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Beyond Journalism: A Profession Between Information Society and Civil Society 183

In general, the shifts in media use outlined above, from print to audiovisual –
including their assumed disadvantages to journalism – are less impressive than
they appear at first sight. Research from the Dutch Social and Cultural Planning
Agency (Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, 1994) shows that ‘loss of reading’
occurs mostly in relation to ‘popular newspapers, regional papers and the tabloid
press’, in short ‘newspapers and magazines that, in their presentation and
simplicity, address the same broad public as broadcasting stations’ (Knulst, 1994:
334–5). The generalizing and depreciating approach of television in the recent
debate on the ‘loss of reading culture’ completely ignores the professionalization
that television journalism has gone through in the last decades.
Moreover, the first articulated fears that the public would literally be flooded out
by the rising tide of information are disappearing. It is becoming clear that receivers
develop their own strategies for dealing with the flow. At the same time, technology –
itself partly responsible for the flood in the first place – also provides solutions.
Artificial memories such as the answering machine, video recorder, fax and
personal computer (PC) afford an escape from the pressure of permanent accessibility
and direct communication and allow messages to be received later – or not at all.
According to Van Cuilenburg (1994: 146–54), in the midst of this surfeit, the modern
citizen has an increasing need to be ‘absently present’, to reserve the right of non-
communication. The increase of directed consultation and interaction services at
the expense of undirected ‘allocutive’ communication also provides a defence
against an embarrassment of unsolicited communication. The increase in segmen-
tation and ‘targeting’ may prove a social anomaly. The well-known ‘information
gap’, the inequality between citizens in terms of access to information and
participation in the political process, is increasing, and reinforces existing social and
political inequality. The fact that certain groups of the population (well-educated,
young, male) seem better able to deal with new forms of communication, merely
serves to reinforce that inequality further.
Again, the suggestion that the new technology provides a solution for a
different gap – the participation gap in democracy, shall we say – is at least
questionable. As we have seen, techno-optimists argue that electronic networks
offer hitherto unknown opportunities for such matters as dialogue, participation
and direct democracy. The technological opportunities for self-representation
allow citizens to participate directly in political debate and decision-making and
are said to negate the reason for the existence of intermediary agencies such as
political parties and the mass media. While the first experimental experiences
have shown that electronic meetings may contribute to sociopolitical debate,
they cannot replace representative democracy (Van Dijk, 1991: 80–90). Electronic
communication differs too much from face-to-face communication, like in gather-
ings. Via electronic networks citizens are approached separately, without there
being a common identity or a shared signification system. The handling of the
agenda proves to be a problem in electronic meetings. This direct democracy
lacks the mechanisms of common consideration and compromising that are
inherent in representative democracy.
The nature of direct, electronic communication is often elusive: it is well suited
to consumerism marketing (in politics too), but does not provide an alternative
to existing forms of opinion formation and decision-making. According to