Table Of ContentDEMOCRATIZATION AND THE MEDIA
Of Related Interest
FACTIONAL POLITICS AND DEMOCRATIZATION
edited by Richard Gillespie, Michael Waller and Lourdes López Nieto
DEMOCRACY AND NORTH AMERICA
edited by Alan Ware
CIVIL SOCIETY
Democratic Perspectives
edited by Robert Fine and Shirin Rai
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN A POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE
edited by Michael Waller, Bruno Coppieters and Kris Deschouwer
POST-COMMUNISM AND THE MEDIA IN EASTERN EUROPE
edited by Patrick H. O'Neil
ECOLOGY AND DEMOCRACY
edited by Freya Mathews
THE STATE IN WESTERN EUROPE
Retreat or Redefinition?
edited by Wolfgang C. Müller and Vincent Wright
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF REGIONALISM
edited by Michael Keating and John Loughlin
THE DEMOGRAPHIC STRUGGLE FOR POWER
The Political Economy of Demographic Engineering in the Modern World
by Milica Zarkovic Bookman
Democratization
and the Media
edited by
VICKY RANDALL
FRANK CASS
LONDON • PORTLAND, OR
First published in 1998 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, 0X14 4RN
and in the United States of America by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
270 Madison Ave,
New York NY 10016
Transferred to Digital Printing 2005
Website: http://www.frankcass.com
Copyright © 1998 Frank Cass & Co Ltd
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Democratization and the media
1. Mass media – Political aspects 2. Mass media – Influence
3. Press and politics. 4. Democracy – Social aspects
I. Randall, Vicky
321.8
ISBN 0 7146 4894 9 (cloth)
ISBN 0 7146 4446 X (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Democratization and the media / edited by Vicky Randall.
p.cm.
Originally appeared as a special issue of Democratization, summer
1998.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-4894-9. – ISBN 0-7146-4446-3 (pbk.)
1. Mass media-Political aspects. 2. Democracy. I.Randall,
Vicky. II. Democratization.
P95.8.D427 1998
321.8'09'045–dc21 98-6865
CIP
This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue on
'Democratization and the Media' of Democratization (ISSN 1351-0347)
5/2 (Summer 1998) published by Frank Cass.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced
into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publisher of this book.
Contents
Introduction Vicky Randall 1
The News Media and Democracy
in the United States David Mervin 6
The Media and the Public Sphere in
Fifth Republic France Raymond Kuhn 23
The Media and Intra-Party Democracy:
'New' Labour and the Clause Four
Debate in Britain Dominic Wring 42
Privacy and Media Intrusion in a
Democratic Society: Britain and the
Calcutt Reports Martin Cloonan 62
Democratization and the Media in Poland
1989-97 Frances Millard 85
Regime Transition and the Media Gary D. Rawnsley and
in Taiwan Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley 106
Asia and the International Press:
The Political Significance of Expanding Markets Garry Rodan 125
Seeking Theory from Experience: Richard Cullen and
Media Regulation in China Hua Ling Fu 155
The Media and Democratization in the
Middle East: The Strange Case of
Television Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi 179
The Promotion of Democracy at the Grass-roots:
The Example of Radio in Mali Mary Myers 200
Democracy and the Information Superhighway Mark Wheeler 217
Concluding Comments Vicky Randall 240
Notes on Contributors 249
Index 251
Introduction
VICKY RANDALL
This collection examines the relationship between democracy,
democratization and the mass communications media. Most of all its focus
is on the contributions, both positive and negative, of the media to the
process of democratization and to the functioning of democracy. But to the
extent that this is a separable question, it is also interested in the
implications of democratization and democracy for the institutions of the
mass media.
These are matters of critical importance for the understanding of
continuity and change in contemporary political systems. And indeed the
significance of the media's political role is increasingly recognised in
studies of the more established democracies, especially the United States.
On the other hand the relationship between the media and the process of
democratization has been relatively neglected by political scientists until
very recently.1
The topic is of course vast, and no claim is made here to cover it
comprehensively. None the less, through a happy combination of editorial
design and individual contributors' preferences, the ensemble of studies
both reflects diversity and provides scope for comparison on a number of
dimensions. Most obviously, the context of analysis ranges not only in terms
of geographical location but also in terms of regime type, from established
democracies – the United States, Britain and France – to countries in the
later stages of democratic transformation in the former Soviet bloc (Poland)
and in East Asia (Taiwan); to Mali in West Africa where democratization is
much less secure; to the Middle East, China and by contrast affluent
Singapore where it remains largely an aspiration.
One of the difficulties in the way of generalizing about the media is their
heterogeneity. Just for example and sticking with the most obvious,
newspapers rely upon the written word; they can, potentially, communicate
a great deal of information, but at the same time low levels of literacy can
restrict their reach. By contrast, television communication depends on
images, whose emotional impact can be intense but whose informational
content is often unclear. In this volume, different examinations focus on
different aspects of the media. Some concentrate on the press (Cloonan;
Rodan), Mary Myers' focus in Mali is on radio, Annabelle Sreberny-
2 DEMOCRATIZATION AND THE MEDIA
Mohammadi concentrates on the impact of television in the Middle East,
while Mark Wheeler examines the implications of the new Information
Communication Technologies (ICTs).
But a further potentially fruitful variation amongst the analysts concerns
the way that central issues are conceptualized, which in turn can have some
bearing on the way in which they are investigated or elaborated. As readers
of Democratization will need no reminding, conceptions of democracy
differ and there is still less agreement around its defining criteria or
prerequisites. Most of the studies here tend to work with fairly conventional
understandings of democracy in terms of the functioning of central political
institutions and processes, but in their discussions of media issues in Mali
and the Middle East, Myers and Sreberny-Mohammadi concentrate on more
'cultural' aspects, understanding these to include power relations, including
gender relations, at the local or familial level. Wheeler introduces a further
concern with 'economic democracy' or democratic relationships within the
economic sphere. Martin Cloonan, writing about the British press, and
Richard Cullen and Hua Ling Fu, looking at possible harbingers of
democratization in China, hone in on particular aspects of democracy, in the
former case the relationship between democracy and privacy, in the latter
the relationship between democracy and rights.
The topic, then, is vast but the range of material goes some way to meet
its dimensions of variability. In some ways a more intractable and
fundamental problem in examining the relationship between the media and
democracy is the extent to which, in practice, they are interdependent. By
definition, the media mediate; they do not stand independent of a given
social system but instead provide channels of communication between
elements within it. To varying degrees this has meant that they are
instrumental to dominant institutions and interests within the society. Yet
having said that, even in the sphere of politics there may be important ways
in which the media themselves contribute to the content of their messages,
and especially to its form. But the embeddedness of the media within the
wider society also makes it almost impossible to establish what direct effects
the media are having which cannot be attributed to other social processes,
or how media messages are actually received. From early assumptions –
either that they were absorbed uncritically (the hypodermic syringe analogy
of the Frankfurt school) or, at the other extreme, that they were absorbed
selectively to reinforce pre-existing beliefs and values – understanding has
progressed.2 Within the confines of political science, individual studies still
seek to measure the impact of specific media-relayed messages, most
notably during election campaigns, on audience attitudes. But there is also
growing recognition that the media's direct message may be less important
than the effects both on the process and on the agenda of politics.
INTRODUCTION 3
Notwithstanding these analytical difficulties, we can none the less ask,
in what ways has it been suggested that the media could contribute to
democracy and democratization? In fact there is general consensus that the
media play a vital role. Many would argue that, in modern societies and
outside of the most local arenas, media of mass communication that are to
a significant extent 'free' are essential to democracy. First, it is suggested,
information is power. As David Mervin emphasizes in his analysis of the
media's place in American politics, the media should act as conduits of vital
political information, which may also mean providing guidance as to the
interpretation of that information, so as to enable citizens to participate
meaningfully in public political life. This function is especially important
during elections. Second the media should constitute a means of expression
for the full range of political interests and viewpoints and a forum for public
debate. This is similar to Habermas's notion of the media as a 'public
sphere', discussed in the contribution by Raymond Kuhn: Kuhn defines the
public sphere as 'an institutional framework and set of practices which
encourage wide and inclusive public debate about issues of social and
political importance'. A further role, suggested elsewhere by Michael
Gurevitch and Jay Blunder,3 is to provide incentives to citizens to become
more informed and involved; this comes closer to a mobilizing function.
Last but by no means least, the media must act as watch-dogs guarding
against abuse of power by the public authorities. That is the role sometimes
encapsulated in the term 'Fourth Estate', coined by Lord Macaulay as early
as 1832, to describe the emergence of the press to rival the power of the
other three great estates, that is the Lords, both temporal and spiritual, and
the Commons.4
As already noted, less has been written, explicitly, about the media's role
in democratization. Under repressive regimes it is in any case by definition
extremely difficult for the media within a country to live up to these ideals.
Even so, elements of the media, and especially what can be termed the
'alternative' media, can help to maintain a tradition of independent criticism
and to undermine regime legitimacy.5 Still more subversive, in many cases,
have been the international media, whose messages it has proved
increasingly difficult and expensive to keep out. It is Samuel Huntington
who first pointed out the importance of the part they have played in what he
calls the current 'third wave' of democratization, through their contribution
to the 'demonstration effect'. Largely as a result of the dramatic expansion
in global communications in the post-war era and in particular 'the
blanketing of the world by TV and communications satellites in the 1970s',
he argues that this effect ensured that 'by the mid-80s the image of a
"worldwide democratic revolution" undoubtedly had become a reality in the
minds of political and intellectual leaders in most countries of the world'.6
