Digital Democracy,Communication Rights and the Media

1
Digital Democracy,Communication Rights and the
Media

• Rhetoric and Reality on the Internet
• Ideology of the Internet
• The Right to Communication
• The Call to Citizens

2
Rhetoric and Reality of the Internet

• A David and Goliath story
• Internet enables consumers to download the music
  they want, to break the power of the
  multinational recording labels
• Plus
• Internet opens up choice alternative news
  sources, alternative venues for distribution of
  new artists
• Minus
• enables pornography to spread, rapidly being
  commercialised

3
Ideology 2

• Why have countries around the world failed to see
  the Internet as offering a revolutionary
  technology with as broad a social impact as the
  radio in the 20s and the 30s? Why have they not
  protected and invested in a public space?
• Why do they frame the Internet as a right for
  consumers, and not a right for citizens?

4
The Right to Communicate

• Birdsall et al refrain from a full articulation.
• Why? Citizens should be involved in defining it
• Yet 1991 Canadian Act in Broadcasting did not
  involve Citizens.1996 US Act involved citizens,
  but the civic agenda lost

5
Communication Rights

• Right to inform and be informed
• Right of active participation in communication
  process
• Right of equitable access to communication
  resources and information
• Right to privacy individual and collective
• source Birdsall et al in courseware.

6
Constitutional Framework

• Stipulates freedom of thought, belief, opinion
  and expression, including freedom of speech and
  the press and other media
• In legal interpretation, both a shield and a
  sword ( unstable history) since may be subject to
  reasonable limits
• Need more affirmation of a Right to Communicate
• A charter amendment
• A new judicial discourse
• A public internet/New Media policy( Birdsall et
  al)
• Irony In Canada, most jurisprudence brought by
  individuals against the laws, not groups against
  corporations or state

7
Responsibilities to Communicate

• Democracy thrives on creation of a culture of
  citizenship
• Individuals have to assume responsibility to keep
  informed, participate in the political process,
  and direct their communication rights
• The issue if these responsibilities honoured,
  does the State have to ensure there is
  non-commercial space for communication
  alternatives?
• Intervene to ensure choice
• Fund alternative news sources
• Support the CBC
• But also support indie/grassroots media more
  fully, in advertising, editorial development,
  training and media literacy programs
• This asserts there must be a positive role of the
  State in providing citizens with the capacity to
  exert their franchise

8
Review

• What is the theoretical framework for this class?
• What do people say are the effects of the media?
• What are some of the central problematics in the
  study of the media in Canada and around the world?

9
The Overall Framework

• Cultural Model of Communication
• How do the media and communication processes
  construct a map of meaning in which people travel
  over time?
• Explores the predominant democratic values,
  constitutional frameworks and ideologies about
  what the media ought to do
• Also implies point of view in evaluating how well
  they do
• Explores lack of culture of citizenship in the
  media
• Introduces a propaganda framework, in situating
  communication at the centre of power in any
  culture at any time, and challenging you to find
  where persusasion becomes propaganda/ where
  objectivity becomes an instrument of power
• A critical, social responsibility perspective
  throughout

10
Assumptions of the Cultural Model

• Both market , state and citizen decisions about
  the media create our cultural worlds
• Systems and structures of ownership and control
  create professional environments and values which
  promote a certain capitalist world view
• cultivation of world views, consequences on
  social stability, political cohesion and
  democracy are profound
• The effects are cumulative long term still only
  in second generation of their effects
• If you are a liberal/pro democracy, this is not
  fundamentally disturbing
• If you are critical of capitalism or seeking to
  restrain its rapacious excesses, you explore the
  operation of hegemony working to suppress
  minorities, workers and the dispossessed.

11
The Impact of Television A Canadian Natural
Experiment

• Communities like Igloolik twice voted against
  having TV in the North
• Eventually conceded
• A study by Tannis McBeth Williams looked at a
  natural experiment before and after introduction
  in 1970s. There was notel mulitel and a
  control
• A multi part study

12
Impact of TV on Creativity ( Key to Culture of
Citizenship)

• Does TV facilitate or inhibit creative thinking
  or imagination?
• Looked at the alternate uses task
• (e.g. tell me the different ways you can use a
  newspaper)
• Total number and originality scored

13
Findings Creativity

• Notel scored higher before TV
• A drop in length people would try to solve
  problems
• Other dimensions vocabulary use, spatial
  ability, reading IQ followed similar trends
• Particularly marked among children
• Why?
• TV displaced other activities where creativity is
  valued displaced deeper information processing,
  encouraged convergent, not divergent thinking
• TV suppresses a culture of creativity, intrinsic
  to a culture of citizenship

14
Findings Aggression/Civility ( Key to Culture of
Citizenship)

• Looked at patterns of childrens play
• Aggression used in place of a social solution
  more often
• Stereotyping and other expectations more
  prevalent.
• Emotion, not Rational problem solving during
  conflict promoted
• Rejection of any effects not logically tenable
• TV cultivates a mean world syndrome which saps
  a culture of citizenship, a sense of community
  empowerment
• Clearly, proven to displace other leisure
  pursuits

15
What are the Cultural Effects?

• Media now predominantly commercially driven (
  less than 3 of TV viewing is now non commercial)
• Exist to sell ideas, products values
• Promote consumerism, individualism, will to
  gratify individual choice
• Promote lifestyle politics branding of self
  and identities
• post modern valorization of choice, diversity,
  difference
• All as superficial style
• Promote an ethical relativism
• its all a matter of taste, if you dont like it,
  switch it off
• TV commodifies politics, creates a culture of
  consumers, not citizens ( See Fletcher and
  McGrath)

16
What are the Political Effects?

• Media set the agenda for what the public thinks
  is important
• Public opinion polls repeatedly find what people
  say is the top problem facing the nation is what
  the media are covering
• Frame news in a certain way
• So that elections are about the horserace and
  not the issues Mayor DaVinci
• So that there is a war on terrorism which
  legitimates almost total suspension of civil
  liberties
• Guilty of war, not peacemongering?
• Annenberg cultivate a mainstream world view
  heavy TV viewers, lack of tolerance for diversity
  or complexity
• Historically media focus on the now do not
  provide the past or contrary interpretations of
  the past and present
• Indirectly, send the political system into
  disrepute
• may be contributing to the decline of party
  loyalty, rise of swing voters, or decline of
  voting levels ( Taras, Fletcher and McGrath
• Structural view Key agent of socialization into
  values of democratic capitalism
• Critical View Key agent of hegemony maintenance
  of power and exploitation of weak

17
The Conflict of Values in News Manufacture
Democracys Oxygen

• What sells
• What is hot recent
• What is close and relevant
• Reports stars
• Involves conflict
• Easily labels reductionist
• Unexpected, novel

• What the society thinks it values
• What matters
• What is not ambulance chasing
• Reports broad newsmakers and NGOs
• Features conflict resolution
• Complex
• Context history, a map to interpreting
  complexity

18
What are the social effects?

• Fleras media express dominant culture, contain
  minority cultures, establish hierarchy, exclusion
  or inclusion
• Promote social tolerance/intolerance or empathy/
  indifference to ethnocultural or other
  difference
• Now, media interaction requires higher and higher
  access to money for the technology and literacy
  creating a wider digital divide a middle class
  gated community?
• The sociology of community is white, middle class
  and gated

19
Several Core Dichotomies to 130

• Citizen versus consumer
• Market versus state
• Regulation versus deregulation
• Censorship versus freedom of expression
• Liberal versus reform responsibility
• Democracy versus Propaganda
• Cultural Democracy versus Cultural Industries

20
Citizen versus Consumer

• The audience is the commodity in commercial
  media access to them is bought and sold to
  advertisers
• Their individual purchase/protest/switch off
  power is limited
• Consumer can veto in the marketplace ( Napster)
  and win partial victory
• Teeth of the self-regulatory bodies are weak
• Consumer Sovereignty not all that is supposed
• As citizens, they control the lawmakers
• Are shareholders in the CBC their only non
  commercial ( and largest news source outside of
  Canada and in Canada)
• Can complain/mobilize against offensive media
• BUT fewer than 10 do so( MediaWatch Survey)
  most just think they can turn off/ not turn to an
  alternative/or formulate community standards
• Can argue for ownership laws is a social
  movement arising in the US?

21
Citizen versus Consumer

• CITIZENS
• See a right to communicate is central
• Maximize collective public goods
• Concerned about digital divide and growing gap
  rich and poor
• Focus on public interest, social responsibility
  views
• Positive rights

• CONSUMERS
• See freedom of choice
• Maximize individual wants
• See media as mostly entertainment, and a luxury,
  for those who can afford
• Focus on right to make/spend money, neo-liberal
  views
• Negative rights only

22
Censorship versus Freedom of Expression

• There is no absolute right to freedom of
  expression in the Canadian constitution
• There are unique protections for minority
  expression, the consideration of when, in certain
  cases, social good may outweigh individual or
  corporate freedom of expression
• Canada has some of the most progressive standards
  in the world ( Gendersetting, Violence in Media
  etc)
• But every case is different there is a
  superordinate freedom of expression, and some
  communities value it more highly than others but
  citizens must be aware of how to influence
  community standards in its interpretation and
  what are the main tests for evaluating media
  contents

23
Censorship Versus Freedom of Expression

• Censorship
• May override basic freedoms when limits are
  reasonable, democratic( that is, prescribed
  by law) and demonstrably justified in a free,
  democratic and multicultural society
• Censorship is social control by the majority,
  necessary and normal
• Censorship may be enacted to protect the minority
  from the majority( hate)
• Censorship can have effect that is, reduce risk
  or change behavior

• Freedom of Expression
• Fundamental to the individual, includes the media
• Should therefore be absolute
• Censorship is by an elite/control oriented and
  often misdirected at symptom, not underlying
  cause of social problems
• Censorship is ineffective in changing behavior
  thwarts rather than advances democracy by hiding
  the unpleasant or drawing more attention to it
• ( see page 96 Fleras)

24
Democracy Versus Propaganda

• Historically, States have used propaganda
  against their enemies in war, and certain
  techniques on their own troops/citizens to
  mobilize in a just, democratically constituted
  war
• Propaganda involves censorship it requires it to
  work
• Traditional propaganda during war has now
  expanded into war on terrorism with no clear
  time horizon or clear enemy
• Democratic regimes now use political marketing,
  techniques of persuasion widely
• Sole protections Ethics Commissioner, Access to
  Information Acts, vigilant public press and
  vigilant public
• Various Homeland Security Acts/ covenants on
  Terrorism pose a real threat to press freedoms
  and publics rights to privacy and to
  knowespecially raise the issue of racial
  profiling, new forms of State oppression
• ( See Fleras, pp. 53-57)

25
Traditional Theories of Persuasion

• Appeals based on ethos ( character and
  credibility)
• Pathos ( emotion or feeling)
• Logos ( argument)
• The psychosocial dimension
• Totalitarian propaganda plays on fear of other,
  will to security, uncertainty, tendency to
  conformity
• Democratic Propaganda plays on desire for well
  being, happiness. Sense of belongingness

26
Democracy Versus Propaganda

• Democracy
• Appeals to Ethos egalltarianism, individualism
• We-ness
• Decentralised
• Lives on myth of rule of the people
• Indirect censorship

• Propaganda
• Appeal to Pathos fear
• Other
• Centralised
• Lives on myth of ruler
• Direct censorship

27
Democratic Propaganda

• We are taught this is an oxymoron
• Since it is in aid of the good it is not
  propaganda
• But it is not democracies have become markets
  based on persuasion
• When is the continuum of persuasion antithetical
  to democracy, to civil rights and to justice?
• When it perpetuates hate
• Leads to Subjugation, dehumanization
• When it uses the big lie
• When it censors, before after and during
• When it suppresses dissent
• When it thrives on secrecy

28
Democratic Propaganda

• See the Fleras piece in the courseware(53-54)
• How does he define it?
• Central argument media work as discourses in
  defence of ideology
• Reference to media as democratic propaganda
  provides a fresh and unconventional way of
  understanding mainstream media in terms of what
  they do and how
• But
• Do not underestimate the gap between
  authoritarianism and democracy
• In Western Democracies the biggest restraint on
  propaganda is the people and their power over
  election over private sector

29
Propaganda Methods

• Black art Name calling and demonization of the
  other
• Glittering Generality
• Transference
• Testimonials
• Card Stacking
• Lie by omission
• Quote out of context
• Bold assertion
• Twisting or Distortion
• Logical Fallacies
• Manipulation of Language
• Delete the agent of a sentence obscures
  responsibility. Instead of US declared war, War
  was declared.
• Delete experiencerimputes a harder fact. Instead
  of journalists estimated 10,000 at the
  demonstration, say 10,000 hit the streets.
• Control Naming Orwell Ministry of Truth.
  Operation Desert Storm.

30
Media in a Time of Crisis

• Aftermath of 9-11 proves civil liberties are
  vulnerable
• State control of military intelligence
  information is now very tight
• Press not able to find out about interned
  prisoners ( importance of Arar case)
• Canada not able to challenge US military
  intelligence or find out about detained citizens

31
Crisis Contd

• US now threatening video surveillance cameras at
  the border dictating 3 fold increase in
  military expenditures ( Rumsfeld) a new Canadian
  identity card surveillance society of George
  Orwells 1984 that threatens spillover
• In the US, dissent is unpatriotic, soft or
  worse, terrorist
• A return to propaganda, racial profiling, risk of
  McCarthy era in Cold War and which press is
  writing about this? The story is only beginning

32
The Media, Politics, Marketplace and Democracy

• We have been and will continue to be involved in
  major global transformations of economies,
  democracies, cultures and societies
• The best way to monitor the impact of such change
  is through a vigorous news media, committed
  artistic community, and impassioned debates over
  ethical and democratic issues

33
Media Reform Movements in Canada

• Social movements emerging ( Mediawatch, CRARR,
  Impacs, Fraser Institute)
• Observatories global media monitoring lab
• Anti war,and pro citizen and pro privacy
• Calls for increasing support for CBC
• Increasing to alternative media
• Federal investigation into mainstream
  oligopolies a pressure which is rising now that
  Minister Rock wants to deregulate the restriction
  on 20 foreign ownership
• More teeth and supreme court challengeson
  complaints on the quality of media coverage to do
  with equity, or fairness
• More studies of the content of the media is it
  good or bad or why

34
The Public Opportunity

• Venues like the World Information Summit (
  sponsored by the UN)
• The International Cultural Accord which calls for
  fair trade in Culture ( UNESCO) led by Canada and
  supported by over 50 countries
• WTO challenging again and again the economism of
  their world view
• In Canada Senate Inquiry, Next Election, Child
  Pornography Bill, Proposed change to Foreign
  Investment laws etc. a Big Agenda

35
Recommendations for Democratic Communication

• CULTURAL DEMOCRACY
• Support public, alternative, non-commercial space
  for the media
• Build media literacy and awareness
• Monitor and critique mainstream media
• Increase the quality and coordination of
  self-regulation

• CULTURAL INDUSTRIES
• Protect the Freedom of the Press
• Support private media outlets against unfair
  competition from the US
• Build audiences for Canadian media
• Monitor and critique alternative media
• De regulation there is sufficient competition
  to let the market decide

36
CMNS 130 Bottom Line

• Media Politics Matter
• Citizens must be aware of the democratic
  consequences of the media worlds they swim in
• The best counsel for media tyranny is
  indifference beware of the Brave New World