6. Political Freedom Part 1: The Trouble with Mass Media

Summary of the chapter

Overview

The concept of public sphere can be narrowed down to the “set of practices members of a society use to communicate about matters they understand to be of public concern and that potentially require collective action or recognition”. Chapter 6 argues that the way mass media now structures these practices is limited: first, mass media offers no return loop from the edges to the core (feedback is local or one-to-one); second, it relies on a passive consumer culture rather than one of public communication. The Internet and the emerging networked information economy provide a better public platform.

Communication in the public sphere is structured not only by technical infrastructures, but also by modes of organization, economic models of production, culture (literacy, social egalitarianism, etc.), and institutions (legal frameworks, subsidies). For example, equivalent technical platforms were available in France, the UK and the US a century ago and later in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Yet active public spheres did not always emerge (although repressive regimes may have one, if political opinions spread through networks) and when they did they varied in relative elitism (UK) or populism (US). There was also great variation in who supported production hubs, whether it be the state (most countries), advertisers (CNN), combinations of both (BBC, CBC), civil society (party presses in Europe) or nonprofits (the Consumer Report in the US).