W2_Theorizing political communication and technology (I) (1).pptx

Theorizing Political Communication and Technology Learning Objectives Explore the ideal type of society and polity based on liberal democratic theory. Understand the importance of Public sphere in democracy Learn some of the main criticisms of the media’s role in modern democrac...

Theorizing Political Communication and Technology Learning Objectives Explore the ideal type of society and polity based on liberal democratic theory. Understand the importance of Public sphere in democracy Learn some of the main criticisms of the media’s role in modern democracies. The Theory of Liberal Democracy What is liberal democracy? It is a democratic system of government in which individual rights and freedoms are officially recognized and protected, and the exercise of political power is limited by the rule of law.  The Theory of Liberal Democracy: Some history… The principles of liberal democracy grew out of the bourgeois critique of autocracy in early modern Europe, beginning in the sixteenth century and culminating in the French Revolution of 1789, with its slogan of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. What is bourgeois? It is relating to, or characteristic of the social middle class (a social group between the rich and the poor) dominated by commercial and industrial interests. The terms were used and defined by Karl Marx and are part of Marxism, where the bourgeoisie are the capitalist class, who aim to own most of the means of production. What is What is autocracy? It is a form of government that is run by a single, self-appointed leader (called an autocrat) as opposed to a group of leaders or elected officials.  Autocratic society In the political structures of autocratic societies, such as those typical of the absolutist monarchies of European feudalism, power resided in the king or queen, whose right to rule. Subordinate classes – the peasantry and artisans – were subject to divine order, lacking political rights of any kind. The institutions of state were directed primarily to the maintenance of this hierarchical system, and to the suppression of dissent, from wherever it came. The overthrow of autocratic society *(Overthrow: remove forcibly from power) The emergence of the bourgeoisie (or capitalist class) as the dominant economic force in Europe and America required the overthrow of autocracy and its monopolisation of political power. There had, therefore, to be free from the absolute power of autocracy, an end to the ideology of the absolute right of the leader. This also means the citizens had the right to dissent and able to express their views at the ballot box. The citizen has the right to choose leaders and act as a rational, knowledgeable electorate who is capable of exercising its rights. A functional liberal democracy assumes that citizens, ‘once they are entrusted with the right to choose who governs them’, are sufficiently well-informed ‘to vote for the wisest, the most honest, the most enlightened of their fellow citizens’ Drawing these understanding, we can identify the defining characteristics of a democratic regime in the following terms: A) Constitutionality, B) Participation and C) Rational choice.  A. Constitutionality First, there must be an agreed set of procedures and rules governing the conduct of elections, the behaviour of those who win them and the legitimate activities of dissenters. Such rules will typically take the form of a constitution. How many articles in Malaysian constitution? https://www.jac.gov.my/spk/ images/stories/10_akta/ perlembagaan_persekutuan/ federal_constitution.pdf  B. Participation Second, those who participate in the democratic process must comprise of a ‘substantial’ proportion of the people or the citizen. In the early democratic period, as we have noted, citizenship rights were restricted to a small minority (example: in the Western country: men with property and/or formal education). Gradually, voting rights were extended to the lower classes and, by the early twentieth century, to women. In Malaysia, only registered voters may vote in elections. Any Malaysian citizens above 21 years old must register in the voters' registry with the Election Commission. Beginning 15 December 2021, those who are 18 years above are eligible to voting. https://www.spr.gov.my/en/node/1255 C. Rational choice A third condition of democracy, as already noted, is the availability of choice (such as Barisan Nasional, PAS, Pakatan Harapan), and the ability of citizens to exercise that choice rationally. This in turn presupposes a knowledgeable, educated citizenry. Does social Media threatened Democracy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1tJaouDwVw  HOW DO YOU FORM PUBLIC OPINION? HOW THE PUBLIC DECIDE WHO TO CHOOSE IN THE NEXT ELECTION? HOW PUBLIC FORM AN OPINION ABOUT THE AUTHORITIES?  PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE This public sphere emerged as ‘a set of institutions representing a sort of “buffer zone” between the state/king and private sphere, to protect them from arbitrary (random) decisions that interfered with what they considered private activities in an irrational way’. The press in particular ‘was to function as an instrument or a forum for the enlightened, rational, critical, and unbiased public discussion of what the common interests were in matters of culture and politics’ (ibid.). Electorate and Public Sphere What is electorate?: Electorate may refer to: people who are eligible to vote in an election. An electoral district or constituency, the geographic area of a particular election. What is public Sphere?: The “public sphere” is generally conceived as the social space in which different opinions are expressed, problems of general concern are discussed, and collective solutions are developed communicatively. Thus, the public sphere is the central arena for societal communication. In large-scale societies, mass media and, more recently, online network media support and sustain communication in the public sphere. PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE It is important that democratic politics must be pursued in the public arena. The knowledge and information on the basis of which citizens will make their political choices must circulate freely and be available to all. The political process demands that individuals act collectively in making decisions about who will govern them. This public opinion of the people as a whole, will be reflected in voting patterns and treated as advice by existing political leaders. Public opinion, in this sense, is formed in what German sociologist Jürgen Habermas has called ‘the public sphere’. By the public sphere we mean first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed.... Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion – that is, within the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions. (Quoted in Pusey, 1978, p. 89) PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE Habermas locates the development of the public sphere in eighteenth- century Britain, where the first newspapers had already begun to perform their modern function of supplying not only information but also opinion, comment and criticism, facilitating debate amongst the emerging bourgeois and educated classes. Habermas also gives example in the coffee-house and salon cultures of Britain and France, debate and political critique became, an important part of the society which forms public opinion. According to Habermas, the term ‘public opinion’ refers to ‘the critical reflection of a [bourgeois] public competent to form its own judgments’ (ibid., p. 90). PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE The public sphere is that ‘distinctive discursive space’ within which ‘individuals are combined so as to be able to assume the role of a politically powerful force’ (1988, p. 47). The public sphere, as can be seen, comprises in essence the communicative institutions of a society, through which facts and opinions circulate and by means of which a common stock of knowledge is built up as the basis for collective political action: in other words, the mass media, which since the eighteenth century have evolved into the main source and focus of a society’s shared experience. Are Twitter and/or Facebook part of Public Sphere?  THE MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE For these functions to be performed adequately, and thus for a real ‘public sphere’ to exist a number of conditions have to be met. the [public sphere] must be accessible to all citizens.... there must be access to information.... specific means for transmitting information must be accessible to those who can be influenced by it... (mobile phone/ computer/ Internet) there must be institutionalised guarantees for [the public sphere] to exist (no censorship and control) THE MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE In short, democracy presumes ‘an open state in which people are allowed to participate in decision- making, and are given access to the media, and other information networks through which advocacy occurs’ (ibid., p. 42). It also presumes, as we have stated, an audience sufficiently educated and knowledgeable to make rational and effective use of the information circulating in the public sphere. Is social media the best Public Sphere? DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA: THE ISSUES Since the eighteenth century, the media, have grown ever-more important to the smooth workings of the democratic political process. Mass communication such as print, then film, radio and television became available to mass audiences is very important in political communication. Now the internet, which grows in importance with every year, represents the main source of their information about politics. However, do the media really helps to create public opinion and public sphere? It is important, however, to acknowledge there are issues in how democracy is functioning nowadays DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA: THE ISSUES A) Citizen are not rational First, it is argued that the assumption of a ‘rational’ citizenry is not realistic. This is due to the failure to produce rational voters, a failure which reflected in the growing political apathy. When those who have the right to vote decline to do so, democracy is clearly less than perfect. In the Malaysian general election, however, the voters’ turnout has improved. The Election Commission (EC) has announced that the final voter turnout was 82.32 per cent. The number of people who voted in GE14 (2018) was 82.32 per cent or 12,299,514 persons out of the total number of registered voters of 14,940,624. However the voters turnout has decline to about 70% during the 2022 election. Looking at the phenomenon of low voter turnout from another angle, it may be argued that political apathy is an entirely rational, if slightly cynical response to a political process in which it may appear to the individual citizen that his or her vote does not matter. While democratic procedures must include regular elections, it may be felt that voting once every four or five years for one of two or at most three rather similar parties is ineffective and pointless, particularly when, as is routinely the case in Malaysia, one party retains power since 1957. Social media make citizen less rational? https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysias-election-commission- voter-turnout-at-8232-higher-than-initial-76 DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA: THE ISSUES B) Absence of choice A further limitation on democracy is often argued to be the absence of genuine choice, or pluralism. One could reasonably argue that there are more similarities in the policies and ideologies of the BN and PKR parties than there are differences. Or are Malaysian politics too fragmented, too many parties? C) Capitalism and power Socialist and Marxist critiques of liberal democracy are more fundamental, arguing that the real power in capitalist societies are hidden behind formal political procedures: in the boardrooms of big business; in the higher reaches of the civil service and security apparatus; in a host of secretive, non-elected institutions, in a hands of social media owners. From this perspective, the democratic process is merely a façade (appearance), behind which the political and economic power by those for whom the citizenry never has an opportunity to vote. Are we being control by capitalists? DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA: THE ISSUES D) The manufacture of consent The legitimacy of liberal democratic government is founded, as we have noted, on the consent of the citizen. But consent, as Walter Lippmann argued, can be ‘manufactured’. ‘The manufacture of consent’ is where politicians combined the techniques of social psychology with the immense reach of mass media. Manipulation of opinion and concealment (or suppression) of information are strategies emanating from political actors themselves, pursued through media institutions. In some cases, journalists will attempt to publicise and expose what is hidden. On the other hand, the media may be complicit in the politicians’ concealment of sensitive information. More generally, there are many aspects of the process of media production which in themselves make media organisations vulnerable to strategies of political manipulation. The term ‘pseudo-event’ in response to what he saw as the increasing tendency of news and journalistic media to cover ‘unreal’, unauthentic ‘happenings’. An important source of pseudo-events for the media has of course been the political process – interviews with government leaders, news leaks and press conferences all provide reportable material (McNair, 2018). In the age of social media, do the media and the authorities control the information or are we in control of the information? DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA: THE ISSUES E) The limitations of objectivity A further criticism of the media’s democratic role focuses on the professional journalistic ethic of objectivity. This ethic developed with the mass media in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For a variety of reasons, it is argued, the media’s political reportage is biased and flawed – subjective, as opposed to objective; partisan, rather than impartial. How bias is social media nowadays. THE MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE From what has been stated thus, it is suggested that there are five functions of the communication media (as a public sphere) in ‘ideal-type’ democratic societies: First, they must inform citizens of what is happening around them (what we may call the ‘surveillance’ or ‘monitoring’ functions of the media). Second, they must educate as to the meaning and significance of the ‘facts’ (the importance of this function explains the seriousness with which journalists protect their objectivity). Third, the media must provide a platform for public political discourse, facilitating the formation of ‘public opinion’, and feeding that opinion back to the public from whence it came. This must include the provision of space for the expression of dissent, without which the notion of democratic consensus would be meaningless. THE MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE Fourth, the media function is to give publicity to governmental and political institutions – the ‘watchdog’ role of journalism, exemplified by the performance of the US media during the Watergate episode and 1MDB in Malaaysia Fifth, the media in democratic societies serve as a channel for the advocacy of political viewpoints. Parties require an outlet for the articulation of their policies and programmes to a mass audience, and thus the media must be open to them. Furthermore, some media, mainly in the print sector, will actively endorse one or other of the parties at sensitive times such as elections. In this latter How social media is shaping the future of politics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kd99IIWJUw&t=238s  References Brian McNair (2018) An Introduction to Political Communication. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Federal Constitution. Retrieved on 7 Febuary 2022: https://www.jac.gov.my/spk/images/stories/10_akta/perlembagaan_perseku tuan/federal_constitution.pdf Pelaksanaan Umur Kelayakan Pengundi 18 Tahun dan Pendaftaran Pemilih Secara Automatik (PPSA). Retrieved on 7 Febuary 2022: https://www.spr.gov.my/en/node/1255 The Straits Times. Malaysia's Election Commission: Voter turnout at 82.32%, higher than initial 76%. Retrieved on 7 Febuary 2022: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysias-election-commission- voter-turnout-at-8232-higher-than-initial-76