Papers

The role of the media consumer in the public sphere in the age of information

Pedro Silva¹
psilva@sfsu.edu

8 November 2006

In The international commercialization of broadcasting, [5] explains the process of exporting the American model of the media into the rest of the world. Simply put, the problem is one of geometric proportions: the advertisement-based revenue model first tested with the radio and later on put into full practice with television implies a commoditization of the media, which in turn puts the strain on the demand-consumer outlet. In other words, expansion is the key to ensuring continuing growth of revenue. And since growth of revenue is the legitimate end of an economic value system, the internationalization of commercial broadcasting was inevitable.

But if the rest of the world did not follow commercial broadcasting initially, what were its effects on their model? In fact, what was their model?

[4] first proposed the public sphere concept, meaning "first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion is formed [with] access guaranteed to all citizens" (p. 49). [3], however, explained its dynamics with the media: he opposes the liberal free press theory to the public service model. The liberal ideal, he argues, is undercut by conditions of oligopoly created by the market; and political communication is manipulated by private ownership. Furthermore, he sees a contradiction between market-driven economic and social political value systems: the individual is a producer-consumer unit in one, with profit being the main concern; however, the individual is a responsible citizen in the other, and the public good is the legitimate end. The public service model attempts to insulate himself from state control but disregards political control and economic social relations, while assuming political social relations.

[5] demonstrates how the European public service broadcasting model was undermined by economic forces at work. He is not, however, without a bias: the perspective of cultural imperialism practiced by the USA comes through his work. Expectedly, the word bourgeois and its marxist connotations is used frequently.

Slightly out of fashion nowadays, cultural imperialism has been progressively been substituted by theories of globalization first, and currently of American cultural supremacy [1]. He argues that this cultural supremacy has subsided over the years not because of structuralist reasons, as [5] proposes, but due to American broadcasters's ünderstanding and adaptation to European cultures (...) They have adopted a regional strategy and adapted their organizational structure to the international nature of the (...) market" (p. 48). What [1] fails to explain is how his model addresses the disappearance of the public sphere. This is obviously not at all what [4] had in mind. Unless we can consider current American cultural supremacy as a liberal free press modelof the public sphere. Some have proposed that a drastic increase of information and communication possibilities would create an information-based society where the citizen could again regain its role of responsible political actor.

[2], however, considers such arguments invalid, due to the ässumption that new technologies will increase general access to information and open up new possibilities of two-way communication" (p. 244). This looks to me as a striking example of why a "point can be made as to the importance of technical knowledge in discussing matters of non-technical significance, but relating to technology [6,p. 5]. The Internet has obviously fulfilled, or has the potential to, whatever expectations proponents of a liberal free press theory had in the first place.

References

[1]: Jean K. Chalaby. American cultural primacy in a new media order: A european perspective. International Communications Gazette, 68(1):33-51, 2006.
[2]: Phillip Elliot. Intellectuals, the 'information society' and the disappearance of the public sphere. In P. Schlesinger and C. Sparks, editors, Media, culture and society, volume 4, pages 244-6. Academic Press, London, 1982.
[3]: Nicholas Garnham. The media and the public sphere. In P. Golding, G. Murdock, and P. Schlesinger, editors, Communicating politics, pages 45-53. Leicester University Press, 1986.
[4]: Jurgen Habermas, Sarah Lennox, and Frank Lennox. The public sphere: An encyclopedia article. New German Critique, (3):49-55, Autumn 1974.
[5]: Herbert I. Schiller. Mass Communications and American Empire, chapter The international commercialization of broadcasting, pages 94-103. Beacon Press, Boston MA, 1971.
[6]: Pedro A. Silva. On the 'acoustical properties of ether' and radio, or paradoxes of neotechnics in communications research during the early-mid 1930s. Unpublished, September 2006.

Footnotes:

¹Broadcast and Electronic Arts Department, San Francisco State University

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On 24 Apr 2007, 23:50.