Media/Democracy : A Comparative Study [1 ed.] 9781443850087, 9781443848398

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Media/Democracy

Media/Democracy: A Comparative Study

Edited by

Alec Charles

Media/Democracy: A Comparative Study, Edited by Alec Charles This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Alec Charles and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4839-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4839-8

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................................. vii Foreword ................................................................................................... ix Natalie Fenton Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1 Media and/or Democracy Alec Charles Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 29 Social Media, Identity and Democracy Bethan Michael Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 49 Making it Easy to Resist Richard Scullion Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 69 Euroscepticism in the Berlusconi and Murdoch Press Paul Rowinski Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 81 The Use of the Web for Political Participation Karolina Koc-Michalska and Darren G. Lilleker with Pawel Suroweic Chapter Six ............................................................................................. 103 The Press and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria Mercy Ette Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 125 Media Reform in South America Cheryl Martens and Ernesto Vivares Contributors ............................................................................................ 139 Index ....................................................................................................... 143

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This collection was born out of the annual conference of the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group held at the University of Bedfordshire on 1-2 November 2012. Thanks are due to everyone who contributed to that conference, and also to all those who supported the event, including James Anslow, Michael Baker, Jen Birks, Emily Brighton, James Crabbe, Peter Dean, Donnacha DeLong, Steven Dumbleton, Natalie Fenton, Neil Fox, Ivor Gaber, Guy Gillingwater, Andy Gordon, Kelly Hallam, Michael Higgins, Kelvin Hopkins, Luke Hockley, Robin Hoey, Ethan Hopkins, Jan Howlett, Ivet Ivanova, Dan Jackson, Keith Jebb, Tyler Jordan, Robin Lustig, Lesley McKenna, Malcolm Keech, Matthew King, Natalie Law, Mary Malcolm, Carsten Maple, Mark Margaretten, Bethan Michael, Dave Miller, Billy Mulligan, Sharon Oh, David Olupitan, Stuart Price, Bill Rammell, Paul Rowinski, Ali Usman Saleem, Heather Savigny, Michele Sorice, Gavin Stewart, Mick Temple, Garry Whannel and Dominic Wring. Thanks are also due to Carol Koulikourdi at Cambridge Scholars Publishing for prompting this volume, and to Amanda Millar, Sean Howley and Emily Surrey at CSP for their support.

FOREWORD NATALIE FENTON

Rarely has the relationship between media and democracy been so centre stage. Whether in relation to media reform brought about by phone hacking in the UK (see Chapter 1), media concentration in Berlusconi’s Italy (Chapter 4) or social media and the internet as a means to increased access to information (Chapters 2 and 5), the debate on whether or not and in what form the media are related to the nature and practice of democracy is raging; and rightly so. The narrative this book relays is that the relationship between media and democracy is fraught and complex. Yes, it is vitally important, yet it is far too often over-simplified. We are frequently told that one leads to the other. In one formulation, media are seen as a pre-requisite for democracy to flourish. Several chapters in this book challenge this assumption. In another version, democracy is translated as being no more than free-market capitalism which is then seen as a direct road straight to enhanced democratisation on the gravy train of commercial media. Both present varying degrees of media determinism that forge a type of logic that leads to arguments that support the inherent liberating and democratising impact of new media forms, such as the internet, regardless of actual content or the broader context of which they are part. The chapters that follow take us through the arguments of why both these approaches are misconstrued. What both approaches all too often fail to point out is that the relationship between media and democracy also depends on the existing state of the media and of the market and indeed on the state of actually existing democracy in each individual context – where context is likely to be state-led because of the prevailing dominance of state legislatures but not state-bound due to globalisation. Thus, this relationship also depends on political culture and media policy; the nature of the economy and the market; media and communication technologies and formats as well as globalisation and social and cultural issues such as literacy, poverty, religious differences and daily rituals (Curran, Fenton and Freedman 2012). Each of these factors will have an effect on media circulation and on media consumption and they will also influence how democracy can function effectively.

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In these sets of complex relations, news media are given a particular relevance with regards to citizen participation in political life. News provides, or should provide, the vital resources for processes of information gathering, deliberation and analysis that enable democracy to function. In an ideal world, unfettered by commercial pressures of failed business models, new technology and plummeting sales and circulation figures, this would mean that news media would survey the socio-political environment, hold the government and other officials to account, provide a platform for intelligible and illuminating debate, and encourage dialogue across a range of views. This is an ideal relationship, however, and it’s hinged very much on a conception of independent journalism in the public interest linked to notions of knowledge, political participation and democratic renewal. But news media have been beset with many challenges over the last decade that have introduced considerable stresslines to these ideals. A huge growth in the number of news outlets including the advent of and rapid increase in free papers, the emergence of 24-hour television news and the popularization of online and mobile platforms, has meant that more news must be produced and distributed at a faster rate than ever before. In a corporate news world it is now difficult to maintain profit margins and shareholder returns unless you employ fewer journalists (Fenton 2010). But fewer journalists with more space to fill means doing more work in less time often leading to a greater use of unattributed rewrites of press agency or public relations material and the cut-and-paste practice now known as churnalism (Davies 2008). If you combine the faster and shallower corporate journalism of the digital age with the need to pull in readers for commercial rather than journalistic reasons it is not difficult to see how the traditional values of professional journalism are quickly cast aside in order to indulge in sensationalism and deal in gratuitous spectacles and dubious emotionalism. Set this alongside the fact that in many places, such as the UK (Media Reform Coalition 2011), there are an ever-smaller number of global media institutions dominating the media landscape; then the simple notion that more media means better democracy starts to look rather tenuous. The larger and more concentrated media empires become, the more concerned politicians are to maintain good relations with owners and senior executives and editors (Davis 2002). Parties, the police and other institutions are reluctant to investigate wrong-doing in the news media, hinder the expansion of large media conglomerates or introduce new regulation of news organisations and journalistic practice. Such patterns and relations have resulted in certain public policy areas being avoided for fear of either hostile reporting or media owner conflict. And, for the same

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reasons, politicians are more likely to discuss populist policies. As such, a media system that may have many platforms and points of distribution but is dominated by a few, powerful voices and a news media increasingly run to secure financial reward or political influence is unlikely to foster greater participation in political culture. Theories of democratic political participation have long since recognized the roles the media play in activating political citizenship and participation. Media coverage plays a significant role in creating awareness and engagement. News matters at a fundamental level to society. But a simple abundance of news, one that just assumes that the more news we have the more democratic our societies are, speaks to a naïve pluralism that has been shown to be blatantly false. More news does not necessarily help democracy, even if consumption is high, if the nature of news content serves the interests of the news industry over and above the public’s information needs. In such cases contemporary coverage can actually lead to a mood of anti-politics, thwart political participation in the public sphere and diminish democracy. Once again, it becomes clear that context is king. Partly because the relationship between democracy and media is so complex and contingent it is also never fixed and constantly open to contestation – although the terms and extent of that contestation may be constrained under particular circumstances. The media, as democracies, are not homogenous, static entities. Both are ever changing, both contain power and shape the space where power is competed for, albeit in different ways. As a consequence, both also contain difference and division as well as being subject to social forces and indeed social movements that may challenge established and vested interests. When this happens and it most often happens at the point of crisis – whether due to the failings of democratic systems or the dismal behaviour of some parts of the media – it is then that the opportunity arises to rethink the relationship between media and democracy. This book speaks to these moments: it offers a welcome depth of context, international comparison and complexity for an issue that deserves nothing less.

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Works Cited Curran, J., Fenton, N., and Freedman, D. 2012. Misunderstanding the Internet. London: Routledge Davies, N. 2008. Flat Earth News. London: Chatto and Windus Davis, A. 2002. Public Relations Democracy: Politics, Public relations and the Mass Media in Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Fenton, N. (ed.) 2010. New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age. London: Sage. Media Reform Coalition. 2011. Media and the Public Interest. Available at: http://www.mediareform.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/ 2013/04/The-media-and-the-public-interest.pdf. Accessed: 16 April 2013.

CHAPTER ONE MEDIA AND/OR DEMOCRACY ALEC CHARLES This chapter takes a broad look at the relationships between mass media forms (both old and new) and political, corporate and popular power. The issue of the phone hacking scandal in the UK has, for example, exposed the questionably close relationships between traditional news media outlets and political power; and an increasing public awareness of such relationships threatens to undermine public trust not only in traditional media institutions but also in traditional political structures. In the UK, for example, media institutions have not merely fostered a democratically healthy mistrust of (a scepticism in relation to) politicians and political parties, strategies and structures; they have also, since the 2009 revelations of parliamentarians’ often extortionate expenses, increasingly promoted a reactionary (and, some might say opportunistically cynical) distrust of the practices and processes of democracy – a distrust which has spread to encompass not only the institutions of politics but also (somewhat ironically) the media institutions which have traditionally underpinned that democracy. The feral pack (as Tony Blair dubbed the British press upon his exit from office in June 2007) have thus begun to fall upon themselves in one last desperate feeding frenzy. An alternative, however, to the continuation of the democratic functions of the traditional mass media appears for some to lie in the mysteries and promises of the internet; and yet, while the internet has undoubtedly done its bit to promote distrust in established democratic processes, it appears, in western democracies at least, to have failed to fulfil its promises of democratization through the propagation of sociopolitical dialogue. The internet has not, in effect, generated a new public sphere (a renaissance of democracy through an electronic arena for the development of popular consensus); it has instead, under the guise of populism, reinforced unaccountable and virtually anonymous structures of corporate and demagogic power, and opened the door to resurgent forms of political extremism.

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Yet what then can countries relatively new to, and developing towards, western modes of democracy learn from this? And what can the older entrenched democracies of the West learn from the deployment of old and new media in the democratic development of such nations? This collection explores these developments from both perspectives – exploring the relationship between media and democracy in Western Europe, as well as in West Africa, South America, Central Europe and the Arab region. This opening chapter specifically compares recent developments in Britain with the series of uprisings that have become known as the Arab Spring.

Humbert Humbert Humbug The veteran British disc jockey and children’s television presenter Sir Jimmy Savile died in October 2011. The following month the BBC’s flagship Newsnight programme launched an investigation into claims that Savile had been an active paedophile. By the middle of December the BBC had, however, decided to drop the Newsnight investigation and later that month the BBC included a number of Jimmy Savile tribute programmes in its Christmas schedule. In early October 2012 the BBC’s commercial rival ITV aired a documentary which advanced allegations of paedophilia against Savile. The editor of Newsnight posted onto his blog a defence of the BBC’s decision to drop the investigation but within three weeks the BBC had admitted that this blogpost contained errors. At the start of November Newsnight then broadcast an erroneous report that a former politician (whom it did not name) had committed acts of sexual abuse against a young boy. Within a week Newsnight had withdrawn this false accusation, but by this time the internet was awash with reports of the identity of this politician – and the presenter of ITV’s This Morning had handed the Prime Minister a list of alleged paedophiles (a list garnered from the internet – a list which identified the said politician) live on air. On 10 November 2012 the BBC’s Director General resigned. The police investigation into the crimes committed by Savile meanwhile expanded to encompass allegations against other public figures. On 29 September The Sun newspaper (Britain’s best-selling daily news title) had reported that a documentary was about to broadcast allegations that Jimmy Savile had abused children – or, as the paper’s headline announced, “Savile is branded paedo on telly show.” From 1 October 2012 The Sun had turned the focus of its outrage upon the BBC, reporting that the BBC had “ignored gossip” about Savile. (This now seems somewhat ironic, as the failure to ignore similar gossip would later get the BBC and various members of the Twitterati into further trouble.) In another piece

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that day, The Sun suggested that the BBC had “ignored claims by girls of 14 about sex attacks by Jimmy Savile in his Television Centre dressing room.” This line was repeated the following day: “At best, they ignored the gossip, at worst they suppressed a horribly sordid truth.” The day after that (3 October), The Sun’s leader pointed out that “no one did anything about it. Not those working with Savile at the BBC who strongly suspected he had a penchant for young girls.” On 4 October the paper reported that “the former boss of [BBC] Radio 1 knew of accusations about Jimmy Savile and child sex abuse as long ago as 1973.” On 5 October the tabloid headed its leader with the words “BBC shame.” The following day’s leader was headlined “Dodgy Beeb” – the headline another article on 6 October denounced the “Shameful silence over Savile.” Another piece that day advanced allegations of a “sex ring” inside the BBC. On 7 October the paper alleged that “many the late DJ worked with at the BBC knew he was a pervert but did nothing to stop him” – beneath the headline “Sick BBC secrets.” By 12 October the paper was citing accusations that “the BBC knew full well that Jimmy Savile had a sick lust for young girls but left victims at his mercy.” The next day The Sun’s leader spoke of the corporation’s “disgraceful complacency” and in another article repeated claims that the BBC’s “bosses knew what was happening but covered it up.” The following day (14 October) the paper predicted that “senior heads at the BBC will roll.” On 29 October The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh commented that the BBC Trust now appeared somewhat “dubiously named.” The same day the paper also suggested that “public trust in the BBC has nosedived in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.” The Sun then appeared to be battling the BBC for that trust, that connection with the public so easily broken by such scandal. In an age in which the cynicism of the populist press has contributed to the diminution of the public trust in the processes of democracy, the possession of such trust seems all the more valuable. The moral outrage of such papers as The Sun in relation to this matter masked their exploitation of this case as a distraction from practical, professional and political embarrassments. For just as the BBC were becoming enmired in the Savile revelations, so the UK press were preparing themselves for the publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report into their own practices and conduct. What better for these newspapers – and in particular for those populist titles which were rightly expecting Leveson to rap them squarely across the knuckles – than to be able to point out, by way of a distraction, the greater moral failings at the heart of the nation’s most trusted media organization – the BBC?

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Right at the start of the Jimmy Savile scandal, in its leader on 1 October 2012 The Sun had specifically observed that “the BBC is lucky not to be the subject of a judge-led inquiry.” On 10 October Jane Moore wrote in The Sun that “the vastly expensive Leveson Inquiry” should be matched by “an official inquiry for which the BBC will be asked to trawl through its own files and computer database to establish who knew what and when about the Jimmy Savile scandal.” On 11 October The Sun’s Bill Leckie had written that the Savile scandal was the BBC’s equivalent of News International’s phone hacking scandal; a week later he said that this had been “a big understatement” – adding that “if tapping into voicemails was crime enough to close a national newspaper, what’s the price for raping children?” The same day (18 October) The Sun’s leader called for “an inquiry that is completely independent and led by a judge appointed by the Government” – in other words, a Leveson equivalent that might transfer some of the heat from The Sun’s News International onto the BBC. A week later (on 25 October) Leckie again asked: “If tapping into voicemails was enough to bring down the News of the World, what price does a publicly funded broadcaster pay for aiding and abetting a paedophile ring?” Again on 26 October The Sun’s leader called for “a fully independent judge-led public inquiry” into the scandal at the BBC. On 30 October paper’s leader yet again called upon the government to convene a public inquiry. On 5 November the paper was clearly pleased to report that the Culture Secretary had intimated the possibility of just such an inquiry. Had such an enquiry taken place – and found the BBC as culpable as The Sun had been insinuating – then that paper would no doubt have again displayed the unrestrained glee it had trumpeted when in January 2004 it had reported the conclusions of Lord Justice Hutton’s public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the suicide of WMD expert Dr David Kelly. On that occasion The Sun had published the judge’s leaked findings immediately before the report’s scheduled publication, findings which had called into question the journalistic practices of the BBC. The paper had thus rejoiced that “The Sun has got its Hutton, Ship, ship, ship, hooray” – in an extraordinarily provocative reference to its own January 2004 headline “Ship ship hooray!” – reporting the case of the suicide of another controversial doctor (the similarly grizzled, bearded and bespectacled serial killer Harold Shipman). It was as if in this nasty little ditty The Sun had been clearly announcing to the British public and to the political establishment that, unlike, the BBC, it was untouchable: it not only published the leaked report but it did so in a style which brazenly invoked its own ethical impunity. When, however, by the end 2012, that impunity was looking somewhat fragile, the paper sought, in its calls for another

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public enquiry into the BBC, to distract attention from its own crisis of public confidence. Rather than seeking to restore public trust in itself (through a transparent investigation into allegations of its own misconduct and through a clear shift in editorial policies), The Sun thus elected instead to undermine public trust in the BBC – to drag its parent organization's greatest rival down to its level. If public trust (not blind faith, but a critical trust) in the news media’s establishment of a healthy dialogue between power and the people is crucial for the functioning of democracy, then this cynical exploitation of such appalling crimes undermines the possibilities of news institutions’ mediation and perpetuation of viable relationships between politicians and their electorates – for the sake of corporate commercial concerns. Rightly then might some (such as Lord Justice Leveson) come to question this newspaper’s moral authority and sociopolitical role.

Paper Tigers In 2007 the royal affairs editor of the UK’s then biggest-selling newspaper The News of the World had been sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for illegally hacking into the mobile telephone voicemail messages of members of the royal family. Between 2008 and 2011 a growing series of allegations of phone hacking emerged against the newspaper. Other titles were implicated in similar practices. On 10 July 2011 The News of the World, having been dragged down by this scandal, published its last ever edition. Three days later Prime Minister David Cameron announced the establishment of a public inquiry into the conduct of the press – and on 14 November that year Lord Justice Leveson commenced that inquiry. Following months of dramatic testimony broadcast live to the nation (including such witnesses as Tony Blair, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, John Major, Rupert Murdoch, Piers Morgan, J.K. Rowling, Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan and Hugh Grant) and further months of press speculation, the inquiry’s report was published on 29 November 2012. As Hanretty (2013, 10) has pointed out, “the reception given to the Leveson Report by newspapers was more negative than the reception given it by politicians; this in turn was more negative than the reception given to the report by the public.” Like much of the press, The News of the World’s surviving stablemate The Sun railed against the Leveson report’s recommendation of the need for statutory powers to reinforce the public oversight of a process of independent industry self-regulation. On 30 November 2012 – the day after the report’s publication – The Sun had done

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its best to undermine the integrity of Leveson’s findings – and indeed, by insinuation, even the integrity of the judge himself. It had published one story pointing out that Brian Leveson – who had “refused to answer any questions on his report” – would the following week be “leaving the political firestorm he ignited to take an expenses-paid trip to Australia.” Leveson, the newspaper said, would be giving a lecture at “a £620-a-ticket conference in Sydney’s University of Technology.” It added that he would then be giving a “free talk” at Melbourne University’s Centre for Advanced Journalism. It noted that the Judicial Office had pointed out that Lord Justice Leveson’s tour was “not at the taxpayer's expense” and that his costs would be met by the universities in question, before adding that “Melbourne University declined to say if it is contributing to the air fare for the judge’s wife, who is accompanying him.” The actual situation then was that a judge had published his report but had not submitted to a round of Q&A on the subject and was then visiting Australia to speak at an averagely priced academic conference and at a university centre of journalism, his expenses to be paid (as might be expected) by the academic organizations he was visiting. The version of events, however, suggested by The Sun newspaper’s innuendo might seem rather different: those casual readers who managed to skim only the first few of paragraphs would perhaps assume that the judge’s “expenses-paid trip” would be at the taxpayer’s expense – otherwise why would one bother to mention it? – it would hardly be newsworthy, would it, unless one were trying to undermine an opponent’s integrity by snide innuendo, to report that the judge was getting his air fare paid to allow him to speak at a conference on the other side of the world? Further insinuations accrue to this account: that Leveson was running off from the mischief he had provoked, like a guilty thing pursued, shamelessly refusing to answer the reasonable questions of Her Majesty’s press (as if judges regularly submitted to interviews on the subjects of their most recent judgments); that Leveson might somehow personally be profiting from an exorbitant registration fee for the Sydney conference; that further questions remained to be answered as to who paid his wife’s air fare. A generous interpretation might suggest that The Sun was not in fact displaying an extraordinary hypocrisy but was ironically parodying the very attitudes, practices and hypocrisies which had prompted Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry in the first place. How, after all, could a newspaper whose Sunday stablemate had behaved so outrageously that it had been forced to cease publication, and whose former editor had been implicated in phone hacking, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and the loan of a former police horse to the Prime Minister, a newspaper whose

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management has been seen by many as representing some of the most disreputable practices of the industry – how could such a publication possibly think that it could get away with such scurrilous insinuations about the well-respected senior judge who had just published a report criticizing such unethical practices? That would of course be completely absurd. Wasn’t The Sun therefore just mocking itself, and, in doing so, wryly admitting to have learnt its lesson and humbly yet humorously pledging to turn over a new leaf? Anything else would surely be a matter of the most unspeakably poor judgment and taste. The only obstacle to that interpretation is the fact that the rest of the coverage of Lord Justice Leveson’s report in that day’s edition of The Sun adopted a similarly dismissive attitude. It columnist Jane Moore argued (with a surprising degree of complacency) that “much of the criticism levelled at newspapers was about excessive practices from way back that industry self-regulation put paid to long ago” while another columnist, Lorraine Kelly, railed against the idea that Government might “interfere in Press freedom.” In a series of short opinion pieces, it gave space to Conservative MP John Whittingdale’s concerns that Leveson’s findings might eventually lead to the “government licensing of newspapers”, to former Conservative MP Louise Mensch’s attempts to assure us that Leveson had vindicated the relationship between The Sun’s publishers and the Conservative Government, a Government which would ensure that (whatever Leveson said) “our free Press will stay free”, to the Head of the Press Complaints Commission’s argument that he remained unconvinced that “statutory regulation would have prevented the horrors of the past” and to the perspective of a father of one of the victims of the al Qaeda attack upon London of 7 July 2005 that Parliament must not “start interfering and passing laws to regulate the Press in any way.” (One might recall in this context that on 8 November 2005 The Sun had featured a picture of 7/7 survivor John Tulloch on its front page alongside a headline supporting the then Prime Minister’s tough stance against terrorism: “Tell Tony he’s right.” But as Professor Tulloch told The Guardian two days later, he did not in fact support Mr Blair’s position on terrorism at all: “The Sun’s rhetoric is as the voice of the people yet they don’t actually ask the people involved [...] what they think.”) Still on 30 November 2012 The Sun went on to quote half a dozen of its readers – all of whom appeared unanimous in their belief that public regulation would undermine the freedom of the press – and that the freedom of the press was necessarily a good thing. There were no suggestions that the freedom of the rich, powerful, influential and selfappointed guardians of public morality might somehow be held publically

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accountable to the public who paid their wages. The readers of The Sun – or at least those selected by the newspaper for their comments – seemed somewhat to fly in the face of public opinion in their opposition to Leveson’s key recommendations; by contrast, a survey of the British public published by the pollsters YouGov in the immediate wake of the publication of Leveson’s report (Kellner 2012) had pointed out that “58% think new laws should be passed by MPs to encourage newspapers to join this new system of regulation; 26% oppose new legislation.” That same day (30 November 2012) The Sun cited Prime Minister David Cameron’s “serious concerns and misgivings” over Lord Justice Leveson’s suggestion that (in the words of The Sun) “it was Parliament’s job to set up an independent Press watchdog.” (It is not entirely clear, however, that Leveson’s report had recommended that Parliament do this: rather, he had recommended that Parliament consider the approval of statutory powers to allow the operation and oversight of an independent body.) The Sun also took some pleasure in pointing out that a documentary made by actor Hugh Grant (who had sensationally reignited the phone hacking scandal in a New Statesman article of April 2011), a documentary entitled Taking on the Tabloids and broadcast by Channel 4 on the eve of the publication of the Leveson report – had been watched by just over half a million viewers – in The Sun’s words, “a paltry 2.3 per cent of people watching TV” – and that this rating was “75 per cent down on the channel’s average for the time slot.” The Sun’s own leader column on 30 December 2012 argued yet again against what it emotively and misleadingly described as Leveson’s “main proposal for new legislation that could bring in State control of newspapers.” It argued specifically against the suggestion that the Office of Communications (Ofcom) might be involved in the oversight of the regulatory process on the grounds that (1) Ofcom was “unelected and allpowerful” and that (2) Ofcom was “created by the Labour Party.” It neglected to point out that Ofcom was created not by the Labour Party itself but in fact by a Labour Government. A Labour Government which had been elected. A Labour Government which, prior to its re-election in 2001, had specifically promised the establishment of Ofcom in its manifesto: “we will merge the five separate regulators into one, to create the world’s most competitive and advanced regulatory system.” In that sense, there are some who might suggest that Ofcom is closer to having a democratic mandate than, say, the media organizations controlled by Rupert Murdoch. The Leveson Inquiry proposed solutions not merely to the problems of the misconduct of certain newspapers (those problems could, as many

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opponents of Leveson argued, already be addressed by criminal and civil laws – laws, for example, against the illegal interception of private communications, or the bribery of public officials, or defamation) but also therefore to the increasing public distrust of these popular newspapers. Its proposed system of publically monitored independent regulation (a system which maintained and indeed reinforced the press’s responsibilities over its own conduct) offered a structure which might restore public trust in these institutions so essential for the preservation and development of democratic processes – that is, public confidence in these institutions’ ability to sponsor such processes. The public had, after all, never lost confidence in the populist press’s capacity for celebrity gossip and salacious scandal – people continued en masse to buy papers for these purposes – but the public perception of the ability of these organs to serve the public interest (to confront power and to empower the people) had so diminished that these papers seemed to hold little greater moral authority (and therefore little more capacity for societal good) than that, for instance, of the social networking site. Without public trust in the capacity of the most prevalent and popular organs for the dissemination of information and establishment of dialogues essential for the sustenance of democracy to serve such functions, those functions cannot be served. This cannot be good for democracy. Opinion polls showed that the overwhelming majority of the British public supported Leveson’s recommendations. Indeed those recommendations were supported not only by the Labour Party and other opposition parties but also by numerous voices within the coalition government (not just the Liberal Democrats – as a party – but also individual Conservatives) to an extent that it seemed clear that Leveson’s proposals would most likely have been endorsed in any free vote by a majority of elected parliamentarians. It therefore seems extraordinary that the Prime Minister – who had established the inquiry in the first place and who had previously pledged to implement its recommendations unless they were completely “bonkers” (The Andrew Marr Show, BBC One, 7 October 2012) – swiftly announced that he would not be implementing the said recommendations. The Prime Minister’s personal friendship with News International’s former Chief Executive Officer Rebekah Brooks had been revealed by the Leveson Inquiry: as she told the inquiry in May 2012, David Cameron signed his text messages “LOL, which he took to mean as ‘lots of love’ until I told him it meant ‘laugh out loud’.” Ms Brooks was charged in July 2012 with conspiracy to intercept communications and in November 2012 over alleged payments to public officials. Nevertheless, upon the publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report, Mr Cameron had yet again

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chosen to side with his friends in the Murdoch empire. In his response to the Leveson Report the Prime Minister informed Parliament on 29 November that “we should […] be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press” – again (as the newspapers themselves were so wont to do) equating a general freedom of expression with the continued privileging of the power of the press elite. He said that he was not convinced that “statute is necessary to achieve Lord Justice Leveson’s objectives” – on the grounds that “this would create a vehicle for politicians whether today or some time in the future to impose regulation and obligations on the press.” On 12 January 2013 Mr Cameron’s government announced its proposed alternative to the statutory underpinning and public monitoring and accountability of an independent regulatory system for the UK press, as envisaged by Lord Justice Leveson – the establishment instead of a press regulator backed by royal charter. The proposal required that any amendment to this charter would require the approval not only of Parliament but also of the three main political parties. One need look no further than the BBC to see how various governments have been able to apply significant political pressure upon that organization through the processes of the periodic renegotiation of the terms of that organization’s own royal charter; one wonders however why Mr Cameron’s proposed safeguard upon any limitation of the freedom of the press would require not only parliamentary approval (which would appear democratic) but also cross-party approval. It might be argued that any governing party with a simple parliamentary majority could abuse this power to limit press expression or even bias it in its own favour; it might also however be argued that this emphasis upon the need for the approval of the three main political parties would further empower these entrenched institutions and further marginalize smaller political parties. It might also be supposed that the evident obstacles to reaching such a consensus between the three main parties would effectively prevent the substantive development of the terms of this charter, the remits, responsibilities and powers allotted to this regulatory body. Under such circumstances the newspapers – without any need to establish their own consensus and therefore with their greater tactical agility – would have clear advantages in their relationship with such a regulator. On 14 March 2013 David Cameron called a halt to cross-party talks on press regulation, instead calling on other parties to support his plan for a royal charter. When the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats responded by sitting down to their own talks, Mr Cameron’s government then rejoined the process. On 18 March 2013 it was announced that the

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three parties had struck a deal, although the discussions on this measure crucial for democracy remained opaque, and even the deal seemed at that point somewhat ambiguous: the BBC reported that “an independent regulator will be set up by royal charter, but views vary over whether it would be underpinned by law” – adding that “Labour leader Ed Miliband and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said this would be the case, but the prime minister denied it.” As the underpinning of this body by statute was the clear point of contention in the first place, it seemed unclear what this deal represented and how it had been reached. With the exception of The Guardian and The Independent, the national press did not react favourably to the news. On 19 March 2013 the BBC noted that “most papers are hostile and [...] claim they were not represented in a meeting [...] at which the three main parties struck a deal.” (One might ask why the newspapers should have been party to the formation of a political response to a report which had in part at least been commissioned to examine the unhealthy influence of those papers on the political process.) The Metro that day advanced claims from the libertarian group Index on Censorship that this was “a sad day for British democracy.” The group expressed particular concern at the way in which the main political parties had come together to agree this policy. The problem might however not be seen as the fact that the elected representatives of these parties had reached a consensus on this issue (this seems reasonably democratic albeit hardly libertarian), but the untransparent manner in which this consensus had been reached. This situation suggests two points: (1) that democracy does not always foster libertarian, liberal or even democratic consequences (we can vote for tyranny) and those who invoke democracy as an absolute value might acknowledge this inherent failing or paradox – or accept its results; and (2) democracy cannot prosper in a culture of secrecy – democracy must be seen to be done, in order to maintain the public trust which sustains it. It seems questionable whether this essential openness might be achieved by the opacity of the response to Lord Justice Leveson’s report, in terms both of that response’s process and of its substance. On 23 March 2013 Chris Blackhurst, the editor of The Independent, published a piece in his own paper arguing that, although there seemed little alternative to the policy agreed between the three main political parties, the way in which it had been “concocted” by these parties, in collaboration with the campaign group Hacked Off, had provided “ammunition to those who are resistant to change at any price” – to those “screaming critics” who sought to continue to “defy consistent opinion poll findings, the recommendations of a judicial inquiry, and the wishes of

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the three main political parties.” Those intransigent critics would include the author of The Times newspaper’s leader that day, which lamented the “late night deal cooked up by politicians and the lobby group Hacked Off.” The same paper also that day sought to cast doubt upon the integrity of the campaign group when, in another article, it suggested that, through private donations to Hacked Off, “anonymous wealthy individuals are exerting excessive political influence.” It seemed a little absurd that a newspaper controlled by Rupert Murdoch should complain that wealthy individuals might exert such excessive influence; especially as one of the key goals of that campaign group was to reduce the abuses perpetrated by such influence. Another one of Blackhurst’s “screaming critics” – none other than the Daily Mail’s redoubtable stalwart Simon Heffer – railed that same day against the plans for the “statutory control of the press” which he viewed as coming “straight from the pages of George Orwell’s terrifying novel 1984.” (Fortunately, however, the imposition of rat-based methods of torture did not make it to the final draft of the proposed royal charter.) Once more, the reactionaries of the established press elite, unwilling to compromise an iota of their self-granted powers, reverted to that tendency for hyperbolic inaccuracy which has so often resulted in the diminishing of their reputation in the eyes of the public. It appears somewhat ironic that these institutions would be so rabid in their attempts to subvert measures designed to restore their public trust by diluting their capacity for such rabidity. Jean Baudrillard (2005, 34) has suggested that we inhabit an uncontestedly hypermediated reality which is “absolutely true, in the sense that nothing any longer stands against it.” In that they have sought to diminish the absolute influence of the mass media upon social reality, and insofar as they have attempted to re-ground the news industry within structures of public accountability, the advocates of a general desire for press regulation have – albeit in an essentially pedestrian way – advanced an improbable bid to counteract the incontrovertibly monolithic truth of this hyperreality. The press have however responded with degrees of hubris and hyperbole (paedophile nightmares and Orwellian terrors) which are both symptomatic of, and at the same time further exacerbate, the original problem: their detachment from, and disproportionate influence upon, the public experience of reality. Nor has the manner in which the political classes resorted to late night wrangling behind closed doors done much to bring the debate back down to earth or to return it to an arena of public understanding, public scrutiny and public trust. The possibility, then, of a radical renaissance in the relationship between journalism and

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democracy appears to have been scuppered by this apparent failure of the media-political elite to learn the lessons of Leveson. On 6 October 2009 David Cameron’s Chancellor George Osborne had announced a series of major public spending cuts but had pledged that “we’re all in this together.” The following day Rebekah Brooks had texted to Cameron: “professionally we’re definitely in this together!” As The Guardian argued on 4 June 2012 “the irony is that that phrase of Osborne’s was meant to show off the Tories’ fair-mindedness, their spirit of shared sacrifice. But this text from Rebekah Brooks skewers that notion, already dead, once more: it shows Cameron as exceptionally close to the top echelon of a corporate empire, permanently mindful of its concerns.” So much then for the possibility that Lord Justice Leveson might restore trust in the relationship between the press and politicians and thus foster a renewal of democracy. The absurdity of this situation is almost hysterically risible. LOL, Mr Cameron, LOL. Or, to be frank, WTF…?

Democracy and the Press Democracy can only surely prosper in a climate of information. The incompetence of misinformation and the wilful deceit of disinformation cannot provide the conditions most fundamentally required to permit a situation in which individual members of society can make informed democratic choices. Democracy therefore requires a set of media institutions (and specifically though not exclusively a set of news media institutions) which are sufficiently funded to generate competent (i.e. accurate and rigorously researched) news product, and which are sufficiently free of state and commercial imperatives and interests to speak the truth to power, or to interrogate power rather than to serve as the mouthpiece or manifestation of unelected and unaccountable power. The prospering of democracy therefore requires a pluralistic journalism which follows neither the agendas of its political or corporate masters nor the prejudices, assumptions or stereotypes propagated by its own industry. Newspapers need to sell newspapers. The Daily Mail website is, for example, a global leader (the internet analytics company ComScore has repeatedly reported it scoring more hits than its closest rival the New York Times) precisely because it is able not only to give its readers what it thinks they want but also to know what they want pretty much of the time: an ideologically conservative formulaic narrative – characterized as the voice of Middle England (or indeed of Little England). Its readers do not want to hear about the triumphs of multiculturalism experienced by

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diverse inner city communities, any more than they want to discover that the Queen of England is a foreigner or a radical, or that Gordon Brown has a PhD. They want their world views comfortingly reinforced (who doesn’t?) and the Mail – founded, as it was, by Alfred Harmsworth in 1896 – has been reinforcing and accenting such positions for such a long time that in many ways it has become their originator. Mick Temple (2010, 195-198) has suggested that press prejudice may merely articulate a broader culture of prejudice ingrained within the British populace. Yet, whether or not media prejudice is responsible for originating public prejudice, it clearly plays a key role in perpetuating and escalating that prejudice. It is in the media’s power to naturalize ideology – to make ideology appear unideological – that the press might be seen as at their most influential, insofar as ideologies are most insidious when they are least visible. The Mail is extremely good at making assumptions appear as truths; but this is, again, not necessarily the result of a conscious conspiracy of disinformation and ideological manipulation. The press as a whole subscribes to its own most successful narratives; those newspapers which survive best are those which are most closely aligned with the most popular stories, structures and perspectives. As Michel Foucault (1991, 26) points out, “power is exercised rather than possessed.” Power structurations are self-performing and self-perpetuating; societal systematization is determined not by the conspiracies of sharp-suited men in smoke-filled rooms but by the evolution of institutional, economic and ideological conditions. These structurations are, in Bourdieu’s terms (1977; 1986), collectively and objectively orchestrated by institutional systems rather than by individuals. In these terms, we are no more than the vehicles, vessels or tools of Marx’s ideologies or of Richard Dawkins’s memes. As Marshall McLuhan (2001, 51) supposed, humanity becomes no more than “the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate.” The press’s readers, journalists, editors and even proprietors may be seen to function in this role. But when newspapers only serve themselves – or when they merely parrot received wisdom (which is at best unwitting misinformation, and at worst ill-informed prejudice), then to what extent can the average newsconsumer or reader (or – to resurrect a rather old-fashioned term – citizen) attain the levels of well-informed, balanced and unprejudiced critical thinking – free thinking – which might be considered a prerequisite for democracy? If freedom of individual thought is necessary for freedom of expression, and if freedom of public expression is a prerequisite for the flourishing of a pluralist democracy, then one might argue that a pluralist news industry has a key role (and therefore a responsibility, a public

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accountability) in the propagation of freedom of thought essential to this process. When a national scandal involving the sexual abuse of minors by a deceased celebrity is exploited by the nation’s most popular newspapers (newspapers which themselves repeatedly sexualize youth and establish cults of celebrity) to bash the competition (in this case, the public broadcaster who employed the late celebrity), to increase the sales of those newspapers and to offer a distraction from allegations of their own misconduct – when it is only for legal reasons that newspapers will disdain from naming and shaming individuals against whom they have no evidence whatsoever save for the gossip of the internet – then we are perhaps beginning to witness the overt collapse of the notion of the public moral and ethical accountability of the journalistic profession and industry. We would then be beginning to witness what Keen (2008, 54) has dubbed “the degeneration of democracy into the rule of the mob and the rumor mill.” When newspapers no longer check facts because they do not have time to (as a result of escalating economic constraints and contemporary workplace practices) or because they do not see the need to (why mistrust – why question – the narrative of hatred?) or because they do not want to (newspapers aren’t in the business of facts, they are in the business of entertainment – the business of selling newspapers), then it might perhaps seem increasingly unlikely that this industry will ever again, in the UK at least, do much for the furtherance of the ideals of democracy. How many righteous tears were shed across the nation when on 10 July 2012 The News of the World said its final ‘thank you & goodbye’? Why then should we care about the fate of its counterparts? And, when the vast majority of the press have railed against the injustice of a public report and public policy that might seek to hold them to public account, have the broadsheet or ‘quality’ newspapers really demonstrated significantly greater value (in other words, a greater right to an inalienable and unaccountable freedom of the press) than their tabloid or populist rivals?

The Rite of Spring Natalie Fenton (2012) has advanced strong arguments in favour of the regulation of the UK press in order to meet the modes of moral obligation and public accountability suggested by Lord Justice Leveson’s report. Indeed Curran, Fenton and Freedman (2012, 184) have gone on to argue that a similar style of regulatory framework also seems appropriate for the internet: ‘the time has come to demand an internet that is run for the

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benefit of the public.’ In the pursuit of this goal, they have called ‘for measures – for public control of a key utility – that have been applied to other key sections of the economy and society.’ It might at this juncture usefully be noted that we should not speak of the Internet. We should instead, says James Curran, call it the internet. Curran’s point is rather less flippant than it sounds. He observes that nineteenth century liberals had once believed that popular journalism would become an “autonomous agency of rational and moral instruction” and had therefore capitalized the “Newspaper Press”. How wrong, it now seems, they were. Curran suggests that we have applied the same idealizing or fetishizing attitude to the internet, arguing that it is now time to drop the awestruck capitals and see what this medium is really all about (Curran et al. 2012, 60). The first stage of that process might be to lose the capitalization. Curran argues that the capitalization of ‘Internet’ stems from a period in which the discourse reflecting upon that medium was dominated by the notion that “utopian dreams, mutual reciprocity and pragmatic flexibility led to the building of a transformative technology that built a better world” (Curran et al. 2012, 34). Curran, by contrast, asserts that, while the internet might indeed one day assist in the construction of a better world, “the mainspring of change will come from society, not the microchip” (Curran et al. 2012, 12) and that therefore those who maintain faith in the idea that the internet’s impact will “follow a single direction dictated by its technology” fail to understand that this impact is in fact “filtered through the structures and processes of society” (Curran et al. 2012, 9). Curran explodes the technologically determinist fantasies of the internet and, in doing so, usefully counters some of the resurgent utopian cant which has, for example, arisen in connection with the uses of new media technologies by the activists who led the Arab Spring uprisings. He argues against the analyses of those events which have emphasized “the enabling role of communications technology, while paying little attention to the past or to the wider context of society” (Curran et al. 2012, 51) and supposes instead that “the Arab uprisings were the product not of Twitter and Facebook but of dissent fermented over decades” (Curran et al. 2012, 52). The suggestion, however, that media do not in themselves deliver democracy does not mean that such media have no role or responsibility in the furtherance of democracy. Their role can be crucial, but only insofar as they are deployed towards a democratic effect; such media are not democratic in themselves, nor do they in themselves necessarily move a society in the direction of democratization; they may therefore be measured not in terms of their inalienable rights to absolute freedoms but

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in terms of their public responsibilities (and the processes by which they may be held to account for their adherence to those responsibilities). Media are morally neutral tools; they are not inherently good or bad – which is to challenge any position which suggests that their powers should go unquestioned or their rights considered sacrosanct. At the start of the twenty-first century internet entrepreneurs, governments and academics alike were making much of the revolutionarily democratic potential of Web 2.0 as the foundation for a new public sphere which might foster civic participation, dialogical citizenship and consensus politics. A decade into the century, more cautious voices had begun to exert a powerful influence over the academic discourse relating to this subject: many studies had shown that internet use in itself did not appear to affect levels of political participation (see, for example, Gibson et al. 2004, 3). Indeed the growth of the internet appeared to coincide with a period of increasing disaffection with politics in western nations. Other studies raised concerns as to the reinforcement and centralization of political and corporate power afforded by the internet (see Bynum and Rogerson 2004, 6). Such writers as Zizi Papacharissi (2010) and Evgeny Morozov (2011a) have influentially questioned an unbridled cyber-utopianism; and even emerging from out of the world of the internet industry itself, such figures as Andrew Keen (2008) have challenged their peers’ continuing claims as to the communitarian, egalitarian and democratizing power of their medium. The events which started in Tunisia in December 2010 and which spread across the Arab region began, however, to foster some measure of a renaissance in cyber-utopianism. Such luminaries as Stuart Allan (2011) and John Downing (2012) have reiterated an optimism for the democratic potential of new media in response to the uses of such technologies by the democratic revolutionaries in this region for the mobilization of popular action. Khamis and Vaughn (2011), for example, argued the increasingly popular notion that “the success of the Egyptian revolution, and the effective role that new media played in it, has broad implications [...] throughout the world.” Yet it has become increasingly clear in these post-revolutionary nations that Web 2.0 has not established a dialogical political consensus, and that the public sphere, such as it is, remains a violent, turbulent and resoundingly material space. Within this context, it seems that new media technologies may not have represented a primary cause of democratic agitation (as a site for the development of political consciousness, debate and consensual strategy) so much as a practical catalyst, a useful tool for the mobilization of flash demonstrations and for the dissemination of

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information and images to international news organizations (and indeed one which could be replaced by more traditional, low-tech tools when the internet was not available: as was seen, for example, in the case of the Egyptian uprising). The Libyan author Hisham Matar has, for example, argued that the role of social media in the Arab Spring has been overstated by media commentators (Singh 2011). Matar has suggested that “the Egyptian uprising didn’t happen on Facebook or Twitter because it couldn’t have happened without the working classes, and they don’t have access to those things. But it allowed the agile, internationalist elite to mobilise and play to the international media.” Matar has added: “Social change takes a very long time. The internet is one of very many different tools and I don’t think it’s always going to make or break an uprising.” As Chehib and Sohail (2011, 155) have suggested, “social media itself cannot be termed as a trigger for the revolutions.” They stress that in the Egyptian uprising of 2011 “social media’s main role was as a facilitator and an accelerating agent.” Courtney Radsch (2011, 80-81) points out that in the months leading up to Egypt’s uprising the Egyptian blogosphere, while reflecting a political situation that was clearly “combustible”, lacked a revolutionary spark – and that this spark was provided by the Tunisian uprising – despite that fact that such combustibility was not particularly evidenced in Tunisia’s own blogosphere. We may infer, therefore, that it was not the blogosphere itself which set the region alight. Indeed Morozov (2011b) has added that while “it’s been extremely entertaining to watch cyber-utopians [...] trip over one another in an effort to put another nail in the coffin of cyber-realism” those cyber-utopians who think the Arab Spring was ignited by activities on social networking websites are ignoring “the real-world activism underpinning them.” In September 2011 BBC journalist Mishal Hussain presented a twopart documentary about the Arab Spring entitled How Facebook Changed the World. What is notable about Hussain’s documentary is how (despite its title) it demonstrated that social networking sites were perhaps most significant not in fomenting revolution internally but in their capacity “to show the outside world what was happening.” Hussain also repeatedly emphasized the limitations of the virtual revolution. She pointed out that in Egypt only 20 per cent of the population had internet access, and explained how, when net access was prevented, calls for protests had been sent not through the electronic ether but via taxi drivers. As Hussain stressed, when the Egyptian authorities had blocked the internet, “the activists already had their plan and technology was no part of it.” She added that when the Libyan government had made a similar move, Libyan

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rebels had reverted to “old technology” – driving to the border with their video footage to get their messages out. Hussain’s documentary concluded with a broader question – and one which remains as yet unanswered – the question as to whether the same technology that helped these nations break with the past could “be harnessed for a better future.” One possible eventual outcome of these protests – the prospective rise of a radical (and possibly Islamist) demagoguery – may make those western cyberenthusiasts who have deployed the notion of the crucial use of such technologies in the propagation of the Arab Spring to support their arguments in favour of the democratizing powers of Web 2.0 reconsider their positions. Indeed the violent political and religious clashes that have erupted in Egypt since the country’s revolution have seemed to underline this point. Ghannam (2011, 23) has suggested that “blogging and social networking alone cannot be expected to bring about immediate political change” and that we should therefore focus not upon the headlinegrabbing online drama but upon “the long-term impact, the development of new political and civil society engagement, and individual and institutional competencies.” The news media have however emphatically propagated the notion of the influence of new media technologies upon these revolutions. On 1 February 2011 Time magazine stressed that “members of the new opposition [...] put up Facebook pages and posted on Twitter [and] exhausted their thumbs sending text messages to everyone in their mobile phone books.” On 17 February 2011 the Daily Mail added that “as in the uprisings that toppled longtime autocratic rulers in Egypt and Tunisia, Libyan activists are using social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter to rally protest.” On 27 January 2011 The Sun newspaper had run a piece unambiguously headlined “How social networks trigger political downfall.” Robert Fisk announced in The Independent (28 January 2011) that “this is revolution by Twitter and revolution by Facebook.” Hugh Macleod in The Guardian (16 April 2011) reported on “Syria’s switched-on cyber activists.” Fawaz Gerges argued in the Mirror (21 February 2011) that the Arab “revolt is powered by [...] cellphones, the Internet, Facebook and Twitter.” The Times’s Stephen Dalton (25 March 2011) suggested that Twitter was “proving mightier than the sword throughout the Middle East” – while the same newspaper’s Adam LeBor (17 January 2011) proposed that “140 characters can spark a revolution.” Indeed, on 13 February 2011 an editorial in The Sunday Times predicted that “more revolutions will be fuelled by Twitter.”

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On 9 February 2011 Martin Fletcher reported for The Times from Egypt’s Tahrir Square where “young men spray-painted Google, Twitter and Facebook logos on walls and tanks.” Fletcher lauded computertechnician-turned-revolutionary Wael Ghonim as “the Facebook dreamer who led his nation.” Indeed Ghonim was later described by Ed O’Loughlin in the Daily Mail (13 January 2012) as a revolutionary who “felt the need to tear himself away from the action because he wanted to update his Facebook page.” Though Ghonim (2012) would later emphasize the role of new media in his account of what he has called Revolution 2.0, his words that day in Tahrir Square were perhaps more illuminating: “I liked to call this the Facebook Revolution, but after seeing the people out there I think it’s the Egyptian people’s revolution” (The Times, 9 February 2011). In his memoir of the Egyptian uprising Ghonim refers repeatedly to the shortcomings of new media in terms of their revolutionary effects. He notes for example that members of online campaigning groups tended to be young while older Egyptians remained away (Ghonim 2012, 113). He points out the problems faced by the online revolutionaries when Facebook chose to suspend certain campaigning pages because of copyright violations or fake user identities (the latter had of course been considered essential to the campaigners’ safety), noting, however, that those online conspiracy theories which suggested that Facebook had struck a deal with the Egyptian government to block certain activists’ pages eventually proved baseless (Ghonim 2012, 113-119). He emphasizes that, while the posting of personalized content on social networking sites can inspire people in ways that the facts and statistics generally used by human rights campaigners cannot, he is not suggesting that the former could ever replace the latter (Ghonim 2012, 88). He also speaks of the need to use these sites not only for the purposes of “communication and coordination” but also to “promote a culture of dialogue [...] and to cultivate a tradition of tolerance” (Ghonim 2012, 155, 113). Ghonim’s problematization of these media forms has not, however, entirely diminished the cyber-enthusiasm of some western commentators. Yet there seems something meanly self-aggrandizing in the West’s claims to the liberatory potentials of its own technologies. For, as Doreen Khoury (2011, 84) has supposed, the “ownership of the Arab revolutions will always belong to the Arab people and not to Facebook or Twitter or any of the other online tools.” The western media’s attempts to appropriate these revolutions as offshoots of western media technologies and cultures may to some extent be explained by their desire to atone for (or to cast a veil over) the

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apparent indifference of many western media organizations (and many western governments) to the decades of human rights abuses perpetrated by these Arab states, or, at worst, to allow the West to forget its complicity in these regimes: from Tony Blair’s now notorious public and secret visits to Colonel Gaddafi, to the case – revealed by The Independent in February 2012 – of the BBC’s screening of a documentary made by a company funded by the Mubarak regime. Natalie Fenton has explored the internet’s claims to social and political empowerment through social networking sites and as an environment for the propagation of radical ideals. She argues that, although all too often “social networking sites are heralded as [...] conferring agency” (Curran et al. 2012, 124), it seems instead the case that “social media work to reinforce already existing social hierarchies” (Curran et al. 2012, 127). Furthermore, she suggests that the illusion of agency offered by the internet may in fact dilute the possibilities of real-world empowerment: “our experience of the internet itself may in some way actually hide what’s going on [...] and blind us to the need for radical change” (Curran et al. 2012, 141). She exposes a number of clear problems with online political activism: that its convenient myths of empowerment may comfort us “to the point of inaction” (Curran et al. 2012, 170); that it is, for the most part, the province of a “global middle class” (Curran et al. 2012, 155); and that the politics emerging from online activism is predominantly not one which develops constructive, consensual agendas but one which is limited to the emotive resistance to perceived practices of hegemonic power, “a politics of non-representation; a politics of affect and antagonism” (Curran et al. 2012, 169). “Why,” she pertinently asks (140), “do we think the network of networks will somehow transcend previous inequalities, when the evidence on the ground is quite the opposite?” If we mistakenly think this technology can save us, it may have a wholly opposite effect, reinforcing government and corporate power, and fragmenting and diluting resistance to that power.

A Rock and a Hard Place While new media may not offer a socio-political panacea, old media also appear to be doing precious little for democracy (or at least seem to be doing little in the way of moving towards doing more for democracy): even a project such as that outlined by Lord Justice Leveson, designed to restore public trust in the relationship between media and political institutions, has been undermined by the media and political responses to its recommendations.

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Democracy requires trust: trust in its institutional structures, trust in shared political ideals or ideologies, trust in individuals and communities, trust in the stability and integrity of society, trust in the sources of information which citizens need in order to make informed political choices. This trust is not blind; it is necessarily founded upon a healthy scepticism, an ever-questioning mistrust; but it is attenuated by opportunistic, cynical and hypocritical distrust; it is made impossible by such an outright rejection of its structures, ideals and principles. A default position of distrust in democracy represents a lowest common denominator of political consciousness based upon prejudice and resentment; it is a position which a number of media organizations have adopted and exploited in order both to sell newspapers and to propagate their own political agendas – as well as to divert public attention away from their own failings and hypocrisies. This narrow-minded populism leads towards a politics of self-interest, democracy turned into demagogy. New media do not seem to have done a lot better – indeed they have not achieved the one thing that they promised to do, the one thing that the appeared to well-equipped to do – the establishment of socially, politically and culturally constructive national and transnational dialogues. Crowdsourced content has not generated consensus, it has just generated crowds: political flash mobs devoid of the possibilities of dialogue crucial to the promotion of a common ideological agenda. The internet has not fostered a new public sphere, but has accelerated the fragmentation of society into ever more isolated and introspective private spheres comprising individuals with increasingly limited interests or awareness beyond the social networks of their peer groups. If new media fragment social experience, then they move societies from states of order towards states of chaos. This entropic effect may be mistaken for constructive evolution, insofar as the confidence and integrity of highly ordered political systems (for example, totalitarian dictatorships) may be undermined by the fundamental individualism and perspectival insularity (the self-absorption, and even eventual solipsism) sponsored by the internet (YouTube wants you to ‘broadcast yourself’; in 2006 Time magazine chose ‘You’ as the person of the year, because ‘you’ have generated the content of the internet; it’s all about you – but in the end this is you singular). This process is not however – despite the claims of certain cyberenthusiasts – about democracy (the development of political direction through popular dialogue); it is, on the contrary, about the triumph of the individual will over the political order. This may at first look like democracy – but in the end it represents a move towards anarchy. This is

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why the effects of new media on societies which have already embraced democracy (such as the UK) have included a summer of riots (in 2011 the riots which engulfed a series of British cities were to a great extent mobilized by – and even appeared to many to be provoked by – the uses of new media technologies) and an increasingly cynical and indeed anarchic media response to public scandal: from, for example, the wrongful identification of paedophile suspects on ITV’s This Morning to The Sun newspaper’s decision on 1 December 2012 to publish a story pointing out that a man arrested (but not named) by police in relation to a high profile sex abuse scandal had been named on the internet and then to identify a particular microblogger who had “tweeted a name” – thus enjoying the power to disseminate unfounded rumour without incurring any legal risk or, it seems, accepting any moral responsibility. In the wake of the publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report a significant number of British national newspapers had argued that because an unregulated internet might spread defamatory gossip about suspected celebrity paedophiles or publish salacious photographs of members of the royal family, then the press should – for reasons of freedom of expression and of commercial parity – also remain virtually unregulated, and should therefore be free to conduct itself in a similar style. In an article for The Sun on 1 December 2012 Paul Staines – aka right-wing political blogger Guido Fawkes – argued that Leveson’s proposals for stronger regulation of the press would have the result that “newspapers will become boring and the readers will switch online to websites like mine.” The Sun was not of course alone in its somewhat sceptical – even cynically self-serving – response to the Leveson report. The Observer had also, for example, on 2 December, criticized Leveson for his “paragraphs of chop-logic where he pretends that Twitter, Facebook and the rest don’t exist” while that same day The Sunday Times had proposed in one article that “Sir Brian had a blind spot when it came to the internet, which threatens to undermine any regulatory system” and, in another, that “the rise of the internet, in any case, makes Leveson[’s] position on regulating a declining portion of the media redundant.” On 30 November the Mail had argued that “Sir Brian raised the internet only to dismiss it as unimportant while failing to mention the huge democratic deficit opening up as, one after another, newspapers go to the wall” and suggested in another article that Leveson’s report had made the previous day (the day of its publication) “a rotten day for freedom.” On 1 December 2012 the Daily Mail argued that a leftistliberal fixation upon “the arcane regulatory details of a printed media that is, by and large, financially dying and is being superseded by an internet which no one, least of all the politicians, can control” was symptomatic of

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how such positions were out of touch with the national agenda and related this detachment to the fact that “voters are turning away from the mainstream parties – and politicians in general – in their droves.” The Mail did not however choose to suggest that the cynicism of voters in relation to political institutions and democratic structures might be related to an increasingly cynical position perpetuated by the popular press: an exploitatively populist (even demagogic) rejection of democratic idealism in favour of a crassly negative consumerist culture. The populist press had previously tried to take the heat off themselves in the run-up to the publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report by such diversionary tactics as those seen in the case of The Sun’s use of the Jimmy Savile scandal to suggest that the BBC had behaved far worse and therefore deserved much worse than they. In the wake of the report’s publication, they turned to the internet – no longer the saviour of the Arab peoples but a demon of malicious disinformation – to excuse their poor behaviour in the past and to legitimize their own future misconduct. Because the internet is allowed to behave badly, they were saying, we should be allowed to do so to. Some might argue that professional news institutions might reasonably be expected to offer a more morally and ethically rigorous example of public conduct than the hysteria and gossip of the internet (or of society in general); Lord Justice Leveson’s report had itself argued that “what the press do and say is no ordinary exercise of free speech; it operates very differently to blogs on the internet and other social media such as Twitter. Its impact is uniquely powerful.” On 30 November 2012 – the day after the report’s publication – The Independent’s former editor Simon Kelner had in that paper argued in support of Leveson’s position that the internet should not be an excuse for journalistic misconduct but that “an age when the internet is where reputations are casually trashed, where unsourced gossip is presented as fact and where bullying and intimidation takes place on a regular basis” offered a new degree of responsibility to the institutions of the press. Indeed, citing Leveson, Kelner went so far as to stress that there might be significant benefits for the press in “establishing a new contract of trust with the public.” Such a restoration of trust, a renewed social contract, might of course have broader implications for the future prosperity and development of democracy. Sadly, however, voices offering such constructive and socially responsible responses to Leveson were rare in the pages of the British national press. Old media might find new media a useful scapegoat in this context, but it seems that new media have merely exacerbated the subversion of the relationships of public trust essential to the sustenance and development of

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democracy already perpetrated by older popular media forms. Those older media forms have in turn re-adopted the increasingly cynical and exploitative practices and perspectives of new media, and reinforced these, and fed them back; and so this relationship cycles viciously, spirals dynamically but ever downwards, ever faster downwards. New media – for all their claims of democratic dialogue and popular empowerment – are in no way democratically accountable; the political disparities and hypocrisies which characterize older media institutions are replicated and extended online, and then return in these exaggerated forms to offer legitimacy to the further excesses of the established industry offline. Like Andrew Keen (2008) before him, Des Freedman (Curran et al. 2012: 78) has argued against the romanticized version of the internet’s history as a heroic synthesis of democratic idealism and venture capitalism, one in which “the rebels take all the risks and in which technology instils social change that [...] lays the foundation for a more productive future.” Freedman (Curran et al. 2012: 78) supposes that this perspective, still prevalent in some circles, is “based on a series of unsubstantiated claims, profound misunderstandings and puzzling absences that render it incapable of providing a rigorous account of the dynamics of the Web 2.0 environment” and suggests that this new manifestation of capitalism, despite its purported ideals, bears all of the problems of older forms, enthralled as it is to the “drive to accumulation that lies at the heart of the market economy, whether it is one based on Fordist assembly lines or digital networks” (Curran et al. 2012: 88). As Freedman proposes, “the pipes may be increasingly digital, but the piper is still being paid and looking to make a profit” (Curran et al. 2012: 70). Multinational online companies are no more democratically accountable than, say, News Corporation, or Exxon Mobil for that matter; but internet megacorporations’ claims to their democratic potential and intentions have magnified their influence over their users. Yet it is becomingly increasingly evident that Facebook and Google’s promises to empower us effectively only empower Facebook and Google. Popular, traditional, established and entrenched media institutions may be doing little for the survival or the furtherance of democracy in western nations; but the internet’s recently emerged corporate media giants are, despite their claims, doing precious little either. The relationship between old and new media in this sense exacerbates the problem: their competition and their collusion spur both onto greater degrees of hypocrisy, opportunism and cynicism, as both do their worst to exploit (and therefore to perpetuate) the lowest levels of populist contempt and public distrust. They have come,

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in short, to represent convenient excuses and terrible examples for each other’s moral conduct. It is not then that we have a choice between old and new media as the most apt tools in our struggles towards democracy, so much as that the relationship between the two threatens to undermine the possibility of democratic choice itself. The mass media, then come to seem to represent not the lifeblood so much as the death knell of democracy. Yet within this context it is perhaps worth bearing in mind that the juxtaposition of media and democracy ignores the fact that any incarnation of democracy is itself of course just another one of these media of mass communication. The relationship between media and democracy might then represent neither an opposition nor a choice (media/democracy) but something closer to an equivalence (medium: democracy)... a mediation, then, between these two positions, an ambivalence which might tellingly be represented neither by a colon nor by a slash, but by the balancing of both positions: media://democracy. Democracy is not an end in itself; it is a process of mediation, a medium of empowerment, as morally neutral as any other media form. It is not the press or television or the internet or even democracy itself that is good or bad. It is what we do with them that makes them so.

Works Cited Allan, S. 2011. Keynote address. Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group Annual Conference, Bournemouth University, 3-4 November 2011. Baudrillard, J. 2005. The Intelligence of Evil or The Lucidity Pact, trans. C. Turner. Oxford: Berg. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 1986. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice. London: Routledge. Bynum, T., and Rogerson, S. 2004. “Ethics in the information age.” Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility, ed. T. Bynum and S. Rogerson, 1-13. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Chebib, N., and Sohail, R. 2011. “The reasons social media contributed to the 2011 Egyptian revolution.” International Journal of Business Research and Management 2 2: 139-162. Curran, J., Fenton, N., and Freedman, D. 2012. Misunderstanding the Internet. London: Routledge. Dawkins, R. 1989. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Downing, J. 2012. Keynote address. Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association Conference, University of Bedfordshire, 11-13 January 2012. Foucault, M. 1998. The Will to Knowledge, trans. R. Hurley. London: Penguin. Fenton, N. 2012. Keynote address. Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group Annual Conference, University of Bedfordshire, 12 November 2012. Ghannam, J. 2011. Social Media in the Arab World. Washington, D.C.: Center for International Media Assistance. Ghonim, W. 2012. Revolution 2.0. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing. Gibson, R., Lusoli, W., Römmele, A., and Ward, S. 2004. “Representative democracy and the Internet.” Electronic Democracy, ed. R. Gibson, A, Römmele and S. Ward, 1-16. Abingdon: Routledge. Hanretty, C. 2013. ‘Leveson Inquiry: letting the judges take the hard decisions?’ Political Insight 4 1: 8-12. Keen, Andrew 2008. The Cult of the Amateur. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Kellner, P. 2012. Leveson: post-publication survey. Available at: http://yougov.co.uk/news/2012/12/03/leveson-post-publication-survey/. Accessed: 23 January 2013. Khamis, S., and Vaughn, K. 2011. “Cyberactivism in the Egyptian revolution: how civic engagement and citizen journalism tilted the balance.” Arab Media and Society 14. Khoury, D. 2011. “Social media and the revolutions: how the internet revived the Arab public sphere and digitialzed activism.” Perspectives 2: 80-86. Labour Party 2001. General election Manifesto: Ambitions for Britain. Available at: http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/2001/2001labour-manifesto.shtml. Accessed: 23 January 2013. McLuhan, Marshall 2001. Understanding Media. London: Routledge. Morozov, E. 2011a. The Net Delusion. London: Allen Lane. —. 2011b. “Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go.” The Guardian, 7 March 2011. Papacharissi, Z. 2010. A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Radsch, C. 2011. “Blogosphere and social media.” Seismic Shift: Understanding Change in the Middle East, ed. E. Laipson. Washington, DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center. 67-81.

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Singh, A. 2011. “Role of Twitter and Facebook in Arab Spring uprising overstated, says Hisham Matar.” Daily Telegraph, 11 July 2011. Staines, P. 2012. “Why was there only one page on unregulated, offshore social media?” The Sun, 1 December 2012. Temple, M. 2010. “In praise of the popular press: the need for tabloid racism.” Politics 30 3: 191-201.

CHAPTER TWO SOCIAL MEDIA, IDENTITY AND DEMOCRACY BETHAN MICHAEL In 2011 the British Social Attitudes Survey asked: “How much do you trust British governments of any party to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party?” The percentage of people who responded “almost never” had increased from 11 per cent in 1987 to 33 per cent in 2010 – more than twice the percentage of those who, according to the Electoral Commission in 2012, turned out to vote for the first Police and Crime Commissioners. The public opinion of politicians in the UK in 2013 was, to put it simply, not good.

Grist to the Mills Writing on the mass media and public opinion in 1950, C. Wright Mills drew attention to the election of Harry Truman in 1948 as an example of the independence of U.S. public opinion. The tensions between the messages of the mass media and the views of the electorate, reflected in both the popularity of the labour movement and contradictions between media indicators and U.S. voting data, led him to conclude that public opinion was informed by more than the mass media: “there are forces at work among the public that are independent of these media of communication, that can and do at times go directly against the opinions promulgated by them” (1963, 578). However, he also drew attention to the view that the health of public opinion was, regardless of its independence on the matter of Truman’s election, not what it had once been. In 1952, writing on liberal values in the modern world, he suggested that “most of us now live as spectators in a world without political interlude: fear of total permanent war stops our kind of morally oriented politics” (1963, 187). In the early years of the Cold War he recognised a feeling of suspended spectatorship in the public that made redundant and myopic any real, personal experience or common sense, which by then seemed to be located in a different time and a simpler place.

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The reality of day-to-day experience appeared almost unreal in the face of the global risk and miasma of political change being witnessed. Mills describes “a time of cultural mediocrity when the levels of public sensibility have sunk below sight” (1963, 187). Those in power appeared “stunned, distracted, and bewildered” and the public seemed to be floundering “without leaders, without counter-ideas” and without any “real demands to make of those in key positions of power” (1963, 187). The picture he paints does not, at present, seem all that unfamiliar. At a time when Britain has been engaged in a distant war for more than a decade and according to the Hansard Society only 38 per cent of the population can name their elected Member of Parliament, counter-ideas seem few and far apart, and democratic sensibilities low. Mills identified what he called a crisis in liberalism, founded on the increasing irrationality and apathy of the individual. Mills does not attribute blame for this apathy solely on the public. He accredits it to the “whole structure of modern society, in particular its bureaucratic and communication systems” which he deems to “virtually expropriate from all but a small intellectual elite the capacity for individual freedom in any adequate psychological meaning of the term” (1963, 195). This emphasis on the capacity of modernity to undermine the agency of the electorate raises questions of how bureaucratic and communication systems influence society, individuals and political engagement, and how public opinion, or more precisely public apathy, comes about. Mills sets out three stages of thinking about the formulation of public opinion in the body politic. He assesses in particular the impact of new media of communication on these developing formulations. His first stage is that of primary publics, wherein the rise of democratic processes facilitates an ebb and flow of discussion and thought between persons. He compares this eighteenth century model of public opinion to that of the market economy. Like competing entrepreneurs, some inevitably more powerful than others, individuals tout their opinions in the marketplace of public thought: “every man [sic] having thought things out for himself and contributing his weight to the great formation of the end result, public opinion” (Mills 1963, 579). He viewed the autonomy of discussion as crucial to democratic legitimation. Public opinion was not heavily influenced by political authority. Further, as long as it was in line with it, then it served to legitimate it. This may seem naïve given the restrictions of eighteenth century democracy on vast amounts of its public’s democratic participation, but Mills emphasises that through discussion and debate public opinion also acted to provide a consistent undercurrent of continuous demand on authority which served to challenge that

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legitimation and to expedite social change: “out of the little circles of people taking with one another, the big forces of social movements and political parties develop, and the discussion of opinion is one crucial phase in a total act by which public affairs are conducted” (Mills 1963, 580). Discussion between people took a dominant role in the process of producing public opinion. This view of how public opinion came into being was challenged in the nineteenth century and, with the rise of the mass media and economic and political institutions, toppled in the twentieth. The role of primary face-toface relationships was relegated to second place. Mills again draws a parallel with the economy. Power is concentrated and monopolised. In some cases it becomes hidden, and influences public opinion through coercive manipulation: in a mediatised and marketised society the process goes on not between the individuals in a primary public but between the “crowd of manipulators with their mass media on the one hand, and the people receiving their communications on the other” (Mills 1963, 581). With the rise of mediated messages from the few to the many the public were spoken to and the capacity for “answering back” by the public was rendered “systematically unavailable” (Mills 1963, 581). The development of vast bureaucratic institutions and the capacity of the powerful to broadcast messages to mass audiences offered little in the way of opportunity for the public to effectively respond. In this second stage of thought, “all power and all social initiative is exercised from above downward” (Mills 1963, 583). The public, “even when they act”, are “more like spectators than actors” (Mills 1963, 582). In the twentieth century, the mass media had become the dominant force in the production of public opinion. The face-to-face process of discussion and communication between primary publics, in Mills’s view highly conducive to the democratic process, became secondary to the passive consumption of mediated messages. Mills’s attitude to the development of the media seems highly sceptical. He views the public as segregated under its influence: “personal discussion does not affect the opinion formulated; each man is an isolated atom reacting alone to the orders and suggestions of the monopolized mass media” (Mills 1963, 582). Mills differentiates this affect from that of propaganda, which goes significantly further through the use of pervasive symbols and images in order to produce “continuous emotional subjection” (Mills 1963, 583) in the individual and render the population obedient and homogenous in their ideological predisposition. The importance Mills attributes to the power of both the media and institutions, and the imagery he draws on when speaking of power and the individual, bear an uncanny resemblance to

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those used by Foucault when discussing the processes of governmentality and, in particular, when employing the metaphor of Bentham’s panopticon. Mills suggested that a synthesis of the first and second stages was coming about in the 1950s. It was now a question of “which is the more important in different areas of opinion, at different times, and of just how the two, as forces causing opinion to change, sometimes work together, and sometimes clash” (Mills 1963, 586). In analysing the three stages of development in the formulation of public opinion Mills draws attention to the ways in which new media of communication transform the process and the practices of the public. However, he emphasises that in the third stage no one factor is dominant despite an unequal distribution of power among them. Public opinion is not formed in the home, workplace, through the influence of the mass media, or, in a more contemporary setting, via social media, but through constant ebb and flow and a synthesis of the discussion that take place in all of these spaces. Mills’s three-stage process and analysis complement the Habermasian idea of the public sphere, a space in which “the public organizes itself as the bearer of public opinion” (Habermas 1987, 351). The health of this sphere, and of public opinion overall, has once again come under close scrutiny in contemporary popular rhetoric and in academic literature (Flinders 2012). The media have remained a dominant factor in the formation of public opinion. Arguably, the media have a more ubiquitous, coercive and dominant role than Mills imagined it would. Mills’s recognition of the multiplicity of the media and of media messages is also more relevant than ever: “there are many influences at work upon those publics and masses and within them, and there are many resistances and counter-forces to these various influences” (Mills 1963, 586). With the expansion and globalisation of the mass media and the rise of social media and blogging, although power remains concentrated and some messages remain dominant, there is more heterogeneity in the messages received. Certainly, there are more places in which to receive them. Just as the mass media transformed the processes by which public opinion was formed in the twentieth century new media are now at the fore of social change in the twenty-first. It is evident that “the expansion of the public realm, together with the possibilities which individuals have for effectively participating in it, have advanced with the maturation of modern institutions” (Giddens 1991, 174). Similarly, the development of new forms of communication afforded by technological advances has influenced fundamental differences in the capacity of the public to communicate. (Most) people can do so relatively freely and asynchronously across geographical boundaries, and,

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importantly, answering back is no longer as systematically unavailable. The interactive capabilities of new media have been central to their role in events in the twenty-first century – for example, in the 2010 Obama campaign and in the Arab Spring. Although some critics have envisaged developing social media as having a positive influence on the public’s capacity to engage in democracy (Rheingold 1993) others have been more sceptical (Sunstein 2009; Hindman, 2009; Flinders 2012). However, contemporary rhetoric reinforces a view that, whether perceived as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, social media have influenced significant change in society and, as Kate Dailey suggested in an article for BBC News (4 October 2012), “have fundamentally changed the political landscape.” But the advancement of technologies of communication has clearly not taken place in isolation. As Mills stressed with regard to his first and second models of the formation of public opinion, these processes reflect changes taking place both in the economy and in the structure of social institutions. As society in the West has become increasingly consumerist and market-driven, so have our modes of communication. As society falls increasingly under the influence of a “deeper penetration of surveillance” (Lyon 1994, 38) allowed by electronic technologies, so in turn this bears its influence on the formation of public opinion.

Panoptical Allusions The rise in bureaucratic institutions and developments in technology transformed relationships between society, the state and individuals throughout the twentieth century. Economic, cultural and historical shifts have meant that identity has become increasingly fluid and boundaries between public and private have disintegrated (Bauman 1992; Lifton 1993; Giddens 1991). The ways in which individuals are disciplined in society has also altered fundamentally. Surveillance practices have expanded with the onset of modernity and with democracy (Lyon 1994). Pervasive surveillance supported by technology is now a largely accepted, if highly controversial, part of contemporary life. (See, for example, the Big Brother Watch website, announcing its role as an organisation that aims to reveal “the true scale of the surveillance state.”) With increased surveillance, there has been a shift from punitive approaches to more regulatory conceptions of discipline. In line with the hidden structures of power that Mills saw as accompanying the rise in bureaucratic institutions and developments in the mass media, Michael Foucault famously assessed the capacity of institutions to regulate populations through coercive processes of dispersed power or governmentality. He adopted the architecture of a

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panopticon, a prison imagined by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1787, as a key metaphor of this situation. Its architecture is made up of “an annular building; at the centre, a tower” (Foucault 1991, 200). The outer building contains a series of backlit cells. From the inner tower a supervisor has visual access into all cells. The view of the prisoner, atomised in their own cell, is obfuscated. As a result prisoners must always assume the presence of the supervisor but can never be assured of it. It is this insecurity that allows for a subtle and coercive functioning of power. The prison cells are “like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible” (Foucault 1991, 201). This image bears an uncanny resemblance to the one Mills paints of an individual who “stands naked of social relations […] an isolated atom reacting alone to the orders and suggestions of the monopolized media” (Mills 1963, 582-3). However, in Foucault’s metaphor, there is the added dimension of real (or perceived) surveillance. Individuals are stunned and atomised under the force of Mills’s twentieth century institutions and media. The whole structure of society was being altered, and the experience of individuals along with it. How are developments in surveillance, new media, and institutions, and the accompanying developments in structures of power, influencing society and individuals in the twenty-first century? Caluya (2010) highlights how the panopticon has become a staple (if now somewhat stale) metaphor in surveillance studies. Various authors have assessed its usefulness (Poster 1990; Haggerty and Ericson 2000; Lyon 1994) and some have reformulated it, as the polyopticon (Allen 1994); ban-opticon (Bigo 2006); or superpanopticon (Poster 1990). Focus tends to fall on the power dynamics inherent in the transmission, security and surveillance of data rather than on the panopticon as a metaphor for the capacity of technology to transform “the whole social body into a field of perception” (Foucault 1991, 209). As Haggerty and Ericson suggest, Foucault “encourages us to acknowledge the role surveillance can play beyond mere repression; how it can contribute to the productive development of modern selves” (Haggerty and Ericson 2000, 607). Surveillance has always been differential in its target audience via either punitive or sequestering practices, including the imprisonment of the poor or mad, or exclusionary practices, such as the repression of the underclass (Bauman 1998). But inevitably surveillance has a diffuse impact on all of those who are subject to it, even if they are not the intended objects of it – hence the popularity of the term the surveillance society. Furthermore, surveillance can no longer be deemed something done to the powerless by the powerful. Mathiesen’s term synopticism (1997) describes an adapted

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model of panopticism taking account of the ways in which the rise of mass media and spectacle allow the many to watch the few. While Mills’s spectators were passive, there is now some debate over whether lay scrutiny of the powerful is a form of active surveillance enhanced via technology or whether it remains the passive consumption of information about the powerful. (Compare, for example, Wikileaks with I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.) But at least to some extent, in particular when compared with Mills’s second model of top-down media transmission, in becoming “rhizomatic” surveillance has “transformed hierarchies of observation, and allows for the scrutiny of the powerful by both institutions and the general population” (Haggerty and Ericson 2000, 617). If those in power now appear as “stunned, distracted, and bewildered” as they did to Mills in the 1950s, it might be less to do with global or financial risk (although, there is that too) and more to do with a heightened awareness that they are now on the receiving end of the surveillance and scrutiny of the mass media and, in turn, public, in a way they have never been before. If modern society is increasingly panoptic, it is having an impact not only on the public but on politicians. Doyle (2011, 289) stresses that surveillance has “always occurred in much more complex and decentralized forms than can be fully captured by the panoptic metaphor” and Lyon (1994, 73) that “even if new technology does facilitate not only a novel penetration of the mundane routines of everyday life […] it is still not clear that this in itself augurs general societal panopticism.” Surveillance is only one factor influencing the complex character of contemporary society. But as technology-enhanced surveillance becomes a staple of contemporary institutions and communication systems, it is, to a lesser or greater extent, influencing the structures both of society and the public. All individuals are varyingly, depending on their financial, educational, lifestyle and geographical positionings, subject to different assemblages of surveillance (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). The more social capital or status an individual has, the more likely they are to buy into their own surveillance (status updates, clubcards) rather than be purely on the receiving end of it (electronic tagging, TV licensing). Individuals’ perceptions of the day-to-day surveillance they are subject to, and often invite, from peers, strangers, search engines, employers and potential employers are transforming the ways in which they represent (and arguably construct) their identities. As Foucault (1979, 204) suggests, “the Panopticon is a privileged space for experiments on men [sic], and for analysing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them.”

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Research conducted by the Government Office for Science in 2013 analysed how technology might impact on identity in the next ten years and how this might in turn influence society. The report (incidentally, rife with neoliberal rhetoric) suggests that “society may become more pluralised, and less integrated” as a result of increased diversity, immigration patterns and online communities. Furthermore “hyperconnectivity not only has the potential to increase the pace of social change, but may also make it more volatile.” Although the internet has not produced new identities in itself it has raised awareness of the multiplicity, contextuality and cultural contingency of identity. The space in which the public can formulate their opinions has expanded as a result of technological developments – as has awareness that the public and public opinion are more highly pluralised than might previously have been understood. If society in the twenty-first century is more highly pluralised it might be as a result of the increased visibility of inequality made possible by panopticism. The Government Office for Science report suggests that “growing awareness of social and economic inequalities will create insecurity and uncertainty.” (Bizarrely, the authors of the report illustrate their point by imaging a scenario in Cardiff in 2016 when the Welsh nationalists have risen to prominence and welfare cuts have led to civil disobedience). Bauman has drawn on Mathiesen’s synoptic model when discussing the nature of contemporary inequality. He describes how the many are disciplined by the few through processes of desire. In a society increasingly under the influences of consumerism, individuals are exposed to the lives and luxuries of the powerful via the media and, in striving to achieve the same (unattainable) position, seduced into conformity (Bauman 1998). The messages of the mass media clearly still have a role to play, as Mills suggested, in expropriating the psychological freedom of the masses, if this time through advertising rather than directive messages. However, Doyle suggests that where Mathiesen’s model is useful it does not reflect the ways in which media have now moved on. Synopticism reflects “a top-down, instrumental way of theorizing the media” and in doing so “neglects resistance, alternative currents” (Doyle 2011). Social media have allowed far greater capacity for individuals to answer back, to resist dominant media messages and produce their own content and community spaces. This represents “a significant ‘demotic turn’ (i.e. ordinary people are able to break news, produce media content, or voice their opinions publicly)” (Murthy 2012, 1064). So, in allowing for the voicing of opinions and the expression of increasingly diverse and

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contingent identities, do social media provide new opportunities for the resurgence of a primary public or the extension of the public sphere? Poster (1997, 217) has emphasised that “the issue of the public sphere is at the heart of any reconceptualization of democracy.” The issue of the public sphere seems to be that it is in decline. There are fewer spaces in which face-to-face discussion might take place. Poster laments the lack of interactive, democratizing practices in contemporary society. In the past these practices took place in “loci such as the agora, the New England town hall, the village church, the coffee house, the tavern, the public square, a convenient barn, the union hall, a park, a factory lunchroom or even a street corner” (217). Whether or not conversations in these informal face-to-face locations have really ceased (or ever really existed in the form they are imagined) is questionable. However, developments in technology have meant that the ebb and flow of conversations, communication and mediated messages are now taking place in new spaces. These new spaces, offered by social media such as Twitter, are shared. In them, both the public and the powerful (traditionally the message-makers) operate simultaneously. Social media offer new spaces for communication which allow politicians to communicate directly with the public and allow the public to produce their own content and answer back. However, social media and those making use of it remain subject to, and implicated in, all of the dominant factors influencing modern society mentioned above: consumerism; the blurring between public and private; an increased awareness of multiplicity and plurality; the influence of the mass media; and, of course, a host of different forms of regulatory surveillance. Social media are not simple places. The success of politicians and the public in using these new media to communicate in a way that is conducive to democracy depends on their ability to navigate these factors.

The Political Twitterati According to InSites Consulting, Twitter is the second most popular social networking site in the UK after Facebook. It provides a pertinent, and arguably particularly panoptic, example of the new model of communication offered by contemporary social media. According to Twitter, in 2011 roughly 140 million tweets were being sent a day. Twitter is also by far the most popular social media site for UK politicians. YatterBox, a website that monitors social media use, reported that in 2012 91 per cent of a total of 29,571 posts made by UK politicians were posted to Twitter. In October 2012, David Cameron joined. He sent his first tweet at 5.51pm on a Saturday and had nearly 50,000 followers by 8pm.

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Local councillors are also using Twitter. Just as Tweetminster exists to aggregate posts by MPs with the aim of making politics more “open, social and engaging”, the website TweetyHall monitors councillors’ online activity with the aim of “helping to connect” them to the “people they represent.” In using Twitter, politicians are faced with the difficulty of communicating simultaneously with the vast multiplicity of people represented there, many of them with competing expectations. Sites like Twitter provide a new challenge for politicians in that they play host to a vast array of opinions at any given time. The Twitter public in itself is not different from the public communicated with via other media, but in this instance those being communicated to are, if they so wish, much more easily able to answer back and all in one place – as if in an open constituency surgery with a mass of thousands of petitioners all able to communicate at once. As in Mills’s notion of the primary publics of faceto-face groups, “anyone is allowed to speak at will, and everyone interested does” (Mills 1963, 579). Like a panopticon, where prisoners do not know whether or not the supervisor is watching, those in the twittersphere are also unaware of who (or what) is following (or capturing) the communications they make. An individual Twitter feed can be accessed via its unique URL out of the context of the wider Twitter community. The page represents the individual through a 160-character bio, background and most recent tweets. Twitter feeds are rarely anything but public. For many tweeters, to set their feed to private would be to defeat the object of the tweeting exercise: the aim is to broadcast, share and engage. As a result tweeters are complicit in their own surveillance (Poster 1990; Albrechtslund 2008). Furthermore, on Twitter the past has ceased to become inaccessible. It can be searched and captured at any given moment. It is possible to delete a tweet, but once it has been captured on a screenshot and posted to another website it remains indefinitely accessible. Twitter provides a “permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent” (Foucault 1991, 214) form of surveillance. Twitter is a space that brings together both the multiplicity of the public and the powerful, all able to follow each other. Even the official language of Twitter lends itself to the culture of surveillance. Within Twitter all are not equal. Tweeters’ existences within the twittersphere are subject to structures of power and influence in the same way their real selves are. Indicators of influence include how many followers users have, how dispersed users’ tweets are through retweets and, additionally, the position of the user in the ‘real world’. As in Mills’s notion of primary publics, it is clear that “some discussants might have

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more influence on the state of opinion than others” (Mills 1963, 579). On Twitter, that is likely to include politicians and political commentators rather than simply what Mills might have conceived of as a lay public. The multiplicity of messages and the regular ebb and flow produced in the tide of any particularly controversial tweet is enough to demonstrate that, again as in Mills’s idea of primary publics, on Twitter “no one man [sic] or group monopolizes the discussion, and although each may influence it, no one man or group sets the state of opinion that prevails” (Mills 1963, 579). But this is not to say that public opinion is changed on Twitter. A multiplicity of messages does not necessarily indicate healthy debate. In many ways, the present situation seems little different from the third stage in the formation of public opinion Mills conceived of in the 1950s. He analysed the methods a self-selecting public use to reinforce their opinions by consuming media that supports their existing ideological viewpoints. A self-selecting public remains a common theme in studies of the consumption of both mass and social media. There is evidence that internet users seek content that reinforces their ideological predispositions (Sunstein 2009) and that, furthermore, internet systems themselves select and filter content that might reinforce individuals’ existing opinions (Pariser 2011). Clearly, the consumption of homogeneous and reinforcing messages is not conducive to the cultivation of independent public thought or to democracy. Users of Twitter do not simply select the content they consume online but also the content they choose to present themselves. Whereas a more static social network profile might be adapted to represent a particular image of the user at a particular time (for example LinkedIn or Facebook) a Twitter feed requires a high degree of self-regulation and updating in order for it to appear current and engaging. Tweets represent the self in real time. One of the most distinctive and powerful aspects of new social media are that “they are designed to provoke and call forth regular updates from their users” (Murthy 2012, 1061). This is not a medium for planned and pre-prepared broadcasts of mass media but for off-the-cuff updates and comment. Successful political tweeters in the UK, who according to The Independent’s 2012 Twitter 100 rankings included Tom Watson, John Prescott and Louise Mensch, are both prolific and opinionated. Their messages feel authentic and personal. However, they also often lead to controversy and the content of their Twitter feeds regularly features in wider media coverage. As Stella Creasy noted in a blog for the London School of Economics on 4 June 2011, it is the evidence of politicians’ personalities on Twitter that can seem to challenge the negative public opinion of politics: in a time

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of diminishing faith in politicians when “according to YouGov, just 36 per cent of the public have either a great deal or fair amount of trust in their elected parliamentarian” it is the personal information given on Twitter that is “key to detoxifying political motivations.” It would seem that if a politician wishes to use Twitter effectively in order to engage the public and enhance their image, they must engage regularly and authentically and disassociate their messages from the top-down spin-laden content that the public seem to have become accustomed to receiving through the mass media. However, this remains problematic. Aware that there are “thousands of eyes” (Foucault 1991, 214) watching, tweeters are implicitly encouraged to exhibit high degrees of self-conscious surveillance over the image of themselves that they represent. Simultaneously watching and being watched, all tweeters are encouraged to monitor and manipulate behaviour in order to conform, or alternatively, to be self-consciously nonconformist. Users are perhaps more conscious of the extent to which they are under the “normalizing gaze of the Superpanopticon” (Poster 1990, 97). Twitter is a social media site that further blurs the boundary of public (LinkedIn) and private (Facebook). Many tweeters use the 160-character bio to list their varied roles in life, both public and personal. Like the panopticon, Twitter is a “distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization” (Foucault 1979, 207). Offline roles and status are taken online. The awareness of this surveillance encourages the cultivation of a controlled Twitter presence, in particular for those in the public eye: note, for example, the tendency of tweeters to add a disclaimer to their profiles: “views expressed are own and retweets are not endorsements.” Twitter is implicated, then, in the shift toward viewing the self as a reflexive project (Giddens 1991) and arguably posits individuals as commodities. This selfconsciousness can lead to both a narcissistic and a sterile representation of the self. It “markets us through our tweets and, as such, shifts us more toward ‘an age of advertisement’, where we are not necessarily advertising products, but rather ourselves” (Murthy 2012, 1066). If a user’s focus is on the development of a desirable, but inevitably inauthentic, branded identity, social media are unlikely to support the development of a more democratic society – through either the resurgence of a primary public engaged in (online) face-to-face discussion, or through enhancing the relationship between politicians and the public. Those who carefully regulate their uses of social media have good reason to do so. The media attention that can result from an ill-timed or illthought-out tweet, commonly referred to as a Twitter Storm, can be extreme. In fact, Hindman has argued that the clearest political impact of

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the internet has been that of the “scandal that it has exposed, or at least allowed to unfold more rapidly” (Hindman 2009, 137). As increasingly complex and intertwining relationships develop between different media, the use of Twitter by politicians has become highly newsworthy in its own right. Each political faux pas is played out both online and in print, sometimes fizzling out within a matter of hours and on occasion producing what the BBC political satire The Thick of It referred to as “slow motion pile ups” and “#epicfails”. As the popularity of Twitter with politicians has increased, so has the mainstream media coverage of their presence on the site. This places an added level of pressure on tweeters who are in the public eye and expands the panopticon. An inappropriate tweet can quickly become headline news, as Labour Party leader Ed Miliband discovered when he mistyped the word ‘Blockbuster’ as ‘Blackbuster’ when tweeting about the death of TV quiz show host Bob Holness. There are certainly thousands of eyes both inside and outside the twittersphere waiting for a high profile tweet that might cause a scandal. On the blog The Not So Big Society Zarathustra recently posted a template entitled ‘Generic Condemnation of This Thing That Person Said on Twitter’. A highly useful (and clearly facetious) tool, it emphasises the extent to which tweeters are now at risk of sparking Twitter Storms and suggests that Twitter has become another vehicle for bland and formulaic political spin. The risk of sparking Twitter Storms forms part of the complexity of using Twitter as a politician. Furthermore, the template suggests there is also a risk associated with attempting inauthentically to start one. As Stella Creasy has blogged, there is evidence that politicians must be (or at least very convincingly appear to be) authentic in their use of Twitter. Perhaps because it suggests a move away from the broadcast talk of Mills’s early twentieth century model of communication, users expect a more unaffected style of political communication in new online contexts. When politicians do use social media in this way it can help to reduce the “very big gap that has emerged between the governors and the governed” (Flinders 2012, ix). But this is not the way all politicians use Twitter. Social media simultaneously inhibits, and is conducive to, authentic use. On the one hand they encourage regular and personal communication and on the other hand their panopticism and inherent risk inhibit authenticity. Twitter can easily become another tool through which to “treat the audience as collective.” This “entails a return to the dynamics of broadcast talk, where conversationality is simulated rather than dialogic” (Page 2012, 194). Many political communications made via Twitter are just that. They lack authenticity or the “emotion, clarity, and direction” Flinders suggests is necessary on behalf of politicians in order to restore faith in democracy

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(2012, ix). If communication via Twitter is formal or closed, or seems inauthentic, it is no different from the communication the public experience from politicians elsewhere. David Cameron’s 2012 entry onto the Twitter stage demonstrated how inauthenticity can be perceived on the site, as well as the increasing porousness between social and other, more traditional forms of media. Cameron gained nearly 50,000 followers within hours of joining Twitter. His level of power in the ‘real world’ was, to some extent, immediately transferred to Twitter with this substantial following. However on Twitter the number of followers does not equate to authority. PeerIndex, a social media ranking service, assesses users based on their levels of engagement with other tweeters, as well as on the levels of interest generated by their posts. In 2009 Cameron had been criticised for a comment made in an interview on Absolute Radio stating that: “I think that politicians do have to think about what we say, and the trouble with twitter is, too many twits might make a twat.” No doubt as a result of some expert public relations advice, a self-conscious attempt to demonstrate a sense of humour, and the correct assumption that his position as Prime Minister would prompt an array of different responses to the tweet, on 6 October 2013 Cameron sent the following message: “I’m starting Conference with this new Twitter feed about my role as Conservative Leader. I promise there won’t be too many tweets.” In direct response to his tweet he received, among others, the following messages: “@David_Cameron Does this include speaking of your role in NHS privatisation, cutting services, screwing over disabled etc?”; “Hello @David_Cameron What’s your favourite sandwich? Mine is bacon and coleslaw on toasted white bread. I bet yours is the tears of the poor”; and “@David_Cameron You’re a fucking prick mate”. The nature of these disinhibited messages is typical of the kind of response a high profile tweeter might receive. Amongst them, there might also be some more meaningful messages. However, Cameron’s tweet might not have elicited a genuine response because it did not ask for one. As with many celebrities and politicians, Cameron has an impersonator on the social networking site who parodies his personality. @David_Scameron was tweeting the following on 6 October 2012: “Good old Jezza, can always count on him. Nothing like an abortion debate to keep ward closures out of the headlines in conference week.” And: “Let me make this clear – I did not know the Department of Transport existed. It was staffed by unemployed plebs, who are solely to blame.” The image Cameron attempted to portray with his controlled tweet was challenged by the vitriolic responses of other tweeters following him. Simultaneously

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Fake Cameron, commenting on the mainstream news stories relating to the Conservative Party on the same day, was drawing attention to wider media coverage related to the Prime Minister. Real Cameron’s tweet then became, almost immediately, a topic of discussion in the mainstream media. (Unsurprisingly there is also speculation as to whether real Cameron is really real either, or in fact an employee in the Cabinet office.) Headlines and stories focussed on the amount of followers and abuse the Prime Minister was receiving. They also commented on the degree of engagement he was demonstrating despite his only having been on the site a very short time. For example: the Daily Mail reported on 10 October 2012 that “David Cameron attracts 100,000 Twitter followers in four days but most have just signed up to abuse him” and, Tom Meltzer in The Guardian on 8 October 2012 noted that “if a person’s ‘following’ list is the new window to their soul, then the 30 people the PM has since added tell us quite a lot about him: every single one is a Tory MP.” Cameron is no exception to the general rule, in that he too seems to prefer to follow those who will reinforce his existing ideological beliefs. Cameron’s online persona was swiftly branded as dull and his Twitter feed deemed insufficiently engaged with other tweeters. He received offensive tweets on the site itself which were then reprinted online and in newspapers, highlighting the nature of response he was receiving to the wider public, including non-Twitter users. Increasing amounts of convergence and intertextuality in the media have allowed panopticism to “increase and multiply” (Foucault 1991, 208). Cameron’s use of social media had a broader impact than he had perhaps expected. The former Conservative MP Louise Mensch is an example of a politician successfully making use of Twitter, not only to engage the public, but arguably to challenge legitimation and expedite social change in the way that Mills’s primary publics did. Mensch publicly documented the abuse she received via Twitter by “favouriting” offensive Tweets, telling the BBC in an article on 3 May 2012 that she felt it was necessary to “call the bullies out.” This both highlighted the misogynistic abuse taking place on the site and simultaneously increased her popularity. Her approach to the abuse she received online was given as one of the reasons for her high ranking in The Independent’s Twitter 100 in 2012. By highlighting the offensive tweets and those who made them, she increased their visibility, leading to further debates about freedom of speech and online behaviour, and also invoked more formal mechanisms of discipline: “There is quite a bit of legislation available to us – the Communications Act 2003, the Malicious Communications Act back in 1988.” Mensch’s Twitter experience became embroiled in larger debates regarding verbal

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and physical violence against women and led to her becoming visibly engaged in political debates on the topic, challenging sexism and violence against women and promoting dialogues aimed at fostering social change. Her engagement on Twitter is prolific and appears honest and authentic (if vitriolically critical of the Liberal Democrats). Through expressing her views and opinions, both political and personal, Mensch developed a strong rapport with her following and made an effort to respond to some of the (countless) responses her tweets receive, or to recognise them through retweeting. What Mensch’s case highlights it the presence of conflicting and contradictory discourses on Twitter. Debate and disagreement are a fundamental part of a democratic society. Mensch’s method of dealing with this led to considerable public debate, both on and off Twitter. However, there is a (rather Orwellian) risk that, in increasingly surveilled spaces where self-representation might be carefully constructed, controversial opinions will gradually vanish from sight. If, under various influences, society is becoming more pluralised and diverse and is at risk of volatility, it is valuable for views and opinions to be shared and challenged rather than suppressed. Twitter provides a space in which multifarious viewpoints can exist simultaneously in one space. On a hashtag feed radically different versions and interpretations of events appear alongside each other (Ampofo, Anstead and O’Loughlin 2011). Those tweeting and following are encouraged to consume the views and opinions of a host of different individuals, albeit in relation to the hashtag they choose to follow. Arguably this encourages tolerance and a deeper understanding of the diverse attitudes of society and “increases the possible utility of individuals” (Foucault 1991, 210). Creasy’s aforementioned blog expresses a hope that it is the expansion of the “online realm’s capacity for self-regulation” that will create a more civil space in which politicians as well as the public can operate online. Digital media may inevitably lead to an increasingly universal panopticism. It might therefore be prudent to encourage engagement and intervention as a preferred method of use by all users and not simply by politicians. If ‘ranters’, the misinformed, critics, journalists, and abusers all endeavour to engage openly, Mills’s idea of that undercurrent of a primary public might be reinvigorated. Twitter may already well be a space for an undercurrent of public opinion. It is not only politicians that are being political on Twitter. On 22 April 2010, during an election campaign, four ‘Tory-backing newspapers’ had headlines criticising Nick Clegg. On that morning the hashtag #nickcleggsfault appeared. According to Charles Arthur’s blog on The

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Guardian website on 22 April 2010 it soon became the “second mosttweeted hashtag” on Twitter. Tweets appeared using the hashtag to proclaim everything from poor weather, theft and bouts of overeating to be #nickcleggsfault. This is an example of an instance of Twitter users reacting to (real or perceived) bias in mass media content and arguably demonstrates their dissatisfaction with dominant media discourses. It may demonstrate that Twitter can be used to form the undercurrent of the primary public that Mills deemed conducive to democracy. The trending of the #nickcleggsfault hashtag shows how “non-elite users augment and in some cases drive mainstream news stories by publishing information through social media” (Ampofo, Anstead and O’Loughlin 2011, 867). Furthermore it serves to show how the unsolicited work of the many can operate to reconstruct the image of those in the public eye. In a digitised and mediatised society the representation of the self is not merely selfrepresentation. Power has been diffused to the extent that the attitudes of the least powerful can significantly influence those of the most powerful. On Twitter the public can influence a politician’s identity, express an opinion on the media, and have fun, all at once. The arguably “smaller and smaller space in which to have a private life” and “perpetual engagement” (which Creasy suggests are associated with media use) encourage the increased levels of self-surveillance produced by an awareness of heightened visibility and the threat of possible rebuke. Heightened self-regulation on the part of politicians could feasibly lead to more controlled and inauthentic representations of self online, and could, as a result, rather than detoxify the public’s view of politicians, lead to a more watered-down, sterile, banal and frankly boring political culture. However, where social media can lead to a barrage of personal attacks they can also provide a space through which to communicate authentically for both politicians and the public. Although there is a limit to the number of followers any tweeter can meaningfully engage with, Twitter can be used effectively to communicate updates, ask questions, provoke discussion, challenge mass media discourse, raise awareness and support social change. Successful Tweeters, political or not, recognise responses from followers and engage with other tweeters. Flinders suggests there is a need “to develop a new set of authentic political relationships that harness the potential of informed and engaged citizens” (Flinders 2012, viii). The focus here is less on politicians and more on the role of an informed and engaged public. Instead of rendering individuals apathetic and detached from the processes of political change, suspended in spectatorship without access to counter-ideas and without articulated demands, a more

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interactive politics might produce a more developed agency in the individual. Although Twitter is clearly not in itself going to solve public apathy, drastically alter the attitude of the public toward politicians or reverse the “corrosive cynicism” that Flinders’ (2012, 2) associates with contemporary attitudes to politics, it is a tool that, if used effectively, can support engagement and change. One might invoke, for example, London Mayor Boris Johnson’s regular Twitter event where he responds to questions directed to him via the hashtag #askboris. Although no medium is a panacea, Twitter might support the development of a more collaborative political culture. Using social media politicians are able to engage as members of the primary public rather than as broadcasters of top-down messages. But, in order for it to be successful, any such process would require authenticity on the part of politicians, informed contributions from the public, and a willingness to engage from both.

Works Cited Allen, M. 1994. “See You in the City: Surveillance in Perth’s Citiplace.” Metropolis Now: Planning and the Urban in Contemporary Australia, ed. K. Gibson and S. Watson, 137-146. Sydney: Pluto. Albrechtslund, A. 2008. “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance.” First Monday 13 3: 1. Ampofo, L., O’Loughlin, B., and Anstead, N. 2011. “Trust, confidence, credibility: citizen responses on Twitter to opinion polls during the 2010 UK general election.” Information, Communication & Society 14 6: 850-871. Bauman, Z. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge. —. 1998. Work Consumerism and the New Poor. Buckingham: Open University Press. Bentham, J. 2008. The Panopticon; or, The Inspection House. London: Dodo. Bigo, D. 2006. “Security, Exception, Ban and Surveillance.” Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond, ed. D Lyon, 46-68. Cullompton: Willan. Caluya, G. 2010. “The post-panoptic society? Reassessing Foucault in surveillance studies.” Social Identities 16 5: 621-633. Creasy, S. 2012. “Perpetual engagement.” Polis, 23 March 2012. Doyle, A. 2011. “Revisiting the synopticon: Reconsidering Mathiesen's ‘The Viewer Society’ in the age of Web 2.0.” Theoretical Criminology 15 3: 283-299.

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Flinders, M. 2012. Defending Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. 1991. Discipline and Punish, trans. A. Sheridan. London: Penguin. Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. T. Bruger and F. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,. Haggerty, K., and Ericson. R. 2000. “The surveillant assemblage.” British Journal of Sociology 51 4: 605-622. Hindman, M. 2009. The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lifton, R. 1993. The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation. New York: Basic Books. Lyon, D. 1994. The Electronic Eye. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mathiesen, T. 1997. “The viewer society: Michel Foucault’s ‘panopticon’ revisited.” Theoretical Criminology 1 2: 215-234. Mills, C. 1963. Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills. Oxford: Ballantine Books. Murthy, D. 2012. “Towards a sociological understanding of social media: theorizing Twitter.” Sociology 46 6: 1059-1073. Page, R. 2012. “The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: the role of hashtags.” Discourse & Communication 6 2: 181201. Pariser, E. 2011. The Filter Bubble. London: Viking. Poster, M. 1990. The Mode of Information. Cambridge: Polity Press. —. 1997. “Cyberdemocracy: the internet and the public sphere.” Virtual Politics: Identity & Community in Cyberspace, ed. D. Holmes, 212229. London: Sage. Rheingold, H. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Cambridge. MA: MIT Press. Sunstein, C. 2007. Republic.com 2.0. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER THREE MAKING IT EASY TO RESIST RICHARD SCULLION We live in and through a largely consumerist ideology that features a mix of characteristics with the purpose of legitimising certain types of power relations (Eagleton 2000). The mediated landscape perpetuates and legitimises this situation through various manifestations of the ideological apparatus (Herman and Chomsky 2002) as part of the wider cultural industries that help generate a consumerist hegemony (Artz and Yahya 2003). The notion that the media have a major socialising influence, as a carrier of culture and a source and communicator of ideological values and norms, is not new. It suggests that at an institutional level the media carries preferences which infuse its social constructionist role; this is manifest in the production and perpetuation of a broadly capitalist worldview (Couldry 2003). Media culture is important as a key connector to others – to a broader society and to public institutions. It is problematized in terms of engagement between citizens and political institutions, because mass media coverage is “biased against certain types of hope” (Richards 2007; cited in Scullion et al. 2013). Empowerment is contingent upon hope that one can exercise power and influence. Thus this media bias leads to lower political self-efficacy and the increased salience of what might be called civic consumerism. Picking up on qualitative concerns about the nature of political engagement in contemporary Britain – the much-lamented “democratic deficit” – this chapter’s aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the meanings which individuals attach to political choice. Its entry point is a highly situated one that recognises and values the dominant cultural discourse of consumerism. Thus it posits that this study’s participants face and make choices primarily as consumers and this mind-set transfers significantly to civic and political spheres. This chapter draws upon the literature that considers choice as a meaning-making device in terms of the principal way of conceiving

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consumer culture, in order to investigate relationships between choicemaking in the consumer and political sphere. This chapter reports pertinent interpretations of a larger phenomenological study carried out in Britain over a period of eighteen months. It is a non-politically-centric way of interpreting culturally-embedded forms of political engagement, identified as an important approach by Hay (2002). This chapter’s central argument is that our contemporary consumer identity is sufficiently full of meaning, leaving little space for salience to be attached to the political sphere. This insight is situated within three core contextual strands; these are: concerns about political (electoral) engagement, the marketisation of politics, and the apparent dominance of a consumer choice-orientation being used when making political decisions. The first contextual strand relates to the veracity of what has become known as a “democratic deficit” (Pattie and Johnston 2001; Lilleker 2005) in many Western liberal countries – that is, a concern about the extent and nature of engagement with, and in, the political process. The second strand focuses on societal-level trends that lead to contemporary culture being widely considered consumerist in nature – where, to paraphrase Bauman (2001), contemporary life is guided by a consumer ethic through which one’s identity is now firmly based on being a consumer. The third contextual strand can be seen as an outcome of the first two, whereby the marketisation of politics represents a response to concerns about the state of electoral participation in which democratic principles adapt to a marketing paradigm, equating pluralism with market competition (Kotler and Kotler 1999) and equating voters with consumers (Ingram and LeesMarshment 2002). This marketisation of politics has given rise to political marketing both as a set of contemporary practices, and as a scholarly discipline to help us understand what is happening in the political arena (Henneberg 2004). These strands serve to articulate the central debate to which this chapter seeks to make a contribution, in an attempt better to understand the impact upon the nature of political participation and engagement of a culture where the dominant discourse is consumerist. This chapter will do this by focusing on a fundamental element of consumer discourse – choice.

Consumer Choice Consumer behaviour literature has increasingly taken a perspective on choice that sees it as a meaning-making activity (Arnould and Thompson 2005). This chapter outlines a case for privileging a meaning-making perspective for consumer choice. This allows the focus of study to move

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away from a preoccupation with the process of making choices towards a perspective which places emphasis upon agency, and upon how individuals attempt to realise this through consumer choice-making (Thompson et al. 1989; Thompson et al. 1990; Kilbourne 1991; Bauman 2007). This chapter revisits and updates the case made in Dermody and Scullion (2001) to concur with such hermeneutic scholars as Gadimer (2006) and such analysts of consumer behaviour as Belk et al. (1988), Thompson (1989), Sherry (1991) and Firat and Dholakia (1998) who have argued that individuals adapt cultural symbols and meanings through their everyday practices, in order to give their own lives specific meanings. Consumption is considered a prime site for the negotiation of competing and conflicting life themes. Elliot (1997) argues that the process of working through the resulting tensions helps explain how individuals achieve a sense of control of their own lives. Certain polarised, heuristic devices help unpack the tension between freedoms and control in consumption sites. Consumer dialectics make up the materiality of the struggle which consumers engage in, so that they are able to experience a sense of establishing and retaining control of their lives. For example, demonstrations of the capacity for self-determination through behaviour in consumer spheres afford consumer choice the ability to signify “success” (Desmeules 2002). Goods become ways of making sense of an otherwise complex, confusing existence; consumption choices develop into a “highly-varied, symbolically-charged set of meanings” (Douglas and Isherwood 1978; cited in Gabriel and Lang 1995, 54). Mick and Buhl (1992, 317) support this meaning-making approach, arguing that “consumers construct a variety of meanings as outcomes of a personal interest-driven, culturally-situated act.” Increasingly, we see in consumer spaces fragmented, plural and fluid offerings that have enabled individuals to access a rich resource, from which they can make sense of their world (Kozinets 2001). This consumption-generated marketplace of “unruly bricoleurs” as Holt (2002) calls them is replete with symbols, symbols which lie at the centre of how we make sense of our lives. There appear strong parallels between the way in which meaning is hereby attached to consumer choices, and the idea of empowerment. We may observe a plethora of literature pronouncing on the apparent enhanced sovereignty of contemporary consumers (Pires et al. 2006; Denegri-Knott et al. 2006), and on their increased access to information and burgeoning choices (Schwartz 2004). Even more pertinent are those studies that demonstrate how consumers generate their own meanings, and how this contributes directly to a sense of increased empowerment, or what

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Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, (1981) refer to as fulfilling an implicit or explicit self-contract. One author who has repeatedly investigated the linking of consumer choice to notions of freedom is Craig Thompson. His contribution to researching the behaviour of consumers in the last twenty years has helped demonstrate the usefulness of the approach used here, an approach which affords value to our participants’ own descriptions of their everyday experiences. In order to appreciate the actual lived meanings of free choice, we have to understand how individuals incorporate their choices into the rest of their lives. One reading of apparent free choice in consumption involves our ability to approach a sense of our ideal; and so we need the ability, if not to determine, at least to influence what we mean by this notion of the ideal. Reaching this state of influence – or what might be referred to as efficacy in political studies – is itself contingent upon having a degree of free choice. For Thompson it is about the oppositions of being in control/not in control, unrestricted/restricted and deliberate/captivated. A crucial point which emerges from Thompson’s work is that free choice is not always located in a context where the person feels in control, unrestricted and able to act deliberatively. The argument linking a consumerist appreciation of choice to the political arena is as follows. We afford crucial significance to our being able personally to determine the meanings of our consumer choices, as this allows us to express our autonomy and experience a sense of agency and control. It is because of the apparently self-determining nature of our choices in consumption that this sphere assumes such a central part in our everyday lives. Significant meaning is created in consumption that resonates throughout people’s everyday lives. In order to understand contemporary political behaviour, we first need to understand the meaning(s) ascribed to political behaviour (Dermody and Scullion 2001). This is so because the attribution of value “goes beyond material objects to include non-tangible experiences, for example the outcome of election promises and other political product offerings” (Dermody and Scullion 2001, 1088).

Methodology The study upon which this chapter’s analysis is based looked at political participation through a consumer choice-maker lens to closely reflect everyday practices. Its approach embraced the cultural turn in consumer studies to acknowledge the importance of capturing the regularised layers of cultural meaning that may help to structure actions in any given context

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(Thompson and Troester 2002). This approach has offered rich descriptive accounts of everyday practices and experiences, with a broader understanding of the shared cultural meanings and social relations found, and indeed constructed, in the specificity of individuals lives (Sherry 1991; Penaloza and Gilly 1999; Penaloza 2001). A phenomenological methodology allows us to gain a first-person description of the actual lived experience of participants. Such a stance acknowledges that there is a uniqueness in how individuals incorporate their cultural and historic baggage into their particular lives (Dahlberg et al. 2001). Several consumer studies have employed this method: see, for example, Mick and DeMoss (1990), O’Guinn and Faber (1989), Thompson et al. (1990), Thompson (1994), Woodruffe-Burton et al. (2002), Belk et al. (2003) and Stevens and Maclaren (2005). These studies share a certain amount of common ground – namely a desire to capture the actual experiences of those being investigated. The scope for this study comprised independent adults, in the sense that these participants were in a position to make their own consumer and political choices. The only strict criteria used to aid recruitment was that they had to be British citizens who had been eligible to vote in the UK general elections of 2005 and/or 2010. The study purposefully excluded using any criteria of a direct political character (i.e. political party members), because its intent was to investigate a political phenomenon from a non-political perspective. A largely non-purposive sample was used, as is the norm in phenomenological studies, where a critical criterion is the participants’ ability and willingness to recall, and talk in detail about, their experiences of the phenomena being studied. The aim was to generate nuanced narratives that contained within them the ways in which participants accounted for their everyday experiences of choice. Results were generated through the long interview technique. These interviews were only “weakly” structured (cf. McCracken 1988), and amassed over 60 hours of the participants’ recounted experiences over a period of eighteen months between May 2007 and December 2008. Each of the participants were interviewed on several separate occasions over this period in order to generate reflections upon their previous interviews.

Overview of Findings All experiences are grounded in particular sets of circumstances (Jessop 1996); crucially, this study’s participants were generally able to distinguish between circumstances that were perceived to afford high potential for their actions to have an impact on how that situation might

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develop, and those where little or no such potential was perceived. The participants’ accounts of their own choice-making suggest they had the capacity to see the structures within the sets of circumstances they faced as both enabling and constraining, adapting the manner of their individual engagements accordingly. They made judgments about how much scope or latitude the context appeared to offer in terms of their own personal conduct. Two qualities were clearly observable: their belief that they possessed choice, and the reflection they engaged in when accounting for their choice practices. The subjective perception of the potential in any given situation was often the starting point for participants to account for their choice-making. In perceivedly agency-rich contexts, choice tended to take on a greater significance in reinforcing the person’s sense of self, supporting the idea that contemporary life is based on an individualised ontology (Campbell 2004). This also suggests a self-fulfilling phenomenon took place – that is, in situations perceived as agency-friendly, the participants made more effort to assert themselves. Some participants purposefully sought out the contexts where they believed they would experience more meaningful types of choice. In contexts perceived as agency-poor, participants tended to talk about “finding themselves in” or feeling “pressured into” situations. Here, choice was usually considered an externally generated obligation, and a challenge, with subsequently less resonance for many participants. Many decisions made in these contexts were seen as part of the routines of life that simply had to be made. Beyond the participants’ perceptions of the context in which choice is experienced, there were three primary meanings afforded to their choicemaking practices. These were: becoming/maintaining self-identity, a taken-for-granted, and an imposition. The first relates mainly to relatively agency-rich contexts, whilst the other two relate mainly to relatively agency-poor contexts. At an existential level choice is thus crucial because the participants staked their sense of who they were on its outcome. And in a somewhat circuitous manner, choice was also how they came to experience their self-identity. A dual process was apparent, where through self-fulfilling practice choice was used to simultaneously create and sustain their self-identity. This resonates with Gabriel and Lang (1995) who argue that self-identity is something to be worked at and achieved, and that the individual is conscious of their uniqueness, which subsequently provides them with their anchoring in the here and now. The discourse of choice as reinforcement of self-identity in agencyrich contexts left open the possibility for change, and was thus not considered to be restrictive. This was very evident with some of the

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participants, where choice signified an opportunity for them to move closer to becoming their ideal self. For others choice was seen to offer a chance to redeem a situation. Choice as a process of self-definition had the characteristic that Nozick (2002) refers to as “originative value”, where the course of action chosen is validated by the act of it being taken. This first primary meaning of choice as creating and maintaining a coherent self-identity fits our consumer culture well as it offers a fragmented and fluid fabric, enabling individuals to access resources from which they can make sense of their world (Kozinets 2001). Indeed, consumer culture theory argues that contemporary consumers attach a polyvocal fluency of meanings to their choice-making (Arnould and Thompson 2005). The second primary meaning of choice was as a taken-for-granted, to the point that it occupied the background of their recalled experiences. It was afforded the status of something that was simply expected, taking on the qualities of a “natural” phenomenon. In these situations choice was so familiar to the participants that they easily, and often, ignored it. This is partly explained by the power of two particular cultural discourses: first, the notion of the autonomous individual that Rose articulates (1993), and, second, the notion of rational choice (Hargreaves-Heap et al. 1999). Both help individuals to believe there is a “right” approach to making choices, and that it is their responsibility to get on with making them. One consequence of considering choice in these ways is that it takes on an air of inevitability, making it easier for the participants to avoid spending time reflecting on their capacity as choice-makers. Treating choice in this way meant that they did not have to complicate their lives by becoming embroiled in reflective processes, risking creating distance from their dayto-day existences. Many of the participants engaged in what Cohen and Taylor (1976) refer to as a strategy for the “mental management” of everyday life. Situations that jeopardised this were often avoided. This leads to the final primary meaning afforded to the participants’ experiences of choice – as an imposition, and for some, a burden that had to be dealt with. Choice took on an authority of its own, sometimes experienced as an external, mandatory aspect of their lives. In these situations choice was considered a challenge that either required effort to “get to grips with” or was to be avoided. Conceived in this manner, choice was rarely welcomed, chiming with Schwartz’s (2004) notion of having too much choice, where he suggests a strategy is adopted in decisionmaking whereby individuals knowingly “make do” with less than the best or ideal option. This satisficing (satisfying/sufficing) approach was especially apparent in situations where the participants believed

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contingency was an essential part of the experience (cf. Bull 2000), and where they were in a state of apprehension about what might occur. In other situations where choice was considered an imposition, the participants often knowingly lacked the motivation or ability required to make a decision. In such contexts choice-making was considered an unwelcome challenge. This helps explain why many choices seen as requiring hard work were categorised in negative ways, as adding to the toil of the participants’ everyday lives, and so they used several strategies to avoid situations where such choices were likely to occur. One such strategy evidently employed was one of routine practices. Such routines often made the participants feel dependent on following conventions in ways that practice theory (Warde 2005) suggests. They accepted sets of appropriate standards to steer their behaviour, and so many of the decisions they made and the choices they faced were not primarily driven by the individual. Rather, participants felt they were already shaped, even determined, by the rules that applied to any given social practice, including politics.

The Discourses of Choice There were six main discourses that emerged through a critique of the participants’ accounts of their choice experiences. These were: as a way of creating and sustaining self-identity, as a demonstration of moral status, as a form of personal rationality, as a means of gaining pleasure, as a way of managing contingency, and, finally, as a way of creating and sustaining routines. These were apparent, albeit manifest in different ways, and with different degrees of strength, in the experiences of all of the participants. It is worth briefly outlining these six discursive themes, before offering an analysis of these findings in relation to their implications for political participation, and specifically for democracy. To start with what appeared to be the most agency-rich discourse: choice as a way of creating and sustaining self-identity. Participants held a clear and largely singular sense of self; the important general point here is that all of the participants expressed confidence in knowing who they were (and in some cases who they wanted to become). Choice was thus used as a vital part of how they reinforced their senses of self. Their clarity of selfidentity resulted in the participants using a discourse that, in effect, meant that they imposed their own restrictions on the options they perceived they had – many possibilities were dismissed as simply “not for them”. Secondly, choice was an expression of the participants’ sense of their own moral codes, and thus part of the participants’ self-identities. For some,

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this represented a strongly defined mode of discourse; for others it was vague and at times, contradictory. Nonetheless, all of the participants expressed a moral/ethical dimension in accounting for their choice practices. Thirdly, many participants acknowledged that some form of responsible, rational decision-making should be, and usually was, part of what their choice-making was about. However, crucially, this represented a form of rationality determined by appropriateness to each participant’s self-identity, and suitability to their moral code. At times, these three discourses merged, so that a multistranded, highly robust sense of “rightness” was associated with their choices. Put another way, participants believed that an option should prove most fitting in relation to their senses of identity, to their moral codes, and to their views of what it was logical to do. A fourth factor was that the participants also used choice as a way to gain pleasure. This experiencing of pleasure was usually derived from the participant making a successful choice in relation to one of the other discourses already outlined; for example, taking a course of action that reinforced their self-identity also brought pleasure. However, at times, pleasure in itself was what choice meant to them, for example by generating an immediate sense of satisfaction, which took on momentary significance. Occasionally, pleasure came from the participants simply knowing that they had options. Fifthly, choice was about the careful management of contingency. All of the participants used this discourse with varying degrees of intensity and in three distinct ways: by trying to control it, by reducing its salience, or by embracing it. However, the important point is that all developed preferred strategies to cope with the uncertainty and potential powerlessness of a life where “things happened to them.” Finally, a significant discourse generated by these interviews involved the construction of routines, and the determination to remain within the comfort zones they provided. These routines sometimes developed into habits; and this phenomenon seemed akin to an unreflective acceptance of reality (Cohen and Taylor 1976). But it was also evident that these routines allowed room for some to experience a sense of control – what we may refer to as routines of freedom.

The Meanings of Choice It was clear that the participants’ perceptions of the particular sets of circumstances that constitute their everyday lives, within which they distinguished between ‘agency-rich’ and ‘agency-poor’ situations, was

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their starting point in attributing meaning and worth to their choices. This is consistent with the work of Thompson et al. (1989; 1990; 1994) in that they argue, in their investigations of freedom and choice in the consumer sphere, that control is a central theme of consumer behaviour. For this study’s participants the characteristics of freedom were context-dependent. Consideration of the six core discourses described above suggests that participants used their self-identity as a key determinant of how they engaged with any given situation, and that their self-identity contained significant (albeit vague) notions of sovereignty. Yet they all also recognised cultural influences as both potentially constraining and enabling their choice-making practices. What seemed critical, however, was how most of the participants had internalised a discourse about what it meant to be a choice-maker as consumer, and this led to self-disciplining behaviour in a manner consistent with the arguments about power advanced by Denegri-Knott et al. (2006). Elliot (1997) argues that consumption dialectics are the moments where the tensions between conflicting life themes of freedom and constraint are most significantly played out. From the analysis of this study’s participants, the perceived differences between freedom and constraint are often small; therefore tensions are usually easily reconciled. However, reflecting on these findings, it is more likely that the key tension experienced is in a set of dialectics not directly referred to by Elliot: namely between a perceived self-identity rich in agency and one that is poor in agency. How this tension is worked out appears to shape the specific combination of elements that constitute notions of free choice (cf. Thompson et al. 1994). Surprisingly, given the dominant view of choice and freedom in contemporary consumer studies, most participants prioritised the ability to act deliberatively over their wanting to feel in control and wanting to be unrestricted in their choice-making. This suggests, somewhat paradoxically, that choice has come to have a restraining impact on their behaviour. When this phenomenon is transferred into the political sphere, consumer choice practices seem to generate a rather conservative force. Choice was most commonly used as a way of limiting further exposure to an ever-expanding range of future options, by creating clear comfort zones in routines that were individualised and had supple parameters. This interpretation is consistent with previous findings in a political context (Scullion 2006).

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The Political Sphere The political arena was consistently perceived by all participants as an agency-poor context, relative to many other spheres of their everyday lives, and specifically compared to their consumer sphere. There are multiple reasons why this is the case. Millar’s polemic (1998), arguing that “shopping really does matter”, finds support in this study. Millar declares that in the political sphere we believe we have little power, whilst in shopping we believe we have far more power. This is so because our sense of empowerment or personal efficacy (Dermody and Hamner-Lloyd 2005) is located in settings where the perceived degree of choice is highest. This chapter’s analysis adds further depth to this argument by suggesting that feelings of efficacy are also at their highest in contexts where certain types of choice-making practices – and therefore types of meanings – are considered to be available. Millar argues that individuals seek to attach importance to those parts of their lives that they feel they have some control over; in this study, the participants were successful in attaching meaningfulness to their consumer choices, even when they felt they had little control over situations. Analyses of our participants’ views of choice suggest that nearly all held a eupsychian view of progress and change: that is, a belief in the need for the transformation of the individual in order to create any sustained improvement in society as a whole (Cohen and Taylor 1993). Perceptions of potential change were located primarily in agency-rich contexts. This perpetuated participants’ existing beliefs that meaningful change is driven by individuals, for example through notions of self-improvement and personal responsibility. This phenomenon offers a poor fit with much that characterises the collective impact of political engagement. The participants all had established clear senses of self-identity, perhaps long before they considered themselves to be members of the electorate. This may help to explain why all, except one, had self-identities that were devoid of any overt political character. Their identities possessed senses of their own agency. A self-fulfilling process occurred where they used choice to strengthen, and highlight to others, their existing (largely non-political) identities. Their views of themselves fuelled their choice practices which, in turn, perpetuated such self-characterisation. Little worth or perceived need was attached to the political sphere in relation to the single most important discourse they used to account for their choices: namely, the development and sustenance of their own identities. Firat and Dholakia (1998) claim the whole world has been marketised, arguing that in late modernity the only remaining legitimising force (and therefore the

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structure with the power to ascribe value) is the market itself. This helps to explain why this study’s participants felt able to generate meaningful choices in the consumer sphere, yet not in the political sphere. The locating of politics as an agency-poor context, the participants’ overwhelming sense of a eupsychian view of progress and change, and their overwhelmingly non-political sense of self-identity have profound implications for the meanings attributed to political choice. They exacerbate the distancing of politics, and further diminish its salience. They also reinforce the widely held opinion that consumer choice practices serve as a conservative force in such individuals’ lives by generating a sense of permanence about their current everyday lives. The main meanings attached to political choice are those associated with an agency-poor context, namely as a taken-for-granted choice that is readily ignored, and/or as a burdensome imposed choice. Although the discourse of choice as taken-for-granted was used to account for political choice-making, it was often applied in a different manner than in the consumer sphere. The lack of salience that such choice possessed for identity-building, its infrequency, and its apparent lack of immediate consequence, all meant that the nature of the taken-for-granted status of electoral choice was manifest as one of a vague duty, or more often, as a choice easily disregarded. The salience of consumer choice-making was reinforced by its very practice; the opposite was the case for political choice, where its remoteness sustained its lack of salience. Thus the prime way in which the study’s participants framed political choice was as externally imposed and as an additional, potentially burdensome decision, that others, remote from their everyday lives, expected them to make. This framing served to emphasize to most that such choice was taking place in an agency-poor context. This overwhelming sense of political choice being considered as an imposition meant such experiences were referred to in words that externalised and objectified them. The major point is that, for the study’s participants, political choice was categorised as chore-like, requiring them to make an effort that they felt no compulsion to make.

Political Choice All of the participants wanted to preserve a coherent sense of self, and the best way to achieve this was to marginalise contexts that might jeopardise it. Consequently, they attributed negligible importance to choices that did not serve this crucial role. Indeed political choice, with its perpetual talk of

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change, threatened disruption to most of the participants’ desires for stable identities. Additionally, the ability to use consumer choices to satisfy selfidentity denied a potential entry point for politics to appear anything other than episodically and marginally relevant. Even those with fragile senses of self-identity found the consumer context relatively accommodating, whereas the political context was described as abrasive and full of uncertainty. Dreams of a better life were largely envisioned as shinier versions of their current situations, and it was as consumers that they sought to achieve their individualised progress, not through any politicised programme. A further potential entry point for politics to be relevant in the participants’ lives was thus diminished. The moral dimensions of choice-making had limited resonance for the participants’ political engagement. Whilst most felt they had a civic responsibility (though it was not usually expressed in these terms), none articulated any clear view of what this duty meant, or why it was salient to them, beyond vague reference to concern for others. For all of the participants, a concern for others was a key reason that their choicemaking had a moral quality, but this was usually confined to their intimate circle: any wider sympathies were peripheral. Participants were able to express sufficient consideration and care through the choices they made in local contexts that affected family, friends and acquaintances, and this was frequently achieved, at least in part, through their consumer choice practices – for example, through gift-giving and self-gifting. The participants were accustomed to accounting for their choices with recourse to a personalised rationality linked closely to their occupation of contexts where they were clear about the levels of their own efficacy (usually in the consumer sphere). Some participants chose to inhabit situations where they were confident of exerting influence – but this was certainly not in the political sphere. Others, with little belief that they could exert control in most situations, made efforts to dwell in contexts where familiarity meant they knew what types of contingent elements they were likely to encounter – again, not in the political sphere. Those participants who created routines as ways of restricting and regulating the types of choices they subsequently faced were accustomed to avoiding and marginalising events outside these routines. Political engagement simply possessed too much potential indeterminateness, and was considered a threat to many of the participants’ well-developed zones of immunity. This meant that, for many, political choice was, in effect, routined out of having any meaningful existence. For others who did participate in the political sphere, it remained a marginal experience, rather than an important part of one of their routines.

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There is very little to say about choice as pleasure-generating in the political sphere as so little emotion towards such choice was expressed other than a generalised sense of complaint about a distant “them”. The discourse of choice as a process of managing contingency was found to be valuable in understanding political engagement. Politics and elections were viewed as generating yet more contingency, to be treated with caution. None of the participants believed they could manage this form of contingency by taking control of it, as it was simply too big, complex and remote from them. The participants managed political and electoral contingency by compartmentalising it into a sphere of their lives to which they attached low salience. This mental differentiation meant that the participants created typologies of choice – consumer choice being associated with limited responsibility to self and to close others, whilst political choice was characterised as requiring broader, more complex consideration, a mode of choice whose outcomes were less certain. Most importantly, the participants’ abilities to successfully compartmentalise allowed them to create a satisfying refuge from the political sphere in a more privatised space – consumption – which afforded them a voice that most were confident in using. Overall then, this analysis suggests that the entire political context is categorised in ways that help people to distance themselves from it. This is compensated for, or balanced by, the participants attributing far richer meaning to the choices they make in other spheres of life (such as consumption). Further reinforcing their desire to partition the political sphere from their everyday lives, the participants rarely linked aspects of their consumer life-sphere with the political sphere, nor did they appear to engage in a process of what Thaler and Sustein (2009) call “choice mapping” that might have revealed inherent associations between a political choice and its potential consequences in other spheres. So, for example, moving house, being recently made redundant and discussing rising prices in the shops were not connected directly with mainstream politics or their electoral choices.

The Resistance of Politics Consumer-dominated discourses of choice, perpetuated by an ideologically infused media landscape, marginalise the political sphere and make it easy to resist enacting practices as a political agent. It appears that individuals perceive themselves to be relatively empowered as consumers, and this, inadvertently or otherwise, weakens the prominence of another life sphere that is all about empowerment – the sphere of politics. The ability to

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account for their everyday consumer choices in the ways they do, offering the detail they do, and with the degree of confidence expressed, reinforces the idea, widely expressed in consumer behaviour studies (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981; Belk et al. 2003; Arnould and Thompson 2005), that consumption spaces are a key location where meaning generation takes place. Many social theorists have expressed concern over the implications of such a state of affairs for political and civic culture (Bauman 1993; Bauman 2007; Beck 1992; Beck and Beck-Gurnsheim 2002). Participants compartmentalised their life spheres in a way that suggests they recognised the differences between the consumer sphere and the political sphere. They readily accepted that these contexts were substantively dissimilar in ways that made them want to maintain a sense of separateness. This process allowed them to make invisible the features that might actually serve to connect the two spheres. This study suggests that consumer choice practices serve as a conforming force in these participants’ lives. They generate a sense of permanence about the everydayness of consumption, to the point where it is often un-reflexively taken for granted. These practices also engender a belief that it is through being a consumer that they can improve and develop. This manifestation of a eupsychian view of progress is similar to Campbell’s reference to the phenomenon of the “wannabe” (2004), where the future is considered to be contained in such individual consumeroriented wishes, propagated by other elements of consumer culture that joyously inform us that we can be, and can do, anything we want, as long as we believe it. Indeed other literature demonstrates how individuals often focus on those consumer activities that bring their dreams closer (d’Astous and Deschênes 2005) and protect their precious senses of an ideal future (McCracken 1988). Hope, an important component of what is promised by politics, is for many located and realised in the consumer sphere, a space rife with ontological possibility. Understandably then, the contemporary electorate are dismissive of politics serving any useful role beyond supporting the continuation of the current system. The consumer sphere creates (especially for those with confidence as consumers) no obvious need to look outside that sphere in order to have meaningful experiences. Those less confident find their own ways to cope within consumption, and in any case they have little belief that they could manage in other less familiar contexts. In other words, consumer choice appears to offer almost everything, by defining what our idea of everything is. In this way we can maintain a sense of being in control of our lives, precisely because we come to depend on making choices of worth as consumers. Such choices do not, then, represent the “emancipatory

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moment in the flux of everyday” that Lefebvre (1991; cited in Bull 2000) suggests. Rather, such choices have come to represent a dominant form of habitual freedom that soon stops feeling like anything much more than everyday choice. Yet it is precisely this taken-for-granted nature of consumer choice that makes us so protective of it and, in contrast, indifferent to and at times wary of engaging in a sphere that is not considered part of our everyday lives – that of politics. One reading of this situation is that consumer choice inherently advances a diminution of experience (Kilbourne 1991) and that the prioritising of the consumer sphere over the political sphere reduces the overall richness of lived experience. The meanings attributed to consumer choice-making serve to nullify much of the salience of political engagement, and, in the process, create the somewhat peculiar mixture of an often personally-belligerent, yet collectively conservative, contemporary electorate. This remediation of the citizen as consumer does not necessarily offer the brightest prospects for the future of democracy.

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Couldry, N. 2003. Media Rituals. London: Routledge. Csikszentmihalyi, M., and Rochberg-Halton, E. 1981. The Meaning of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. d’Astous, A., and Deschênes, J. 2000. “Consuming in one’s mind: an exploration.” Psychology and Marketing 2 1: 1-30. Dahlberg, K., Drew, N., and Nystrom, M. 2001. Reflective Lifeworld Research. Lund: Studetnlitteratur. Denegri-Knott, J., Zwick, D., and Schroeder, J. 2006 “Mapping consumer power: an integrative framework for marketing and consumer research.” European Journal of Marketing 40 9/10: 950-971. Dermody, J., and Scullion, R. 2001. “Delusions of grandeur? Marketing’s contribution to ‘meaningful’ western political consumption.” European Journal of Marketing 35 10/11: 1086-1098. Dermody, J., Lloyd-Hamner, S. 2005. “Safeguarding the future of democracy: (re)branding young people’s trust in parliamentary politics.” Journal of Political Marketing 4 2/3: 115-133. Eagleton, T. 2000. The Idea of Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Herman, E., and Chomsky, N. 2002. Manufacturing Consent. New York: Pantheon. Elliot, R. 1997. “Existential consumption and irrational desire.” European Journal of Marketing 31 3/4: 285-296. Firat, A., and Dholakia, N. 1998. Consuming People. London: Routledge. Gabriel, Y., and Lang, T. 1995. The Unmanageable Consumer. London: Sage. Gadamer, H. 2006. “Classical and philosophical hermeneutics.” Theory, Culture and Society 23 1: 29-56. Hargreaves-Heap, S., Hollis, M., Lyons, B., Sugden, R., and Weale, A. 1999. The Theory of Choice. Oxford: Blackwell. Hay, C. 2002. Political Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Henneberg, S. 2004. “The views of an advocatus dei: political marketing and its critics.” Journal of Public Affairs 4 3: 77-95 Holt, D. 2002. “Why do brands cause trouble?” Journal of Consumer Research 29: 70-90. Ingram, P., and Lees-Marshment, J. 2002. “The Anglicisation of political marketing: how Blair ‘out-marketed’ Clinton.” Journal of Public Affairs 2 2: 44-56 Kilbourne, W. 1991. “The impact of the symbolic dimensions of possession on individual potential.” Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality 6 6: 445-456.

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Kotler, P., and Kotler, N. 1999. “Political marketing. generating effective candidates, campaigns and causes.” Handbook of Political Marketing, ed. B. Newman, London: Sage. Kozinets, R. 2001. “Utopian enterprise: articulating the meaning of Star Trek’s culture of consumption.” Journal of Consumer Research 28 1: 67-88. Lilleker, D. 2005. “Political marketing: the cause of an emerging democratic deficit in Britain?” Journal of Non-profit and Public Sector Marketing 14 1/2: 5-26 McCracken, G. 1988. Culture and Consumption. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mick, D., and Buhl, C. 1992. “A meaning-based model of advertising experiences.” Journal of Consumer Research 19: 317-338. Mick, D., and DeMoss, M. 1990. “Self-gifts: phenomenological insights from four contexts.” Journal of Consumer Research 17: 322-332. Miller, D. 1998. A Theory of Shopping. New York: Cornell University Press. Nozick, R. 2002. Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge: Cambridge University press. Pattie, C., and Johnston, R. 2001. “A low turnout landslide: abstention at the British general election of 1997.” Political Studies 49: 286-305. Penaloza, L., and Gilly, M. 1999. “Marketer acculturation: the changer and the changed.” Journal of Marketing 63 3: 84-104. Penaloza, L. 2001. “Consuming the American West.” Journal of Consumer Research 28 3: 369-398. Pires, G., Stanton, J., and Rita, P. 2006. “The internet, consumer empowerment and marketing strategies.” European Journal of Marketing 40 9/10: 936-949. Rose, N. 1993. “Government, authority and expertise in advanced liberalism.” Economy and Society 22 3: 283 Schwartz, B. 2004. The Paradox of Choice. New York: HarperCollins. Scullion, R. 2006. “Investigating electoral choice through a consumer as choice-maker lens.” The Marketing of Political Parties, ed. D. Lilleker, D. N. Jackson and R. Scullion. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Scullion, R., Gerodomos, R., Jackson, D., and Lilleker, D. 2013. The Media, Political Participation and Empowerment. London: Routledge. Sherry, J. 1991. “Postmodern alternatives: the imperative turn in consumer research.” Handbook of Consumer Research, ed. T. Robertson and H. Kassarjiran. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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Stevens, L., and Maclaren, P. 2005. “Exploring the shopping imaginary.” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 4 4: 57-70. Thaler, R., and Sustein, K. 2009. Nudge. London: Penguin Books. Thompson, C., Locander, W., and Pollio, H. 1989. “Putting consumer experience back into consumer research.” Journal of Consumer Research 16 2: 133-147. Thompson, C., Locander, W., and Pollio, H. 1990. “The lived meaning of free choice: an existentialist-phenomenological description of everyday consumer experiences of contemporary married women.” Journal of Consumer Research 17 3: 346-361. Thompson, C., Pollio, H., and Locander, W. 1994. “The spoken and the unspoken: a hermeneutical approach to understanding the cultural viewpoints that underlie consumers’ expressed meanings.” Journal of Consumer Research 21 3: 432-452. Thompson, C., and Troester, M. 2002. “Consumer value systems in the age of postmodern fragmentation.” Journal of Consumer Research 28 4: 550-571. Warde, A. 2005. “Consumption and theories of practice.” Journal of Consumer Culture 5 2: 131-153. Woodruffe-Burton, H., Eccles, S., and Elliot, R. 2002. “Towards a theory of shopping: a holistic framework.” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 1 3: 256-266.

CHAPTER FOUR EUROSCEPTICISM IN THE BERLUSCONI AND MURDOCH PRESS PAUL ROWINSKI Europe is in crisis, facing its most serious test since the end of the Second World War. Popular political movements are on the rise and a pervasive Euroscepticism is now starting to spread its tentacles across the political spectrum. The notion of the media providing a platform for the communication and creation of a European public sphere (Fossum and Schlesinger 2007) has dissipated. Nation is proving very hardy (Billig 1995) as the EU itself concedes, entrenched further by the euro crisis. National self-preservation appears de rigeur, as Soros (2012) argues. Tensions are rising. For instance, Il Giornale, the Berlusconi-run newspaper that is a focus later in this chapter, has fed and fed upon the zeitgeist of Italian national prejudice towards Germany in light of the euro crisis. The European historian Alan Milward argued that Europe would move forward as long as it served mutual national self-interest. Milward proposed European integration only occurred when it was actually needed by nation states (Dedman 1996, 12). Now the word mutual appears absent from the equation, as, say Britain, with its long history of post-war Euroscepticism (Gifford 2008), seeks to withdraw further still – as the EU summit in December 2011 demonstrated (Watson 2011). The euro is in turmoil. The French leader Charles de Gaulle once wanted l’Europe de Patrie, rejecting Winston Churchill’s vision of a United States of Europe. As Gillingham (1991, 196) said of de Gaulle, “the Common Market, he thought, would become a worldwide free trade area, that would be the end of Europe, which would cease to be European.” This is food for thought in our global age and the current euro crisis. There is some evidence to suggest that the Berlusconi- and Murdochrun quality newspapers have helped to push the pendulum of Euroscepticism further still (Gifford 2008; Mautner 2008) – let alone in

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the populist tabloids. In a 2004 interview with this author, Nick Clegg called the political reaction to this phenomenon cowardice in the face of press vitriol. On joining the euro in 2002, there was a distinctly lukewarm response from Berlusconi’s Forza Italia-led coalition government, elected the year before. This was reflected in the Berlusconi-run Il Giornale newspaper. Berlusconi administration minister Antonio Martino was a member of the Eurosceptic Bruges group, along with Margaret Thatcher. As Forza Italia’s chief economist, Martino had been hostile to monetary union. As Defence Minister, Martino joined with the Giulio Tremonti, Forza Italia’s Economy Minister, in January 2002 to give the euro a cool reception. Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero subsequently resigned from Berlusconi’s government because of their response to the euro. As this chapter will suggest, two very different (yet in specific contexts surprisingly similar) brands of Euroscepticism come to the fore in the quality newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch (The Times) and Silvio Berlusconi (Il Giornale) and their coverage of major EU stories. In both cases, however, these brands of Euroscepticism appear related to the political positions held by their proprietors, and their proprietors’ perceptions of their readerships. In this context, the newspaper seems still to be a prism through which national consciousness and subsequent discourse is expressed (Mautner 2008, 42-45).

Nationhood What is meant by nationhood? How is this sense of self understood and expressed very differently across Europe – and through the prism of newspapers? Hallin and Mancini (2004, 2) in advancing their comparative approach to media structures in different countries, argue that “most of the literature on the media is highly ethnocentric, in the sense that it refers only to the experience of a single country, yet is written in general terms, as though the model that prevailed in that country was universal.” The problem of ethnocentricity (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 2) is arguably more pervasive still, affecting social scientific research generally. Ulrich Beck (2003, 454) suggests that “a nation state outlook on society and politics, law and justice and history governs the sociological imagination. To some extent, much of social science is a prisoner of the nation state.” When presenting comparative data it is useful to challenge readers’ perceptions and preconceptions. Hallin and Mancini (2004, 2) argue that certain aspects of media systems are so familiar they are not perceived at all. They suggest that comparison forces us to de-naturalize, conceptualizing

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more clearly which parts of the media system actually require more explanation. Thus Blumler and Gurevitch (1975, 76) suppose that comparative analysis has the “capacity to render the invisible visible.”

Italy Italy’s post-war premier Alcide de Gasperi was one of the founding fathers of the European project, alongside his German counterpart Konrad Adenauer and France’s foreign minister Robert Schuman. Post-war Italy has very much defined itself in relation to Europe (Ginzborg 2003, 239). It is nevertheless a nation with a very strong regionalism and a north-south divide which has created a platform for separatists in the north to talk of an independent Padania, as articulated by the secessionist (and very antiEU) Northern League (Ginzborg 2003, 301; Giordano 2004, 65). The Berlusconi-owned newspaper Il Giornale (based in Milan) serves both the readerships of the Northern League and the People of Liberty party of Silvio Berlusconi (previously known as Forza Italia). Hence sometimes two very different audiences are addressed and mediated in its pages – while these two political parties have simultaneously co-operated in a series of Berlusconi’s coalition governments. It should be noted that the readerships for Italian newspapers have always been relatively small, serving opinion-formers in the main, despite attempts to make Il Giornale more of a mass circulation title (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 102). This newspaper may therefore be seen as functioning to negotiate between and synthesize the positions of key groups within these two parties. Britain has played a pioneering role in developing what Chalaby (1996) called fact-centred discourse. Italy understands news and presents it very differently. Putnam, in his analysis of the Italian media (1973, 81-2), argues that “in journalism, this style is reflected in the fact that facts are not seen as speaking for themselves, commentary is valued, and neutrality appears as inconsistency, naiveté or opportunism.” Hence the notion of the pastone (on the front page of such newspapers as Il Giornale) is prevalent. Pastone combine a review of the major political developments of the day with comments by the journalists. Despite Italian journalism’s increased market-orientation, this commentary-oriented version of (or alternative to) front-page news has yet to be abandoned (Roidi 2001). This therefore remains an influential arena for the mediation of political perspectives.

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Britain Winston Churchill was one of the founding members of the Council of Europe in 1949. He worked closely with Italian prime minister Alcide de Gasperi. Churchill, in a speech in Zurich on 19 September 1946, called for the establishment of “a kind of United States of Europe” arguing that its “first step is to form a Council of Europe” and that “France and Germany must take the lead together” while “Great Britain, the British Commonwealth [and] mighty America must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe” (Brinkley and Hackett 1991, 20). The Council of Europe was concerned with human rights, education and culture. In 1951, West Germany joined – an act of reconciliation suggested by Churchill (Judt 2005, 275). Yet, by contrast, the Little England jingoism of many British newspapers today instead evokes a onedimensional Churchill, the national war leader, which Garton-Ash (2005, 31) describes as the meta-story of a plucky Churchillian Britain. Britain finally joined the European Economic Community (EEC) more than twenty years behind the founding nations – in 1973. The British press have tended to echo a lack of enthusiasm for all things European which (they appear to assume) reflects – and which certainly reinforces – the stereotypical perspective of the British public. British newspapers are used to speaking to and for the nation. This speaking to and for is further reinforced by a majoritarian two-party system (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 242) which (current incumbents excluded) often returns one-party governments with large majorities – which are also therefore in a position to speak to and for the nation. Those monolithic governments tend most successfully to consolidate their influence when they join forces with the giants of the UK press – a situation to which the significant relationships both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair enjoyed with the Murdoch empire clearly attest. British journalism is often characterized by a mode of professionalism whereby, regardless of their personal sympathies, journalists will write for a majority right-wing press, and serve that press’s readership – while privately often standing elsewhere on the political spectrum (Hallin and Mancini 2004). Furthermore, it is likely that, again regardless of the journalists’ sympathies, their copy will be laden with a ‘Eurosceptic inflection’ (Morgan 1995) as London desks often re-work copy from (for example) Brussels, to give it just the right flavour for the papers’ perceived readerships and proprietorial or editorial positions.. British newspapers then tend for the most part to offer Eurosceptical positions. The early demise of Robert Maxwell’s attempt at a Euro-

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enthusiastic newspaper, The European (1990-1998), has not encouraged other titles to adopt a similar perspective. The role of national governments in helping citizens comprehend European governance is also a key determinant in the European Union’s failure to connect with its populations, as Statham (2008, 418-419) suggests. Statham argues that journalists would adapt towards more pro-European positions if politicians made European governance more salient in the “hearts and minds of citizens” (2008, 418-419). The communication deficit is not therefore just down to the EU (though there are clearly also problems at a supranational level – see, for example, Gavin 2009). It is also down to national politicians and not just newspapers. This chapter’s focus, however, is limited to newspaper discourse and the role that Berlusconi and Murdoch papers have played in this phenomenon.

Berlusconi and Europe Silvio Berlusconi told The Times on 14 January 2002 that he wanted Europe to be “strong, democratic, and able to speak with one voice” but not to be a “centrally run” superstate (Owen 2002). Berlusconi also spoke of a future of “common European cultural values” but not of the “bloated and cumbersome machine” of “the Eurocentralisers”. Ginzborg (2003 291) argues that “Berlusconi advocated a basically neoliberal, economic programme, with strong Thatcherite overtones.” However, as Owen (2002) noted, Berlusconi added that “no country is more European than Italy” as one of the founding six and that it was “rubbish” to call him Eurosceptic: “If anything I am a Euro-enthusiast. I am the elected leader of a country whose European credentials are second to none. When Italians voted for me – overwhelmingly – they were voting for an Italy in Europe.” Indeed Berlusconi accepted that “states surrender pieces of their sovereignty in the interests of a greater identity.” He has also voiced support for subsidiarity – “the principle that decisions are taken at the appropriate level, which derives from the Christian Democratic culture in which I grew up” (Owen 2002). Indeed Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party (Emmott 2012) has more recently said that talk of returning to the lira “should not be considered as blasphemy.” Berlusconi alarmed many observers in 2012 by musing openly about Italy quitting the euro zone, but he told the French newspaper Liberation that his remarks had been misreported. He said that some members of his party had raised the possibility just to put pressure on Germany to relent in its demands for painful fiscal austerity. Berlusconi told Reuters on 11 August 2012 (Flynn 2012): “I always said that the exit

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of one or more of its members would mean the disintegration of the euro zone. It would mean the failure of a historic project to unify Europe and no one could want that. Within the PDL [People of Liberty party], we all consider that an exit from the euro would be a disaster.”

Murdoch and Europe At Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into the conduct of the British press, Rupert Murdoch was forced to admit that his newspapers did indeed reflect his views, whether it was on the broad issue of which party to back at an election, or on such specifics as the EU constitution. He said, for example, that “we certainly expressed the opinion strongly that the EU Constitution should be put to the people” (25 April 2012). But perhaps the aspect of Mr Murdoch’s testimony that most revealed the man in all his ambiguity came when he spoke about issues that really concerned him. At these moments his own sense of identity became confused and he spoke as if he saw his real identity as that of the true Brit that his Sun newspaper aspires to represent. On 25 April 2012 he told the Leveson Inquiry: “My feeling about it, if you want to debate the euro, was that it was a great abdication of power over our own affairs.” We may note his emphasis on the affairs of Britain being ones he shares – as “our own”. James Harding wrote in The Financial Times on 11 June 2002 that Rupert Murdoch wanted to see an anti-euro message “spread by his newspapers The Sun, The News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times.” Harding quoted Murdoch himself as arguing that as “Europe is made up of so many diverse cultures and histories” it would be damaging “to slam it altogether with a government of French bureaucrats answerable to nobody.” Murdoch’s position evoked clichéd tabloid fears that British national sovereignty might be suppressed by the influence of the French. Again, it remains unclear whether Murdoch’s British patriotism – bordering on jingoism – is affected or sincere, but perhaps that ambiguity is unimportant (and perhaps even Mr Murdoch doesn’t really know whether it’s real). What is certain is that it is both commercially successful and ideologically influential. On 15 November 2003 Murdoch told the BBC his views upon a possible EU Constitution. He was questioned over the possibility that The Sun newspaper might shift its allegiance from the Labour Party to the Conservatives at the next election. Murdoch replied: “It’s a long way away, let’s see what the government is doing with Europe.” He warned of the “great dangers” of the new European Constitution. Murdoch added: “I

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don’t like the idea of any more abdication of our sovereignty in economic affairs or anything else.” He said he would wait to see what was in the final EU Constitution, but that if it was anything like the draft “then we’ll oppose it.”

Press Discourse Detailed studies of the discourses relating to the European Union in the newspapers owned by Silvio Berlusconi and Rupert Murdoch have shown how the positions of these papers problematically reflect the positions taken by their owners (Rowinski 2010). Political clashes between Berlusconi’s party and that of the Northern League have, for example, resulted in somewhat mixed messages on the pages of Il Giornale. Yet the broader discourse presented by the newspaper has been one of a sometimes cautious Italy – yet one consistently seeing itself as central to Europe’s success. This mixture of a curiously Eurocentric patriotism (or, rather, an Italy-centred Euro-enthusiasm) and a (some might say cynical) political pragmatism appears consistent with positions advanced by Silvio Berlusconi himself. The Times has meanwhile, with rather less ambiguity or ambivalence, both reflected and on occasions reinforced a perception of Europe as a threat to the national interest – a perception projected by Rupert Murdoch, one which for that newspaper’s Australian-American owner reflects his projection of his readership’s perception of their own antagonistic Britishness (and his own sense of his own Britishness). Il Giornale has, however, taken issue with the idea of the euro as a springboard for a deeper Europe. Instead it has argued (in the style of businessman Berlusconi) that the common market has needed improved management. The Times has gone rather further by articulating its (and its owner’s) view of the precariousness of even considering joining the euro, and the need therefore to wait and see what happens with the single currency. Indeed The Times has gone so far as to question whether EU countries were really as closely aligned, in terms of economic performance, as fiscal harmonisation required. This issue has been used by Mr Murdoch’s publication to highlight the European threat to Britain’s economic autonomy and indeed to its political sovereignty. Chiming with views expressed by its owner, the message was to wait on the euro, and to distrust the motivations which lay behind the initiative. What is apparent is that the minutiae of Europe, beyond the prism of nationhood, are not conveyed to the reader. These papers have focused on what Europe means for their own (and their readers’) senses of national

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identity (that, after all, is what sells papers), in ways which tend to reflect their owners’ commercial and political interests. The perceived shortcomings, for example, of premiers Mario Monti and David Cameron in their dealings with Europe are represented as issues of national concern; but European governance itself is not subjected to detailed scrutiny in the news pages of Il Giornale or The Times. This journalistic deficit may offer populist advantages to the Eurosceptic right (amongst others) as these European nations withdraw behind their own national barricades to fight off the continuing damage of international recession.

A Political Vacuum? In the Eastleigh by-election at the end of February 2013, the Liberal Democrats held on to the seat, narrowly seeing off the challenge of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). The Conservatives were driven into third place. In Britain at least it has appeared that Euroscepticism is significantly on the rise. This may result in part more generally from a distrust of the entrenched institutions of mainstream national politics, and in part from a specific distrust of European institutions, a distrust propagated at their proprietors’ behest by such newspapers as The Sun and The Times. Either way, the implications to the continued health of democracy in the UK may raise concerns. Gifford (2008, 143) noted that the UK Independence Party’s central policy, to seek the complete withdrawal of Britain from the EU, had once allowed the Conservatives to position themselves as a middle way on Europe. Yet there may have developed a recalibration of the Conservative position under David Cameron’s leadership, perhaps out of political expediency. UKIP have suggested that the possibility of any future electoral pact with the Conservatives would require the latter to make a promise “written in blood” to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. Mr Cameron has shifted ever closer to such a promise: the incremental shifts of his position on the European Union have been gradual, but radical. Cameron’s referendum pledge, although yet to be penned in blood, has been seen by some as taking political pragmatism past opportunism towards a cynical populism designed to curry favour with an influentially Eurosceptic press (and with sections of the electorate and of his own party whose positions on Europe reflect – and are perhaps to some extent shaped by – those of that press). The murmurings in Westminster suggest that the Conservative Party may need to go into coalition with UKIP after the next election. Some argue that UKIP could become the third force in British politics, ousting

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the Tories’ current coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has therefore pledged that under his continued leadership Britain would face a referendum on British membership of the EU by 2017 (Watt 2013). According to Grice (2006) Rupert Murdoch had once lobbied former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to secure a referendum on the then EU Constitution. The need for this was rendered redundant, after the referendum rejections by the peoples of France, Holland and Ireland. So will the Murdoch press now push the pendulum further regarding Europe? Could Britain finally leave the European table by 2017? This seems a radical but not improbable scenario. Yet the repercussions of the Eastleigh by-election result dim into insignificance when one considers what happened in the Italian general election in February 2013. The Five Star Movement, led by the former comedian Beppe Grillo, won more seats than Mr Berlusconi’s party. The Eurosceptic protest movement had campaigned for a referendum on euro membership and had succeeded in a challenge to Italy’s ageing political class. Day (2013) claimed in The Independent that the political establishments in Italy and the EU would be quaking at the protest movement’s rise. A Eurosceptic populist movement has thus taken centre-stage in Italy. Consecutive Italian governments have failed to reaffirm their positions on Italy’s Europeanness; Beppe Grillo and his movement have had no such difficulties. His is a movement which lives online and selected its own parliamentary candidates through web-based primaries. Grillo himself had cast his vote for “a mother of three, a 23-year-old college graduate and an engineer” (Davies, 2013) – because, as he stressed, “those are the people I want to see in parliament.” The failure of mainstream political parties to resist and to counteract the agendas set by a predominantly Eurosceptical or politically cynical press (agendas clearly aligned with those of the owners of those papers) has allowed such parties as the Northern League, the Five Star Movement and the UK Independence Party to gain in influence. Any resurgence of nationalism and of xenophobia that may result might garner some degree of popular support; but, insofar as such an ideological environment is provoked by a media elite, it might seem less the product of democracy than of demagoguery. If the European Union has evolved out of an original aspiration to maintain peace and democracy in Western Europe, then it may be worth questioning the motivations of those who threaten its demise, and imagining for a moment the possible consequences of that demise.

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Works Cited Beck, U. 2003. “Toward a new critical theory with a cosmopolitan intent.” Constellations 10 4: 453-68. Billig, M. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Blumler, J., and Gurevitch, M. 1975. “Towards a comparative framework for political communication research.” The Crisis of Public Communication, ed. J Blumler and M. Gurevitch, 59-72. London: Routledge. Brinkley, D., and Hackett, C. 1991. Jean Monnet: The Path to European Unity. London: Macmillan. Chalaby, J. 1996. “Journalism as an Anglo-American invention.” European Journal of Communication 11 3: 303-326. Davies, L. 2013. “Italy prepares to meet the Grillini.” The Guardian, 28 February 2013. Day, M. 2013. “Italian election: surge in popularity for Eurosceptic protest party headed by stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo raises fears in EU.” The Independent, 22 February 2013. Dedman, M. 1996. The Origins and Development of the European Union. London: Routledge. Emmott, B. 2012. “Saving Italy.” Prospect, October 2012. Flynn, D. 2012. “Berlusconi says an Italian exit from euro would be disaster.” Reuters, 11 August 2012. Fossum, J., and Schlesinger, P. 2007. The European Union and the Public Sphere. London: Routledge. Garton-Ash, T. 2005. Free World. London: Penguin. Gavin, N. 2009. “The European Union and its promotions deficit.” Media in the Enlarged Europe, ed. A. Charles, 79-89. Bristol: Intellect. Gifford, C. 2008. The Making of a Eurosceptic Britain. Identity and Economy in a Post-Imperial State. Aldershot: Ashgate. Gillingham, J. 1991. Jean Monnet: The Path to European Unity, ed D. Binckley and C. Hackett, 134-135. London: Macmillan. Ginzborg, P. 2003. Italy and Its Discontents. London: Penguin. Giordano, B. 2004. “The politics of the Northern League and Italy’s changing attitude towards Europe.” Perspectives on European Politics and Society 5 1: 61-79. Grice, A. 2006. “Murdoch set to back Blair – for a place in his boardroom.” The Independent, 29 July 2006. Hallin, D., and Mancini, P. 2004. Comparing Media Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Judt, T. 2005. Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. London: Pimlico.

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Morgan, D. 1995. “British media and European Union news.” European Journal of Communication 10 3: 321-343. Owen, R. 2002. “My passion for Europe.” The Times, 14 January 2002. Putnam, R. 1973. The Beliefs of Politicians: Ideology, conflict and democracy in Britain and Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Roidi, V. 2001. La Fabbrica delle Notizie. Bari: Laterza. Rowinski, P. 2010. European Integration in Italian and British Newspaper Discourse. PhD dissertation: University of Strathclyde. Soros, G. 2012. “George Soros’ Plan to Save the Euro.” Der Spiegel, 11 September 2012. Watson, R. 2011. “Britain stands alone with historic rejection of EU.” The Times, 10 December 2011. Watt, N. 2013. “David Cameron’s EU referendum pledge wins over Eurosceptic Tories.” The Guardian, 23 January 2013.

CHAPTER FIVE THE USE OF THE WEB FOR POLITICAL PARTICIPATION KAROLINA KOC-MICHALSKA AND DARREN G. LILLEKER WITH PAWEL SUROWEIC This chapter explores the behavioural characteristics of individuals who actively seek political information in online environments in the context of Poland’s 2011 parliamentary elections. It aims to explore online forms of political participation as an adjunct of democratic engagement with the contemporary online public sphere in Poland. Our findings are contextualised within the notion of civic society, an ideological force for political mobilisation and participation advocated by elites in Poland since 1989 (Frentzel-Zagorska 1990). This chapter offers insights into how the internet facilitates online political information-seeking, commenting, sharing and creating as mediated forms of civic participation and engagement, explores the links between different forms of participation and uses of online platforms, and contributes to an ongoing debate on the quality of democracy in Poland.

Political Internet as Public Sphere Our analysis does not seek explicitly to test for the existence of a public sphere but aims to analyse existing social spaces in which some form of political participation can take place. Identifying what forms of political participation occur, and understanding the patterns of participation and the motivations for participating, offer insights into how the internet facilitates participation within the context of a nation’s democratic culture (Lasch 1987). Public sphere scholars are keen to separate the notion of the public space from definitions of a public sphere. Following from the work of Papacharissi (2009), however, we would suggest that these online public spaces present reflexive architectures within which individuals are able to

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share their private thoughts. More broadly, participation contributes to a diegesis (a multi-authored, cross-platform narrative) around any subject area, specific issue or event. The contributions to this diegesis can be viewed as empowering the contributor and shaping the opinions of audiences. It is this perspective upon the online environment as providing spaces for reflection, self-expression and feedback that may be seen to connect our study of individual contributors with broader notions of them as contributors to a public sphere. The majority of current studies in this field focus on online civic participation in the United States. Supported by some empirical findings such studies hypothesise that participating in politics leads to feelings of empowerment and prompts further participation. Such participation is traditionally viewed within the narrow terms of voting, campaigning, contacting representatives and officials, and pressure group membership and activism (Verba and Nie 1972; Verba et al. 1995). However, more recently studies have focused on “non-traditional forms of participation” facilitated within online environments (McLeod et al. 1999; Scheufele and Nisbet 2002). The question is whether these new participatory forms contribute to civic engagement, as much research suggests, or, due to the lack of effort and consideration required, say, to complete online petitions, represent at best weak participation (Morozov 2011). Much research has focused around the subject of interactivity and political talk with data indicating that there is a strong and causal relationship between discussing politics on a weblog, for example, and engaging in discussions offline, as well as other forms of political activity. Evidence also suggests strong relationships between talking about politics and self-reported political efficacy (Semetko and Valkenburg 1998), greater civic participation (Shah et al. 2005) and political participation (Rojas 2008). There is also evidence that internet use for political discussions enhances social capital (Shah et al. 2001), and increases political participation (Shah et al. 2002; Wellman et al. 2003) and civic engagement (Jennings and Zeitner 2003), and that there are generally “positive effects of using the internet on communication, social involvement and well-being” (Kraut et al. 2002, 49). These studies cumulatively suggest that the internet has a highly positive impact upon individual civic engagement and by implication upon the health of a democracy. However, existing research largely focuses on specific types of behaviour, such as authoring a weblog. While there may be a link between the most active forms of online participation and broader civic engagement, the notion of a causal connection remains open to question.

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Research among those with the highest levels of online political engagement, blog readers, authors and contributors, has found an empirical relationship between blog use and a series of online political behaviours, including discussion, campaigning and other forms of political participation such as signing petitions or donating money. Gil de Zuniga et al. (2010, 45) therefore suggest that “blog readers are involved in a range of participatory activities, both online and offline, and that these two spheres are highly complementary and mutually supportive. We view these findings as evidence of the emergence of a hybrid participation that combines the virtual and real world realms of political engagement and action – a new digital democracy.” But does this hold true outside the United States and for all the myriad activities that take place within those online environments that we may describe as participatory in some form? Being active may not only be restricted to actions such as commenting but should include informationseeking, as opposed to passively receiving news via mass media. Being active in seeking information is argued to have positive effects for the individual and broader democracy (Boulianne 2009; Eveland et al. 2005). Research shows that using media to obtain news increases political knowledge, and encourages reflection on events and cognitive elaboration of news items. This is argued to be particularly the case when using online news (Boulianne 2009). Active information-seeking also fosters a sense of political efficacy (Eveland et al. 2005). News consumption, when combined with interpersonal political discussion, also encourages various forms of political participation (Sotirovic and McLeod 2001; Hardy and Scheufele 2005). Accessing information is also seen as a springboard towards entering into political discussion, particularly when audiences are exposed to multiple viewpoints (Mutz and Martin 2001). Therefore, information-seeking is seen as one pathway to entering into conversations which can encourage further engagement in civic and political life (Mutz 2006; Walsh 2004). Information-seeking and conversations can take place in multiple environments and it is argued that online interactions complement face-to-face political talk, and that, through facilitating political discussion and dialogue, the internet can increase a sense of civicness (Shah et al. 2005). We recognise, however, that the benefits reaped through online participation, even in the form of active informationseeking, may only be the preserve of a minority. Studies have shown that those who make extensive use of online political information are those with strong pre-existing interests in politics (Bimber 1999; Shah et al. 2001; Norris 2003; Polat 2005). It is also noted that there are strong indicators that participants online mirror the elite who are likely to be

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highly involved information-seekers and producers offline, being predominantly white, male and highly educated (Hindman 2009). There are, however, some indications that social media are broadening the demographic of those participating in this way (Smith et al. 2009). Elections represent points in time when there is an increased focus on politics. Therefore one may expect a simultaneous upsurge in engagement and participation within online environments from a less narrow demographic than the usual elite. Most research focuses on the uses of the internet as a campaign tool (see for example Kluver et al. 2007; Lilleker and Jackson 2011). Where citizen usage of this environment is studied, data suggests that online discussion becomes framed by the concerns of the media and thus focuses on non-substantive issues, often the processes of campaigning as opposed to policy issues, and comment areas become dominated with unconstructive engagement between participants (Koop and Jansen 2009). For active information-seekers this may mean that there is little benefit to be had from going online. However, it is noted that the internet is increasingly used as a source of information to aid voter choices (Drew and Weaver 2006). Identifying information-seeking as an indicator of political engagement contrasts with perspectives that argue the internet encourages people to participate only within ideological ghettoes (Sunstein 2007) or partisan networks (Stanyer 2006). Information-seeking suggests a multiplicity of forms of engagement and can lead to a range of participatory activities. The motivations for participatory engagement are as diverse as the range of possible activities facilitated by the increasingly granular online environment (Chadwick 2010). Engagement motivates information-seeking which, it is argued, leads to higher levels of engagement and, in theory, some forms of active political participation. Traditionally such participation is viewed in terms of forms of activism, demonstrations, strikes and public meetings, as well as voting (Verba and Nye 1972). However, notwithstanding the polarised debates surrounding online activism, there are now myriad forms of participatory behaviour that can be carried out requiring only some form of access to the internet. Online participation ranges from liking or sharing media items via social networking sites, to acts of joining and campaigning, and is thought to mirror and support offline campaigns, particularly in the context of elections (Howard 2006). But are these online activists the already-converted – as was argued to be the case for visitors to party websites (Norris 2003) – and is it only partisan activists who engage in participatory activity (Norris and Curtice 2008) or is the internet now facilitating a range of different forms of participation, as some U.S. research suggests (Kaye 2010)? This chapter

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seeks to shed some light upon who participates within the politicallyfocused communicative ecosystem facilitated by the internet, the characteristics of their participation, their motivations for participation and that environment’s cognitive and behavioural impacts upon those participants, in order to offer an understanding of online participation within the context of elections in emergent democracies.

Polish Democracy Polish democracy is in a state of flux. Although democratisation has primarily been analysed in terms of developments in political economy (Pachulska 2005), the formation of an idealised civic society, as envisioned by Polish elites, is still considered within the academic discourse on Polish democracy as a “work in progress” (Paczynska 2005). Poland is characterised as having “a short democratic history, underdeveloped parties and ‘tabloidized’ politics” (Tworzecki and Semetko 2012, 3). Thus far, the academic attempts to assess democratisation in Poland have centred on perspectives of civic life being “half full” or “half empty”: the former argues there is progress in the country’s democratic revival; the latter highlights the immaturity and shortcomings of the embeddedness of democracy in Poland, both institutionally and within civic culture. Furthermore, the process of democratisation has been primarily thought of in modernist top-down terms whereby political and cultural elites have positioned themselves as having hegemony over the formation of civic society in Poland (Domagalski 2003). Polish democracy has seen personality-driven new parties dominate the political scene for short periods; its history of divisions, incompetent governance and personalization, and the instability of its party system and election outcomes, have led to a largely disengaged electorate (Millard 2010, 13-16). Data shows that only 40 per cent of the electorate have any stable partisan attachments, while the average turnout at elections falls below 50 per cent. Millard’s review of Polish elections 1991-2007 (Millard 2010, 208218) argues that, despite the country’s long history of activism, those who do not vote (a majority of the Polish electorate) were not interested in, and felt alienated by, electoral politics: “they did not see politics as important or relevant to their lives and they lacked confidence in political institutions.” The Polish parliament (Sejm) was viewed positively by only 18 per cent of the electorate. Non-voters argued that “voting would make no difference to the country or to themselves”. Data also reveals “anger at the failure of politicians to maintain standards of probity and public service”. These systemic problems have implications for understanding the

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relationship between democracy, civic participation and the public sphere in Poland. Paczynska (2005) argues that democratic participation has become the domain of a narrow, privileged class of citizens. Yet, mechanisms for testing mandate-responsiveness and exposing failure are in place and may be accentuated in online environments were citizens have the ability publicly to censure politicians (Kurtz 2005; Shachtman 2002). Notwithstanding such criticisms of democratisation in Poland, the rationale for this study stems from a few observations. While political elections come for many to represent a “promotional culture” spectacle (Wernick 1991), this does not have to be the case. There is very little analysis of online communicative practices or their contribution to the Polish public sphere. It has been argued that traditional media have played a significant role in the formation of civic society (Ociepka 2003; Pfetsch and Voltmer 2012). Evidence from Central and Eastern European countries shows that reading quality newspapers is strongly linked to higher levels of political engagement and “exposure to outlets that feature serious and in-depth analysis of public affairs can indeed have a positive impact on participatory behaviour in new democracies” (Tworzecki and Semetko 2012, 20). Theoretically, the internet offers opportunities for re-structuring the Polish public sphere in order to empower marginalised voices. Furthermore, the Institute of Public Affairs’ monitoring of public policy in Poland suggests that online campaigning has increasingly been utilised in political communication at the time of elections, but the ways in which online campaigning and participation in online political discussion and debate contribute to broader democratic mobilisation remain unexplored (Huddleston 2011). This chapter examines those who participate (as readers and/or creators) within the online Polish political public sphere. It explores their patterns of behaviour, their motivations and the impacts upon them of the online environment, in order to gain insights into whether that environment contributes to their involvement in the democratic processes of Polish political life. Within the context of the 2011 Polish general election this analysis focuses on the following three research questions: x RQ1: What patterns of political participation can be identified among the users of Poland’s online political sphere? x RQ2: What factors shape patterns of political participation? x RQ3: How do different forms of online political participation impact upon voting behaviour?

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Survey Online The Polish online political sphere is still under construction. Internet users represent only 56 per cent of the general population. They differ mostly by age and education; gender differences are minor. As may be expected, younger Poles use the internet most frequently. Statistical data generated by a 2011 survey conducted by Poland’s Public Opinion Research Centre, (CBOS) shows internet use among 94 per cent of 18-24 year-olds, 89 per cent of 25-34 year-olds, 71 per cent of 35-44 year-olds, 50 per cent of 4554 year-olds, 32 per cent of 55-64 year-olds and 9 per cent of people aged 65 or older. The CBOS survey also demonstrated that internet usage increases with education (except among schoolchildren, 94 per cent of whom use the internet regardless of levels of educational advantage or attainment). Usage rates of 93 per cent and 71 per cent were recorded among those with university and college educations respectively. Income also plays an important role as among the poorest sections of the population only 25 per cent use the internet, while 75 per cent of the most wealthy do so. There are no substantial differences between cities; but usage is slightly lower in small villages. Only 13 per cent of internet users read political blogs and 3 per cent comment on political forums; among these there are aboveaverage proportions of men and people over 65 years old, and, as might be expected, these users also have higher than average levels of educational attainment. As many as 82 per cent of internet users say that they are likely to vote, and 78 per cent declare actually voting (which is much higher than the actual turnout seen in 2011: 48.9 per cent). The population from which this study has drawn its sample is therefore a minority of the Polish electorate and participants, given that it utilised an online survey method which generated a purely self-selecting sample – a sample of individuals who were more than averagely likely to be interested in politics and so to possess high levels of democratic engagement. However, this method has been used in a number of studies designed to understand online political participation and participants’ motivations (see Johnson and Kaye 2009).

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Table 1. Factor analysis of political participation .

Social networking site political participation Visit SNS page of political organization Visit SNS page of NGO Visit SNS page of politician Visit SNS page of political party Visit SNA page of election commentator Political comment on own SNS profile Political comment on SNS profile of party or candidate Blog/microblog political participation Writing own political blog Comment on political blogs Political comment on Twitter Follow political news feed of parties or candidates Participate in political meetings Website political participation Search for political information Visit party website Visit candidate website Watch political video Visit video-sharing website of political party or politician Re-send political information to others Offline political participation Strike Illegal demonstration Boycotting products, people Legal demonstration Produce political graffiti Participate in party event Eigenvalues % of Variance

.869 .830 .803 .750 .746 .663 .565 .671 .624 .615 .565 .406 -.718 -.717 -.679 -.637 -.574 -.421

6.225 26.062

.658 .533 .499 .479 .375 .327 2.026 1.659 1.316 8.444 6.912 5.481

Note: Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization. For reasons of clarity only factors above 0.3 are presented.

Our survey went live during the two week period (1-14 October 2011) surrounding the Polish Parliamentary election on 7 October. We contacted ten of the major providers of online political information in Poland, out of whom six participated in this study. As obtaining a representative sample of political internet users is very difficult if not impossible (see Gil de

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Zuniga 2010) we attempted to achieve the most representative sample by advertising our research on a cross-section of online political platforms, including general political sites and a very popular social networking page dedicated to elections. Among the platforms participating in our research, two represented politically influential daily and weekly newspapers, one was a blog platform dedicated to political issues popular among a range of professional, ideological and independent political actors and commentators, two were general online platforms with popular weblogs dedicated to political issues, and one was an election-related page on Facebook belonging to Poland’s largest daily newspaper. All participants were asked to advertise our study in the form of a banner or pop-up leading to a link to our survey. A website featuring information about the research was created, and this offered an additional link to the survey. In total 781 respondents took part in the survey, with 460 responding to all questions. Demographically the participants adhered to the general profile of those most likely to be politically active online. Of the total number of respondents 35 per cent were women and 63 per cent men. The mean age was 36 years. Their education level was mostly higher than college (54.9 per cent of respondents had earned a Master’s degree or PhD). 44.8 per cent of respondents were from cities with populations larger than 500,000 people. The profile of our respondents therefore correlates with the findings of studies that show that those who are politically active online tend to be predominantly male, highly educated city-dwellers (Hindman 2009). Their median monthly income per household was €1000-€1250, which is average for Poland. That our participants were highly politically engaged internet users is shown by the general responses to questions about their online activities. 41 per cent said they had been reading blogs for at least four years and at least once daily. On average our survey’s respondents each read 5.88 blogs – of which 3.88 were specifically political blogs. 21 per cent of our respondents wrote their own blogs about politics. They were also individuals who sought interaction: 51 per cent of respondents stated that they commented on entries on weblogs. 29 per cent said that they commented about politics on their own social networking profile pages, and 19 per cent said that they commented about politics on the social networking profile pages of politicians or political parties. Six per cent commented about political events on Twitter. Respondents tended to be more diversely politically active online – participating online on average in 4.03 modes of political activity (out of 11 suggested modes of activity) – than offline (where they on average participated in 1.7 out of 9 suggested modes of political activity).

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Our respondents held a range of ideological positions, most positioning themselves within the centre rather than on the extremes of the left-right scale. On an 11-point scale of ideological positions, they averaged a score of 6.09 with a standard deviation of 2.5. Most respondents had a strong propensity to vote, participating in most elections (78.8 per cent). Even though our sample’s level of voting engagement was not representative of that of the general population, their voter choice did seem representative, with their support for political parties reflecting the results of the 2007 and 2011 parliamentary elections. The two political parties which received the highest levels of support from our respondents (Civic Platform on 27.7 per cent and Law and Justice on 20.5 per cent) had attained similar levels of support from the electorate as a whole. To address our research questions a set of dependent and independent variables were used. Our analysis involved the use of two statistical procedures: a principal component factor analysis to explore different forms of political participation, and regression models to explain variance in patterns of participation and the relationship between participation and voting behaviour. The first group of variables was created using a principal component factor analysis, which allowed us to distinguish four different patterns of political participation (RQ1): political participation offline (what is deemed traditional or conventional participation); political participation via blogs and microblogs (which is a mixture of the most traditional forms of online political participation – blogs – and non-traditional forms of political participation via microblogging, especially Twitter); political participation on websites and political participation via social networks (see table 1 above). We defined political participation as actively seeking information and/or contributing to debates or discussions in some way (cf. Bimber 2001). While it is impossible here to identify causality between participation online and offline, as some studies have attempted (de Zuniga et al. 2009), we can identify different factors influencing online and offline forms of participation (RQ2). One key variable related to switches in voting behaviour between 2007 and 2011 (RQ3). 48 per cent of the sample declared some vote change. This group constituted those who in 2011 decided to vote for a different party than in 2007, or decided to participate in voting (when they decided not to vote in 2007) or decided not to vote (though they had voted in 2007). We were able to detect relationships between changes in voting behaviour and variables influencing voting behaviour: traditional demographic variables (e.g. age, gender, political identification) and media usage (cf. Edwards 2006) as well as different forms of political participation.

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In addition we distinguished between two forms of activism. Those who felt empowered by commenting and participating in offline discussion were labelled leaders of offline political discussions; they constituted 40 per cent of respondents. Those feeling empowered through online discussions constituted 39 per cent of the respondents. These individuals were those who attempt to lead discussions and arguably have a positive impact upon political participation by influencing others through the act of sharing their opinions (cf. Leighley 1990).

Patterns of Participation In order further to understand the patterns of non-traditional political participation we used a principal component factor analysis. From a given number of 24 different political activities four different patterns of political participation emerged (see table 1 above). The final results showed a strong division between different patterns of political participation within four diverse environments: social networks, blogs/microblogs, websites and offline. We have found participation was highly polarised and largely discrete within each of the four environments. The patterns discovered, which encompass a range of forms of participation, differ from the results of studies which focus purely on information-seeking (cf. Kaye 2010). First, we have identified participation located within social networks (Facebook or Poland’s Nasza Klasa) where participation is both passive (e.g. reading or visiting) and active (e.g. commenting or posting). The second group we have identified combines some traditional forms of online political engagement (writing and commenting on political blogs) with microblogging but also includes people who visit public meetings. This may suggest this group are newsmakers, reporting to an online audience, or partisan activists extending the reach of their parties. Polish bloggers and weblog readers appear to be similar to those surveyed by Kaye (2010, 213), who used weblogs to “share opinions and become politically involved [and as] a convenient way to become informed.” However, we have found a third group we identified to be information-seekers who surf the websites of candidates or parties, reading material and watching videos to support their voting decisions. Finally, we have identified a separate group whose participation is predominantly within the offline environment. Table 2 (below) shows the results of a regression analysis which sought explanations for the different patterns of political participation. Demographics do not play an important role in predicting patterns of participation, and this is consistent across all variables: there are no gender

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differences; education and income are not statistically significant except between participation on websites and social networks. As expected, age is negatively associated with participation online; however, age has no significant impact on participation in weblogs or on offline participation. Interest in politics has a statistically significant impact only in the case of website-based political participation. For the other forms of participation, however, interest in politics plays no significant role. This counters data from previous research where the level of interest in politics is the main explanatory variable (for example, Bimber 2001). However, this lack of impact may be due to the generally high level of interest in politics among our respondents which reduces observable differences found in previous studies between those with zero and significant levels of interest. Table 2. Political engagement (OLS regressions) Offline political participation B Std. Error Personal characteristics Gender -.031 .107 Age -.001 .003 HE .052 .102 High income .269 .132 Political variables Interest in politics .017 .024 Political ID Left .432 .136 Political ID Right .307 .112 Party member 1.469 .385 Political attitudes Lead political .033 .107 discussions (offline) Feel empowered by .060 .105 online discussions Media usage Offline media use -.009 .012 Online media use .056 .016 Online measures Intensive web use .109 .102 Constant -.209 .266 R Square .195 Adjusted R Square .163

B Std. Error

Blog/microblog political participation B Std. Error

Social network political participation B Std. Error

-.037 -.011 -.178 -.150

.179 .006 .171 .221

-.103 .005 -.222 .123

.113 .004 .108 .140

-.324 -.042 -.230 -.214

.220 .007 .210 .272

.103 .513 .308 .298

.040 .228 .186 .643

.037 .337 .280 2.693

.025 .144 .118 .407

.046 .164 -.439 1.422

.049 .280 .230 .792

.657

.179

.068

.113

.523

.220

.345

.176

.382

.111

.126

.216

.068 .200

.020 .027

.007 .107

.013 .017

-.035 .347

.025 .033

.009 -.907

.108 .282 .409 .384

.486 .054

.210 .548 .461 .441

Web political participation

.106 .170 -1.178 .445 .422 .400

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Ideology (as reported by participants) had a strong effect on participation. Those with extreme views on either the left or the right (in comparison with those situated in the centre) were significantly more active both offline and on general websites, weblogs and microblogs. However, this effect was not significant in relation to participation on social networking sites among those who were left-oriented and the effect was negative for those who were right-oriented. This finding may indicate that political participation on social networking sites attracts those with moderate views and who actively support moderate, mainstream parties. This hypothesis correlates with the fact that party membership has a statistically significant positive impact on offline participation and on participation via social networking sites; party members engage mainly via traditional routes of participation but also through the latest non-traditional channels. This situation is likely to be a corollary of those practices whereby parties build networks on social networking sites, use fan pages and then mobilise their fan-bases to extend their reach. Online media usage had a positive influence on all activities regardless of the environment, indicating that our respondents were highly engaged consumers of news and so were predisposed towards political participation (cf. Norris 2003; Boulianne 2009). This may also explain why high levels of offline media usage had a significant and positive impact on online activity. Our data suggests that each form of political participation is performed by a slightly different group of people. Offline political engagement is performed most often by those declaring party membership and those who have clear ideological positions. Participation on political websites is mostly practised by younger people who are interested in politics, who are active in offline conversations and who feel empowered by participating in online political discussions. Additionally, these individuals use both offline and online media extensively as sources of political information. Participation on weblogs and microblogs is for those with relatively lower levels of educational attainment, but who are partisan or possess strong ideological stances which they may seek to reinforce or voice (cf. Kaye 2010, 224). These findings suggest that these individuals are party activists, an inference which would also explain their propensity to attend public meetings. They also seek empowerment through participation in online political discussions and use online media as sources of political information. Political participation via social networking sites is performed by younger people who use the internet extensively (being almost permanently online), and who tend to use such sites to connect with friends. However, evidence suggests that these SNS users also discuss and

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seek and share information about politics both online and offline. But they are also political moderates; those who identify themselves as right-wing are less likely to participate politically within such social networking sites. In order further to test the explanatory value of the characteristics identified above we performed simple correlations and cross-tabulations among different groups of activities. The correlations were not particularly high, which confirmed that each grouping of different participation modes largely contained different internet users. As expected any kind of online political participation exhibited a high level of correlation with other forms of online participation rather than with the offline political participation. Our findings largely match those of previous research. However, we note the spread of a relatively new type of participant, one who is politically active on social networking sites, as has been observed by recent research in the United States (Kaye 2010). This type is younger, is permanently connected to the internet and tends to have been online for eight years or more, depending upon their age. They rely on online media as sources of political information and are also more than averagely likely to engage in offline political discussions. They have neither strong political identifications nor feel politically empowered by commenting about politics. The most counter-intuitive finding is that their level of interest in politics does not influence their degree of political participation; the small variances in our sample indicate that those with high levels of political interest only appear to seek information on websites. One might suggest that online social networkers may find political content by accident and are then drawn into some form of simple activism, and that these forms of activity may escalate (from liking to commenting), or that they prefer simpler political messages delivered by members of their networks. Perhaps due to Poland’s crystallizing political culture, only partisans tend to view party political material online.

Voter Choice Our focus finally turns to a specific group of respondents, those who recorded having changed their voting behaviour between 2007 and 2011. This presents an opportunity to detect how traditional explanatory variables (demographics, political attitudes or media usage) may have influenced vote-switching. As this was not a declarative variable (but an outcome of two independent variable responses) we could follow different patterns of change (party/party, voting/not-voting and not-voting/voting).

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However, for the purposes of this chapter, we have concentrated on the issue of changes in voting decisions (table 3 below). There were only three variables which had a positive and statistically significant impact on changes in voting behaviour. The most important was left-wing political identification, an issue which had been expected as a result of the emergence of a new left-oriented party (Ruch Palikota). We recognized that this party was able to convince some on the centre and those more left-oriented to vote for them. We also discovered two participation variables: website-based participation (information-seeking) and offline political engagement had a positive impact on changes to voting behaviour. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found political participation within weblogs or microblogs was not a significant factor in participants having changed their voting decisions; this finding is consistent with the assumption that those who participate politically in weblogs and microblogs may already be strong partisan activists. Contrary to our expectations (as this group mostly comprised young people with neither strong political interests nor strong political identifications) those who performed political participation on social networking sites, reading or sharing political information, did not exhibit impacts of these activities upon changes to their voting decisions. Those respondents who recorded performing any web-based forms of political activity were between two and eight times more likely to have changed their voting decisions than those who did not perform such activities. Other statistically significant factors had only negative influences. Older respondents and women were less likely to change their voting decisions. Education (though this was significant only for those who had a qualification higher than a college degree) was also shown to have a negative impact on the probability of changing voting decisions. Those who tended to be frequent voters, declaring participation in all elections, were also less likely to switch their voting allegiances. No influence was found in the uses of either offline or online media as sources of political information.

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Table 3. Vote decision change 2007-2011 (logistic regression) Personal characteristics Gender Age Education (college) Education (university) Income (rich) Political variables Interest in politics Political ID Left Political ID Right Voting tradition Being party member Leading political discussions (off) Media usage Offline media use Online media use Political participation OFFLINE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION BLOG/MICROBLOG POLITICAL PARTICIPATION WEB POLITICAL PARTICIPATION SOCIAL NETWORK POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Constant Cox & Snell R Square Nagelkerke R Square

Odds ratio

Std. Error

.409 .942 .173 .526 1.012

.400 .015 .566 .426 .444

.890 4.304 .598 .331 .299 1.454

.105 .504 .399 .511 1.018 .365

.808 .949

.131 .166

2.172

.372

.803

.394

2.850

.527

.871

.389 .273 .365

Terms of Engagement The literature on online political participation suggests that those with a propensity to participate will do so across a range of platforms and forums, both online and offline. However, the picture in Poland is somewhat different. We have identified four discrete forms of participation, with minimal overlap between these spheres of participation, and so it appears that, as different opportunities for participation have become embedded, internet users develop individual preferences for particular types of engagement.

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Xenos and Moy (2007) note the impact of the internet on democratic engagement is contingent upon attitudinal variables. We would additionally suggest that attitudes shaped by different social uses of online platforms, and the differing opportunities for participation, can shape forms of participation. Given that those who participate politically on social networking sites and on weblogs and microblogs, those who read, comment, repost or share political content, appear to have partisan or ideological attachments and are highly active online, it follows that there is minimal impact from their uses of the internet on their own voting behaviours, as they simultaneously seek to impact upon the attitudes and behaviours of other browsers. It may also be observed that weblog and microblog users may be less tech-savvy or eschew the personalised profile use encouraged by Facebook and Nasza Klasa. Those respondents who for the most part monitor online and offline environments as consumers of news also seek to exert influences upon others and may see themselves as conduits of political information within their online and offline social networks. Importantly, however, they also appear to seek information to aid their choices at the ballot box as their patterns of participation indicate they are the most likely to change their voting behaviours. Given that the majority of variables within offline participation relate to non-partisan activism, changes in voting behaviour may be a reflection of the failure of elected parties to offer effective representation and to give voice to dissenting groups. Cumulatively these data suggest that there is a range of discrete, and possibly strategically motivated, behaviours which tend not to overlap or interlink. The key motivation of only a small proportion of participants in online environments would appear to be their political partisanship (2 per cent only). Their intention in such participation is to extend the reach of a party or an individual politician (given the highly personalised nature of Polish politics) or a set of ideas. Members of another group demonstrate a desire to gain information that will inform political discussions with others, as well as aid them in arriving at decisions over whom to support on election day. Forms of online political participation linked to information-seeking appear directly to impact upon their voting behaviours. We would therefore suggest that these highly engaged political participants are strategic players who approach the internet with clear objectives that drive participation. The lack of any strong interconnectedness between these forms of participation suggests that we cannot talk about the internet as a societal driver promoting wider civic

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participation per se, but as providing an avenue into specific forms of civic behaviour. It may also be the case that these forms of behaviour are those most encouraged by political parties and candidates. A separate analysis of the use of different platforms within the 2011 Polish election campaign has shown that parties and candidates tended to build websites designed to persuade (see table 4 below). Social networking sites represented the second most prevalent strategy for online engagement. Weblogs and microblogs represented the least likely form to be used. While we are not suggesting that party and candidate behaviour drives civic participation, it may be the case that certain types of behaviour were more effectively facilitated during the election campaign. Table 4. Party and candidate uses of online platforms (2011 election) Websites Weblogs Social networking webpages Twitter (microblog)

Party (out of 11) 11 2 8 5

Main candidates (out of 331) 170 28 110 36

Our findings also offer an insight into the vibrancy of the political public sphere in Poland. The highly engaged minority which comprised our sample included the highly partisan and those with few ideological or partisan attachments. This situation appears to mirror the fragmented and polarised party system which has marred Polish democracy over the previous two decades. However, there are signs of the potential for positive developments within this participatory political culture. Although online participation does not appear to lead to offline activism, there is a significant culture of discussion shared by many of those who are active online. There was also evidence of a willingness among participants in our study to seek out views that contrasted with their own, and of an interest in starting discussions and interacting with like-minded internet users. This suggests that the groundwork is in place for a healthy political public sphere, key to which is the fact that many of our respondents sought to be informed participants within both online and offline political discussions. It is not surprising that a small elite appear to be building Poland’s online political public sphere. This finding is consistent with critiques of Polish democracy as inaccessible and elite-driven. However, this group seemed in fact to represent several distinct and diverse elites; and their differing patterns of activism using such platforms as Facebook, which

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have only recently become mainstream in Poland, may extend structures of political accessibility. In this sense we may be identifying patterns of behaviour, driven by a diverse range of political and ideological tendencies, which indicate a positive future for Poland’s political public sphere.

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CHAPTER SIX THE PRESS AND DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION IN NIGERIA MERCY ETTE Nigeria’s relatively peaceful and successful transition from military dictatorship to civilian rule in May 1999 marked a watershed in the country’s political history. After almost three decades of rounds of transitions between civilian and military regimes, the country’s pattern of carefully staged, but unsuccessful, transition-to-democracy programmes ended with a transfer of power from the military to a seemingly acceptable civilian administration. Although it was a hastily arranged compromise between the military elite and the political class, by 2013 three multi-party elections had followed that initial transfer of power. Based upon a somewhat minimalist definition of democratic consolidation, Nigeria could now be regarded as an entrenched democracy. However, measured against a more comprehensive framework, the country falls short of some standards of consolidation. This chapter assesses how the press coverage of a critical presidential election by a newspaper of record mirrors the prospects and challenges for the entrenchment of democracy in Nigeria.

Nigerian Democracy Towards the end of the last century Africa, like many other parts of the world, witnessed the so-called “third wave of democratization” when authoritarian regimes and one-party governments gave way to civilian administrations. Nigeria, one of the strongholds of military dictatorship in Africa, and the continent’s most populous country, was caught up in the snowballing effect of this wave. As a result, after eleven governments and six successful military coups, the civil-military cycle was again broken when a civilian administration was installed on 29 May 1999 as a major step towards liberal democratic rule. However, it was one thing for a transition programme to end successfully and another for the new political system to survive, given the country’s previous experience of civilian rule

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and the extent of the militarisation of civil society. While the country’s political structures have not disintegrated despite persistent ethnic, economic and political storms, a reverse wave is not improbable. However, the existence of such facets of a democratic infrastructure as a free and pluralist press, a vibrant civil society and an expansion in communication facilities justifies hopes for the future of democracy in Nigeria. For example, the press, now free from a repressive environment engendered by military rule and state censorship, is positioned to select, shape and define issues in ways which support democracy. It has the power to expand the democratic space and provide a forum for political participation. It can serve as an information-broker for its audience, set the political agenda and facilitate democratic consolidation. In principle the constraints that curtailed press freedom during periods of military dictatorship have been eliminated. This chapter examines prospects and challenges for democratic consolidation in Nigeria, as reflected in the coverage of the 2011 presidential election by The Guardian newspaper, a Nigerian prestige newspaper and a publication of record. The Guardian, like some other publications in Nigeria, still exercises considerable influence on policymaking, despite dwindling newspaper circulations, and, as a “favourite of the intellectuals”, is one of the most influential national titles. It is “respected for its independent, sober views” (Olukoyun 2004, 71). Founded in February 1983, The Guardian claims to be the flagship of Nigerian journalism. Unlike most privately owned newspapers in Nigeria, The Guardian was set up purely as a commercial venture and not to serve as its publisher’s political megaphone. Although it is owned by a family with diversified political leanings, the paper manifests allegiance to no political party or ethno-religious position. It is widely regarded as an independent newspaper. When The Guardian takes a stand on an issue, its readers take notice and the government often responds, because of its degree of public influence. Its coverage of democratisation programmes during the military dictatorship, for example, was extensive and went beyond simply relaying information towards a contextualization of its narratives. As a paper of record, The Guardian has the discretionary power to set the agenda for public debate, to give salience to issues of national significance and, during an election campaign, can be expected to provide a credible and critical account of the state of democracy in the country. The paper could also be expected to scrutinise the policies and promises of political parties and politicians, to explain to its readers what the parties stand for and to assess the credibility of their representatives. This is

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particularly important in an emerging democracy where voters’ electoral choices are not informed by their experience of past performances of the political parties competing for their support. This analysis of The Guardian’s coverage of the 2011 election is aimed at identifying the issues that the paper selected and signposted as important and primed for the attention of its readers during the election campaign. The focus is on the front page of the newspaper and this choice was determined by its accessibility to readers and its relevance to the political process. Accessibility was defined as having a high probability of being seen by casual readers. As the increasing cost of newspapers continues to limit the purchasing power of many readers, access is sometimes limited to what is readily visible at the newsstands or displayed by newspaper vendors. A front-page headline could in all probability have been the main source of information about the presidential election for some readers. As Eleazu (1977, 205) has argued, “in a country such as Nigeria where most of those who ‘see’ the papers will not have the time to actually read them, many people form their impressions about the topic of the day by front page headlines supplemented by hearsay from those who read the papers.”

Media and Politics The core argument of this chapter is located in the intertwining relationship between the news media and democracy and the understanding that the press has a defining and vital role in democratic societies. At the normative level, the press is considered an essential element in the process of democratic politics because it has the power to provide an arena and channel for wide debate, make candidates for office widely known and distribute diverse information and opinion (McQuail 2000, 3). The press can signal to voters what the important issues are and construct political reality; it can facilitate political participation by making accessible to citizens information they need to make informed decisions; it can strengthen democracy by holding political actors accountable through its watchdog role, and by providing a forum for public debate on important issues, especially during election campaigns. As Tettey asserts, the media can serve as a “conduit for democratic expression and consolidation” (2001, 5). To play such a critical role, the press is expected to maintain surveillance of the political scene in order to curtail abuses of power, and gather, interpret, contextualise and disseminate information in a meaningful and accessible form (McNair 2010). The provision of reliable information that can empower citizens to understand complex political,

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economic and social issues and make informed political choices is one of the key responsibilities of a democratically relevant press. As Stephen Cushion (2012, 44) explains, news is “the informational fuel considered vital for a democracy to remain healthy.” Or as Neil Washbourne (2010, 5) puts it, democratic politics requires the provision of a full and diverse coverage of politics: “media coverage has to be adequate to both make the political system intelligible and accountable to voters, and interesting enough to encourage voters of different social and cultural backgrounds to fulfil their democratic duties.” The media should ideally represent an arena in which a mass democracy communicates with itself. This involves a whole range of activities: informing, arguing, questioning, reflecting, investigating and exposing. Without a set of media institutions that perform this role, the nation is deprived of its collective street corner, market square and noticeboard. If deprived in this way, the quality of its democracy suffers (see Wright 1998, 20). Elections provide useful testing grounds for the capacity of the press to play its democratic role effectively. The press is expected to play a critical role during what Negrine describes as this “hallmark of a democratic political system” (1994, 152) because coverage of an election can have a significant impact on voters’ understanding of issues and influence their engagement in politics (Cushion 2012). Moreover, the press can serve as a “mirror which reflects the general orientation of political life and the microscope which allows citizens to pay attention to different national activities” (Masmoudi 1992, 34). This role is critical because in a democracy, elections “serve as instruments through which the electorate can exercise some control over the actions of government” (Dode 2010, 189) and, as noted by James Curran (1991, 29), the press enables the people to shape the conduct of government by articulating their views. Underpinning this understanding of the press-democracy paradigm is the assumption that information available to voters empowers them to exercise their democratic rights. As Jackie Harrison has noted, the mediapolitics relationship is based on the assumption that “those being governed in a democracy give their informed consent which occurs where there is freely available information in which such consent may be based” (Harrison 2006, 100). If citizens are expected to participate in the democratic process, it is important for them to have access to information that empowers and equips them to act out of knowledge and not ignorance; to monitor and scrutinise state action and to make informed choices during elections (Norris 2000). This is particularly important for

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the consolidation of democratic values, especially where democracy is still a new game in town. In Nigeria, antidemocratic behaviour and years of military rule had eroded democratic values and entrenched an authoritarian understanding of politics. Consequently, a large number of voters have little experience of democratic politics, and more than a decade after a successful transition programme, unstable democratic structures, limited knowledge and experience of democratic procedures and values, and a polarised polity are still posing challenges to the consolidation of Nigerian democracy. Against this background, the role of the Nigerian news media becomes more critical as they represent the only institutions that have been in existence through the different stages of the country’s political history. Moreover, the press is the only institution empowered by the constitution to protect democracy. It therefore has the power to inform the electorate about important political issues and contexts that should determine their voting choices. Furthermore, the press can monitor democratic conditions and hold politicians accountable on behalf of the people.

Democratic Consolidation Understanding the challenges of democratic consolidation in Nigeria requires an insight into the country’s political history, especially in relation to democratisation. The post-independence political history of Nigeria has been dominated by military interference. But in spite of its critical role in politics, the military was never accepted as a permanent solution to the country’s political instability. Rather, most military rulers legitimised their intervention in politics by promising to transfer power to democratically elected representatives of the people. As Osaghae has noted, “military regimes which did not have a transition programme or failed to carry through their transitions (Ironsi, Gowon, Buhari, Babangida) provided a justification for their own later overthrow” (1998, 55). After the country’s first coup in January 1966, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, one of the leaders of the plot, made it clear that he and his fellow coup plotters had no interest in running the country: “we are soldiers and not politicians […] we were going to make civilians of proven honesty and efficiency who would be thoroughly hand-picked to do all the governing” (Ihonvbere 1994, 154). Other military officers who overthrew civilian governments also promised to hand over power to elected politicians as soon as it was expedient, thus suggesting that selfperpetuation in office was not on their agenda. Four out of eight military heads of state embarked on transition-to-democracy programmes but only

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two of these programmes resulted in civilian administrations. The first successful transition programme ended in October 1979 but the civilian government it produced lasted for barely four years before being terminated by a military coup in 1983. General Ibrahim Babangida’s transition programme (1986-1993), the longest and most expansive, produced a semi-democratic structure but the programme failed in 1993 when the General annulled a presidential election that should have resulted in a full transfer of power to elected politicians. In 1999 General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s programme culminated in a civilian administration that, at the time of writing, has survived three multiparty elections. Interestingly, the first successful transition programme in Nigeria was implemented by General Olusegun Obasanjo; the second resulted in Obasanjo, now retired, being elected as president of the country in 1999. The years before 1999’s successful transfer of power from a military government to a civilian administration were notable for transition programmes that appeared to be more successful at entrenching autocratic regimes than at producing democratic governments. But as Diamond (1988) has noted, democratic aspiration was kept alive and sustained despite the military dictatorship. Diamond attributes this partly to the “vigour of the Nigerian press” and argues that “despite repressive decrees and continuous threats, harassment and arrests” the press “managed to preserve its freedom and integrity to a considerable degree” (1988, 46). Although other scholars (Ette 2000; Uko 2004; Pate and Bashir 2012) have challenged this notion of the vanguard role of the press in the context of democratisation, there is no doubt that the Nigerian press kept liberal democratic rhetoric on the agenda through their coverage of the transition programmes. Moreover, Nigerians have always manifested a strong commitment to democracy and have consequently never accepted military rule as the norm. Although their politicians did not enjoy overwhelming public support, Nigerians still clamoured for opportunities to choose who could exercise political power over them. Democracy was the preferred system of government, notwithstanding the past failures of politicians, failures which had justified military coups. However, by the end of the 1990s, the military had lost its claim to its self-assigned role of saviour and guardian of the nation because of what Nwabueze (1993) describes as “lawless autocracy.” A clamour for a transfer of power supported by the “third wave” made democratisation inevitable and by 1999, Nigeria was once again under civilian rule and democratic consolidation was a possibility. It is worth noting that democratic consolidation is a contested concept. Andreas Schedler, for instance, describes it as “an omnibus concept, a

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garbage-can concept, a catch-all concept, lacking a core meaning that would unite all modes of usage” (1998, 101). But despite its fuzzy nature, most scholars accept the original understanding of the concept as being associated with the challenge of securing and extending the life expectancy of new democracies, of building immunity against the threat of regression to authoritarianism and “reverse waves” (Schedler 1998, 90). Or as Frimpong-Mansoh noted, it is a “descriptive term to refer to a firm establishment and successful completion of the process of political democratization” (2012, 4). For Mainwaring et al., a notable characteristic of democratic consolidation is the acceptance by all “political actors that democratic procedures dictate government renewal” (1992, 3). Put differently, democratic consolidation entails the widespread acceptance of rules that guarantee political participation and competition. A consolidated democracy is not at risk of ending suddenly or abruptly through unconstitutional means such as a military coup. Dode (2010, 189) asserts that consolidation “implies established stability in governance. This consolidation of democracy involves behavioural and institutional changes that normalise democratic politics and narrow its uncertainty.” Although elections provide a framework for testing the durability of a democracy, as Bratton (1998, 52) argues, “elections do not, in and of themselves, constitute a consolidated democracy; they remain fundamental, not only for installing democratic governments, as a requisite for broader democratic consolidation.” Democratic consolidation begins where the “transition to democracy” ends but is a long and complex process (Beetham 1994; Abdulai and Crawford 2010). Moreover, as David Beetham (1994, 159) argues, the democratisation process “is always and everywhere an unfinished business” – it is “not an all-or-nothing affair, but a matter of the degree to which the basic principles are realized.” Larry Diamond, a leading exponent on the politics of transition to democracy, has also observed that “democratisation is bound to be gradual, messy, fitful and slow, with many imperfections along the way” (cited in Randall and Svåsand 2002, 30). Generally, as Beetham (1994, 160) supposes, “establishing democratic electoral arrangements is one thing, sustaining them over time without reversal is quite another. Not all who make the transition will be able to sustain it.” While views of what constitutes democratic consolidation may vary, there is a broad understanding of features that characterize entrenched democracies. To Mainwaring et al. (1992, 3) the most obvious characteristic of consolidation is when “all major political actors take for granted the fact that democratic procedures dictate government renewal.” Adrian Leftwich (1997, 524) meanwhile notes that

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“the politics of liberal democracy may be said to be consolidated where people, political parties and groups pursue their interests within an institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” In addition to this broad understanding of democratic consolidation, certain specific defining features have also been identified and these range from the “two-election test” to the measure of simple longevity. The former emphasises the significance of the transfer of power when a government that was inaugurated at the end of the transition is defeated at a subsequent election and accepts the result without seeking to retain or retake power by unconstitutional means (Huntington, 1993). Beetham (1994, 160) explains that this acceptance of electoral defeat signals that “powerful players, and their social backers, are prepared to put respect for the rules of the game above the continuation of their power.” The longevity measure presupposes that, after a number of years of successful competitive politics, a democratic system could be considered consolidated. This measure, however, is problematic when the transfer of power from one party to another is not a feature of the political system. In South Africa, for example, the African National Congress (ANC) has been in power since 1994 and while it may not be as popular as it was when Nelson Mandela was in office, it is unlikely that the party will lose a presidential election soon. The implication of this record is that the leaders of the ANC have not had an opportunity to prove their democratic credentials through the loss of an election to an opposition party. Thus longevity alone may not necessarily test the durability or sustainability of a democratic system (Beetham 1994). After three post-transition multi-party elections, Nigeria’s democratic system has met the primary two-election test requirement to be considered consolidated. However, the party that won the 1999 polls has yet to lose an election and its powerful players have not faced the challenge of demonstrating their willingness to accept electoral defeat. This is particularly critical given the poor performance of the party in government. Against this backdrop, it can be argued that Nigeria’s political system cannot be said to have been consolidated to a practically irreversible level. Although the 2011 general election marked another milestone in the country’s progress towards consolidation, it also raised a number of questions about the institutionalisation of democratic structures and the effectiveness of the press to defend democracy.

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Election 2011 The 2011 general election and the presidential race in particular were contentious for two key reasons. Some of the controversies that had emerged during and after the 2007 polls were still unresolved as the country prepared to go to the polls for the third time since the 1999 transfer of power from the military to politicians. The ruling People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) victory at the previous polls was still controversial four years later because of the level of election malpractices during that earlier exercise. Local and international election monitors had been unanimous in their criticism of the 2007 election and its outcome. The European Union, for example, reported that the polls had “fallen far short of basic international and regional standards for democratic elections and [...] cannot be considered to have been credible.” Max van den Berg, head of the EU’s 150-strong monitoring team, described it as “one of the worst elections the EU had observed.” Peter Lewis (2011, 63-64), a leading commentator on Nigerian politics, described the 2007 election as a “low point for electoral integrity” and “the most compromised and disorderly [election] since the inception of the Fourth Republic, and possibly since Nigeria became an independent country.” Jean Herskovits (2007), a specialist in Nigerian history and politics, spoke of “Nigeria’s rigged democracy.” The PDP’s landslide victory, Omotola (2010, 549) argued was “unimaginable” because the party had not earned the support of a majority of Nigerians and its success was attributed to “unprecedented rigging, ballot stuffing, falsification of results, intimidation of voters, and direct assault on the people.” In view of this dire record, the PDP-led government had to conduct a more acceptable election in 2011 if it wanted the outcome of the exercise to be credible and legitimate. As the third multi-party election after the 1999 transfer of power, the 2011 election was also significant because it had the potential of resulting in “an important departure from the familiar trajectory of politics in the country” (Lewis 2011, 60). Dr Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent president, and the ruling party’s presidential candidate had become president in 2010 following the death of his predecessor, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. However, Dr Jonathan’s elevation from the vicepresidency had triggered intra-party conflict by challenging a deeply entrenched policy on the distribution of important political positions and offices. The policy of “zoning” had represented the ruling party’s strategy for the sharing of political offices along ethno-geopolitical lines. In 2007 the office of the president had been zoned for two terms to the Muslim

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north and that of the vice-president to the Christian south. When Jonathan, a southern Christian, succeeded President Yar’Adua in 2010 the party’s ethno-geopolitical alignment was jeopardised. To core supporters of the zoning policy, the north still had full claim to the presidency. Consequently, Jonathan was not considered eligible to contest the next election after completing what remained of Yar’Adua’s four-year term. Some commentators argued that it was unacceptable to discard the rotational presidency policy of the party in favour of Jonathan. Dan Agbese, a veteran columnist and editor-in-chief of Newswatch, Nigeria’s foremost news magazine, wrote on 27 July 2010: “I believe the president can see that those who support zoning are merely asking the PDP to respect its own constitutional provision until a court strikes it down as inconsistent with the constitution of the republic. I believe he can see that if a party cannot respect its own constitution, there is not much hope, as the PDP has repeatedly demonstrated, of its ever showing a modicum of respect to the country’s constitution. Obedience to the rule of law and the constitution should, I believe, begin at the party level.” Against this backdrop, Jonathan’s decision and announcement in September 2010 that he intended to seek his party’s nomination to contest the election generated conflict within the PDP and in wider Nigerian society. As Agbese noted (Newswatch, 27 July 2010), “a simple matter of what to make of zoning and rotational presidency [...] degenerated into ethnic and geopolitical fist fights with no room for prisoners [...] the issue has degenerated to the absurd level of polarising the country into proJonathan and anti-Jonathan groups.” Jonathan’s decision also challenged the “ethnic arithmetic of the presidency” – “his decision not step aside for a Muslim northerner, while constitutional, went against the informal power-sharing arrangement that had stabilised elite politics for more than a decade” (Lewis 2011, 66). With several northern Muslim politicians laying claim to their right to contest the nomination on the basis of the zoning policy, Jonathan’s candidacy pitched the north against the south. Atiku Abubakar, a former vice-president (1999-2007), was endorsed by the northern political elite as a “consensus” challenger for the PDP presidential nomination. But, despite the backing of the northern establishment, Abubakar lost his challenge and Jonathan won the party’s presidential ticket. The foregoing summary of the political context of the 2011 elections highlights how challenging the coverage was bound to be for the press. In Nigeria democratic party politics has always been divisive because the people’s primary allegiances follow ethno-geopolitical lines and politicians are perceived to be representing their own ethnic groups and

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competing for access to the spoils of office to be shared with their groups. In the absence of a strong sense of national identity, ethnic rivalry has become a driving force in political competition, a situation that was made more complicated by the emergence of a southerner as the presidential candidate when it was still the turn of the north to lead. As a primary source of information, especially about issues beyond the direct experience of voters, The Guardian had the power to explain and contextualise the significant events and issues of the election campaign. It was the principal means of mediation, a process which entails “standing between the people and the world and reporting to them what they could not see or experience themselves” (Nimmo and Combs 1983, 12). The Guardian as a paper of record had the power to inform its readers of what the main issues were during the election campaign and to determine what the public would consider to be significant. But, perhaps more importantly, its coverage could also give an insight into the extent of the nation’s democratic consolidation. As a prestige newspaper, The Guardian is a recognised mediating agent in the construction of Nigeria’s political reality. Its position on issues is authoritative and influential. As a source of cognitive knowledge, it can inform, explain, simplify and contextualise complex issues in ways that can structure political reality. Its position on significant or even on insignificant issues reflects its symbolic power to influence public opinion. As a prestige newspaper, The Guardian was also an authoritative source of information about the government because of its access to official spokespersons. Its reporters were “licensed agents of symbolic power” – a position that Meikle (2008, 70) describes as having a “central role for the media within democratic political system.” This defining role is even more critical in democracies because “it is difficult to conceive of any consolidated democracy which does not include a widely valued and efficacious party system and communications media” (Sandbrook 1996, 70).

The Guardian and Democratic Consolidation The analysis in this chapter is located within a multidimensional framework based on Adrian Leftwich’s (1997) conditions for democratic survival and Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan’s (1996) definition of democratic consolidation. Leftwich’s conditions for consolidation include legitimacy, consensus about the rules of the game, and policy restraint by winning parties. Legitimacy, like democratic consolidation, is a contested concept but, to simplify it, Leftwich operationalises it into three

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components: geographical, constitutional and political legitimacy. Geographical legitimacy refers to a general acceptance by all who live within a state of the “territorial definition and the appropriateness of their place within it or, at least, [that] they do not positively oppose it, except by constitutional means” (Leftwich 1997, 525). Constitutional legitimacy refers to the acceptance of the “formal structure of rules whereby political power is competed for, organised and distributed” while political legitimacy “refers to the extent to which the electorate […] regards the government in power as being entitled, procedurally, to be there” (1997, 526). For Linz and Stepan consolidation has been achieved when democracy has become “the only game in town.” Expanding on this definition, they explain that consolidation can be demonstrated behaviourally, attitudinally and constitutionally (Linz and Stepan 1996, 5). Behaviourally, a democracy is consolidated when “no significant political groups seriously attempt to overthrow the democratic regime or secede from the state” and the threat of democratic breakdown no longer dominates the behaviour of the elected government. Attitudinally, democratic consolidation is achieved when “even in the face of severe political and economic crises, the overwhelming majority of the people believe that any further political change must emerge within the parameters of democratic formulas.” This dimension extends the understanding of consolidation beyond the behaviour of political leaders to citizens’ engagement with democratic ideals and procedures. Constitutionally, democracy is consolidated “when all the actors in the polity become habituated to the fact that political conflict will be resolved according to established norms.” “In short,” Linz and Stepan (1996, 5) conclude, “with consolidation, democracy becomes routinised and deeply internalised in social, institutional, and even psychological life, as well as in calculations for achieving success.” Measured against some of these conditions, there are indications that Nigeria has achieved a certain level of consolidation behaviourally in that there were no reports of attempted secession by any significant political group or of a credible threat of a military coup plot during the campaign period. However, The Guardian reported that former vice-president Atiku Abubakar had made inflammatory comments that suggested a threat to the stability of the country. On 28 December 2010 the paper observed that the former vice-president’s warning that “those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable” had been widely condemned by the State Security Services. A week after President Jonathan had won his party’s nomination, the paper reported that the government had started “taking steps to douse

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tension caused by the bitter campaigns that preceded the Peoples’ Democratic Party presidential primary as well as the coming elections” (The Guardian, 24 January 2010). While this could have been seen as an indication of the instability of the country, it did not necessarily suggest imminent secession by any group. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that secession has been a constant threat in Nigeria since as far back as 1967 when the eastern part of the country attempted to secede from the republic. Moreover, the political elite from the oil-rich Niger delta and the northern parts of the country often speak openly about secession. In an interview with this author, on 26 August 2012, Casmir Igbokwe, a former editor of the national newspaper The Sunday Punch, attributed this to ethnic conflict: “Many people do not believe in the entity called Nigeria. The different ethnic groups that make up this country do not see themselves as belonging to it.” Emeka Izeze, editor-in-chief of The Guardian, has also confirmed that there were muted secession talks among some ethnic groups during the election campaign. It seems the paper did not report such threats because it was not in the interest of the country to validate them. Attitudinally, democracy is consolidated when the majority of the people are not deterred from the pursuit of democracy even in the face of severe or economic pressure. Consolidation requires full acceptance of the rules of the democratic process. The Guardian’s account of the election demonstrated and reinforced voters’ commitment to the electoral process. A large voter turnout was indicative of support for democracy. Despite a spate of bombings in different parts of the country during the election period and a change in the polling timetable, the paper reported on 10 April 2011 that these problems did not “dampen the enthusiasm of Nigerians to perform their civic responsibility […] They came massively out to vote for change, which is evident in the results.” The political elite also demonstrated their commitment to democracy when the leaders of some opposition parties decided to support the candidacy of President Jonathan. On 14 April 2011 The Guardian reported that “it was a last minute mobilisation for President Goodluck Jonathan’s victory in the election. It was a harvest of endorsement of Jonathan and defection of members of the opposition to PDP in a move to ensure victory for the president at the polls.” (It should be pointed out that this support for the president was not as altruistic as it sounds. The defectors were aware that given the nature of Nigerian politics and the power of incumbency, President Jonathan was most likely to win the election and that it was therefore in their interests to identify with the likely winner. The tradition of distributing rewards described by Richard Joseph as “prebendal

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politics” is endemic in the Nigerian political system and, with the office of the president being the most powerful in the country, support for Jonathan was informed by a resultant client-patron relationship.) President Jonathan predictably won the election, beating his closest rival, General Muhammadu Buhari, into second place. On 18 April 2011 The Guardian announced the result with the enthusiastic headline “Hail to the Chief! Jonathan.” The paper reported that the president had won more than 25 per cent of votes in more than 24 states, as required by the constitution to be declared winner. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the official result on 18 April. The following day Professor Attahiru Jega, chairperson of the INEC, told The Guardian that President Jonathan had in fact achieved at least 25 per cent of the vote in 31 states out of 36; Buhari had won in 16 states. Although the president won decisively, receiving more than 99 per cent of the votes in his home state, it could be argued that the large turnout in the south was driven by ethno-geopolitical interest, rather than any deep-seated commitment to democracy. But the outcome of the election was accepted as reflecting the will of the people. Lewis (2011, 70-71), an observer from the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute, has noted that “among the most positive elements of the elections were the remarkable strong citizen engagement and oversight by civil society groups. Energetic civileducation campaigns clearly paid off, as voters seemed well-informed about polling locations and procedures and eager to keep watch over the process.” These campaigns were indications of the nation’s commitment to democracy. However, this achievement was marred by outbreaks of violence in many parts of the north where supporters of the candidates who had lost the election did not accept Dr Jonathan’s victory. Violent conflicts had erupted in the northern parts of the country and cast a shadow over what many observers acknowledged as an acceptable electoral exercise. The post-election violence could be an indication that democracy has not become perfectly routinised to a generally high level of acceptance. The constitutional dimension of democratic consolidation holds that a democracy is entrenched “when all the actors in the polity become habituated to the fact that political conflict will be resolved according to established norms” (Linz and Stepan 1996, 5). According to this measure, Nigeria has made some progress towards democratic consolidation because politicians routinely use democratic institutions to resolve political conflict. All presidential election results in the country since 1979 have been challenged in court. The 2011 result was not an exception. The Guardian reported that “as it was in previous presidential elections, the

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winner of the April 16, 2011 polls, would finally be determined by the Supreme Court.” A few days after the INEC declared President Jonathan winner of the election, General Buhari, the presidential candidate for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), who had come second in the polls, announced that he would go to court to seek a judicial review of the conduct of the election. Buhari and his party “accused the PDP of colluding with security agents to cook figures to fraudulently win the election” (The Guardian, 22 April 2011). Choosing to contest the outcome of the election through constitutional means was a demonstration of the progress that the country had made towards the consolidation of democratic values and procedures, and Buhari’s recognition of democratic procedures as the only legitimate way of resolving electoral disputes was reinforced by the newspaper’s normalizing acceptance of this process. As Omotola (2010, 550-551) argues, “the resort to the courts to seek electoral justice signals the gradual acceptance of the rule of law as the most viable option for those seeking redress […] This shows that the political class is gaining increasing confidence in the judiciary as an important democratic institution.” Such sympathies with this recourse to the courts were not, however, shared by aggrieved voters who chose illegitimate means to challenge the outcome of the election and embarked on violent protests in many parts of the north. Although Buhari and other northern Muslim elites distanced themselves from the violence, The Guardian reported that “thugs believed to be championing the cause of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, presidential candidate, Maj-General Muhammadu Buhari, who lost the election to the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan” were involved in the rampage (23 April 2011). The opposition to the candidacy of President Jonathan by the northern political elite and the outbreak of violence in some parts of the north when he was declared winner of the election indicate that the institutionalisation of democratic structures and procedures has not yet been entirely achieved. Although the outcome of the election was decisive for the PDP, its victory sharpened ethno-religious tensions that threatened the stability of the country. The post-election violence in Muslim-majority states in the north was an indication that some Nigerians were unwilling to accept political change achieved through the ballot box. Thus, the attitudinal and constitutional dimensions of democratic consolidation have not been fully realized in Nigeria.

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Beyond Elections After three multi-party elections, Nigeria’s political history has changed and significant elements of democratic consolidation are apparent in the political system. These include a vibrant press, an independent judiciary and a budding civil society. There is widespread acceptance of elections as the means by which to choose political leaders. But as in many new democracies, the process of democratization has created and exacerbated other problems in the country. While the overthrow of the civilian government by the military is not a major threat, because of the record of the military in office, the possibility of the erosion of democratic values – “the intermittent or gradual weakening of democracy by those elected to lead it’ (Huntington 1996, 8) – cannot be ruled out. Based on Leftwich’s geographical legitimacy perspective, consolidation is still problematic because many Nigerians share the view that Nigeria is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria from those who do not (cited in Onwubu 1975, 399). A lack of consensus among the political elite on national issues, especially on the distribution of spoils of office, has bred a sense of exclusion. Emeka Izeze, editor-inchief of The Guardian, observed in 2012 that “many Nigerians feel aggrieved and excluded and want to leave.” But the traumatic memories of the thirty months of civil war that followed the attempt by the eastern region to secede generate a certain degree of restraint. The foremost challenge to democratic consolidation in Nigeria is probably the political structure, which has led to a degree of apathy because political parties exercise power over the selection of election candidates to the point of imposing their choices on voters. Consequently, voters do not have a key connection with the democratic process. Dan Agbese, a veteran journalist and public affairs commentator, argued in a personal interview of August 2012 that in a strict sense Nigeria does not have a democratic system: “in a democracy the people must have the right to choose election candidates. Here, the people do not have that right. That right is denied them by leaders of political parties.” Casmir Igbokwe, former editor of the Sunday Punch, one of Nigeria’s most popular national newspapers, shares Agbese’s views. Igbokwe has argued that Nigeria has yet to experience a truly democratic government and can therefore not be regarded as a consolidated democracy. He asserted in a personal interview of August 2012 that the country’s level of corruption had impeded democratic development because politicians had “made wealth accumulation a centre piece of politics.” Emeka Izeze, the editor-in-chief of The Guardian, has taken a slightly different position. He has argued (also in a

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personal interview of August 2012) that Nigeria has a democratic structure but lacks democrats: “the system is still fragile but we are making some progress.” He has blamed politicians for their failure to understand democracy and its tenets. But Agbese has been more optimistic, arguing that since the country is experiencing its longest spell of civil rule, some elements of consolidation are bound to emerge: “we have had four elections since 1999 and none gave the military cause to return. That is significant.” Another critical threat to democratic consolidation is the ongoing political violence in the northern part of the country. Although the activities of the Islamist sect Boko Haram appear to be informed by religious values, the underlying tension could be linked to a sense of marginalisation and alienation that seems to pervade some parts of the country. The fissures of the 2011 election underscore the fact that “democratisation has done little to advance the rule of law, governmental accountability, effective institutions, or broad public welfare” (Lewis 2011, 62). The ethno-geopolitical divide that was emphasized by the response to President Jonathan’s decision to contest the 2011 election has continued to widen. But there is room for some quiet optimism about the future of democracy in Nigeria. Six Afrobarometer surveys conducted between 2000 and 2008 indicated consistent popular support for a democratic political system, although the level of satisfaction with democracy has been on the decline. While 15 per cent of respondents said Nigeria was not a democracy, 68 per cent said it was a democracy with major/minor problems. Asked how satisfied they were with the way democracy worked in Nigeria, 84 per cent of respondents in 2000 said they were fairly/very satisfied – while only 26 per cent were so in 2008. But when asked about the future of democracy in Nigeria, in 2007 31 per cent (down from 42 per cent in 2005) said it was not likely to remain a democratic country. Overall, the surveys showed that support for a multi-party political system is slowly climbing and a rejection of military rule has been consistently high. In 2008 72 per cent of respondents said democracy was preferable to military rule and 74 per cent disapproved of military rule. Against that backdrop, the prospect for a return to military autocracy seems limited. As Raphael Njoku (2001, 94-95) argues, there is at least “an equal probability for democratic consolidation as for a reversion to dictatorship” and the continued survival of the democratic structures that were installed on 29 May 1999 point to a certain level of consolidation. Nigeria’s fourth cycle of civilian government has already changed the political trajectory of the country. As Peter Lewis (2011, 62) observed, “the most democratic

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dispensation in Nigeria has shown considerable resilience as well as serious shortcomings.” This is the country’s longest spell of civilian administration – an indication that democracy is becoming entrenched.

Future Prospects The Guardian’s coverage of the election reinforced the understanding that the news media play a pivotal role in the preservation of social order by serving as a mirror that reflects (and thereby reinforces) the state of political life. The newspaper demonstrated its commitment to supporting democracy through its inclination to provide a platform for the ruling party and its representatives, thus presenting a unified picture of the country during the election campaign. This might however be considered as much a weakness as a democratic strength. Overall the contribution of the paper to democratic consolidation is decidedly mixed because of its tendency to index power. While it served as a megaphone for the powerful, it rarely attempted to deepen political communication by widening the public space to accommodate the non-elite. There was no evidence of democratic participation by the less powerful and those outside the political class, nor any attempt to include marginalised voices in its coverage of the election. The newspaper could have done more to strengthen democracy by disseminating political information and articulating opinions that were not generated by the ruling party. In other words, the paper could have facilitated the development of a more informed electorate through its coverage of the election campaign. Despite these shortcomings, there is room for optimism because The Guardian, like other Nigerian newspapers, is no longer under the fetters of autocratic regimes. It is now in a position to play a more constructive role in the country’s democratic life by providing information that can empower citizens to engage with political issues. The socio-political situation of the country offers The Guardian and other newspapers opportunities to play pivotal roles assigned to the media by liberal democratic theories and to be a potent force in the entrenchment of democracy in the country. Although Nigeria’s democratic prospects are uncertain and its fissures along ethno-geopolitical divides continue to threaten national stability, Nigerians’ commitment to and preference for democracy, and the conditions of press freedom necessary to support it, point to the likelihood of gradual democratic gains.

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Works Cited Abdulai, A. and Crawford, G. 2010. “Consolidating democracy in Ghana: progress and prospects?” Democratization 17 1: 26-67. Agbese, D. 2010. “His visible presence.” Newswatch 52 5. Beetham, D. 1994. “Conditions for democratic consolidation.” Review of African Political Economy 21 60: 157-172. Bratton, M. 1998. “Second elections in Africa.” Journal of Democracy, 9 3: 51-66. Curran, J. 1991. “Mass media and democracy, a reappraisal.” Mass Media and Society, ed. J. Curran and M. Gurevitch. London: Edward Arnold Cushion, S. 2012. The Democratic Value of News. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Diamond, L. 1988. “Nigeria: pluralism, statism and the struggle for democracy.” Democracy in Developing Countries, ed. by L. Diamond, J. Linz and S. Lipset. Boulder: Lynne Reinner Publishers. Dode, O. 2010. “Political parties and the prospects of democratic consolidation in Nigeria: 1999-2006.” African Journal of Political Science and International Relations 4 5: 188-194. Eleazu, U. 1977. Federalism and Nation-Building: The Nigerian Experience 1954-1964. Devon: Arthur Stockwell Ltd. Ette, M. 2000. “Agent of change or stability? The Nigerian press undermines democracy.” Press/Politics 5 3: 67-86. Frimpong-Mansoh, Y. 2012. “Democratic consolidation in Ghana: the role of the news media.” Africa Media and Democracy Conference, Accra, 15-18 August 2012. Harrison, J. 2006. News. Abingdon: Routledge. Herskovits, J. 2007 . “Nigeria’s rigged democracy.” Foreign Affairs 86 4: 115-130. Huntington, S. 1996. “Democracy for the Long Haul.” Journal of Democracy 7 2: 3-13. Ihonvbere, J. 1994. Nigeria: The politics of Adjustment and Democracy. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Leftwich, A. 1997. “From democratization to democratic consolidation.”’ Democratization, ed. D. Potter, D. Goldblatt, M. Kiloh and P. Lewis, 517-536. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lewis, P. 2011. “Nigeria votes.” Journal of Democracy 22 4: 60-74. Linz, J. and Stepan, A. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Mainwaring, S., O’Donnell, G., and Valenzuela, S. 1992. Issues in Democratic Consolidation: New South American Democracies in

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Comparative Perspective. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press. Masmoudi, M. 1992. “Media and the state in periods of crisis.” Media, Crisis and Democracy: Mass Communication and the Disruption of Social Order, ed. M. Raboy and B. Degenais, 34-43. London: Sage. McQuail, D. 1977. ‘The influence and effects of mass media.” Mass Communication and Society, ed. J. Curran, M. Gurevitch and J. Woollacott. London: Edward Arnold. —. 2000. Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage. McNair, B. 2011. An Introduction to Political Communication. London: Routledge. Meikle, G. 2008. Interpreting News. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Negrine, R. 1994. Politics and the Mass Media. London: Routledge. Nimmo, D., and Combs, J. 1983. Political Communication. New York: Longman. Njoku, R. 2001. “Deconstructing Abacha: demilitarization and democratic consolidation in Nigeria after the Abacha era.” Government and Opposition 36 1: 71-96. Norris, P. 2000. The Virtuous Circle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nwabueze, B. 1993. Democracy. Ibadan: Spectrum Books. Olukoyun, A. 2004. “Media accountability and democracy in Nigeria, 1999-2003.” African Studies Review 47 3: 69-90. Omotola, J. 2010. “Elections and democratic transitions in Nigeria under the fourth Republic.” African Affairs 109 437: 535-553. Onwubu, C. 1975. “Ethnic identity, political integration, and national development: the Igbo diaspora in Nigeria.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 13 3: 399-413. Osaghae, E. 1998. Crippled Giant. London: Hurst & Company. Randall, V., and Svåsand, L. (2002). “Political parties and democratic consolidation in Africa.” Democratization 9 3: 30-52. Sandbrook, R. 1996. ‘Transitions without consolidation: democratization in six African cases.” Third World Quarterly 17 1: 69-87. Schedler, A. 1998. “What is democratic consolidation?” Journal of Democracy 9: 91–107. Tettey, W. 2001. “The media and democratization in Africa: contributions, constraints and concerns of the private press.” Media, Culture & Society 23: 5-31. Washbourne, N. 2010. Mediating Politics. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

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Wright, T. 1998. “Inside the whale: the media from parliament.” Politics and the Media, ed. J. Seaton. Oxford: Blackwell.

CHAPTER SEVEN MEDIA REFORM IN SOUTH AMERICA CHERYL MARTENS AND ERNESTO VIVARES There is a growing academic interest in the conflict between the media and the populist/neo-developmentalist governments of such countries as Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. In contrast to other countries in the region, where neoliberal economic models predominate and the media largely legitimize development strategies orientated towards capitalist growth, the media in these countries have entered into a power struggle with neo-populist and neo-developmentalist governments. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela represent a new regional dynamic, which has come about in relation to globalization and the ensuing struggles for and against neoliberal restructuring (Tsolakis 2012), in contrast to countries following neoliberal paths of development such as Chile and Colombia. Thus as South American heterodox administrations adapt their structures to address the outcomes of decades of neoliberal and conservative agendas, media players empowered by market-led developments are now shifting to confront these popular national administrations in the arenas of media discourse and political legitimacy. As a result, in these struggles to control the direction of national development, media industries confront and oppose governments who in turn seek to restructure and regulate media monopolies in which they discover unofficial yet powerful forces of political opposition (Follari 2010). Within this context, the case of Argentina’s 2009 introduction of antimonopolistic media legislation is a pertinent example of how, within such struggles for legitimacy and authority, governments have sought to divide media monpolies and restructure by regulation the neoliberal and conservative powers of these emergent political players. Powerful media actors such as Argentina’s Clarin Group have sought in response to delegitimize such governmental actions as populist, antidemocratic policies, often personalizing their attacks on the figures of executive power.

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This chapter’s central aim is to explore the relations between media, power, regionalism and democracy. It is significant to note that Argentina’s 2009 media reforms received the support of more than 300 civil society groups. Public opinion and civic responses to this new legislation have become increasingly polarized, however, as critics have argued that the law limits freedom of expression and does not promote transparency. Based on an ethnographic study of the implementation of the media law in Argentina between 2011 and 2013, this chapter includes interviews with politicians, media theorists, and corporate and community media figures, in order to explore the context of the conflicts and current challenges concerning the application of Argentina’s Audiovisual Communication Services Law, also known as Law 26.522. Examining the 2009 audiovisual media reforms introduced by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s administration, we will offer four approaches to an analysis of the development of media and democracy in Argentina: (1) conceptual approaches to issues of development, media, power and regionalism; (2) the historical and political economic contexts of these reforms; (3) the ways in which these reforms seek to increase popular participation and redistribute the control of media ownership; and (4) the meanings of responses to these reforms in relation to democracy and development.

Development and Democracy In order better to understand the historical and theoretical contexts of Argentina’s media reforms, it seems useful to invoke the critical perspective of the political economy of development and regionalism (Cox 1996; Payne 2004). The perspective invoked herein does not take the extant processes and structures of development and institutions for granted nor as determined by universal and ahistorical rules, but sees them as unfolding within the contexts of the struggles towards (or in relation to) development and democracy. We would argue that, ontologically speaking, reality is historical and defined by different world orders whose hegemonic paths of development are always contested (cf. Gamble and Payne 1996). The developmentalist post-war order in Latin America, for example, has been contested by populism, and the subsequent neoliberal orders of the 1990s and of the beginning of the twenty-first century were contested by neo-populist, heterodox and pragmatic paths of regional development (Halperín Donghi 1995; Bulmer-Thomas 2003). Socio-political reality is therefore dynamic and continuously changing; development is the arena of political struggle defined by the rise,

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consolidation and decline of different social forces, political orders and paradigms of what development is and what it should be (cf. Payne 2005). In the case of Argentina and other countries in South America powerful media and other corporate actors, under heterodox models of development, have taken on the role of opposition players, entering into dialectics of conflict with neo-populist and neo-developmentalist governments (Martens and Vivares 2012). These media corporations have come to invoke neoliberal principles to negate neopopulist governmental approaches, while neopopulist governments have sought to regulate and control these media organizations through apparently outmoded political approaches. It may be observed conversely that similar struggles in the mass media field between corporate and state power are not evident in such models of South American neoliberalism as Chile and Colombia. Media theorists have argued that it is possible to distinguish two main historical stages in relation to the development of the social significance of the mass media in Latin America. The first falls between 1930 and 1950, when the mass media played a decisive role in both conveying and challenging “‘the appeal of populism, which transformed the mass into the people and the people into the nation” (Martin-Barbero 1993, 164). The second stage came after 1960, when the political functions of the media came to be subsumed to their economic functions, as (although the state maintained the rhetoric that the airwaves were public and that the mass media represented a social service) responsibilities for the management of the media were effectively transferred to the private sector (MartinBarbero 1993). As we will argue, these stages are now giving way to a third stage, whereby the media have become so intertwined with the private sector to which they have long belonged, that their approaches to their societal roles now centrally promote their own corporate interests over the public interest. Another factor which has impacted upon communications policy in the region relates to academic perspectives which have highlighted issues of cultural imperialism (Dorfman and Mattelart 1972). Such debates gained momentum in Argentina and elsewhere in the region in the 1980s and 1990s, and have raised concerns over the transnational control and commercialization of the media of mass communications, as highlighted in the UNESCO-sponsored MacBride Report of 1980. As a result, the societal role and corporate interests of the media have become the subjects of public debate and activism, factors which have proven to represent key sources of the impetus for media reform. In addition, however, it is necessary to consider how these changes are part of a much wider populist dynamic in the region and beyond, a

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dynamic which no longer takes for granted the neoliberal assumptions as to the necessity and acceptability of unfettered corporate power. For this reason, it is important to consider how these post-neoliberal media developments in the region might be considered in relation to the logic of populism in which they are developing. In order more fully to unravel the complexities of media legislation in Argentina in the context of this populism and its impact upon democracy, it may be useful to consider the work of such scholars as Ernesto Laclau (2005) and Roberto Follari (2010), writers who question much of the treatment of populism by European and North American scholars, whereby leftist leaders in South America are often labelled in a similar vein to conservative and neoliberal populist leaders elsewhere. Follari (2010) critiques assumptions that a parliamentary system and capitalism represent essential components of democracy. Follari argues that it is hypocritical to label systems which fail to respect civil rights democratic just because those systems follow parliamentary rules and neoliberal capitalist policies. He points out how systems are often labelled undemocratic for their questioning of free market principles, while at the same time those systems are focussed upon improving the overall standards of living and the socio-economic equality of their populations. Follari (2010, 124) proposes that, in many so-called democratic states, democracy may not equally empower all citizens (and non-citizens), particularly the marginalized, the homeless and the stateless.

History Argentina’s media reforms have coincided with the projects of governments and civil society initiatives to restrict media power and diversify media ownership after decades of monopolistic concentration promoted by the erstwhile Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) and subsequent weak democracies. The following discussion will consider how the historical and economic contexts of current populist media policies under democratic and transformative democracies in South America are illustrative of the complex dynamics between civil society, corporate actors, governments and policies of regionalism. Argentina constitutes an important example in the study of the political economy of media and democracy in relation to the neoliberal order both in terms of developing democracy and as indicative of wider tendencies in South America over the past four decades – from its period of dictatorship (1976-1983), through the 2001 crisis of its post-dictatorship neoliberal model, to its current populist/neo-developmentalist path.

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A significant structural transformation in the relationships between political power, the mass media and socio-economic development began with the military coup which overtook Argentina on 24 March 1976. The resulting dictatorship embarked upon a project which would have unprecedentedly negative social, economic and political consequences for the country. The central objective of this project was to dismantle the sources of power of the Peronist state and to break up the country’s developmentalist ISI structure (the policy of “import substitution industrialization”), in order to impose a new economic model based on the external financing of development and the supremacy of capital over labour, a strategic model closely aligned with Washington (Rock 1987, 366; Basualdo 2001). This neoliberal dictatorship’s policies came to rely heavily upon foreign finance, the concentration of economic power, state terrorism and media control and restructuring. By 1983, 68.5 per cent of Argentina’s external debt was in the hands of commercial banks, while debt under the control of Bretton Woods institutions had risen to 15.9 per cent. In other words, by 1983 the commercial banks and the Bretton Woods institutions controlled 84.4 per cent of the total debt of the country (Escude and Cisneros 2000, 50; Bouzas and Keifman 1990, 70). Domestically, nearly thirty thousand victims of the dictatorship had been designated as “missing” – while, internationally, the dictatorship had embarked upon an irrational project to reassert its power through its costly and unsuccessful invasion of the Malvinas/Falklands. In the face of increasing social unrest the military government was eventually compelled to call for new elections. However, the defeat of this regime did not mean a change in the configuration of the structures upon which it had been founded, structures which would extend their influence into the next decade of Argentine history (Rock 1987, 374-379; Franco 2002). By the end of the 1980s, the effects of the neoliberal experiment were obvious. The weakening of the economy, as well as the dictatorship’s costly military expenditure, had brought the country’s financial system close to collapse (Rock 1987, 372-374). The role and position of the Argentine media had undergone a significant point of transition in 1977, when the military dictatorship had confiscated the newsprint corporation Papel Prensa from the Graiver family (who had owned of 75 per cent of the company’s holdings) and turned it over to the corporations now known as the Clarin Group. This made it possible for the dictatorship to gain control of nation’s newspapers (Sel 2010; Papaleo 2009). The power of the Clarin group continued

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beyond the period of the dictatorship and through the subsequent neoliberal era of weak democracy in Argentina. Pushed by its debt crisis, Argentina began at the end of 1989 to open its media sector to external players through the privatization of a range of telecommunications and audiovisual services, including the major public TV channels and the National Company of Telecommunications. However, as a result of pressure from domestic players, the arrival of foreign capital and ownership did not come until 1991 with the agreement of a Treaty of Reciprocal Protection and Promotion with the United States. Two specific periods can be distinguished in the rise of these media monopolies as central political forces in the development of Argentina: 1989-1995 and 1995-2000 (Postolsky 2010). In the first period media power was characterized by the control of national capital in oligopoly markets favoured by the privatization processes. International operators acceded to the telecommunication sectors with the arrival of International Telecommunications and Citibank (Postolsky 2010). The second period represented a continuation of the first but was marked by the mass transfer of the ownership of the major media companies to international operators. At the end of the process, two main groups dominated the national market: the Clarin Group and Investment Equity Citicorp (IEC). The most important events thereafter involved the arrival of the Goldman Sachs Group to form a partnership with the Clarin Group and the dissolution of the IEC. By the end of 2000 the country’s media monopolies were able to avoid or adapt legislation for their own benefit, displaying an unprecedented degree of power over politics and its major institutions. As these media monopolies continued to grow in size and power, civil society’s calls for media reform became stronger. A range of civil society organizations came to form the Coalition for Democratic Radiodifusion, an organization seeking to challenge the unfettered power of the corporate media. However, it was not until 2009 that the issue of the corporate concentration of power was addressed at the state level, through the creation of the Audiovisual Communication Services Law No. 26.522.

The Campo Moment The Clarin Group remains Argentina’s principal media conglomerate, controlling more than 40 per cent of the media in terms of print, radio, television, cable and internet content (Orlando 2011). The conflict between the government and the Clarin group, which resulted in the 2009 media law, was initiated when the Clarin Group fought the rise of export

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retentions proposed by the government in Resolution 125. Through the various media outlets controlled by Clarin, the ruralists or ‘Campo’ were portrayed as representing the best of the Argentine identity, whilst President Cristina Kirchner was constantly belittled and ‘Kirchnerismo’ was denigrated as corrupt. By 2008 the Clarin Group controlled 267 media communication licences. When the “Campo moment” occurred, President Kirchner responded to the harsh media criticism by publicly questioning whether freedom of speech belonged to corporations or to ordinary citizens. The government thus entered a direct confrontation with the corporate media and gained substantial public support as the media attacks against the Kirchner administration became increasingly violent and personalized. These attacks from the press backfired to provoke significant public support for the government, giving the Kirchner administration the impetus to move ahead with its Audiovisual Communication Services Law, a piece of legislation aimed at breaking up media monopolies, driven by the Coalition for Democratic Radiodifusion, a movement which had been gathering momentum in its calls for the redistribution of media power since before Cristina Kirchner’s predecessor Néstor Kirchner had left office in 2007.

26.522 With a broad base of public support, drawing together more than 300 civil society actors, and following six months of public debate, the Cristina Kirchner administration passed Law No. 26.522 on 10 October 2009. The law was clearly aimed at moving the country away from the neoliberal policies of the post-dictatorship period. Breaking up media monopolies also made it possible for the Kirchner government to promote its economic agenda of “accumulation with social inclusion”. The new regulatory framework fixed limits upon the concentration of media monopolies by redistributing audiovisual services equally between corporate, community and government ownership, set limits on foreign broadcasters, established quotas for domestic content and promoted diversity of media channels at local, national, regional and international levels (Sel 2010). This policy for the democratization of communications was based on 21 points presented to the government by the Coalition for Democratic Radiodifusion, an agenda which had developed over several years of forums and public debates held by the Coalition since 2004. The main features of the law included:

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x radio and television broadcast service concentration to be divided into thirds: one third for government services, one third for nonprofit services and one third for commercial services; x limits to the number of licenses a single company or network could operate (any operator over this quota to divest their surplus within a year); x 70 per cent of radio content and 60 per cent of broadcast television content to be produced in Argentina; x cable television networks to include universities, municipalities and provinces within their services, in order to promote local artists, musicians, etc., as well as to support Argentina’s national and local culture; x the creation of a registry for foreign channels; x a limit of 30 per cent to the proportion of foreign ownership of local radio and television. The formulation and scope of these reforms were notable for their high levels of engagement with civil society, articulating a wider project of civic mobilization and restructuring. The law established the decentralized National Authority for Audiovisual Services and the Federal Council of Audiovisual Communication, consisting of representatives from each province and from the city of Buenos Aires, three representatives each from corporations, unions and non-profit organizations, one representative each from universities, original peoples, public media and rights representations organizations. There was, of course, opposition from the corporate sphere. A campaign against the law was launched, led by the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa, as well as several local press associations, and corporate-sponsored think-thanks (Sel 2010). Although these organizations and the Clarin group failed to defeat the law, the implementation of the law was delayed until 2011, as a result of legal cases brought by Clarin over issues of media ownership and divestment.

Discourses of Democracy The following sections of this chapter discuss the results of an ethnographic study examining responses to Argentina’s media law conducted between 2011 and 2013. This study included interviews with politicians, media theorists, journalists, community media professionals and independent producers, as well as an analysis of the press coverage of this issue during this period. The main aim of this study was to examine

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the many competing discourses concerning the media that have come to shape the current political and social landscape in Argentina. The first stage of this study examined the creation of the media law, looking at the various key players and their relationships. The second stage, from January 2012 to January 2013, examined the implementation of the legislation and the ways in which the initial discourses had shifted over the course of the previous year. The findings of the initial stage of our study (2011-2012) demonstrated a range of competing narratives in relation to the Audiovisual Communication Services Law. Government discourses centred around the idea of the democratization of communications as “a collective creation” with talk of “television for all” – discourses in which the people were invoked both as participants in the formulation of the law, but also as actors in the creation of strong Argentine cultural industries, industries that would create Argentine jobs. A democratic media system would not be possible with current levels of concentration, argued one government spokesman (interviewed in 2011). The words pluralism, diversity and participation were key terms invoked time and again in this context by the government. At the same time, the government discourse sought to construct the corporate media as the enemy. As Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said on 22 June 2011, “monopolies are bad in all activities as they turn the user into a captive.” As the government’s Communication Department observed in 2011, “a popular political identity can be created through clearly planting a strong opposition to the other side.” The development of these discourses had been inadvertently aided by Clarin’s treatment of the president and by the discourses through which the corporate media engaged in a process of what one interviewee described as “hitting the government.” Another tactic deployed by the corporate media during this period was to invoke concepts of freedom of expression. Thirteen media organizations and the International Press Association issued a joint statement declaring that “far from achieving diversity, these regulations carry with them censorship that will restrict the supply of content to citizens” (Peters 2009). If we look more closely at this statement and Clarin’s legal appeals, however, it would appear that the “supply of content” that is being referred to represents the corporate media’s unrestricted control over media channels. What was not reported in the corporate media at this time was that the formulation of the proposed legislation’s position on freedom of expression was based upon a wide range of consultative processes which had taken place within Argentina. The law drew upon many reports and

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debates which had highlighted the key role of media diversity in fostering freedom of expression. The resources drawn upon also included the UN’s Special Session on Freedom of Expression, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights’ Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression. The process of the law’s formulation may be seen as advancing possibilities for the development of radical democracy (Laclau 2005) and the public sphere. Revisions were made to the law on several occasions in response to the contributions of a wide range of civic groups. Some of the key revisions came from groups interested in promoting indigenous rights and the protection of minors. The inclusion of the involvement of Pueblos Originarios (or Original Peoples), for example, in decision-making processes was added as a result of the participation of a range of civic groups working in the area of indigenous peoples’ rights. A wide range of civil society groups also became involved in broadening and clarifying Articles 70 and 71, which dealt with the protection of children and rights in relation to discriminatory messages. In total there were over 100 proposals made by diverse civil society groups for revisions to the draft legislation (Orlando 2011). This appeared to demonstrate significant levels of democratic engagement with the legislative process.

Challenges of Implementation It is important to bear in mind that the Audiovisual Communication Services Law was implemented after more than a year of legal battles between the Clarin Group and the Argentine government, creating a highly polarized culture in relation to this debate. Support for curbing the power of media monopolies has continued. The strongest support came from those elements of society most likely benefit from these reforms, including universities and such civil society groups as Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. The public response to this new legislation has however in many cases turned to disappointment, as the media revolution many were expecting has not come about. Critics not just from the sphere of corporate media but also from the spheres of independent and community media have argued that the law has not promoted the levels of transparency or equality anticipated. Interviews conducted for this study with radio professionals, independent producers and audiovisual artists revealed, for example, an uneasiness about the ambiguities within the legislation’s crucial definition of non-profit organizations and about the continued unevenness of media distribution.

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Other voices have also raised concerns over issues of access. One participant from a local radio station pointed out that licence fees of 30,000 USD had put such licences out of the reach of many prospective broadcasters, and that media content was therefore not necessarily significantly more pluralistic despite the introduction of new channels. Several of our interviewees expressed disquiet at the sudden animosity arising from the polarization of perspectives on this subject: “one moment your organizations are friends and the next they are enemies,” said one audiovisual artist, interviewed in 2012. “It’s like you’ve got two teams, that are lifelong rivals, and you fight to the death in the match [...] unfortunately with this battle, there is no end,” added a Clarin Group journalist, also speaking in 2012. “Who,” asked one interviewee, “is the enemy? Who holds the truth?” Such questions began to emerge in 2012, as sympathies started to shift away from the government, as the public grew fatigued with the administration’s apparently endless war with the Clarin Group. Government restrictions had also begun to tighten. Journalists interviewed for this study criticized the blocking of certain groups of reporters from access to government information and the discriminatory allocation of official advertising contracts. These journalists noted that fears that the government might pull advertising revenues from their publications had fostered a culture of self-censorship. The Kirchner administration’s legislation disappointed those who had been expecting a step change in Argentina’s mass media landscape: it appears that the revolution would not, after all, be televised. It seems that those elements within civil society which continue to dream of radical transformations to their national culture might therefore have to return to the grassroots activism upon which the aspirations of 26.522 had originally been founded: as one independent film producer, interviewed in 2012, put it, “although we may never get the support we need from corporate or government channels to show our work, we need to organize a strong nucleus of artists in support of our work.” The formulation of 26.522 relied extensively upon the mobilization of groups within civil society, including marginalized and minority voices and the youth movement in particular, as part of what one member of the government has termed “a process of amalgamating the identity of Kirchner with the wider history of Peronism.” However, as Laclau (2005) has demonstrated in his analysis of “the obstacles and limits to the construction of the people” the notion of the people as a mobilizing force can swiftly dissipate. The fieldwork conducted for the purposes of this study has thus exposed a great deal of dissatisfaction voiced by the groups

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at the margins of society over the outcomes of the governments’ plans for a media revolution intended “for all”. The great potential of these reforms lay in their incorporation of such a wide range of perspectives from within Argentine society. The most marginalized voices were to be afforded greater space and possibilities for participation, in a project which offered new opportunities for the democratization of the media and the public sphere. Yet in the implementation of this project there clearly remain issues of equality of access to information and to the resources of production, issues that must be addressed if the full range of voices that spoke to the creation of this law is to continue to be heard.

Works Cited Basualdo, E. 2001. Modelo de Acumulación y Sistema Político en Argentina. Quilmes: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Bouzas, R., and Keifman, S. 1990. “Deuda externa y negociaciones financieras en la década de los ochenta: una evaluación de la experiencia argentina.” Buenos Aires: FLACSO. Bulmer-Thomas, V. 2003. The Economic History of Latin America since Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cox, R. 1996. “Gramsci, hegemony and international relations.” Approaches to World Order, ed. R. Cox and T. Sinclair, 124-143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dorfman, A., and A. 1972. How to Read Donald Duck. Buenos Aries: Siglo XXI. Escude, C., and Cisneros, A. 2000. Historia de las Relaciones Exteriores Argentinas. Buenos Aires: Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Exteriores. Follari, R. 2010. La Alternativa Neopopulista. Buenos Aires: Homo Sapiens. Franco, M. 2002. Fases y momento actual de la estructura social Argentina. Mendoza: Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Gamble, A., and Payne, A. 1996. Regionalism and World Order. London: Macmillan. Halperín Donghi, T. 1993. The Contemporary History of Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Laclau, E. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Martens, C., and Vivares, E.. 2012. “Media and Democracy in South America.” Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group Annual Conference, University of Bedfordshire, 1-2 November 2012.

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Martin-Barbero, J. 1993. Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations. London: Sage. Orlando, R. 2012. Medios privados y nuevos gobiernos en Ecuador y Argentina. Quito: FLACSO. Papaleo, O. 2009. “Clarin compro Papel Prensa con la familia Graiver secustrada.” Miradas al Sur, 26 September 2009. Payne, A. 2004. The New Regional Politics of Development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. —. 2005. The Global Politics of Unequal Development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Peters, C. 2009. “Argentine government fast-tracking controversial media law.” International Press Institute, 16 September 2009. Postolsky, G. “Continuidades, Desplazamientos y transformaciones en las politicas de Comunicación en Argentina.” Politicas de Comunicación en el Capitualismo Contemporaneo, ed. S. Sel, 135-154. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.Rock, D. 1987. Argentina, 1516-1987: From Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War and Alfonsin. London: Tauris. Sel, S. 2010. Politicas de Comunicación en el Capitualismo Contemporaneo. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Tsolakis, A. 2012. “The end of neoliberalism in Latin America?” Neoliberalism in Crisis, ed. H. Overbeek and B. van Appledoorn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

CONTRIBUTORS

Alec Charles Alec Charles is Principal Lecturer in Media at the University of Bedfordshire. He has previously made documentaries for BBC Radio and taught at universities in Japan and Estonia, where he also worked as a newspaper journalist. He is the editor of Media in the Enlarged Europe (2009), co-editor of The End of Journalism (2011) and author of Interactivity: New Media, Politics and Society (2012). Recent publications include papers in Science Fiction Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television, Utopian Studies, Journalism Education, British Politics and Journal of Popular Television. Mercy Ette Mercy Ette is Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Media at the University of Huddersfield. Her research focuses on media and democracy, political communication and gendered mediation. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the Association for Journalism Education. Natalie Fenton Natalie Fenton is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also serves as Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy and of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre. She is the editor of New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age and co-author of Misunderstanding the Internet. Karolina Koc-Michalska Karolina Koc-Michalska is an Associate Researcher at the Centre for Political Research CEVIPOF at Sciences-Po, Paris, and member of the Communication and Politics Laboratory, France. Her research focuses on online political communication, online campaign strategies, the role of social networks in Western politics and changes in political engagement. She has published in Journal of European Communication and Journal of Information Technology and Politics.

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Contributors

Darren G. Lilleker Darren Lilleker is Director of the Centre for Public Communication and Senior Lecturer in the Media School at Bournemouth University. He has published widely on the professionalisation and marketisation of political communication including Key Concepts in Political Communication (2006) and Political Campaigning, Elections and the Internet (2011). He has coedited The Marketing of Political Parties (2006), Voters or Consumers (2008) and Political Marketing in Comparative Perspective (2005). Cheryl Martens Cheryl Martens is Senior Lecturer in the Media School at Bournemouth University, and currently lives in Quito, Ecuador. She is working on a documentary concerning media reform in South America. Bethan Michael Bethan Michael is Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of Bedfordshire and a councillor for the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Her current research explores notions of trauma and mourning in late postmodern culture. Paul Rowinski Paul Rowinski is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Bedfordshire, and has previously worked as a national and transnational newspaper journalist for over twenty years, writing for such titles as The European, Scotland on Sunday, The Independent, Daily Mail and Financial Times. Richard Scullion Richard Scullion is Senior Lecturer in Marketing Communications at Bournemouth University. He has published in a range of international journals including Advances in Consumer Research, European Journal of Marketing and Journal of Marketing Management. He is co-editor of The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer. Pawel Suroweic Pawel Suroweic is Lecturer in Propaganda Studies at Bournemouth University. His research focuses on the re-invention of propaganda as a professional practice and power relations in persuasive communication. His latest research projects explore the communication practices of the Solidarity movement in Poland (1980-1981) and the British government’s overseas campaigning efforts in the context of 2012 Olympics.

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Ernesto Vivares Ernesto Vivares is Research Professor in Political Economy and Research Methods, and the Coordinator of the International Relations programme, FLACSO Ecuador. His research focuses upon the political economy of South American regionalism, development and conflict.

INDEX

A Absolute Radio 42 Abubakar, Abdulsalami 108 Abubakar, Atiku 112, 114 Adenauer, Konrad 71 African Commission on Human and People’s Rights 134 African National Congress 110 Afrobarometer 119 Agbese, Dan 112, 118 Allan, Stuart 17 Andrew Marr Show, The 9 Arab Spring 2, 16-20 Argentina 123-134 Audiovisual Communication Services Law 126, 130-131, 133-135 Australia 6, 75 B Baudrillard, Jean 12 BBC 2-5, 9-11, 18, 21, 24, 33, 41, 43, 74 Bentham, Jeremy 32-33 Berlusconi, Silvio ix, 69-71, 73-77 Big Brother Watch 33 Blackhurst, Chris 11-12 Blair, Tony 1, 5, 21, 72, 77 Blogs 2, 18, 23-24, 32, 39, 41, 44, 82, 88-90, 91-97 Boko Haram 119 Bolivia 125 Bourdieu, Pierre 14 Brazil 125 Bretton Woods 129 British Social Attitudes Survey 29 Brooks, Rebekah 6, 9, 12 Brown, Gordon 5, 13 Buhari, Muhammadu 107, 116-117

C Cameron, David 6, 8, 9-10, 12-13, 37, 42-43, 76 Campo 130-131 Capitalism 25, 128 Chile 125, 127 Chomsky, Noam 49 Choice mapping 62 Churchill, Winston 69, 72 Citibank 130 Clarin Group 125, 129-135 Clegg, Nick 11, 44-45, 70 Coalition for Democratic Radiodifusion 130-131 Cold War 29 Colombia 125, 127 Communication Department (Argentina) 131 Conservative Party 8, 10, 42-43, 74, 76 Consumerism 36-37, 49-52 Coogan, Steve 5 Couldry, Nick 49 Creasy, Stella 39-41, 44-45 Curran, James ix, 15-16, 106 D Daily, Kate 33 Daily Mail 12-14, 19, 23, 42 Daily Mirror 19 Dawkins, Richard 14 de Gaulle, Charles 69 de Gasperi, Alcide 71-72 Department of Transport 42 Downing, John 17 E Eagleton, Terry 49 Eastleigh 76-77

144 Ecuador 123 Egypt 17-20 Electoral Commission (UK) 29 Eupsychianism 59-60, 63 EU Constitution 74-75, 77 Euro 69-70, 73-75, 77 European, The 73 Euroscepticism 69-70, 72-73, 76-77 Exxon Mobil 25 F Facebook 16-20, 23, 25, 37, 39-40, 89, 91, 97- 98 Falklands 129 Federal Council of Audiovisual Communication 132 Fenton, Natalie ix, x, 15, 20-21 Financial Times 74 Fisk, Robert 19 Five Star Movement 77 Follari, Roberto 125, 127 Forza Italia 70-71 Foucault, Michel 14, 32-35, 38, 40, 43-44 Freedman, Des ix, 24-25 Freedom of expression 10, 14, 22, 126, 133-134 Freedom of the press 7, 10, 15, 104, 120 G Gaddafi, Muammar 20 Ghonim, Wael 19-20 Giornale , Il 69-72, 75-76 Google 19, 25 Government Office for Science 36 Grant, Hugh 5, 8 Grillo, Beppo 77 Guardian, The (Nigeria) 104-105, 113-120 Guardian, The (UK) 8, 11-12, 19, 43-45 H Habermas, Jürgen 32 Hacked Off 11

Index Hansard Society 30 Harmsworth, Alfred 13 Heffer, Simon 12 Holness, Bob 41 How Facebook Changed the World 18 Hussain, Mishal 18 Hutton Inquiry 4 I Igbokwe, Casmir 115, 118 I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here 35 Independent, The 11, 19-20, 24, 39, 43, 77 Independent National Electoral Commission (Nigeria) 116 InSites Consulting 37 International Press Association 133 Investment Equity Citicorp 130 Italy ix, 71, 73, 75-76 Izeze, Emeka 115, 118 J Johnson, Boris 45 Jonathan, Goodluck 111-112, 114117, 119 Judicial Office 6 K Keen, Andrew 17, 24 Kelly, David 4 Kelly, Lorraine 7 Kelner, Simon 24 Kirchner, Cristina 126, 131, 133, 135 Kirchner, Néstor 131 L Labour Party 8-10, 41, 74 Laclau, Ernesto 128, 134-135 Leckie, Bill 4 Leveson Inquiry 4-13, 15, 21-24, 74 Liberal Democrats 9-10, 44, 76 Liberation 73 Libya 17

Media/Democracy: A Comparative Study Lilleker, Darren 50, 84 LinkedIn 39-40

Northern League 71, 75, 77 Not So Big Society 41

M MacBride Report 125 Madres de la Plaza de Mayo 134 Major, John 5 Malvinas 127 Mandela, Nelson 110 Martino, Antonio 70 Marx, Karl 14 Maxwell, Robert 72 McLuhan, Marshall 14 McQuail, Denis 105 Media Reform Coalition x Melbourne 6 Mensch, Louise 7, 39, 43-44 Metro 11 Microblogs 3, 16-17, 19-20, 22-24, 37-45, 88-97 Miliband, Ed 11, 41 Miller, Sienna 5 Mills, C. Wright 29-36, 38-39, 41, 43-44 Milward, Alan 69 Moore, Jane 4, 7 Morgan, Piers 5 Morozov, Evgeny 17-18, 82 Mubarak, Hosni 20 Murdoch, Rupert 12, 69-70, 73-75, 77

O Obasanjo, Olusegun 110 Observer, The 23 Ofcom 8 Orwell, George 12, 44 Osbourne, George 12 OSCE 134

N Nasza Klasa 92, 96 National Authority for Audiovisual Services 132 National Democratic Institute 116 National Company of Telecommunications 130 News Corporation 25 News International 4 Newsnight 2 News of the World 4-5, 15, 74 Newswatch 114 New York Times 13 Nigeria 103-105, 107-120

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P Padania 71 Panopticon 32-34, 36, 38, 40-41 Papacharissi, Zizi 17, 82 Papel Pensa 129 PeerIndex 41 People of Liberty 71, 73-74 People’s Democratic Party 111-112, 115-117 Peronism 127, 133 Poland 81, 85-98 Police Commissioners 29 Prescott, John 39 Press Complaints Commission 7 Public Opinion Research Centre (Poland) 87 Public sphere 1, 16-17, 22, 32, 37, 69, 81-82, 85-86, 97, 134 Pueblos Originarios 132, 134 Q Queen Elizabeth II 13 R Riots 22 Rowling, J.K. 5 Ruch Palikota 95 Ruggiero, Renato 70 S Savile, Jimmy 2-4, 23 Schuman, Robert 71 Scullion, Richard 49, 51-52, 59 Shipman, Harold 4 Social capital 35, 82

146 Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa 132 Soros, George 69 Staines, Paul 23 Sun, The 2-9, 19, 22-23, 75, 76 Sunday Punch 117, 120 Sunday Times 19, 23, 74 Surveillance society 34 Sydney 6 T Taking on the Tabloids 8 Temple, Mick 13 Thatcher, Margaret 70, 72-73 Thick of It, The 41 Thompson, Craig 52 This Morning 2, 22 Time 19, 22 Times, The 11, 13, 19, 70, 73-76 Treaty of Reciprocal Protection and Promotion 130 Tremonti, Giulio 70 Truman, Harry 29 Tulloch, John 7 Tunisia 17, 19 Tweetminster 38 TweetyHall 38 Twitter 3, 16-17, 19-20, 23-24, 3745, 88-90, 97

Index Twitter Storm 40-41 U UK Independence Party 76-77 United Nations 125, 132 UNESCO 125 United States 29, 72, 75, 92-84, 93, 116, 128-130 V van den Berg, Max 111 Venezuela 125 W Washington 127 Watson, Tom 39 Weblogs 2, 18, 23-24, 32, 39, 41, 44, 82, 87-97 Welsh nationalism 36 Wikileaks 35 Whittingdale, John 7 Y Yar’Adua, Umaru 111-112 YouGov 8, 40 YouTube 22 Z Zarathustra 41 Zones of immunity 61