This document discusses the role of media in shaping public opinion and functioning as a public sphere. It examines debates around the responsibilities of broadcasters to stakeholders versus audiences. The ideal role of news media is seen as disseminating accurate, politically relevant information to contribute to an informed civic society. However, contemporary media are argued to have become "re-feudalized" due to ownership, advertising, and spin. The document analyzes BBC and ITV news coverage of public opinion and finds they construct audiences as apathetic. It also discusses whether shows like Question Time truly represent public spheres or serve ratings.

1. 1
Constructing the publicConstructing the public
#MAC201#MAC201
rrobert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.ukobert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk

2. Context
• Examine the media’s democratic & civic usefulness in
helping shape public opinion
• Do broadcasters have a responsibility to their
stakeholders, advertisers, or audience?
• How best to deliver information to the public in a
competitive market place?
2

3. • To disseminate
accurate information
and political
intelligence that is of
general interest
• To contribute to an
informed political
culture and civic
society
3
News & political
responsibility

4. 4
Public sphere
• Civic space in which private
citizens could meet to discuss
matters of political importance
• Work towards the formation of a
collective opinion for the benefit
of the citizenry
– ‘communicative rationality’
– knowledge, language and validity
claims

5. 5
Conditions for the public
sphere
• Free from the influences of:
– the market place
– the state
– the family

6. 6
Contemporary significance?
• Media become the primary location of public
engagement
• Now, we have a re-feudalised public sphere
– (i.e. the mass media and its power relations)
• No independence - corrupted by:
– Ownership and control of the media industry
– Advertising revenues
– Public relations and ‘spin culture’

7. 7

8. 8
MediaMediaPrivate
sphere
Private
sphere
Public sphere
Mediasphere
semiosphere

9. ‘mediasphere’
The ‘mediasphere’ is the whole
universe of media … in all languages
in all countries. … [It] is clear that
television is a crucial site of the
mediasphere and a crucial mediator
between general cultural sense-
making systems (the semiosphere)
and specialist components of social
sense-making like the public sphere
(Hartley, 1999: p.217-218)
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10. Media sphere:
Negatives
• Habermas is pessimistic
• TV and press most important sources of
information: “extensive reliance on mass
media has been accompanied by an
increase in cynicism and negativism
towards politics” (McQuail, 2000: 158)
• Mass media accused of failing to serve
politicians
• “Entertainers” (Carey, 1999)
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11. Media sphere:
Positives
• Public sphere is a neutral zone where
– access to information for the public good is
widely available
– discussion is free from domination
– and all those participating are equal
• The media facilitate this process by
forming public opinion (Curran, 1996)
• Provide a zone of ‘protection’ for citizens
• Dahlgren (1995) positive political
communication
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12. Constructing the public
• Analysis of BBC and ITV news
coverage over 3 weeks
• Focused on late evening slots
• Examined references to public
opinion
1. Opinion polls
2. Inferences about the public mood
3. Vox pops (9.3%)
4. Campaign interactions between MPs
and the public (17.8%)
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Rochdale, April, 2010 – PM Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy

14. “The discursive construction of the
apathetic electorate works
ideologically to legitimize a situation
in which media and political elites
are the key players, while citizens
are incapable of making meaningful
contributions to the debate. In this
way, the political and media
establishments produce the
alienation they claim to deplore.”
(Brookes et al, 2004, p.78)
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15. Testing the political public
sphere
• See Higgins, 2006 (on Sunspace)
• Debate surrounding the 1999
election to the newly formed
devolved Scottish parliament.
• Scottish press coverage vs UK
coverage
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16. 16
All broadsheet newspapers or ‘quality’ titles
(Bromley: 1998) from 3 day period: 5th-7th of May
Method

17. Levels of coverage
• Scottish papers = 84,160 words
• UK papers = 19,246 words
• ‘The Scottish papers therefore assume the
greater role in the political public sphere
around the election simply by offering
substantially more coverage than the UK
papers’
(Higgins, 2006: 29-30)
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18. 18
Schizophrenic: The Sun wanted both Cameron and Sturgeon to win in May
2015. Is it pandering to different ‘publics’ or did it not want Labour to win?

19. 19

20. 20
The show attracted 7.8 million viewers, three times the usual figure.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1222331/BNP-leader-Nick-Griffin-
complain-BBC-unfair-treatment-Question-Time.html#ixzz3RWc62K2l

21. PanelistsPanelists
TV Audience
Chair

22. Question Time Clip
1. Is this contributing to the notion of an
informed public opinion? Or was he there to
get the ratings?
2. Is Question Time a true representation of
the public sphere? (Consider who are the
guests, who sets the agenda, who controls
the flow of information, etc).
3. Should the media give ‘far right-wing’
politicians a stage to express their view
(their opinion on public betterment)?
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23. Ideal?
• The media should inform democratic
decisions by helping ‘citizens learn about
the world, debate their responses to it and
reach informed decisions about what
course of action to adopt’
(Dahlgren, 1991: 1)
23

24. 24
“Is Britain really overcrowded?”
Question Time, 11/12/2014, Canterbury
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2RSKJC-ugk

25. 25

26. Sunday Politics Clip
26

27. Sunday Politics backlash
27

28. 28Simon Cottle (2006) Mediatized Conflict

29. News as social and political agent?
• Should we think of the business of news as
reporting facts or seeking out and bringing us
material we should know about?
• Is it a role of the news to make us more socially
and politically aware, or to distract and entertain
us?
• Can it do both? (Think of the role of news
values)
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30. Points for discussion
• In your judgement, is the media as a
public sphere driven by consideration of:
– Political and democratic responsibility on the
part of the media institutions and journalists?
– The need to appeal to a given audience?
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31. Bibliography
• Allan, S. (1999/2004) News culture. Buckingham: Open University Press.
• Bell, A. (1991) The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Bromley, M. (1998) ‘The ‘tabloiding’ of Britain: ‘Quality’ newspapers in the 1990s’, in M. Bromley and H. Stephenson (eds)
Sex, lies and democracy: the press and the public, pp. 25-38. London: Longman.
• Curran, J. ((1996), ‘Mass Media and Democracy Revisited’, in Curran and M. Gurevitch, eds. (2000) Mass Media and
Society,
• Dahlgren, P. (1991) ‘Introduction’, in P. Dahlgren and C. Sparks (eds) Communication and citizenship: journalism and the
public sphere, pp. 1-24. London: Routledge.
• Deacon, D., M. Pickering, P. Golding and G. Murdock (1999) Researching communications. London: Arnold.
• Fowler, R. (1991) Language in the news: discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge.
• Franklin, B. (1997) Newszak and news media. London: Arnold.
• Franklin, B. (2004) Packaging politics, 2nd
edition. London: Arnold.
• Galtung, J. and M. Ruge (1973) ‘Structuring and selecting news’, in S. Cohen and J. Young (eds) The manufacture of news:
deviance, social problems and the media, pp. 62-72. London: Constable.
• Garnham, N. (1992) ‘The media and the public sphere’, in C. Calhoun (ed) Habermas and the public sphere, pp. 359-376.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Habermas, J. (1989) The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Habermas, J. (2004) ‘Public space and political public sphere – the biographical roots of two motifs in my thought’,
Commemorative Lecture, Kyoto, November 11.
• Hartley, J. (1996) Popular reality: journalism, modernity, popular culture. London: Arnold.
• Hicks, W. (1998) English for journalists, 2nd
edition. London: Routledge.
• Higgins, M. (2006) ‘Substantiating a political public sphere in the Scottish press: a comparative analysis’, in Journalism, Vol.
7, No. 1, pp 25-44.
• Livingstone, S. and P. Lunt (1994) Talk on television: audience participation and public debate. London: Routledge.
• Negrine, R. (1998) Parliament and the media: a study of Britain, Germany and France. London: Pinter.
• Walzer, M (1995), Toward A Global Civil Society, Oxford: Berghahn Books
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