Page 20 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

INTRODUCTION 9

contributing to both the concrete empirical investigation and theoretical
development. A nuanced understanding of the limits and possibilities of
meaning production and circulation is essential, if we are to avoid such
pitfalls as assuming cardboard cut-out versions of ‘rational man’,
reducing all signification to ideology or positing an unlimited polysemy
in media-audience interfaces (Dahlgren 1987, 1988).
We should not forget that today we know an awful lot about the
media, politics and the problems of democracy. We are by no means
starting from scratch: there is a good deal of relevant and excellent work
going on—empirical, interpretive, reflexive as well as critical—which is
contributing to our understanding of the various dimensions of the
public sphere. For instance, the sociology of news production tells us a
great deal about the conditions and contingencies which shape
journalistic practices and output. (See Ericson et al. 1987 and 1989 for a
survey of this field as well as a report from a very ambitious project
thus far within the area. Schudson 1989 offers a useful overview of the
literature.) Indeed, all the practical concerns and debates concerning
journalistic freedom—e.g. access to information, use of sources,
censorship, the legal frameworks which balance privacy with the
collective good—are as decisive for the public sphere today as they
were in the early nineteenth century, if not more so. Yet knowledge-
wise we are in a better position to confront them.

INSTITUTIONAL CONFIGURATIONS: A NEW
MEDIA AGE
The institutional configurations of the prevailing social order and its
media are staggering in their complexity and can be represented in
innumerable ways. The category of the public sphere can help us to
order these configurations in a cohesive manner from the standpoint of
the criteria of citizen access and participation in the political process, as
well as provide a focused political angle of vision. In the years since
Habermas’s book appeared, there have been many dramatic societal
changes; these seem to be accelerating, not least within the area of the
media. To speak of a new media age is not to engage in periodization at
the level of serious historiography, but only to emphasize the profundity
of the transformations in the media and society generally. Neither media
institutions nor constellations of social power are exactly as they were
in the early 1960s.
The political economy of the traditional mass media in western
societies has evolved significantly. Research brought to our attention