Page 23 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

12 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

while sacrificing the remaining third and allowing it to solidify into a
underclass. Party loyalty and participation in the arena of official
politics understandably recedes. Reagan, it should be recalled, came to
power with just over one-fourth of the popular vote: about half the
electorate did not feel that participation was meaningful. In such a
situation, the ideological success of the powerful in the public sphere is
at least being passively contested to a degree not manifested three
decades ago.
In the wake of the expanding commercial rationality of the media we
observe the continual segmentation of audiences according to
consumption capacities and demographics. News journalism becomes
targeted to different groups according to market strategies. This is a
very complex process, but tends to follow the class polarization noted
above. One can say that generally there is a weakening of the serious
media which have attempted to serve as national fora, the case of
European public service being paramount. The active segmentation in
news ‘packaging’ is perhaps most pronounced in the realm of radio news
in the USA, but can also be seen within television news and the printed
media. The marked decline of literary culture and skills among younger
generations is having a profound impact on the whole newspaper
industry in the USA (Shaw 1989). Where this trend toward
fragmentation is negated by new initiatives, the best example being the
success of USA Today as a national paper, the utility of such initiatives
as resources for political participation in the arena of national politics is
limited, to say the least. The overall upshot is thus a further decline of a
viable public sphere for national politics.
In the intersection of the crisis of the national state, the sagging
vitality of parliamentary politics and the segmentation of audiences we
find the dramatic flowering of new political and social movements.
They cover such diverse domains as the environment, disarmament,
women’s and sexual minorities’ legal rights and social conditions, racial
and ethnic groups’ interests and social welfare issues such as housing
and health care. These movements vary greatly in their orientation,
tactics and goals; within certain movements one sees differing strands
which can even be at odds with each other. On the other hand, groups
focused on different concerns, such as women and the environment,
may at times join forces with each other for particular campaigns. A ‘post-
marxist’ attempt to theorize these movements can be found in Laclau
and Mouffe (1985); see also Aronowitz (1988).
For the most part politically progressive, there are also conservative
and reactionary movements, such as various right-wing Christian