Speaking for the Public: Representation and Audience Participation during the 1997 British General Election Campaign

Audience-participation programs are designed to provide interaction between politicians and voters. Through voters' questions, politicians gain a valuable gauge of public opinion. However, for this to happen, participants must be representative of the general public. Previous U.S. research suggests that this is not the case, but this failure may be caused by that country's commercialized media structure. Callers to the premiere British election phone-in program, Election Call, broadcast by the noncommercial BBC, are compared with members of the general public to determine whether its participants are socially and politically representative of the general public. The results are negative, at least in part because simply reflecting the public mood would conflict with the rules and norms of public-interest broadcasting.