Media, Power and Public Opinion

2010

The exercise of political power in a democracy is primarily made through communication with institutions, civil society and individuals. What happens if governments have to deal with an enormous increase of mass, personal and interactive communication like the latest "explosion of communication"? The new media landscape arises issues in the relation of democratic governments with society, specially when it comes to the exercise of its power. In the past, media influenced not only the way government spoke with citizens but the political process and the media-politics relationship. Now it seems governments all over the world are successfully changing the media and the news. New attacks on the freedom of the press and journalists happen all over the world in either liberal or conservative regimes. This article with look for examples from several countries, as France, Italy, Portugal, Venezuela, Argentina, the United States and Russia, and will try to draw a picture and not just to gather a sum of anecdotical evidence. Can these strains and limitations result from the "excess" of nongovernment communications, leading governments to overtake the media, by legal procedures, exerting economic pressure, interfering in the media or upgrading their own marketing, propaganda and misinformation? The present day governmental hyperpropaganda and the constraints on journalists activity hint at the emergence of a new paradigma in the governments-media relation: severe constraints within a formal democracy. It is widely accepted that "attempts by governments to control and manipulate the media are universal because public officials everywhere believe that media are important political forces" and that, in consequence, nowhere are the media totally free from formal and informal government and social controls, even in times of peace. On the whole, authoritarian governments control more extensively and more rigidly than nonauthoritarian ones, but all control systems represent a point of continuum. There are also gradations of control within nations, depending on the current regime and political setting, regional and local variations, and then nature of news. The specifics of control systems vary from country to country, but the overall patterns are similar (Graber, 2010: 16). Hallin and Mancini (2004) theorised media systems with a mutual dependency between political and media institutions and practices, avoiding the paradigma of media always being the dependent variable on relation to the system of social control which it reflects: "media institutions have an impact of their own on other social structures" (Hallin and Mancini, 2004: 8). Considering that mutual dependency, they proposed three models of media systems: the Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist (including Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain), the North and Central European or 1 Please do not quote without consulting the author.

Media, Culture & Society, 2017

In this article author has taken into consideration the potential meanings of power which media seem to possess. Understanding the notion of the fourth estate (as media used to be named) has been connected with distinguished typology of media power (in a proposal form): power as a mediatisation; power as an impact; power as a function; and, last but not least, power as a control. First type of power (mediatisation) concerns the essence of media – process of getting to know surrounding world via media by mass audience. From this perspective, media become our window on the world and their power consists in creating frames of our perception. Second type of power (impact/influence) is based on an expected relation between media and their recipients. This relation assumes that media with their facts, opinions and entertainment can in some cases possibly change mass audience’s definite point of view. However, we have to bear in mind that this type of media power depends on intentional, not accidental influence of mass media. Third type of power (function) seems to be the most obvious one. Every object – according to philosophical logic – which is attributed to a specific function acquires definite power as a part of this function. Finally, fourth type of power concerns the control idea of media, or the so-called: watchdog. This is a crucial aspect of media power, i.e. media as a great controller of governments. Media as a Fourth Estate ought to control political elite, judge them for their promises. That is a source of media’s power.

The rules of journalism profession are lost in the requirements: faster, cheaper, more flexible. The facts, the course of events, their order, reasons and protagonists – the journalists are mostly not bothering with these anymore. The facts are patient, news are not. The media no longer participate in the struggle for power. Today, the media experiment with the limits and ranges of power. It is time for Nietzsche's call: " Give us some air! " The power is shifting towards the world of fiction, and this structural inversion is conducted by the media. Today we find power in a state of schizophrenia: it resides partly in the world of profit, and partly in the world of illusion. Outside of these two worlds, we meet power only as replicas and ... nothing else. It seems that hallucinations are all that's left to the humankind. Or, does it have to be that way? Discussing the informative effect of media today, we have much more reasons to speak about the news deformation and its results: manipulation, misinformation, intoxication and propaganda, than provision of information. And if we observe the news deformation, it is clear that they do not involve creation of the public through informing, but rather through modelling and simulation of the public, achieved through disinformation and manipulation. Additionally, bearing in mind the rising concentration of media, owned by a small number of international companies or private entities within one country, articulation, intermediation, criticism and control as media functions become seriously compromised. The media are not value-neutral, but, on the contrary, ideologically, politically, class and gender colored to the extent that they are internally connected with the capital market manipulation, misinformation, intoxication and propaganda, than provision of information. And if we observe manipulation, misinformation, intoxication and propaganda, it is clear that they do not involve creation of the public through informing, but rather through modelling and simulation of the public, achieved through disinformation and manipulation. Additionally, bearing in mind the rising concentration of media, owned by a small number of international companies or private entities within one country, articulation, intermediation, criticism and control as media functions become seriously compromised. The media are not value-neutral, but, on the contrary, ideologically, politically, class and gender colored to the extent that they are internally connected with the capital market.

2008

One chapter already archived https://lra.le.ac.uk/handle/2381/42898 so the file associated with this record is under a permanent embargo in accordance with the publisher's policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above.

2012

Media International Australia, 2018

In the mass media era, the role of the media was universally regarded as fundamental to the proper functioning of the democratic state: the media’s capacity to provide information freely to all citizens ensured they had equal access to the democratic process. There were many, though, who registered concern at the top-down, government-led and highly concentrated structures of power embedded here; it was easy to demonstrate how the flow of information could be manipulated and the power of the media abused. Consequently, the arrival of the digital era seemed to radically modify that power relation for the better. The initial enthusiasm, though, has been challenged by what, a decade or two later, we have ended up with: a digital landscape that does indeed offer unprecedented access to information, in ways that have been transformative – but that is also awash with socially regressive content: fake news, hate speech revenge porn and so on. In this article, I want to discuss some aspects ...

T he central theme of Mauro Porto's analysis is the political role of the media in contexts of democratic transition. His reflection is anchored in a case study of the Globo Television Network, a prominent nationwide network usually referred to as TV Globo. It is interesting to note that the history of theories on political communication runs jointly with the history of the rise of representative democracies. But lacunas still exist in the interface between communication and democracy, and the contributions of Porto's book are significant.