Page 28 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information and Political Change
“Information” need not stand in opposition to opinions, stories,
rhetoric, or signals about value structures. Information might be a “fact”
about the rate of inflation published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis
just as well as a political official’s statement about the need to control in-
flation. A candidate’s promise on a web site or broadcast advertisement
“to protect Social Security” conveys certain political information, just as
a Congressional Budget Office report on Social Security fund solvency
conveys other information of a different and perhaps more satisfyingly
“objective” sort. Information is simply something that can be known or
communicated.
To avoid epistemological and ontological concerns that fall outside the
scope of this book, it is useful not to bind the definition of information
too tightly to the human acts of perception and knowing. I assume that
information can exist independently of its perception and understanding
by any particular political actor. It is important, however, to observe the
intimacy of the connection between “communication” and “informa-
tion,” as implied in the Oxford definition. Throughout this book, I use
“communication” to mean simply the transfer or exchange of informa-
tion. Certainly, different forms of communication may convey different
quantities of information in different ways, but I do not attempt to isolate
the two concepts.
My definition of information therefore extends well beyond facts, and
my definition of communication well beyond a quantitative transmis-
sion model. My conception of information is consistent with Inguun
Hagen’s interpretation of the process of television news-watching by citi-
zens, which may involve not only becoming informed in a narrow sense,
but also diversion, habit or ritual, and fulfillment of a sense of duty or
obligation. 21 Information defined this way permeates human activity,
and in principle the complete range of human meaning can be conveyed
by communication.
Defined this broadly, information becomes vital to democracy in myr-
iad ways: in the processes by which citizen preferences are formed and
aggregated, in the behaviors of citizens and elites, in formal procedures of
representation, in acts of governmental decision making, in the adminis-
tration of laws and regulations, and in the mechanisms of accountability
thatfreshendemocracyandsustainitslegitimacy.Noneoftheseelements
of the democratic process can operate apart from the exchange and flow

21 Inguun Hagen, “Communicating to an Ideal Audience: News and the Notion of an
‘Informed Citizen,’” Political Communication 14, no. 4 (1997): 405–419.

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