Page 160 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

THE USE OF NEWS IN ‘COALITION’ GOVERNMENT 149

showing, on the contrary, that it is essential to consider the subject of
the public sphere as a field requiring study by scholars in different
sciences, and in this regard the universalization of a single model would
be wrong. At the same time this study does not yet offer answers to
many questions. The concept of public relevance and how it differs from
the processes of legitimation has still to be clarified, and it is probably
within this problem that the role of the common reader, faced with
methods and subjects of communication which do not consider him as
the main recipient, can be explained, even if such methods and topics
take into account his political beliefs.
The discussion which followed the presentation of this paper during
the seminar on ‘Journalism and the Public Sphere in the New Media
Age’ (Dubrovnik, 8–12 May 1989) helped me very much in writing the
final draft. I therefore thank all those who took part in it. I am equally
grateful to Jay Blumler and Michael Gurevitch who gave me important
suggestions.

NOTES

1 By ‘protected’ I mean that the life and the functioning of these circuits of
communication are assured by the organization of the political parties
and their interpersonal networks.
2 This definition comes from a particular interpretation of Habermas’s
concept of public sphere.
3 In communication exchanges in the public sphere, not only political
communication but also economic information, labour news, etc. are
included.
4 As for journalistic information, the public monopoly has not been
affected by the birth of commercial or privately owned television
networks which are denied the right to broadcast live, a privilege essential
to effective coverage of current events.
5 The same definition is used by Carlo Marletti who intends it to refer
essentially to the dynamics established between majority and opposition
(Marletti 1987). More precisely, political scientists distinguish between
the majority electoral system, which permits defining the government
make-up at the time of voting, and the proportional electoral system,
which is the Italian one, which determines the distribution of party seats
in Parliament and delegates to the parties the formation of alliances.
6 The centre and centre-right governments involved Christian Democrats,
the Liberal Party, the Republican Party, plus other minor groups. In the
centre-left governments the Socialist party also had a primary role.
However, over the years, these formulas have not remained unchanged