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Spin: from tactic to tabloid
Author(s) -
Andrews Leighton
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of public affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.221
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 1479-1854
pISSN - 1472-3891
DOI - 10.1002/pa.37
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , meaning (existential) , politics , principal (computer security) , field (mathematics) , publics , media studies , sociology , political science , public relations , law , epistemology , linguistics , computer science , philosophy , mathematics , computer security , pure mathematics
Over the last fifteen years, the word Spin has come to define both the process of political communication, and the practice of public relations itself. The history of the term requires some examination. Arguably, until around 1992, Spin did not have such a widespread meaning—it was simply one tactic in an election campaigner's armoury. Now it seems to embrace the whole process of communication, not only between election campaigners and the media, but also between a Government and its people, or between a public relations professional in any field, and his or her target publics. The development of Spin as a word has gone through a number of stages which will be addressed in the course of this paper. It now has widespread popular usage, which has arisen through two principal processes: The increasing celebrity status of the spin‐doctor role: and the usefulness of the word to tabloid sub‐editors. By 1997, when New Labour came into Government, the discourse of spin was firmly established. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.