard National Press Club Address Price on Carbon’(Gillard,
2011c); and ‘Julia Gillard: Clean Energy Bill’ (Gillard, 2011d)
fitted the research criteria. The video ‘Julia Gillard Address to
the Nation…’ (Gillard, 2011b) is the same as “A plan for a clean
energy future’ (found on the PM Gillard channel) and it was
therefore decided, for reasons of consistency, to only include
those versions that had been uploaded to the Australian Labor
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YouTube channel (n=3).
Data sample: Tony Abbott
A search of Abbott’s official website
(http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/) returned 97 speech/video
transcripts and of these 13 fell within the study timeframe
(n=13). Video recordings of Abbott were then selected on the same
grounds as those used to determine the selection of video
recordings of Gillard. A search of Abbott’s official website
(http://www.tonyabbott.com.au) returned 73 video recordings. A
further search using the search term ‘carbon’ returned one video:
Address to the Nation- The Carbon Tax. Some of the videos on
Abbott’s website were linked to Abbott’s YouTube channel
‘MrTAbbott1’ (http://www.youtube.com/user/MrTAbbott1) however as
these were all uploaded outside of the study period none were
included in the study. Many of the videos on Abbott’s website
were linked to Liberal Party TV – the official YouTube channel of
the Liberal Party of Australia
(http://www.youtube.com/user/LiberalPartyTV). A search of this
site and entering the search term ‘carbon’ returned 177 videos.
An individual search found fifteen fitted within the study
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timeframe however four were not of Abbott and eight did not have
corresponding transcripts that had been uploaded to Abbott’s
website. The remaining three videos (n=3): Leader of the
Opposition’s Address to the Nation (Abbott 2011a); Tony Abbott –
No Carbon Tax Rally (Abbott, 2011b) and Tony Abbott - Carbon Tax
- Convoy of No Confidence (Abbott, 2011c) were included in the
study.
Summary of data included in the study
The following six video recordings (n=3 and n=3 respectively),
together with the corresponding video or speech transcripts (n=3
and n=3), form the corpus of the study and are listed in
chronological order as follows:
July 10, 2011
Julia Gillard Address to the Nation: Securing a Clean EnergyFuture [Video recording] (Gillard, 2011a)
Transcript of Address to the Nation (Gillard, 2011b)
July 10, 2011
Leader of the Opposition's Address to the Nation [Video recording] (Abbott, 2011a)
Address to the Nation [Transcript] (Abbott, 2011b)
July 14, 2011
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Julia Gillard National Press Club Address: Price on Carbon [Video recording] (Gillard, 2011c)
"A great clean energy future, a great reform agenda", Address to the National Press Club, Canberra [Transcript] (Gillard, 2011d)
August 15, 2011
Tony Abbott- No Carbon Tax Rally [Video recording] (Abbott, 2011c)
Address to the No Carbon Tax Rally, Canberra [Transcript] (Abbott, 2011d)
August 21, 2011
Tony Abbott - Carbon Tax - Convoy of No Confidence [Video recording] (Abbott, 2011e)
Address to the Convoy of No Confidence Rally, Canberra [Transcript] (Abbott, 2011f)
September 13, 2011
Julia Gillard: Clean Energy Bill [Video recording] (Gillard,2011e)
Introduction of the Clean Energy Bill 2011, Canberra [Transcript] (Gillard, 2011f)
Findings and analysis
When using the public relations positioning framework to conduct
a positioning discourse analysis the first consideration concerns
the positioning goal(s) of the entity that has commissioned the
public relations activity. The video-recording transcripts of
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Gillard suggested a goal of positioning the ALP as the legitimate
Government. In contrast the video-recording transcripts of Abbott
suggested a goal of positioning the ALP as the illegitimate
government and, conversely, the Opposition as the legitimate
(rightful) government.
The second core domain is the ‘purpose positioning domain’ in which
positioning is undertaken for the purposes of ingratiation,
intimidation, self-promotion, exemplification, facilitation or
supplication (James, 2010). The positioning purpose suggested in
Gillard’s video transcripts was primarily that of positioning for
the purposes of exemplification or in other words the desire was
to be seen as going above and beyond or of taking the moral
higher ground relative to Abbott. Abbott’s positioning purpose
was similarly exemplification however this was mostly achieved by
pointing out the failures of Gillard and the ALP relative to the
successes of the Opposition.
Purpose positioning domain
Self Promotion
Exemplification
Ingratiation
Intimidation
Supplication
Facilitation
Abbott 7 8 11 1 0 14
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Gillard 5 9 5 0 0 0
The third core domain is the ‘positioning type domain’ in which
entities can deliberately self-position; be forced into self-
positioning; engage in deliberate positioning of others, or be
forced into positioning others. Both Abbott and Gillard used
their speeches to deliberately self position themselves and their
respective parties. They also deliberately positioned one another
and one another’s opposing political parties, and were variously
forced into adopting different positions. There was no evidence
of being forced into positioning others. One of the most often
used positioning strategies was Abbott’s deliberate positioning
of the Prime Minister as a liar because she had previously said
she would not introduce a carbon tax. Gillard, despite this
positioning, maintained a self position of doing what is right
for Australia by introducing a carbon price. Both Abbott and
Gillard also consistently self-positioned as being able to
lead/provide the better Government for Australia.
Positioning type domain
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Positioning type domain Gillard Abbott
Situations of self-positioning 9 14Situations of forced self-positioning
4 6
Situations of deliberate positioning of others
6 14
Situations of forced positioningof others
0 0
The fourth and final domain is the positioning triangle domain in which
the actual and the desired position(s) of an entity and its
stakeholders; the speech act/action used to declare a desired
outcome; and the discourses and narratives or storylines used to
support and achieve the position declared in the speech
acts/actions, must all align. (See appendix ii: positioning
triangle domain)
In terms of their respective positions Gillard’s position was
that a carbon price was good or positive for Australia while
Abbott’s position was that a carbon tax was negative or bad for
Australia. For example Gillard stated, “I see a great clean
energy future for our great country” (Gillard, 2011b) while
Abbott adopted the contrary position stating, “this carbon tax is
a bad idea because everything will cost more” (Abbott, 2011b).
The supporting narratives or storylines used to support these
positions primarily centred on the financial opportunities that
such a scheme would offer in terms of new technologies for the
delivery of energy and with it the creation of new jobs
(Gillard), or alternatively that the imposition of a carbon tax
on industry would not only cost jobs but these added costs would
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be passed on to individual consumers (Abbott). These storylines
were underpinned by discourses of having a vision for Australia
(Gillard) or discourses of fear for Australia’s future (Abbott).
Central to these storylines and positions were speech acts.
Searle (1979) proposes that there are a limited number of basic
things that individuals do with language: “we tell people how
things are” (assertives); “we try to get them to do things”
(directives), “we commit ourselves to doing things”
(commissives); “we express our feelings and attitudes”
(expressives) “and we bring about changes through our utterances”
(declarations) (p.29). Moreover, we “often, we do more than one
of these at once in the same utterance” (Searle, 1979, p. 29).
For example Gillard’s statement that, “I will be introducing
historic legislation to put a price on carbon and accelerate our
transition to a low carbon economy” (13 September 2011) is both a
declaration (I will…) and a commissive in that she is committing
her Government to a particular course of action. Similarly
Abbott’s statement that, “I want to give you this absolutely
categorical assurance on behalf of the Coalition I lead: we will
oppose the carbon tax in opposition and we will rescind it in
government” (Abbott, 2011b) is both a commissive and an
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assertion. In both instances the speakers are establishing their
positions not through their utterances but through the power of
their illocutions to do or achieve something. However, while the
illocutionary force of an utterance “determines how content is
supposed to relate to the world” (Searle, 1979, pp. 4-13) the
success or not of a speech act depends not on the strength of the
utterance relative to its context, but rather is contingent upon
the position of the speaker to perform the act (Searle &
Vanderveken, 1985). This ties into the local moral order or the
specific rights, duties, and obligations of speakers to “ascribe
rights and claim them” for themselves and to “place duties on
others” (Moghaddam & Harré, 2010, p.3).
Abbott Gillard
Goal Domain To position the Opposition as the better party/government
To position the ALP as the better party/government
Positioning Type Domain Self positioning, deliberate other positioning, forced positioning
Self positioning, deliberate other positioning, forced positioning
Positioning Purpose Domain
Exemplification Exemplification
Positioning Triangle A carbon tax is bad A carbon price is good
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Domain: Position for Australia for Australia
Positioning Triangle Domain: Speech/act action
Address to the Nation
Address to the No Carbon Tax Rally, Canberra
Address to the Convoy of No Confidence Rally, Canberra
Address to the Nation
National Press Club Address: Price on Carbon
Introduction of the Clean Energy Bill 2011 to the Federal Parliament
Positioning Triangle Domain: Discourses/storylines used to support the position taken
A carbon tax will cause electricity prices to rise for consumers [economic discourse at an individual level]
The costs associatedwith the carbon tax will cause Australian industries and businesses to close [economic discourse at a national level]
Australia (in a globalised context) cannot risk a carbontax at a time of global financial crisis [economic discourse at an international level]
‘Big polluters will pay’ [economic discourse at an individual level]
A carbon price will fund the developmentof new ‘clean’ energy technologies and businesses [economic discourse at a national level]
Australia (in a globalised context) cannot afford to notintroduce a carbon price [economic discourse at an international level]
Analysis of the YouTube recordings of Gillard and Abbott
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A further way in which Gillard and Abbott enacted their positions
was through the choice of particular venues/events and audiences
for each social episode. For example Julia Gillard’s ‘Address to
the Nation’ (Gillard, 2011b) was filmed by the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and was televised nationally at
6.30 pm on Sunday night (prime viewing time) across two free to
air television channels, the subscriber TV channel ‘Sky’, and on
three federally funded public television channels
(http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2011/07/abc-seven-nine-carbon-tax-
announcements.html). On some of these channels a segment
dedicated to analysis followed the Prime Minister’s announcement,
and it was reported that Abbott demanded that he be given equal
airtime for his response (Hurst, 2011). However, while there is
no retrospective evidence that he succeeded in this aim it is
possible that parts of his video package (see Abbott, 2011a) were
used in these analysis segments.
What are notable in both of these episodes are the differences
between the settings in which they were enacted. Both Gillard’s
and Abbott’s ‘Addresses to the Nation’ commence with a soft focus
background image of Parliament House overlayed with the
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Australian Coat of Arms and beneath this the (underlined) text
“Address to the Nation”. However, while Abbott is obviously
sitting in an office it is less obvious where Gillard is
situated. Red flowers, photos and various nick-knacks (none of
which are in clear focus apart from the flowers) highlighted by
punches of aqua and yellow and bare spaces on a wall of wooden
irregular shelving suggest this is an office, but could equally
be a suburban lounge room. Gillard is filmed sitting, but at a
distance that permits these background paraphernalia to be framed
within each shot. To Gillard’s left there is a (casually?) draped
and barely discernable Australian flag, and she is dressed in
black with a white open necked jacket and earrings that sometimes
twinkle when they hit the light. Gillard often smiles slightly
whilst talking and overall the discourses suggested are
femininity, informality, and openness. This relatively ‘soft’
enactment of a major policy decision was a discursive tactic
possibly designed to ‘soften the blow’ of the introduction of a
carbon price for everyday Australians many of whom were already
wary of the scheme due to the global financial crisis.
In contrast Abbott sits much closer to the camera and doesn’t
smile suggesting a discourse of earnestness as opposed to
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Gillard’s informality. Also different is the use of the
Australian flag which features prominently to Abbott’s right, and
although both leaders have bookshelves as backgrounds Abbott’s
shelves are regular and contain nothing apart from matching blue-
bound books without any bare spaces. The books, the flag, and
Abbott’s striped tie are all the same or similar tones of blue (a
cultural symbol of maleness and conservative politics) and this
suggests, when taken in combination, an overall discourse of
professionalism, masculinity, conservatism, and authority, and
this is in keeping with the often assertive speech acts enacted
in Abbott’s speech. Abbott’s more forceful positioning in this
context comparative to Gillard may also be because, in the
preceding months, Abbott had constructed the moral right to self
position as opposing a carbon tax whereas Gillard had not
constructed the right to impose a carbon price.
Gillard’s address to the National Press Club (Gillard 2011c,
2011d) was also recorded and broadcast on television by the ABC.
The National Press Club is based in the Australian capital city
of Canberra and its members primarily consist of journalists but
may also include academics, public servants, business people and
members of the wider public and as such is a public forum known
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for its discussion and debate on major political and public
policy issues. On this occasion the most notable discourses are
professionalism and authority and this is due to Gillard’s choice
of attire (a dark blue buttoned up suit that mimics the dress
code of the majority male audience) and the fact that she is
standing on a stage in front of a lectern with a microphone. It
is likely that the enactment of these professional and
authoritative discourses in this context were a discursive ploy
intended to convey a business like determination to act on
climate change for the betterment of Australia. These discourses
also support the commissive and assertive speech acts that
constitute much of Gillard’s address.
Gillard’s final speech introducing the Clean Energy Bill 2011 (Gillard,
2011e; 2011f) to the Federal Parliament was broadcast across a
range of media that included each of the major television
channels and newspapers. On this occasion Gillard is again
standing as opposed to sitting and she is addressing the Speaker
of the House and the Opposition Members of Parliament (including
Abbott) sitting opposite. Gillard’s clothing – a black skirt with
a white jacket open apart from a button at her midriff- reveals a
bright red shirt beneath. Red is associated with passion and with
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the left side of politics – red also being the primary colour
used in Labor’s logo. However what is most noticeable is
Gillard’s erect posture as she stands on the floor of the
Parliament and this suggests a discourse of authority and of
power that lends gravitas to her enactment of what is an
important (for the ALP and Gillard) directive speech act.
The anti-carbon tax rally attended by Abbott was also held in
Canberra and drew a crowd of approximately 5000- 6000 people
(although organisers claimed 10,000 people attended) that arrived
in buses from Sydney, rural NSW and Victoria. Various
conservative luminaries addressed the rally however it was Abbott
who was the obvious star with the crowd chanting “Tony, Tony,
Tony” (Abbott stars at anti-carbon tax rally, 2010). At this
rally, as with a previous rally held in March, some of the crowd
held placards that stated “Ditch the Witch” and other slogans
vilifying the Prime Minister. The video of Abbott at this rally
shows little of this contextual information (and arguably it has
been significantly edited to omit some of the signage present
which is known to have personally attacked Prime Minister Gillard
e.g. calling her a witch and a bitch in various contexts) so we
are left with an image of Abbott dressed conservatively in a
27
black suit, white shirt, and black, grey and white striped tie
holding a microphone in front of a banner with red signage on a
white background. Abbott’s attire immediately sets him apart from
the crowd, as most are dressed casually as one might expect given
the context of a rally. The microphone he is holding has signage
for a local ‘light and sound’ business which connotes that the
event is community funded. Abbott appears relaxed and smiles in
places however it is towards the video’s end that the most
surprising event occurs. It is at this point that Abbott bends
down and pulls a man from the crowd to share the stage with him.
Abbott commences speaking and the man becomes visibly upset and
overcome with emotion- so much so that another man comes on stage
to physically support him. Abbott appears bemused by this turn of
events and smiles at the crowd and at the man. The discourse
suggested by Abbott’s actions and appearance is not one of being
the audience’s equal (he is very obviously the star of the event
and never actually descends off the stage) but one of being
willing to bend down and ‘be on their side’. This discourse
reinforces Abbott’s storyline of understanding the (economic)
pressures facing ‘ordinary’ Australians and also supports many of
the expressive speech acts enacted by Abbott in this episode.
28
Abbott’s ‘Address to the No Carbon Tax Rally’ (Abbott, 2011e,
2011f) was again held in Canberra and, while relatively smaller
with 300 people on the lawn outside Parliament and “200 vehicles
from all over Australia” rolling “around Canberra blowing their
horns” (Willingham, 2011), the spectacle of the trucks and the
rally itself were broadcast by the major media players. Abbott
was again separated in stature from the crowd by his dress – this
time wearing a dark grey suit, white shirt and red and white
striped tie. Behind Abbott are professional cameras and on his
right is a prominent and controversial radio journalist, and
known supporter of conservative politics, Alan Jones. As he
speaks the Australian flag sometimes appears flapping in the
breeze. Abbott sometimes smiles whilst talking and appears
relaxed – his frequent use of hand gestures suggesting he is
talking ‘off the cuff’ and this suggests a discourse of frankness
but also one of authority. Given the media furore after his
previous speech at the ‘No carbon tax’ rally a few days
previously Abbott’s authoritarian discourse suggests an attempt
to enact a more serious albeit friendly self position. These
discourses also support the assertive and commissive speech acts
that comprised much of Abbott’s address.
29
Discussion
Abbott’s strategy of positioning the carbon tax as being bad for
Australia and Australians by causing job losses and price
increases in a range of everyday items, and linking this to the
existing attitudes of many Australians who believed they were at
economic risk because of the global financial crisis was, in
terms of discursive positioning, hugely successful. Indeed,
numerous polls indicated that if an election had been held during
the study period the Opposition would have won convincingly, and
moreover would have had a clear mandate to repeal the carbon
pricing legislation. One reason for the success of this strategy
is that “in attempting to ensure that a particular image is held
by an individual, public relations practitioners must articulate
this image with a pre- existing attitude or experience which
predisposes the individual to accept that image” (Motion &
Leitch, 1996, p. 300). Abbott’s use of economic risk discourses
appears to have succeeded in over-riding previous societal values
about doing what is right for the environment (i.e. by acting on
climate change).
Conversely Gillard’s strategy of positioning the carbon price as
30
being good for Australia and Australians by creating jobs and
boosting the economy was far less successful. By again applying
Motion and Leitch’s (1996) premise, it is possible to suppose
that this may be because the pre-existing attitudes or
experiences of most Australians at the time meant they knew
little about what ‘clean energy’ technologies actually were, and
Gillard’s economic opportunity discourses failed to gain traction
in the public opinion stakes primarily because of the success of
Abbott’s positioning strategy. It is also impossible to overlook
Gillard’s pre-election commitment to not introduce a carbon price
should she be re-elected. This discursive ‘pre-positioning’
episode meant that Gillard more or less locked herself in to
taking a particular position and her failure to do so, and the
subsequent and successful positioning of her as a liar by Abbott,
played and continues to play a substantial part in her lack of
popularity with the majority of the Australian electorate. This
episode also demonstrates the importance of an entity either
having the right, or constructing that right, to adopt a
particular position or the position will fail.
The study also found that both of the political
parties/politicians made extensive use of video recordings, with
31
many of these recordings uploaded to not only their individual
websites, but also their official YouTube channels (see tables 1
and 2 for an overview of YouTube usage and viewing statistics).
This finding supports other recent research into the use of
social media and demonstrates that from an organisational
standpoint, the growing use of video sharing sites such as
YouTube is important in struggles for power and control. Abbott’s
use of this visual medium was much more strategic in terms of
getting out and about with ‘everyday’ Australians. Gillard, as
perhaps befits a Prime Minister, was much more restricted in
terms of where she spoke and the discourses available to her. It
is also unarguably the situation that both politicians’ genders
came into play in these episodes. For example whereas Gillard
self-positioned visually as feminine in her Address to the
Nation, Abbott’s discourse was overtly masculine in his reply.
Further research is needed to understand the importance of these
discourses within these contexts.
Conclusion
32
Applying James’ framework as a method to guide a discourse
analysis of public relations texts was useful in that it
encouraged a systematic analysis according to four core domains.
This allowed a repeated and in-depth analysis of the texts, and
it also ensured that texts were examined on a variety of levels
thereby overcoming one of the criticisms of discourse analysis as
methodology- namely that it lacks a coherent framework to guide
the analysis. The use of YouTube video recordings to conduct a
visual discourse analysis of these various social episodes
underlined the importance of visual communication in the digital
age, especially in a public relations context. This research is a
work in progress however research undertaken to date in this and
a previous study (Wise & James, in press) suggests that using the
positioning framework to conduct a discourse analysis
demonstrates the dynamism of positioning efforts of both sides in
a debate, as they each seek to strengthen their own position
while destabilising the opposition’s position. As such the
framework could conceivably provide a new method for undertaking
a discourse analysis of public relations texts.
33
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Table 1: website statistics
Website Totalvideos
Videos/ carbon
Subscribe
rs
Site views
http://www.pm.gov.au 47 8 Unknown Unknown
http://www.youtube.com/user/
PMGillard
47 8 487 62,706
http://www.youtube.com/user/
australianlabor
319 123 2,364 1,552,437
http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/ 73 1 Unknown Unknown
38
http://www.youtube.com/user/
MrTAbbott1
29 4 19 9979
http://www.youtube.com/user/
LiberalPartyTV
239 177 2,772 2,068,5
28
Table 2: YouTube views per video
Video title Video views
Julia Gillard Address to the Nation: Securing a Clean EnergyFuture
2185
Julia Gillard National Press Club Address: Price on Carbon 2660
Julia Gillard: Clean Energy Bill 854
Leader of the Opposition's Address to the Nation 2701
Tony Abbott- No Carbon Tax Rally 2646
Tony Abbott – Carbon Tax- Convoy of No Confidence 1115
39
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