Reclaiming the Media

Nico Carpentier, Bart Cammaerts

Description

At the beginning of the 21st century, it hardly goes uncontested anymore that media organisations play an important role in democracy. The main questions have now become whether the contemporary media conjuncture offers enough to our democracies, how their democratic investment can be deepened and how our communication rights can be expande. This book aims to look at four thematic areas that structure the opportunities for democratising (media) democracy. A first section is devoted to citizenship and the public spheres, giving special attention to the general theme of communication rights. The second section elaborates further on a notion central to communication rights, namely that of participation. The third section returns to the traditional representational role in relation to democracy and citizenship, scrutinizing and criticizing the democratic efforts of contemporary journalism. The fourth section moves outside of the (traditional) media system, and deals with the diversity of media and communication strategies of activists. This is volume 3 in the European Communication Research and Education Association book series.

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Communication Studies
• Political Science
• General officer
• Politics
• Media studies
• Journalism
• General
• Cultural Studies
• Democracy
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841509754
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

European Communication Research and Education Association
This series consists of books arising from the intellectual work of ECREA members. Books address themes relevant to ECREA s interests; make a major contribution to the theory, research, practice and/or policy literature; are European in scope; and represent a diversity of perspectives. Book proposals are refereed.
Series Editors
Nico Carpentier
Fran ois Heinderyckx
Series Advisory Board
Denis McQuail
Robert Picard
Jan Servaes
The aims of the ECREA are: a) To provide a forum where researchers and others involved in communication and information research can meet and exchange information and documentation about their work. Its disciplinary focus will include media, (tele)communications and informatics research, including relevant approaches of human and social sciences; b) To encourage the development of research and systematic study, especially on subjects and areas where such work is not well developed; c) To stimulate academic and intellectual interest in media and communication research, and to promote communication and cooperation between members of the Association; d) To co-ordinate the circulation of information on communications research in Europe, with a view to establishing a database of ongoing research; e) To encourage, support, and where possible, publish, the work of young researchers in Europe; f) To take into account the desirability of different languages and cultures in Europe; g) To develop links with relevant national and international communication organisations and with professional communication researchers working for commercial organisations and regulatory institutions, both public and private; h) To promote the interests of communication research within and among the Member States of the Council of Europe and the European Union; i) To collect and disseminate information concerning the professional position of communication researchers in the European region; and j) To develop, improve and promote communication and media education.
Reclaiming the Media
Communication Rights and Democratic Media Roles
Edited by Bart Cammaerts and Nico Carpentier
First Published in the UK in 2007 by
Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First Published in the USA in 2007 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427
E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2007 Intellect
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-975-2 / ISBN 978-1-84150-163-8
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons
Printed and bound by Cambrian Printers, UK.
Contents

Foreword by Peter Dahlgren
Introduction by Bart Cammaerts and Nico Carpentier
Reclaiming the media: communication rights and expanding democratic media roles

Section One Citizenship, the Public Sphere, and Media by Bart Cammaerts
Chapter One by Kari Karppinen
Making a difference to media pluralism: a critique of the pluralistic consensus in European media policy
Chapter Two by Arjuna Tuzzi,
Claudia Padovani, and Giorgia Nesti
Communication and (e)democracy: assessing European e-democracy discourses
Chapter Three by Margit B ck
Reducing communicative inequalities towards a pedagogy for inclusion

Section Two Participation and Media by Nico Carpentier
Chapter Four by Auli Harju
Citizen participation and local public spheres: an agency and identity focussed approach to the Tampere postal services conflict
Chapter Five by Egil G. Skogseth
Towards fair participation: recruitment strategies in Demostation
Appendix: the five programmes
Chapter Six by Tamara Witschge
Representation and inclusion in the online debate: the issue of honor killings

Section Three Journalism, Media, and Democracy by Nico Carpentier
Chapter Seven by Nico Carpentier
Coping with the agoraphobic media professional: a typology of journalistic practices reinforcing democracy and participation
Chapter Eight by Hannu Nieminen
Disobedient media - unruly citizens: governmental communication in crisis
Chapter Nine by Anu Kantola
On the dark side of democracy: the global imaginary of financial journalism

Section Four Activism and Media by Bart Cammaerts
Chapter Ten by Natalie Fenton
Contesting global capital, new media, solidarity, and the role of a social imaginary
Chapter Eleven by Arne Hintz
Civil Society Media at the WSIS: a new actor in global communication governance?
Chapter Twelve by Bart Cammaerts
Media and communication strategies of glocalized activists: beyond media-centric thinking
Notes on the Contributors
Foreword
We inevitably find ourselves in the position of trying to understand contemporary situations with the aid of analytic tools derived from the past, whether the issues at hand have to do with our personal everyday lives or with macro-societal issues. In any given set of circumstances, we mobilize those familiar sets of concepts, those frames of reference that we have at our disposal, and we continue in that manner - that is, until discrepancies between newer situations and older ways of thinking force us into critical reflection. With a decade or two of hindsight, we can note that this seems certainly to be the case in regard to a nexus of themes having to do with democracy, citizenship, the media and journalism. A lot of history has been taking place over a relatively short time span in these areas, and in the process, we have been witnessing a great deal of reflection and reformulation about how to understand the developments. This book is an important contribution in that process.
The overarching notion of democracy has, of course, always been problematic at some level, not least in regard to whether it has been fully achieved or remains basically a vision that requires continual struggle to be minimally attained and maintained. No doubt one s views on such matters were, and still are, in part shaped by where in the world - in what particular society - one happens to be, but sharing the same socio-political realities per se does not ensure any consensus on that matter. The ideas and ideals of democracy remain contested, and if at times we may experience this as both cumbersome and tiresome, we should keep in mind that such debate is at bottom in itself a sign of democratic vitality, not least in societies where there are legal and other barriers to such discussion. In terms of the political systems of Western liberal democracies, it has almost become a truism in many circles that it is not functioning as it has in the past. Observers record general declines in party loyalties, in voter turnouts, in engagement with issues, even in involvement with the associations and other institutions of civil society. The official arenas of democratic politics are seemingly caught in an energy crisis (though certainly the polarized climate in the United States around the Bush administration must be seen as a very important exception), while at the same time an expansive vitality is seen in extra-parliamentarian contexts. Various groups, networks, movements and NGOs are renewing political engagement in ways that are beginning to transform the very character of the democratic system , broadening its ideological spectrum and manifesting new (as well as traditional) forms of civic agency.
These developments must be understood against a backdrop of dramatic sociocultural change that is altering the conditions that have shaped Western liberal democracy. In the context of a globalizing late modernity, many of the institutional forces, life patterns, modes of relationships, consumption patterns, media milieus and their info-symbolic frameworks, and processes of identity formation - to just name a few key aspects - have in the past three decades undergone deep-seated permutations if we compare with circumstances in the first three post-war decades. While there may at times be tendencies to exaggerate the decline in old patterns and ignore the continuities that are still with us, important factors that shape the experience of society and its cultural dimensions, at the level of the individual and of institutions, have nonetheless been mutating before our eyes. In this dynamic interplay of powerful societal vectors, people s horizons of knowledge and expectation, their values, sense of belonging, perceived efficacy and overall social imaginaries unavoidably become modified.
These changes are of course connected to another obvious puzzle piece, namely the neo-liberal turn in global capitalism. We need not get involved here in discussions about which factors are the most fundamental and which are derivative of other forces; we need only to note their simultaneity and reciprocal interplay for understanding the changing situation of democracy. While there have always been tensions between the ideals of democracy and the mechanisms of capitalism, the neo-liberal era of the past quarter century has immeasurably changed the circumstances in which democracy operates. Not only do we witness very real retrenchments in the kinds of decisions that are handled by formal democratic systems with considerable power shifting to the corporate sector, but also there is a significant ideological transformation at work: democracy is increasingly being reconfigured, in conceptual and rhetorical terms, to make it compatible with a corporate view of societal development. Democratic will becomes increasingly reduced to market choice. In such circumstances, to placidly continue with our previous notions of democracy - to not see and meet the challenge inherent in this development - is to abdicate responsibility for its future.
While some of the discussions and polemics around demo