Page 151 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

140 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

making policy decisions. This use also appears perfectly congenial to
the relationships which are traditionally established between the political
system and the media and which, as we have already said in part, place
the latter in a position which may be defined as non-conflictual in
relation to the political system.
We can now attempt to specify better what is meant by the negotial
use of political communication and how such use is distributed. First of
all, we can speak of two spheres of negotiation: in the first, political
communication performs a function of intermediation between the
majority and the opposition and, in the second, a function of
intermediation between the factions of government coalitions. As
regards the first sphere, Marletti speaks of informal formations of
‘superparties’ (also between the majority and the opposition), defined as

transversal organizations of political interests…systems of
alliances in which segments or groups of a party fight against
other segments and groups in the same party and, in order to carry
on this struggle effectively, they become associated in various
ways, openly or covertly, with segments and groups in parties
other than their own.
(Marletti 1987:40)

Again, more simply, as some studies have shown (Parisi and Pasquino
1984), much of the legislation in Italy is the fruit of a continuous
process of intermediation between the majority and the opposition
which almost always succeeds in avoiding the open opposition of the
factions at vote taking. The process of negotiation, which leads to ‘non-
opposition’, is carried out in institutional seats (Parliament,
Parliamentary Committees, etc.) according to the formal and informal
rules adopted by them. More often than not, the institutional seat
involves ‘non-publicity’: this does not mean secrecy or non-access by
the media, but rather the fact that this negotiation is based on personal
or group exchanges and starts therefore from a framework consolidated
by practices which are, because of their habitualness, either of little
public importance, or must, in order to succeed, be non-official.
However, the non-opposition, and therefore the process of non-public
negotiation, is quite often the result of an initial public exchange of
communications, such as statements, suggestions, etc., published in the
newspapers or broadcast on television.
The public nature of the mediation among factions of the governing
coalition is certainly more important. The mediation is first carried out