POLITICS AS A GAME OF COMPETING NARRATIVES
Lookatmedia™
Lookatmedia™ helps organisations navigate the fast-moving media landscape where messages are constantly reassembled, ensuring your stories remain clear, consistent, and discoverable amid competing interpretations across news cycles.
After watching recent media coverage of a state election and federal budget, I concluded what game most closely represents modern politics, Scrabble.
Why not chess?
Chess is an abstract strategy game with no hidden information. Chess is about setting up goals and long-term plans for future play. This is not how modern politics is played. For the most part, politics is now about using the past activity of your opponents to advance your agenda.
Scrabble
Scrabble is a better political metaphor. Everyone starts out with random selections of tiles. They then try to form words that deliver the highest number of points. You look for opportunities created by your opponents, then build on those achievements or mistakes to your advantage using the tiles you have. With politics (as with scrabble), long-term plans seem irrelevant.
Throwback
As with politics, in scrabble, the random nature of having to work with the titles you’ve picked can lead to a dead end. That’s where you forego a ‘turn’, hoping that a refresh will increase your chances. The same is true of politics. Sometimes a party or movement is nowhere, so they have to accept a loss and use the time out of power to ‘pick new tiles’.
POLITICS, SCRABBLE, AND THE BATTLE FOR NARRATIVE ADVANTAGE
Lookatmedia™
Lookatmedia™ helps organisations respond to a fast-moving media environment where messages are continuously reshaped by external events, enabling them to reuse, reframe, and repackage content so their narrative stays relevant and discoverable.
POLITICS, SCRABBLE, AND THE BATTLE FOR NARRATIVE ADVANTAGE
Lookatmedia™
Lookatmedia™ helps organisations respond to a fast-moving media environment where messages are continuously reshaped by external events, enabling them to reuse, reframe, and repackage content so their narrative stays relevant and discoverable.
How does this play out in the media?
Media and communications are the game of politics. Politicians and parties are always trying to score points. Traditional and new media play a role in this process. They are the scorekeepers if we want to keep with the scabble analogy; however, their scorekeeping isn't always accurate. In some cases, they may even be helping one side cheat.
HOW MEDIA SHAPES THE POLITICAL “SCOREBOARD”
Lookatmedia™
Lookatmedia™ helps organisations navigate a media environment where narratives are constantly framed and reframed, enabling clearer, more consistent communication that reduces distortion and ensures messages are accurately represented across channels
HOW MEDIA SHAPES THE POLITICAL “SCOREBOARD”
Lookatmedia™
Lookatmedia™ helps organisations navigate a media environment where narratives are constantly framed and reframed, enabling clearer, more consistent communication that reduces distortion and ensures messages are accurately represented across channels
Should politics be a game?
The reality is that representative democracies have probably always been a bit of a game. However, that doesn't mean that this game cannot be used to deliver objective and meaningful outcomes for people and the planet. There is a way of delivering real change, not just point-scoring.
Having the scorekeeper on your side
The media are as (if not more) motivated by page views than the substance and agendas of politicians and political parties. In a recent survey, 70% of journalists said they would share a story based on a trending storyline. In the same study, 68% of journalists said they would share a story based on an image. This research indicates that journalists know that images and videos are how you capture and hold readers or viewers' attention. The lesson here is that if you want the 'scorekeeper' on your side, start using visual content in your media engagement strategy.
Turning Media Attention Into Meaningful Impact
Lookatmedia™
Lookatmedia™ helps organisations move beyond point-scoring narratives by leveraging visual storytelling and structured newsroom content, aligning with how journalists prioritise trending stories and compelling imagery to drive engagement and coverage.
Turning Media Attention Into Meaningful Impact
Lookatmedia™
Lookatmedia™ helps organisations move beyond point-scoring narratives by leveraging visual storytelling and structured newsroom content, aligning with how journalists prioritise trending stories and compelling imagery to drive engagement and coverage.
Master the game
Whether you see the game of politics as Scrabble or Chess, if you want to master the game, you need a newsroom solution that allows you to use all of your pieces to generate more wins and make more advanced moves. To do this, you need a Lookatmedia™ newsroom solution.
