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” (177). 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 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).

Design Characteristics of A Communications Platform For a Liberal Public Platform or a Liberal Public Sphere

There are several basic characteristics of the public sphere necessary, in a wide range of democracies, to communicate private opinion and convert it into public, political opinion and later into formal state action:

• Universal intake. This does not mean that every voice is heard and every concern debated and answered, but rather that in principle anyone's situation can be considered when someone believes it requires public attention.
• Filtering for potential political relevance. This is necessary so that the public can focus on important issues.
• Filtering for accreditation. This ensures that the information communicated is credible.
• Synthesis of public opinion. What counts as public opinion varies between and among deliberative conceptions and pluralist conceptions of democracy, but some combination of clusters of individual opinion is essential.
• Independence from governmental control. Though the government can participate in explicit conversations and the administration receives instructions from their output, neither controls the platform itself.

The first and last requirements are the most controversial, for they raise the issue of so-called authoritarian public spheres. Benkler beings this section with Harbermas' descriptive definition of a public sphere and asserts that it can be liberal or authoritarian. The difference is that people in the idealized Athenian agora or New England town halls express, listen to and evaluate proposals, facts, concerns and opinions with complete freedom, while in authoritarian regimes “communications are regimented and controlled by the government in order to achieve acquiescence and to mobilize support” (181). In both cases at least some private opinions are communicated and converted into state action.

Yet when Benkler sets out to define the above criteria (182), he is only concerned with liberal democratic public spheres – not with partially independent platforms and theoretical universal intake. Such a normative notion of the public sphere suggests that it makes little sense to speak of authoritarian public spheres, for regimes that allow a political, public opinion to form and to influence or “convert into” state action are usually considered democratic. (This is of course difficult to assess, since sophisticated executives in any regime both listen to public opinion and retain their own agenda. See Case Studies below).

Basic Critiques of Mass Media

Media Concentration: The Power of Ownership and Money

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