A rchive Date
[ 04-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Political Science ]
|
[Politics of The Global Economy
The State, Freedom of Expression and Mass Media
The Division of Labour in Democratic Discourse
Notlimah Hsineved 22/03/2019
Social critics are skeptical of the prospects for democracy under conditions of modern social conditions of complexity and pluralism. They see reasons for such pessimism, primarily, from the perspective that perceives a failure of parliamentary systems to effectively adapt to ongoing social and economic forces; and, one that is spurring globalisation forward at its current breakneck pace. It would seem that a new and global model or framework is required to address the increasing forces of social change among nation states.
In addition to the social and economic forces, the pace of technological advancement reveals itself as a pivotal point in the growing trend toward globalisation.
Media and Communication
Voting and representative institutions emerged in response to conditions that had made previous models of government rule seem irrational, ineffective, and open to manipulation - with respect to social and cultural conflicts.
Participatory models of democracy evolved out of representative democracies. It advanced the idea that face-to-face type assemblies and town hall-like meetings were more effective means of addressing social/political issues. This have may have been so for non-urban areas. However, as a model it becomes increasingly ineffective or inappropriate for large scale and complex urban centres. This weaknes of participatory models is very apparent when applied to nation states; and, one that multiplies proportionately on a broader global scale.
Theorists, such as Robert Dahl, call for the transformation of society beyond the mechanisms of voting and representation, specifically, as response to globalisation and the effects of electronic mass media on how we perceive political debate and communication.
They believe that, even if the traditional areas of democratic influences are not realised or transformed within the national state or print media spheres, there is a need to rethink democratic ideals if they are to be made feasible and more effective in their response to governing and problem solving under new social conditions. (pg 47)
The Division of Labour in Democratic Discourse
It is critical to democracy to analyse and understand how other institutions, such as the media, influence the conditions in which political discussion, persuasion and communication occur. The consequences of changes in technology and media (and the increasing need for expertise in the area of social or political communication) are all representative of influences that are discernible within the cognitive and communicative division of labour. That is, they provide the conditions necessary to rational discussions and debate about social and political issues.
Experts
The cognitive division of labour (in science and, in other areas as well) produces expert knowledge, the content of which is often beyond the scope of the average person to test or evaluate. And, as technological transformation entrenches itself in society and become a part of state institutions and social conventions, political relationships alter accordingly.
Citizens may no longer see themselves as being free and autonomous agents who can directly rule themselves and control their shared circumstances of a common life that is interwoven, inter-related or co-dependent. Rather, they seem to co-exist in political relationships that, increasingly, drive a need for asymmetrical and salient information gathering and manipulation – aided by ever evolving technologies.
A familiar consequence of such changes is that political communications now take place in a mediated manner. Instead of addressing each other in a face-to-face manner, most such communication takes place in the form of pre-packaged communiques by ‘expert communicators’ for audiences that have very little opportunity to alter the course of the exchange or communication.
That is, deliberative, reasoned public dialogue or communication is no longer simply concerned with merely stating a premise, building an argument and offering a possible conclusion as being true, or a truth. Public debates and discussions are now more agenda driven and require mediation to get countervailing views across in such an environment.
Critics, such as Bohman, argues that this communicative division of labour threatens to undermine the quality of communication by introducing distortion and manipulation since the goals of mass media are “not to promote democracy but, rather, to shape communication to gain greater market share or to further the goals of the paying customers”.
As this division of labour reshapes the possibilities of democracy, it becomes readily apparent that its influences are unfavourable to the demands of deliberative democracy that attempts to make politics more rational.
“In the face of social conditions of pluralism, complexity and inequality, advocates of deliberative democracy develop a critical and reformist dimension through proposals that seek to broaden the potential of self-rule of citizens through the public use of reason”.
Deliberative Democracy
A criticism of participatory democracy is that it begins from basic assumptions of liberal or libertarian forms of democracy: that constitutional freedom and equality is attainable through self-rule of the citizens.
This, reason tells us, that a civil, democratic and constitutional state based on ‘mere self-interest or preference aggregation’ is itself flawed, or a best – a house of cards.
From a reformist perspective, deliberative democracy proposes a reasoned and critical examination of democracy, its politics, mechanisms, institutions and other underlaying assumptions and presuppositions. There seems to be a view of bringing about a new framework in which to redefine the nature or role of democratic principles as it applies to the modern nation state and in a more global context.
One of its propositions is that reasoned political decisions become progressive when they are made through public deliberations; and, to reach this stage a civil society requires men who are free and equal citizens.
That is, when based on a deliberative process of reasoned arguments and dialogue, plebescites are likely to become everyday and commonplace methods and means of addressing all social and political issues, hopefully, in a non-confrontational manner. But, are they going to be any more effective in governing a complex modern state along the lines of liberal and democratic principles?
All of which presupposes an informal public sphere, a vibrant civil society and, as well as, formal spheres and institutions that are hospitable to deliberation to decision making.
In addition, there is also the assumption that, an informed populace can or is representative of a rational, deliberative political being that will, more often than not, set aside personal self-interests for the greater aggregate self-interests of the political entity, the state.
However, “The social asymmetries inherent to the communicative and cognitive division of labour threaten to short-circuit the deliberative process, making it impossible for citizens to have equal opportunities to influence many decisions, to express opinions freely and effectively; and to have their reasons fully and fairly considered”.
The economic basis of liberal capitalism is not merely wealth accumulation, material production or control of the means of commodtisation. It includes, as well, the utilisation of social symbols as ways of controlling or regulating the flow of social or common knowledge within the Public Sphere. Communication is, after all, a key bond of all societies.
A conception of deliberative democracy appropriate to societies such as our own cannot ignore the benefits and necessity of division of labour. However, it requires that we imagine a society that is even more democratic and deliberative than any current model or historical example. It is a notion that demands a public that is deliberative and open to any public form of deliberation.
Media, Communication and Experts
The problems for advocates of deliberative democracy:
- How to determine communicative advantages and prevent political rule or social domination from becoming some form of technocracy?
- What will the scope of expertise entail; and are there to be limits placed on the number and types of experts?
- What will be their spheres of influence? (pg 48)
Democratic Enquiry and Communication
The cognitive and communicative division of labour in democracy combines public deliberation as guides into social enquiries.
Hilary Putnam says, “All cooperative activity involves enquiry. The regulation of means and ends has more to do with determining what is acceptable to those participating in large collective and cooperative enterprise than with approximating some ideal state of full causal knowledge”. (1994, 174)
In contrast, there is Hempel’s conception of the masterful engineer who chooses the optimal solution to a problem of design. For, the ideally rational action in a state led by deliberative rationality would require that the actor have a “range of permissible solutions, clearly defined and delimited. The relevant probabilities and utilities are precisely specified and, even the criteria of rationality to be employed, is explicitly stated. Such a person or engineer would be in little need of cooperation, only acquiescence. Such a communicator would only need to employ the proper scientifically informed strategy to convince others of the worthiness of their goals.” (Hempel 1965, 481)
In addition, experts do not meet Hempel’s criteria of rationality. While they may know more about their areas of expertise, they fall short of improbable, illdefined or overly idealistic conditions regarding social problems of immense complexities.
The human condition would appear to be without the parallel capability or computional means of modeling the infinite amounts of complexities that would be required to provide definitive or determinate knowledge; and, so it becomes easier to reject expert advice about options or criteria. (pg 49)
In any model of democracy, the problems posed by conditions of non-cooperation cannot be resolved through the introduction of a masterful engineer. "No actor or group can stand proxy for the whole since the inputs of non-cooperators always remain a constant-variable that is defined by it nature to be uncontrollable and indeterminate, regardless of the degree of social coercion or costs applied”.
Citizens must at least have a reasonable degree of expectation of being able to influence the deliberations and discussions if they are willing participants – such as success. Or, if unwilling or uninvolved bystanders or spectators, reasons can be found to discursively reject both the substance of any communication or the way of being addressed. If mediated communication, rejection of a mode of address undermines its strategic expectation: that it will be successful.
Bohman argues that there clearly exists within the framework of deliberative democracy a potential for influencing the asymmetrics of social interaction. Democracy, as a form of cooperative enquiry, requires that we refocus our thinking about the nature and utility of a civil, modern state.
We must deliberately seek out the best forms of social knowledge that exists, not only in public, but also as a part of the social fabric of a civil society. That is, when the dominant forms representing social institutions or a class, such as experts, it becomes apparent that they are master engineers – but only in a few narrow social or scientific fields.
Experts find themselves into positions where their expertise has an influencing role on decision-makers; and in the process, innumerable, unexpressed, lesser heard voices or non-dominant ‘experts, expertise and opinions’ are often overlooked. There would then seem to be a need to question the wisdom of applying the rationality of scientific methods to the human condition of civil society. When such standard are applied they set out to achieve complex and stable forms of knowledge that is dependent on ongoing cooperation in which the objective is clearly for the purpose of defining ideal social conditions and acceptable courses of action.
The need for mutual knowledge and the basis for future cooperation place normative constraints on those who participate. It governs through conditions of publicity, acting as filters on some forms of strategic information or behaviour while, simultaneously, offering opportunities for self-interested and non-cooperative acts of defiance.
This applies to the actions of experts and other cooperators as a whole and not to any specific actions or situations. There then remains “considerable degrees of uncertainity regarding the credibility of expert knowledge that is acquired through the cooperative division of labour itself since a reliance on coercion undermines any advantages of cooperative enquiry”.
John Dewey claimed that in the democractic division of labour everyone is an expert in some area or other. From his perspective, an efficient distribution of the cognitive resources of a community or group idealises everyone’s social interdepence: ‘if each member has to know everything that the group, as a whole, knows they then become ‘omni-competent individuals’.
This was a position that was later critised by Walter Lipmann who characterised such a group as “all knowing less than a group in which the division of labour accommodates the cognitive limitations of individual agents and provides a way to overcome them by a certain degree of specialisation”.
In order for all to know more than each member singly, agents must ideally cooperate by engaging in enquiry as a joint venture. “For all to know more, independent actions of each are necessary and may not be monitored by others without loss of knowledge of efficiency. The advantage of the division of labour is that it makes “the social actor dependent on the actions of many others so that the outcome of the collective enterprise depends on the necessary action of others that cannot be immediately controlled or predicted with certainity”.
This requires trust of the sort that is pervasive of all cooperative enterprises …. But hardly unique to the cognitive division of labour”, argues Williams. The problem is that this dependence on trust may turn into a monopoly on knowledge and an enormous advantage in gaining political influence. (pg 50)
Experts make special demands on cooperators in cognitively organised groups. What is unique to expertise is that others may not be in a position to monitor and srutinise the expert, even if the opportunity was available. Additionally, most experts are not able to judge the results of of experts outside of their own sub-fields of expertise. In this way, the division of labour creates a pervasive asymmetry of competence and access to information as necessary conditions that filter through to every aspect of the ordinary life or situations of the social life – the public spheres and institutions.
It is not only a question of access to information but also of that of interpretation. Labour is more than simply delegated tasks. Rather, it is not the “delegating of tasks that we could do ourselves at the cost of time but the giving of tasks that we could not do at all to others. The proliferation of gent/principal relationships of modern societies may work to undermine the advantages of the division of labour for democracy by creating a passive citizenry of princial/clients to agents/experts who are responsible for regulatory control of vast areas of social life”.
Scientisation of Politics
Jurgen Habermas outlines three models for the relation of scientific expertise to political decision-making, summed up as the scientisation of politics. The first two are hierarchial with experts or politicians at the top. The technocratic model gives experts the task of elaborating the consequences of various techniques to arrive at optimal strategies for control. The non-deliberative model sees expert knowledge as an instrument for ends independently decided upon by politicians.
Dewey position presents a third view – an interactive model in which the division of labour more deliberative and democratic. For a strict separation to exist between the functions of politicians and experts it has to be replaced by an area of critical interaction between, not them but the rest of the general public as well. This then necessitates the need for mediators, another layer of experts and expertise whose primary objective or purpose rest on an obligation or accountability to the larger public that they serve.
That is, mediator would replace or supplant politicians and their particular range of expertise by being in a position to exert sway and influence in democratic processes. By default, having greater access to all sources of information and the ability to regulate its flow, elevates the role of mediators. This then assigns to them the right or privilege of testing various techniques and making reports based on their degree or level of expertise.
However, with a scientific or materialistic view towards ends, what is accomplishable through strategies must also be cognizant of shared interests, norms and values. This requires that in an interactive model, democracy is inherently based and dependent upon extensive and reciprocal communication existing between all persons.
Perhaps, the potential tendency of the mediative model to lean towards technocracy and anti-rationalism are reasons enough to avoid it since, in a civil society what is deemed acceptable or permissible is not of a determinate or static nature. It is, for such reasons that mediated communication has the potential to ‘dehumanise’ the norms of publicity.
It allows for the filtering of reason in such a way that eventually only mediated communication becomes available to the public. In this way, the ability of all others to effectively influence public decision-making is minimised or neutralised by the mediators of communication and information. A mediated deliberative society is just another model of a technocracy with deliberative, democractic principles as underpinnings of its foundation. (pg 51)
However, it requires more than a public sphere or institution for such critical interactions to occur. A mediated public sphere that is deliberative infers the education of others through some means of communication. This then, obviously, further necessitates the need for more experts to educate the public so that they to can gain the capacity to discern the truth about society and its power structure – through the use of deliberative, mediated, mass communication.
The problem, as some see it, is that for democracy expert knowledge not only produces dependence (by virtue of its social nature) but also deference: Science improves deliberation only if it produces gains that are different in kind from lay knowledge, even when supplemented by public discussions.
Differences between expert and lay knowledge is what make the interaction between the two difficult and introduces the need for mediators, seem as, necessary if successful resolution to social problems is to occur.
- All experts and laypersons share some common background or culture, including political culture.
- Informed citizens can overcome their lack of internal knowledge of the expert’s framework by acquiring a reflexive knowledge about the origin and character of such social frameworks as a whole.
How, is the question that begs an answer? Dewey discussed communication between expert knowledge and public opinion as the solution to the problem of the democratic division of labour without explicitly stating how this comes about.
According to Bohman, Dewey underestimates the logical, interpretive and social difficulties of such communication, especially the problem of strategic manipulation that remains within both the deliberative or technocratic models of civil society, as it does as well with any previous models than can be empirically studied and examined.
“Not only is it difficult to translate scientific knowledge so as to make it more publicly accessible. It is also difficult to translate practical questions and public problems back into the framework of scientific discourses. If the public of laypersons is not to become politically-incapacitated, they must create the means for mobilising against such social and technological tendencies. Counter-knowledge draws on the pertinent forms of expertise to make its own translation”. (Habermas 1996,372)
The ability to make such translations permit citizens to contest expert policies that affect their everyday life; and so, the opportunity to make decisions and judgements without deference to experts still exists, in a deliberative and democratic fashion.
The social distribution of knowledge is itself a solution to a social problem: the limitations of resources and human cognitive abilities. The difficulties that arise from applying scientific or materialistic paradigms highlight a growing trend. In that there appears to be a push toward nation states that will all seek to gain an edge over each other in ‘virtual battle’ models. Experts with access to vast amounts of intellectual rights and properties will, through expert mediators and negotiators (and, hopefully, politicians, educators and employers and other public officials) issue communiques, policy statements, memos, directives and press releases that inform the masses that the decisions have already been made and put into implementation.
Public crises involving expert authority show a deterioration within a state when mediated communnication becomes more typical - in an age in which science is seen not as being collectively beneficial; or, when beneficial, not widely avaiable. It signals a breakdown in communication mediated through the public sphere between experts and affected citizens.
“When communication is restored, by creating situations of public dialogue, the cooperative basis for the division of labour is re-established as well. Cooperators seek to redefine the relevance of experts’ knowledge with a regard to the needs, activities and consent of a wider public. If experts do not incorporate such publicly accessible and acceptable definitions of their activities the social basis of their own knowledge then becomes increasingly uncertain. By defining expert knowledge through its social consequences, laypersons can shape the very knowledge that is produced and make it accessible as a shared resource ”.
Current social movements are doing just that in the public spheres. In that context, the problem of cooperation requires the maintaining of credibilty and legitimacy more than trust. It encompasses the creation of communication across divergent frameworks and interests among experts and laypublic rather than the embedding of of expertise in a larger social context of informal interactions or civic engagement.
Expert institutions have their own embedded pattern of social interaction that is often intramural and limited to those within a particular profession or community. It is within such a structured, deliberative environment that expert scientific enquiries are expressed normatively, as it pertains to a particular community – a sub-culture that is somewhat outside the common purview of the larger public.
The relevance or application of scientific methods to social issues by experts is not merely a question about the democratic division of labour. Nor is it a question of whether science is or can be ‘republic’.
According to Michael Polanyi, “It is an enquiry into how to establish credibility and authority across communities of enquiry, each with their own interests and intersecting but often conflicting criteria of relevance and judgement” (Warren 1996). That is, the application of expert opinions to social issues makes it political. That then generates the need to insert a layer of mediators to engage cooperators or agents of the larger public sphere in deliberative discussions in a democratic fashion for general common and social ends.
The division of labour is required whenever expert knowledge has a larger social context, beyond the context of scientific enquiry or enterprise purely for the sake of scientific enquiry. Social science, however, encompasses and defines the socialising (politicising) nature of science in the context that it involves a public that is more than just simply scientists and experts.
Science contains within itself the very same social and political aspects of the rest of society; and so it is reflective upon society as well. It is not effective simply because of its collective expertise or “ability to use the impersonal forces of nature and machines” but also “because it requires the enlistment and aid of many different groups and occupations – all of whom are necessary participants in other large scale public or collective projects themselves”.
In any large-scale enterprise, there are many points at which ongoing cooperation of many different people and groups is required for a project to move forward. At each of these points, non-cooperation threatens or forces a less hierarchical, authoritarian and more decentralised or democratic process.
The democratisation of expert authority requires more than the endorsement or acknowledgement of efficiencies in the division of labour. It forces us to shift our understanding of communities or researchers and to include them, as well, since they too are involved in collective enterprises. Their inclusion in social enterprises establishes and enhances the critical scrutiny of authority among experts while their political authority remains diffused and decentralised among those newly added to the enterprise. (pg 53)
Disuse, misuse or abuse of public trust (a moral resource) has the potential to bring about scarcity that can result in “asymmetries of knowledge and information that cease to set the terms of cooperation among individuals. Further, the disappearance of asymmetrical distribution of information among individuals within a social enterprise necessitates the need to make the process open to the political process”. Through decentralisation of expert authority in the wider public sphere, available knowledge when re-distributed among the aggregate loses it authoritative aspect.
Expert knowledge is no longer (if ever) exclusively in the domain of experts. It has come to be defined as, a resource shared that becomes accessible through contestation of its legitimacy to exert public authority over social and political issues and other decision-making processes that necessarily need to be deliberative and distributed widely as knowledge necessary to deliberation and debate.
The advantages of socialised expertise is that it does not violate the requirements of democratic processes or principles if all cooperators have access to deliberation at every level, including the division of labour itself, about the nature, norms and definitions involved in the activity of acquiring socialised knowledge.
Knowledge, perceived as a social resource with features not exhausted through use, highlights the political problem of how to ensure that the public is able to gain access to relevant forums in which definitions and terms are democratically and deliberatively negotiated or discussed.
Challenges by the public of expert credibility, authority or expert definitions of epistemic enterprise make them accountable, their knowledge social and shared, even if differentially distributed. This aspect or use of public reason depends on the public leveraging of non-cooperators to change the character of scientific institutions.
Current social movements are examples of the public application of reason to cross-social boundaries of functionally differentiated societies. They demonstrate that it is possible to bridge a public sphere that consists of experts and laypersons or redefine the norms of agents and principals. It is through negotiation that the necessity for hierarchy or deference to authority is relegated a lesser status in the publicly social or political relationship.
There is a need for and dependence upon a robust public sphere that raises questions about socially organised expertise and the need for expert communicators. This is especially so as typical modern public communication becomes heavily mediated and further reliant on a variety of asymmetrical forms for distribution and dissemination. (pg 55)
Mediated Communication, Expertise and the Public Sphere
As in the case of the cognitive division of labour, proposals for deliberative reform begin by accepting, as realistic, a premise that holds that the communicative division of labour is demanded by social circumstances - such as the size of the social body and the complexity of the social problems. That is, mediated communcation meets the necessary requirement of democracy that permits for a highly diverse and widely dispersed audience.
Deliberation is seen as being improved not just by widening opportunities but also by “the subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive art of communcation”. This is the task filled, in part, by professional communicators who,
“… disseminate the best available information and techniques to large audiences of citizens. With this dependence on such art and techniques of communication, the public simply need not be the object of techniques of persuasion. Rather than a mass of cultural dopes, mediated communication makes a rational public possible in the sense that ‘the public as a whole’ can generally form policy preferences that reflect the best available information”.
Based on the totality of political information that is available, and the tendency of the general public to correct media biases and distortions, it is possible to see how through mediation communication changes over time. The extent to which it applies or to what degree is dependent upon the presupposed deliberative aspect public communication.
In complex, large-scale and pluralistic societies, mediated communication becomes unavoidable if the channels of communication is broad or diverse enough to address the needs of highly heterogeneous audiences by treating issues adequately by having the public speakers in each locale vary the contents or message according to the specific demands of any particular situation.
The speed and breadth of mass-electronic media make informal methods of communication inefficient to these tasks, empirically and normatively. Non-mediated, informal communication, deliberative or not, is limited in scope and incapable of reaching a large enough audience to permit the replacing of pre-existing patterns of communication. What is apparent is that, in an environment of informality, opportunities for political influence is significantly lower outside the formal sphere of experts and their communities. The latter, through formal organisation provide themselves with access to resources that covers a wide range of communication and across existing patterns of interaction.
For this reality to change in any significant manner would require that mediated communication must cease to be the means of promoting the division of political labour while producing cognitive diversity and mutual criticism.
Mechanisms for democratically correcting problems created by the necessaity of mediated political communication appear to be of one type: “more public communication based on unrestricted free expression as the basis of public use of reason. It includes the rights of association and expression - when used to change the public sphere, to create mew public spheres or to wrest them from expert control”.
The agent and principal aspects that develop out of democratic modes of interaction between experts and their audience in the public sphere require that citizen resist the mediasation of politics, along with the technisation of experts, their expertise and communications.
For this to occur, the public must learn to challenge the credibility of expert communicators with respect to their capacity to set agendas and the framework for discussing social issues. Secondly, when cooperating with experts the public must challenge the reception of their own public communication by the media as well.
This becomes necessary, insofar as, “they must also report, represent, and even define public opinion of citizens who are strangers to each other. This self-referential aspect of public communication is achievable only by interaction between the media and public that challenges both the ways in which the public is addressed, and how its opinion is presented. Mediated communication that inhibits deliberation with the public denies the opportunity to make such a challenge when public officials and mainstream media take a position similar to each other and in opposition to the general public”. (Page 1996, 119) (pg 56)
Communicative linkages such as these are not mere contingent factors but are a part of the interaction that typically takes place in mediated political communication between media, government and an audience.
Media outlets are dependent on government agencies for much of their information, or the sources to such. This often includes public officials and political candidates who must use the media as their primary channel of communication if they are to reach the widest possible audience.
This is a relationship froth with pitfalls as is seen when public communication is manipulated or becomes effectively restricted through lack of access to government information or their sources. Such occurences then require mediation that may become inflamed as well – such as we see when “mediated interaction becomes dominant forms of communication in public and political affairs. From these are created new forms of social interaction and political relationships that, in time, re-order space and time to become structured in ways less like mutually responsive dialogue”. (Thompson, 1995, 85)
The Millian solution sought to establish a ‘marketplace of ideas’ supported by a diversity and variety of communication channels. This, however, appears to have been inadequate in that each ‘marketplace’ is capable of structuring itself along the same narrow patterns of influence they sought to address.
What is needed, it seems, is a robust interaction between the audience of citizens and the professional media over the nature and character of public opinion and the power that media itself has or exercise in defining this relationship and available forms and topics of communication.
The communicative division of labour makes possible the exercise of political power by means of communicative asymmetries in subtle and not so subtle forms of coercion, deception and exclusion. The use of this type of power does not remove the media from the public sphere. In fact it is the very nature and function of mass communication that requires that public media be held accountable for their action.
In the area of social responsibility, the public sphere, media is expected to address itself to a public audience about social and political matters, thereby, making the media public in purpose; and, if so, there is an expectation that it must be deliberative and democratic as well.
Consequently, the media is subject to the public’s definition of itself: an aggregate audience with a public identity. The publicness of media is demonstrated in the manner through which its social position, authority or ability to influence political outcomes is exercised when one acknowledges that the solution to the problem lies primarily in the hands of the public citizens and to whom mediated communication is addressed.
If the audience of structured, mediated, mass communication sees itself not as mere consumers of public messages but as a public audience that can contest public mediation and structuring of political communication it can then undermine the very conditions of publicity that its is expected to support and enhance. “In a deliberative democracy, there must be constant interaction between the media as institutions and the public to who its messages are addressed. In this interaction, it is the public who must hold the media accountable for the structural limitations on its forms of mediation”.
However, for this to occur, the public sphere must function well under conditions of mediated communication; and the public sphere only functions well if there is a public with a robust sense of its responsibility for sustaining the publicity of mediated communication. (pg 57)
The relationship of the communicator and audience is marked by asymmetries of information, agency and control. The communicator, as producer, addresses and defines the public as less well informed, if not entirely lacking, in knowledge of some expert social practice.
The audience, perceived as a gallery of bystanders who merely observe the actions of others, independently define and exercise control over the situation. This is a characterisation that applies, as well, to parliamentary institutions where politicians, classed as experts and agents, use scarce media resources, filter through selection topics and speakers to effect large-scale public communication. The aim of which is to reach a widely dispersed and politically varied audience of actors and agents
The political actor or expert’s ability to structure the contents of political communication permits the strategic manipulation of public attention toward ‘relevant social problems’. With media’s propensity to toward centralisation, the variety of concerns and possible topics of public deliberation in a heterogeneous society, some form of gatekeeping invariably becomes necessary requirement or condition.
As is the case in agent/principal relationships, producer/audience relations require normative regulation to limit structural differentials in social power. Professional standards act as balance and add objectivity that may help in establishing a type of impartiality. In a similar manner, ethical standards add balance and diversity. However, on their own “they are insufficient to overcome the tendency of any institution to act according to established patterns of problem solving … when considering a well defined spectrum of political options and plausible problem-solving strategies”.
The high cost of infrastructure for electronic mass media and the tendencies toward selectivity endow media with extensive political power – particularly with respect to defining agendas. Media power is further enhanced if the basis for media presentation of issues is itself the prepackaging of information prepared by other media professionals and expert representatives of political parties, lobbyists and interest groups.
Solutions proposed to the problem of accountability of media institutions:
A code of conduct of ethics and democratic goals, pursued by media professionals and embodied in the civic journalism movement has as its goal the promotion of the greatest amount of pluralism in speakers and channels of mediated communication in hopes of epistemic gains.
However, pluralism by itself does not solve the problem of competition for limited resource of human attention and the dependence of effective political communication on ‘winning and holding the attention of a heterogeneous audience’ that can inhibit the media from wholeheartedly committing itself to the democratic task’ (Gurevitch and Blumler 1990, 271). (pg 58)
Communication, however, is a two way process and such proposals tend to ignore another dimension to communication that is more important than regulation of political speech in a democracy: its public character. Publicity in this sense requires “democratic norms that prohibit exclusions; and a critical feature of publicity is that among citizens it entails a certain kind of reflexivity. That is, the public must think of itself as as public and be concerned with the public character of its political communications”. (Bohman, 1999a)
How can a public preserve the public character of deliberation and with it the opportunity to influence political communication? First,
“Through interaction with those institutions for whom it is a public - a self-identified public’ and aggregate audience or gallery of bystanders. The former organises its activities and speech around the rules and framework of institutions that define opportunities and occasions for public interaction. The latter, representative of a public audience that attempts to redefine itself by expanding and defining new opportunities for institutionally defined conditions of deliberation: a public that can reshape an institution indirectly by forming a new public with which the existing institutions must interact. (Dewey 1988 243)
In such a process, the communicative process organised around an institution is changed in a variety of ways – changes to agendas, re-definition of problems, alteration to problem-solving strategies, etc. Similar interactions must take place between media and its public, to not only break the close-circuit manner of political influencing, if the opportunities for deliberation and influence is to widen measurably and be more inclusive.
“Veto power goes beyond not being convinced on particular issues. It may include the rejection of removal of an issue from the public agenda, insistence on explicit definition of the audience to whom the communication is directed, and/or whole modes of communication”. In this way the actors in civil society take responsibility for sustaining the conditions of communication and maintaining its public character.
The public does not just simply change its relationship to media institutions by vigilence and surveillance of them and their practices. Rather, “it changes the patterns of opportunities for influence within the media by challenging other institutions and asymmetrical relationships directly; and thus defines itself as an active public”. (pg 59)
It is the existence of a dynamic civil society with a vibrant public sphere that opens up media institutions to public deliberation, remoulds the definition of an audience that is defined by asymmetrical relationships of information and power. It broadens he definition of influence over the means of communication.
The audience is addressed as potential agents whose influence must be calculated for, even if it is a statistically negative influence, since by definition their acceptance or rejection of any public communication plays a role in the setting of the media and political agendas, the definition of problems and the means by which the media attempts to constitute its audiences.
A need for a much broader definition of politics is required in understanding democratic discourse in societies characterised by scientific expertise and mediated communication. All forms of dependence with the potential for dominance must be exposed to the possibility of contestation so that the distinctions between the roles of patience and audience is understood and recognised as being political because the distribute power and opportunities for influence. Understood in terms of politics of the distribution of power and influence, it opens up a public process among equal citizens that can change the rules and assumptions that shape the institution on which the asymmetries depend. (pg 60)
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