Indhold : Nr. 2 : Årgang 9 : 2006
Theme
New Technologies and Not-So-New Democracies
by Michael Schudson
Domesticating the Simpsons - Four Types of Citizenship in Monitorial Democracy
by Anker Brink Lund
Global Interconnectedness - Local Authorities and Transnational Networking
by Hans Krause Hansen and Dorte Salskov-Iversen
Online Citizens - Does the Net Add Something New to the Local Public and Local Politics?
by Lars Torpe
Politics Backstage - Television Documentaries, Politics and Politicians
by Ib Bondebjerg
Spin in the Media - the media in (self-) Spin?
by Nete Nørgaard Kristensen
Public Space and the Coevolution of Digital and Digitized Media
by Niels Ole Finnemann
Catch 22: The Privatization of Danish TV 2 vs. EU Rules on State Aid
by Frands Mortensen
Virtual Capital? Internet Competence and Political Participation in Denmark
by Jens Hoff
MODINET: Challenges and Achievements
by Eli Skogerbø
Media & Politics
The media and politics are increasingly fused in what some refer to as ‘the mediatization of politics’. This fusion has a real, material as well as a theoretical dimension. Thus, politics is increasingly conducted through and by the media, and on conditions set by the media resulting in sound-bite politics, political spectacle and infotainment. While some perceive this as a process of democratic decay, others have a more positive view on the prospects opened up by what also constitutes new types of political communication taking place through new media platforms created through the diversification of ‘traditional’ media and the invention of new media; most notably the Internet. In order to fully understand these processes and locate them within the context of the challenge they pose for democracy and the nation-state in a globalized world as well as for the traditional mass media, established cultural institutions and the journalistic profession, it has become increasingly clear that there is a strategic demand for theories and research methods capable of integrating the traditional fields of political science and media studies.
An initiative to develop exactly such theories and methods and to investigate this rapidly expanding field was taken by a number of Danish researchers who, responding to a call from the national research councils, formulated a project entitled Media and Democracy in the Network Society (MODINET). The project, which received a major grant from the Danish Research Agency, ran from 2002 to 2006 and involved roughly 50 senior researchers and Ph.D. students. This theme issue, published as a joint venture between the Danish journals Mediekultur and POLITIK, is primarily based on presentations made at MODINET’s final conference in August 2005.
Abstracts:
New Technologies and Not-So-New Democracies
Michael Schudson, Distinguished Professor of Communication, University of California, San Diego and Professor of Communication, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
Discussions of the impact of the new media on democratic politics often generalize too broadly about new technologies and almost always take for granted a uniformity about democracies. Democracies vary across nations and over time. For the USA, it is argued that Americans have had four different visions of what political speech and participation should be. American democracy has shifted from a citizenship of deference, to one of party enthusiasm, to a model of the informed citizen, to the contemporary model of irreverent citizenship. Each model calls forth different versions of a public sphere. What is the democracy that technology is having an impact on? This question must be integrated in the discussion of the impact of technology on democracy.
Domesticating The Simpsons - Four Types of Citizenship in Monitorial Democracy
Anker Brink Lund, Professor, dr.phil., International Center for Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School
Inspired by Michael Schudson, four types of historically informed citizenship (cast in the cartoon characters of The Simpsons) are presented, developing gradually in an ongoing struggle between liberal and communitarian politics. The four types are successive in time, but not mutually exclusive. Based on data from the MODINET project, we claim that the Danish Simpsons are somewhat more trusting and associational than their American counterparts. The Marges, Homers, Lisas, and Barts of Denmark live together in a relatively peaceful Institution of Citizens’ Affairs (ICA), supplementing one another rather than struggling between communitarian and liberal codes of conduct. Public service media has played an important part in these processes.
Global Interconnectedness - Local Authorities and Transnational Networking
Hans Krause Hansen, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School & Dorte Salskov-Iversen, Ph.D., Associate Professor/Head of Department, Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School
This article argues that, in their continuous and proclaimed efforts at ‘modernizing’ themselves, public sector organizations, also at the sub-national level, increasingly envision the new media as an object of policy making and intervention. At the same time, this focus on the new media facilitates transborder networking, taking the shape of globalizing webs that connect the actors internationally through processes of mediation and with implications for relations of authority and modes of governance. As such, these webs both constitute and facilitate a form of everyday political globalization which is on the rise. Empirically, our account is based on studies of two local authorities, the cities of Vina del Mar in Chile and Bremen in Germany, as well as two of the transnational networks that connect them.
Online citizens. Does the Net add something new to the local public and local politics?
Lars Torpe, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Politics and Public Administration, Aalborg University
The article discusses the skeptical view that on-line forms of political participation have thus far had only little importance for democracy. Based on an analysis of the interplay between the supply of, and the demands for, e-tools for political information and deliberation at the local level in Denmark, it is concluded that the skeptical view is confirmed to some extent; however, It is also shown that something more – as well as something new – is added to the local political public, both in terms of the citizens involved and the topics discussed. Furthermore, the case study indicates that online deliberations have had a number of minor effects on local political opinion-formation and decision-making. Thus, the overall conclusion is that a local forum of digital deliberations has the potential to form an alternative channel for raising issues and forming a vehicle for involving more citizens in politics, including citizens with weak resources.
Politics backstage - Television documentaries, politics and politicians
Ib Bondebjerg, Professor, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen
This article deals with ‘the transformation of visibility’ in political discourse on and representation of politics and politicians in recent Danish television documentaries. Drawing on the theories of Habermas, Meyrowitz and John B. Thompson, it is argued that the political persona on television is moved closer to the individual citizen, creating a sort ‘mediated quasi-interaction’ giving mediated communication a stronger element of face-to-face interaction. Together with the more pervasive ‘live’ coverage of politics and politicians, this expands media coverage to both the backstage of political processes and the private and personal backstage of politicians, changing the form of democracy and public debate.
Spin in the Media – the Media in a (self-)Spin?
Nete Nørgaard Kristensen, Associate Professor, Ph.D., Film and Media Studies Section, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication,
University of Copenhagen
The article focuses on the discussion of spin in the Danish media, especially during the 2005 election campaign, in which spin was a prominent issue amongst journalists. The main argument is that this is not primarily an expression of a professional, self-reflective consciousness regarding the shifts in the relationship between the media, society and politics. Rather, it is an expression of a self-legitimizing meta-discourse that might, however, fail to see the more structurally rooted tendencies that spin is part of – a mediatization of politics – presenting new perspectives and challenges for both politics and the media. These perspectives appear to disintegrate in the comprehensive but often one-dimensional and self-centered discourse of journalists and communication experts, wherein they proclaim every political, communicative initiative as spin in the hunt for the disclosure of political façade.
Public Space and the Coevolution of Digital and Digitized Media.
Niels Ole Finneman, Professor, dr. phil, Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus
The integration of digital media in the overall media matrix has given rise to a number of theories regarding the relationship between the old (digitized) media, such as newspapers, radio and television, and the new (digital) media, such as the Internet and mobile media. While some scholars argue that ‘computer-centered technologies’ are capable of re-scaling social relations and domains (e.g. Sassen 2006), others argue that the convergence of media reveals that digital media are not that different from ‘conventional’ media (e.g. Schultz 2004). The paper considers the two main issues in this debate. First, whether we require new theories to comprehend how the digital media differ from previous media and, second, how the old and new media relate to one another.
Catch 22: The Privatization of Danish TV 2 vs. EU Rules on State Aid
Frands Mortensen, Professor, Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus
Since 2001, the Danish government has wanted to privatize the public broadcaster TV 2; however, the sales process has been halted. Apparently the EU rules on competition block for the will of the majority in the Danish parliament. The presentation explains this paradox by describing the historical development of two processes: the attempt to the privatize TV 2 and the state aid cases against TV 2, which were opened by the Commission and now pending at the Court of First Instance. The conclusion finds no inconsistency between the government’s wish and the rules on State aid, but TV 2 has unlawfully transferred funding for programming to equity capital, and the Commissions has misinterpreted the conditions for using Article 86(2) in the Treaty in the evaluation of the recapitalization of TV 2. These two processes now obstruct each other.
Virtual Capital? Internet Competence and Political Participation in Denmark
Jens Hoff, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
On the basis of data from a Danish nationwide representative survey, this article demonstrates, firstly, that virtual capital (competence in using the internet) is a personal resource in its own right, independent of other types of personal resources. Secondly, it is demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between virtual capital and political participation and political efficacy. Thirdly, the article shows that for persons with a high level of virtual capital, the possession of virtual capital appears to neutralize or overshadow the effect of education on political participation and political efficacy. The article points to the fact that the Internet enlarges the ‘opportunity structure’ for the individual, thereby making it easier to find out about and participate in different activities, among these politics. Finally, the article discusses the question of whether “super-users” might be seen as (a part of) the so-called “creative class”.
MODINET: Challenges and Achievements
Eli Skogerbø, Professor/Head of Department, Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo
The objective of the article is to assess MODINET’s contributions by examining the following aspects: first, what are MODINET’s most important findings, and to what extent are they relevant for the international research community? Second, what, if any, are the weaknesses of the research undertaken under the MODINET umbrella? The assessment is carried out by dividing the studies in three broad themes: democracy studies, journalism studies and interface studies. The review argues that in the case of democracy studies, the contextualization of the case studies in a theoretical framework tied to the broad debates on governance, network society, power etc places the studies at the center of ongoing debates. The journalism studies appear less contextualized, despite very interesting individual reports. Concerning the interface studies, the theoretical framework is more ambitious than the cases, but indeed fascinating.