Page 39 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 18

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
their modern function of supplying not only information but also opinion,
comment and criticism, facilitating debate amongst the emerging bourgeois
and educated classes. Quoting Thomas McCarthy, Habermas shows how
these new social forces gradually replaced a political system ‘in which the
[autocratic] ruler’s power was merely represented before the people with a
sphere in which state authority was publicly monitored through informed
and critical discourse by the people’ (quoted in Habermas, 1989, p. xi). In
the coffee-house and salon cultures of Britain and France, debate and
political critique became, for the first time, public property (meaning, of
course, the bourgeois public, which excluded the mass of poor and illiterate
underclasses). According to Habermas, the first use of the term ‘public
opinion’ was documented in 1781, referring to ‘the critical reflection of a
[bourgeois] public competent to form its own judgments’ (ibid., p. 90).
Gripsund notes that the public sphere thus emerged as ‘a set of institutions
representing a sort of “buffer zone” between the state/king and private
sphere, to protect them from arbitrary decisions that interfered with what
they considered private activities in an irrational way’ (1992, p. 89). 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.).
For Josef Ernst, 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). It is, in short, ‘the bourgeois realm
of politics’ (ibid.) which has gradually expanded from its elitist beginnings to
include absolute majorities of the population in modern democratic societies.
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 (see Figure 2.1). The modern concept of ‘news’ developed
precisely as a means of furnishing citizens with the most important infor-
mation, from the point of view of their political activities, and of stream-
lining and guiding public discussion, functions which are taken for granted
in contemporary journalism.

THE MEDIA AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS

From what has been stated thus far we may now suggest five functions of the
communication media 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).

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