Public Sphere & Political Economy

• The public sphere and political economy are being discussed.
• The lecture date is February 14, 2025.

Guiding Questions

• What conditions need to exist for meaningful public discourse to occur and for public opinion to be shaped?
• Are these conditions currently in place?
• What would Jurgen Habermas say about the current state of public discourse?

The Enlightenment

• A European intellectual movement that occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries.
• Emphasized reason and rationality.
• Marked the emergence of empiricism and the scientific method.

Critiques of the Enlightenment

• There are critiques related to capital "T" Truth.
• Some belive Science can explain everything.
• Instrumental reason.
• There are questions surrounding who qualifies as the reasoning subject.

Habermas' Perspective on the Enlightenment

• Average people became more involved in the political process, leading to democracy and the public sphere.
• Increased literacy rates.
• The rise of capitalism, liberal politics, nation states, and class systems.

The Public Sphere

• Emerged in the 17th century.
• It's a space where private individuals gather to discuss matters of public concern.
• Jurgen Habermas defined the public sphere in 1964 as a realm of social life where public opinion can be formed and access is guaranteed to all citizens.
• It mediates between society and the state, where the public organizes as the bearer of public opinion.
• Specific conditions need to facilitate a proper public sphere.

Conditions for a Functional Public Sphere

• Separation from the state by remaining free from government bureaucracy.
• Citizens have freedom of assembly, association, and expression regarding matters of general interest.
• Distinct from the Market, and must be free of market and commercial interests.
• Needs Communicative Rationality or action.

Communicative Rationality

• Parties coming together to express themselves authentically.
• Involves hearing one another.
• Requires agreeing on a collective action.
• It is oriented toward achieving, sustaining, and reviewing consensus through intersubjective recognition of criticizable validity claims.
• Four rules for proper communication:
  • Everyone must understand each other by using the same common language.
  • Everyone must agree that the conversation is worth having.
  • Everyone must genuinely and authentically believe what they are saying is true.
  • Everyone must agree on a set of values and behaviors.
• Evaluate communication and statements to ensure:
  • Is it true?
  • Is it ethical?
  • Is it sincere?

Communicative vs Persuasive Rationality

• Persuasive/strategic rationality is often insincere and misleading.

Historical Context

• Coffee houses in the 18th century served as places for people to read political publications and literature, and discuss them.
• The public sphere and public opinion arose in the 18th century as a historically contingent phenomenon.
• The rise of the Bourgeois/Constitutional Society.
• Relative freedom from feudal struggles allowed for new ideas.
• Due to the Reformation, church matters became a private choice.
• Greater involvement of the reading public in political discussions and processes.

Review of Conditions

• Business/private interests must be absent.
• Must be free from government influence.
• The public must have reasoning skills and a collective rationality.
• Must be accessible for all citizens.
• Requires an informed public with access to information.
• There must be proper communication systems and transparency from the government.

Habermas' Laments

• The commercialization of journalism is not a benefit.
• There is concern about the rise of public relations and propaganda.
• Companies and governments create an "apparent display of openness".

Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

• Modern Journalism Commercialization: Transformed to a more commercial 19th century model
  • There are now advertising agencies that are responsible for placing commercials in newspapers
• There is a shift from journalism of conviction to one of commerce.
• Journalism is necessary for democracy because the people must remain informed.
• The rise of bureaucracy in the welfare state.
• Over success of Capitalism and Late Modern Capitalism has an impact.
• Newspapers and television were communication tools presented by Habermas.
• There are communication tools that are most influential today.
• They may fall short of the criteria that defines public sphere.

Critiques of Public Sphere

• Difficulty in agreeing on norms, values, and truth.
• Disagreement on what is rational.
• Some forms of communication, like anger, might be legitimate.
• Universality is hard to achieve because agreed norms and values in language/culture matters.
• Ideal conditions can only exist under "Utopic" conditions.
• There is unequal access due to inequality in society based on gender, sex, citizenship/immigration status, race, ethnicity, language, ability, etc.
• Nancy Fraser's Feminist Critiques state that the public sphere excludes women and minoritized groups, being supposedly universal but not.

Political Economy (Robert McChesney)

• Political economy is the study of the relationships between individuals and society and between markets and the state.
• This uses numerous tools and methods from many fields like economics, political science, and sociology.
• In communications, it concerns ownership, control, and regulations of media systems.
• Also concerns how that ownership, control, and regulation could impact the democratic process.
• The media system’s function is beyond just an economic category, but also in what is responsible for transmitting culture, journalism and politically relevant information, which is mandatory for self-governance.
  • Media thus serves the public.

Key Terms

• Media Concentration: Corporate mergers and acquisitions that allows control more of the market and less competition.
• Monopoly/Oligopoly: One or a few companies control most of the market, and thus prevents competition.
• Deregulation: Less regulations are in place to curb the impact and power of large corporations.
• Capitalism: Economic system where privately owned production is guided along with the income distributed largely through the operation of markets.
• Commodification: To turn something into a product to be bought or sold.

Media Regulation

• Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
• Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the U.S.
• Other regulators like the Department of Justice and FTC.

Political Economy Examples

• Google has an illegal monopoly on search as of August 6, 2024.
• Canada's Online News Act (2023) led to Meta blocking news on Facebook and Instagram.
• Brazil shuttered X amid judge's feud with Elon Musk as of August 30th, 2024,.

McChesney's Central Concerns

• The commercial model of current media systems where a media system should allow for public debate, and be free from private interest in order to have an informed, democratic society.
• There is profit and appealing to audiences concerns, along with a greater emphasis on disposable income than democratic participation.
• Private corporations using power to intervene in the political/regulatory process.
• Deregulation occurs as big media companies push for less strict regulations.
• Media Concentration and Capitalist Accumulation: large corporations acquire smaller companies and merge resulting in media monopoly or oligopoly.
• Regulation (rather than Deregulation) is in public interest.
  • It allows plurality of voices.
  • Helps curb impact of large media corporations/help smaller companies compete.

Justification for Concentration

• The market is self-regulating.
• Better and naturally sorted products and innovation.
• No alternative.

The Fate of Journalism

• Now advertisers no longer buy space in newspapers but into an ad pool run by internet technology companies (like Google) to reach audiences.
• Because of the internet there is a “Journalism free zone" (McChesney, 2013).
• There is no reason to not maintain a regulated commercial system, a democratically accountable public media system, and a large non-profit and non-commercial media sector.

Digital Monopolies

• Top 10 Companies by Market cap in 2024 that include:
  • Apple being the largest at $3.441 trillion.
  • Microsoft at $3.221 Trillion.
  • Nvidia at $3.029 Trillion.
  • Amazon at $2.020 Trillion.
  • Alphabet(Google) at $1.987 Trillion.
  • Saudi Aramco at $1.789 Trillion.
  • Meta Platforms at $1.437 Trillion.
  • Berkshire Hathaway at $975.58 billion.
  • TSMC at $945.68 billion.
  • Eli Lilly at $832.49 billion.
• All data retrieved from the Forbes India Report, September 26, 2024

Digital Monopolies and Democracy

• There is commodification of users and their data in commercial models.
• Shoshana Zuboff (2018) called this "surveillance capitalism."
  • In addition, there is a lack of government regulations for it.
  • It is a stark new form of social inequality referring back to the pre-Gutenberg era, where tech giants seize control of information/learning itself.