Media Perspectives for the 21st Century

Stylianos Papathanassopoulos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136847752
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

Media Perspectives for the 21st Century brings together key international scholars to explore concepts, topics and issues concerning the communication environment in contemporary democratic societies. It combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to provide an interdisciplinary and truly global perspective that reflects the trends, theories and issues in current media and communication research.

The collection raises significant questions about the study of the media by challenging approaches to major media and societal issues, and analyses in more depth the range of concerns that shape both the present and the future media landscape and the issues these can create for communication. It also investigates the main effects of technological developments on the domain of the news media and journalism.

Divided into two main sections, Part I provides accounts of the role of the media in society, and deals with agendas that affect the field of communications studies. Part II goes on to examine the world of new media and offers analyses on the developments of the 21st century. Chapters deal with various dimensions of media from a number of different perspectives and socio-political contexts, covering a wide range of topics including Social Networking, Political Communication, Public Journalism, Global Infotainment and Consumer Culture.

Media Perspectives for the 21st Century will be highly useful to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers and academics, in the fields of media and communication studies, mass communication, journalism and new media.

Part I

Media in the Contemporary Age

1 Information and Democracy: The Weakening of Social Democracy

Frank Webster

The social democratic perspective has long been dominant in discussions of information and democracy. Its analysis highlights capitalism’s shortcomings in providing information to the public: it suggests that what the market best provides is diversion, gossip and trivia, being inept when it comes to supplying reliable news, disinterested debate and the in-depth scrutiny that an informed citizenry most needs. In response, the social democratic approach recommends state intervention in order to ensure that informational needs can be adequately fulfilled (this penchant for intervention is why it may be conceived as social democratic). Such a policy unavoidably introduces unease since many advocates are sensitive to the growth of ‘spin’ within the polity itself, the expansion of which they have encouraged as a counter to market inadequacies.

Democratic Deficit

A starting point of this approach is the shortcomings of actually existing democracies. There is widespread concern about a ‘democratic deficit’ in the mature democracies. In such countries, democracy appears fully established: citizens have long had the vote, there are well-established procedures for conducting elections and there are multiple channels for political debate. Yet not all is well: voter turnout is low even at national elections, membership of political parties has plummeted, and it is often difficult to persuade candidates to run for local offices.

Critics observe other deficits. These include high levels of ignorance amongst the public (Jacoby, 2008), survey evidence showing high proportions of the public incapable of naming members of the government (and often more able to identify celebrities) or being uninformed about foreign policy. Chris Hedges (2008) conjures ‘America the Illiterate’ to conceive a majority that is ‘informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés’. Recent analyses of presidential speeches have evidenced a decline in complexity of language use (from vocabulary through to reasoned argumentation) and a marked shift towards use of emotive and easily understandable phrases (Lim, 2008).

Critics generally go beyond observing public ignorance to identify as the major culprit a commercial media system dedicated to profit maximization. This leads to content that is escapist, shallow and hucksterist because the media producers must achieve highest possible audience figures while creating least possible controversy (there is a surfeit of faux controversy in the tabloid press about celebrities and the personality traits of politicians, most of it inconsequential). Certainly, audience size does not translate directly into profitability since it is audience demographics that most appeal to a commercial media. Hence, if a demographic attracts advertisers because it is well educated and affluent, then the product will be able to reflect something of this, perhaps offering content that addresses its lifestyle or even social concerns. However, the determinant remains profit maximization, with media reliant on and prioritizing the ratings or the sponsor. Either way the consequences for content are major, with a general narrowing of the range of coverage, a deluge of trivia, and a disposition towards conservatism (Miliband, 1969, chapters 7–8).

For many critics, public ignorance is exacerbated by an inadequate media system that supplies abundant information, but of an inappropriate kind, being obsessed with personality, glamour and the ephemeral. Infotainment is what media offer, ‘junk information’ comparable to foodstuff that is pervasive yet bad for one’s health. A likely consequence is that vulnerable audiences, befuddled by a diet of garbage information, will be incapable of sifting nutritious from junk information, thereby pressured into reliance on image, appearance and personality traits – accoutrements of the celebrity culture that finds accord with commercialized media – in coming to decisions about issues of great moment (Popkin, 1994).

While it is commonplace for critics to suggest that the market is incapable of supplying reliable information to the citizenry, it is also usual for them to argue that political and business élites manipulate information. The charge then is not merely that markets operate in ways such that adequate information is not made available, but that business leaders and politicians more generally intervene to manipulate information in ways that favour themselves. In evidence, critics point to the spread of PR, spin doctoring, media management and suchlike as contributors to the spread of interested information.

It follows from this that neither the market system nor politicians can be trusted to supply the information required of democracy. But a problem then for the social democrats is that their advocacy – let the state intervene to ensure resilient and reliable information availability – must be suspected since we have so much evidence to show that politicians endeavour to shape information to suit themselves.

An Informed Electorate

It follows from concern about the democratic deficit, and the conviction that inadequate media play a key role in fermenting this condition, that critics wish for reform. The premise is that any meaningful democracy must have an informed electorate. If the public is ignorant, then to such critics democracy is weak. If people are unaware of the great issues of the day, then government cannot respond to the general will of the people. If citizens lack reliable information, then they may also be manipulated by those in the know. This is the underlying logic of the position that moves readily from identification of flaws to recommendation of state intervention to ensure that the public may be appropriately informed.

The Importance of Statistics

Let us point to something that vividly illustrates the importance of reliable information being available for the conduct of meaningful democracy. Accurate national statistics are an essential foundation of any democratic society – and for the most part, they must be paid for out of general taxation as a public good since market mechanisms are unlikely to deliver what is required.

It is worth emphasizing this since the importance of statistics is underestimated in everyday life. Yet without reliable data on, say, population trends, mortality rates, migration patterns and consumer expenditure, meaningful participation in democratic affairs is hard to envision. Access to such information is a requisite of debate since otherwise one must rely on personal experience only. It is essential that an infrastructure is in place that ensures the gathering and dissemination of such statistical data. These statistics are gathered from diverse sources, but the major responsibility rests with government.

Such statistics come to citizens chiefly via the media that use them as a matter of routine. This is probably the reason why many people underestimate the import of statistical services; they receive them at second hand, pre-digested in a politician’s speech or inflected in a newspaper report. However, it is vital to appreciate that democracy relies enormously on the resource of accurate statistical data.

How else might a society know itself were not diligent and impartial statisticians gathering information, traceable often to particular households yet also aggregated into data sets, which allows us to understand the changing shape of the nation? Imagine how disabling it would be were politicians not able to discuss, say, changes in standards of living or regional development, without recourse to authoritative data. A rudimentary knowledge of social statistics reveals imperfections, but to concede that there is need for improvement on the data of, let us say, criminal activity or illegal immigration is a far cry from arguing that statistical information is unimportant. On the contrary, it is a prerequisite of democratic debate and discussion. While statistics might be unglamorous and they can be contentious, and while their generation involves expense and high-level technical skills, it is important that we recognize that democracies are impoverished without their being available.

Distrust of the Market

The social democratic approach hinges on the perceived inability of the market to deliver robust and reliable information. There are several reasons why this should be so, but an important one is that it may not be in the interests of commercial organizations to make available what they know to the wider public. As profit-making outfits, their concern is to maximize returns to their investors – and this may encourage private organizations to keep information to themselves. If information is proprietary, then it is likely that it will be limited by copyright to protect the interest of the owners. Indeed, changes in technology have meant that producers of information have been at once challenged when established mechanisms of ensuring a return on their product are threatened (one thinks of the ease of swapping files of music and movies on the Internet), and at the same time galvanized to use new media as opportunities to seek greater returns on their ‘intellectual property’ (e.g. on digitalized stocks of newspapers).

Further, there are pressures to provide information based on willingness to pay and its profitability to the producers. Together this means cheapest costs in terms of investment and maximum sales of information. A result is programming that has mass, lowest common denominator, appeal, such as soap opera television, sports and movies. In a market system, this pushes to the margins information of particular value to the democratic system (either by alternative information being prohibitively expensive or by the provision of news and current affairs in diminished amounts and at the outreaches of the schedule). Add to this the ongoing spread of information management, from politicians as well as the business community, and then social democrats have powerful reasons to distrust the information made available in democracies.

The Public Sphere

It is at this point that the concept – and its institutional expressions – of public sphere becomes significant. This idea was developed by Jürgen Habermas in the early 1960s, and it is surely one of the most striking instances of the practical influence of a philosophical notion. The public sphere has been extensively discussed elsewhere, so I do not need here to go into detail (Webster, 2006). It is an arena, independent of government (even if in receipt of state funds) while also being autonomous of economic interests, which is dedicated to open-ended discussion and debate, the proceedings of which are open to entry and accessible to scrutiny by the citizenry. Habermas (1989) offered a historical account, but here it will be enough to make a few observations about its recent pertinence.

My view is that many of those who favour state subsidy of informational activities articulate their defence in terms of a ‘public service’ ideal that owes much to Habermas’ notion of the public sphere. The argument is that large private corporations have developed market practices in ways that thwart effective democratic engagement. Against this, other institutions have emerged that rely on state subsidy for their continuation. At the heart of their defence is the view that they support the supply of reliable information so that discussion and debate may be conducted at the optimal level. This is crucial, attest supporters, so that democracy may thrive and discussion and decision-making may take place that is informed by reliable information and the deliberations of democracy made available to the widest possible public.

Those who support public service institutions such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Office of National Statistics (ONS) routinely argue that they offer what the market cannot deliver as regards information. The range, depth and reliability of, for example, news and current affairs programmes on the BBC are superior to what one might expect from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (and, runs an important argument, the public service ethos of the BBC has exercised a positive influence on commercial rivals at home). Similarly, it is thought inconceivable that commercial organizations could deliver what the ONS offers in terms of statistical portraits of how we live today.

Moreover, it is essential for them to have autonomy not just from market pressures to provide this public service, but also to be at arm’s length from government so that they may resist efforts at information management that are widespread in politics today. In 2008, a motive to insulate the UK Statistics Authority from political interference – though it is entirely reliant on public funding – was to separate it from a government department and provide it with the independence that comes with being answerable only to Parliament as a whole.

In Britain especially, the idea of public service has a great deal of congruence with public sphere conceptions. To be sure, the meaning of public service has shifted over the years. But at its heart is found a reluctance to admit market practices since they can jeopardize the mission of the organization, a commitment to impartiality and disinterestedness in terms of information that is generated and made available, a necessary autonomy from politics albeit that income comes predominantly from the public purse, and a self-perception that those who find employment in such organizations are motivated by a vocational calling to serve the commonweal.

This is inevitably an idealized version of public service institutions. On the ground things are a good deal messier and it is not unusual to come across careerists, political interference, and a falling from professional standards. Nonetheless, it is also easy enough to find in national statistical services, public television, museums and art galleries, and even in the education system, adherence to these sorts of belief. It may appear grandiose to formulate things in this way, but such public service institutions can find legitimacy in the claim that they provide an informational infrastructure without which democracy would be less healthy than it is.

The Demise of Public Service Institutions?

There is widespread agreement that public service institutions have been under siege over the last generation or so and with this there has been an accompanying assault on their distinctive contributions to information and democracy. There is a range of reasons for this, including the following.

• The widespread dislike of taxation increases pressure for reductions in public expenditure. Public service institutions are dependent on state funds, hence on tax revenues, and they are thereby in the front line when policies of reduced public expenditure are proposed.
• This combines with suspicion of non-commercial organizations in a market society. The retreat of collectivism since the early 1980s and the advances of market practices pose challenges to organizations that can appear as quasi-socialist institutions insofar as their income comes from the state.
• A related attack on public service advances the view that they are aloof from the ‘real world’ in that they were cushioned from market disciplines, thereby assured of continuity however poorly they perform.
• Consonant with this immunity from the market is the accusation that public service institutions are self-serving and élitist. They have a vested interest in increasing their revenue (hence increasing public taxation) since this has led to their own expansion and aggrandizement and they are also élitist in that they are not answerable to customers since they are aloof from market disciplines. To some this has meant that employees of public service institutions are not giving customers what they want, but instead are presumptuous in offering what they as employees feel their ‘clients’ are in need of. Such a ‘nanny’ attitude is said to be widespread in public service institutions such as libraries and the BBC.
• Indeed, many of the pressures upon public service institutions have come not from audiences, but from politicians who set the budgets. Critics of public service criticize this political interference while bemoaning the lack of answerability of ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• List of Contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: Media perspectives for the 21st century
• Part I Media in the Contemporary Age
• 1 Information and Democracy: The Weakening of Social Democracy
• 2 The Transformation of Political Communication
• 3 What Does Information Technology Imply for Media Effects Research?
• 4 Infotainment Inc.: The Ascent of a Global Ideology
• 5 Emotions in the Media and the Mediatization of Traumas
• 6 Media, Migrations and Transnational Cultures
• Part II Communication in the Digital Era
• 7 From Mass to Networked Communication
• 8 Media Life
• 9 Consumer Culture and New Media: Commodity Fetishism in the Digital Era
• 10 How Does the Internet Change Journalistic Investigation and How Should Communication Science Deal with this Issue? A Multimethod Approach for Researching Journalists' Investigative Work in Tv, Radio, Printed Press and Online Media
• 11 Philosophical Linkages between Public Journalism and Citizen Journalism1
• 12 Toward a New(er) Sociability: Uses, Gratifications and Social Capital on Facebook
• 13 Minding the Digital Gap: Why Understanding Digital Inequality Matters
• Index