Blumler Gurevitch Demokratizacija Sajberspejsa

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THE NEW MEDIA

AND OUR POLITICAL
COMMUNICATION
DISCONTENTS:
DEMOCRATIZING
CYBERSPACE
Jay G. Blumler & Michael Gurevitch
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NEW MEDIA AND OUR POLITICAL COMMUNICATION DISCONTENTS:
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Information, Communication & Society 4:1 2001 1–13
THE NEW MEDIA AND OUR POLITICAL

COMMUNICATION DISCONTENTS:
DEMOCRATIZING CYBERSPACE
Jay G. Blumler
University of Leeds, UK
Michael Gurevitch
University of Maryland, USA
Abstract
This article argues that the new interactive media have a ‘vulnerable potential’ to
enhance public communications and enrich democracy, which can be realized
only through appropriate policy support and imaginative institution building.
After outlining the main shortcomings of the prevailing political communication
system, certain elements of redemptive potential, inherent in distinctive features
of the Internet, are identied. The policy implications of this analysis are then
drawn for the public-service obligations of mainstream media, to ensure open
access to new media platforms, and to create a ‘civic commons’ in cyberspace.
Keywords
political communication, Internet, democracy, new media policy,

public broadcasting
Our point of departure in this article is the need for advanced democracies to ‘get
a grip’ on their political communication arrangements. Communications is now
central to the politics of late modern societies but, as presently organized, is
sucking the substance and spirit out of it. Fortunately, an opportunity and means
to do something about this have emerged amidst the welter of technology-led
change of media systems. The available chances are fragile, however, and must be
grasped in a manner that is both visionary and practical. It would be utopian to
rely on the spontaneous activation of the better civic instincts of politicians,
journalists or voters to harness computer-based communication to the needs of
democracy. Only deliberate institution building will suf ce. As we argue in the
conclusion, we should aim to build a civic commons in cyberspace. This outlook
re ects three underlying stances.
One is impatience with generalized attitudes of optimism or pessimism towards
new media roles in politics, over which conflicts are often sterile. Since the
Information, Communication & Society
ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/13691180110035704
JAY G. B LUM LER AND MICH AEL GUREVITCH
Internet, for example, is a very different medium from television, it is almost

bound eventually to change or add something different to how communicators
and publics relate to each other. We need, therefore, to move beyond holistic
posturing and aim instead to think more concretely about what some of the main
developments might be, track them through research and consider how to foster
and entrench the more hopeful prospects among them.
Second, nothing is pre-ordained about the impact of new media in politics. This
will be shaped by the interplay of con icting cross-currents and in uences. At
best, the new interactive media can be said to have a vulnerable potential to enhance
public communications. With appropriate policies and institutional support, some
of that potential may be realized. Otherwise, however, it could be compromised

and co-opted by forces with their own axes to grind, relegated to tricksy side-
lines, or just submerged by other games.
Third, in of cial policy circles, ‘new media in democracy’ appears a relatively
neglected subject. If this gap is not closed, we could have evolved tolerably
considered policies for promoting or regulating Internet roles in commerce and
education and for the delivery of government and other public services (plus
widespread access to its platforms) but not its potential to vitalize our political
communication arrangements. Yet those arrangements could do with more than
a bit of help!
THE ‘DISCONTENTS’
What ever its strengths, it would be difficult to maintain that our political
communication system is in great all-round shape at present.1 Ironically, a polity
that is increasingly communications driven seems to be running on an increasingly
degraded fuel supply!
First, in democracies where measures of trends across recent election
campaigns are available, the balance of admittedly mixed evidence suggests that,
in multichannel conditions of commercialized competition for the attention of less
politically engaged audiences, media coverage of politics is diminishing in amount,
as well as becoming more ‘mediated’, more focused on power tactics at the
expense of issue substance, and more negative.2
Second, much of the present system seems to pivot on a mutually counter-
productive relationship between its key elements – journalists and leading
politicians. Whereas journalists continually face orchestrated attempts to set their
agendas, politicians’ initiatives are continually ‘deconstructed’ (as Scammell
(2000) has put it) for their ‘base strategic signi cance’. For example, a content
analysis of the political coverage by eight quality newspapers of Britain’s national
2
NEW MEDIA & POLITICAL COMM UN ICATION DISCONTENTS
press during six months preceding and including the 1997 General Election
campaign found 444 articles (many of them critical) about ‘spin doctoring’ by the
major parties, amounting to an average of seventeen such pieces per week (Esser
et al. 2000). Following Labour’s election victory, this drumbeat was ampli ed
yet further. Thus, according to Greenspan (2000), a library check of computer
records for ten national papers showed ‘that “spin” has appeared in more than
2,500 headlines, let alone stories’.
Such a communications road is especially bumpy for governments with
ambitious policy projects in train. Hindmoor (2000) notes, for example, that
when Britain’s New Labour Government issued its second Annual Report in August
1999, itemizing how many and which of its manifesto commitments had been
met:
most papers dismissed the exercise as a meaningless and largely ctitious publicity stunt. The
impression of a government lacking in policy backbone, chasing headlines and plaudits was
reinforced by a report intended to demonstrate the exact opposite.
Fearing that such persistent framing was responsible for evidence emerging from
focus groups that Tony Blair was widely perceived as a man of no substance who
has not fullled his election promises, it was announced in June 2000 that the
Prime Minister’s Press Secretary would hereafter play a less prominent part in
conducting the Government’s communications strategy. But all this may also be
confusing for citizens – left uncertain how much of the communications coming
their way should be taken as ‘for real’, how much as the smoke and mirrors of
political spin, and how much as the sensationalism and cynicism of journalistic
spin.
Finally, owing to a host of deep-seated social and political changes – the frag-
mentation of social orders, breakdown of party loyalties, increased electoral
volatility, independent mindedness and scepticism, and the increased intractability
of the central problems of politics – the political communication scene has become
more turbulent and less manageably containable than before. Both politicians and
political journalists face increased competition for access to publics and audiences
– the former from a wider range of cause and interest groups clamouring for
publicity, the latter from many new makers and breakers of news, sources of
commentary and investigative purveyors of scandal in talk shows, tabloids and
Internet web sites. Traditional ethical constraints are fraying on both sides of the
political communication divide as well – with politicians less inhibited about
mounting negative attacks on each other and journalists less wedded to the
proprieties of their trade. And, in conditions of communication abundance, the
3
structure and role of the audience is changing, whose members are more dif cult
for communicators to ‘read’ and pin down.3
Arguably a new sort of normative issue arises from these latter developments
within and surrounding political communication: how can the forces breeding a
cacophonic free-for-all be countered by forces for civility, integrity and
coherence?
THE ELEMENTS OF POTENTIAL
So could new media be at all redemptive in these conditions? Any answer to this
question must be cautious. Their dissemination is unlikely to replace the old

communication system by a new one, overturn existing power structures or
reverse the zeitgeists that have accompanied recent social, political and cultural
changes. The Internet could even exacerbate some of the above-described
turbulence – by further fragmenting the public’s reception of news and current
affairs and con ning it to already politically literate citizens. One US study of the
grati cations associated with Internet use has disclosed a prole more like that
for viewing prime-time entertainment television than for reading newspapers or
watching the news (Althaus and Tewksbury 2000). And as for civility, after
analysing the ow of political discussion in several Usenet groups, Davis (1999)
has castigated it as:
cacophony rather than wisdom, a form of expression that follows not parliamentary principles
but the Hobbesian law of the boring dinner party; it belongs, that is, to the person who talks
loudest, logs on most often.
But the explanation he proffered is also instructive:
Usenet groups reproduce chaos because discussion moderators or facilitators designed to

stimulate and regulate discussion, to encourage representation and maintain direction are plainly
absent.
This diagnosis tallies with the discovery by Dutton (1996) of widespread concern
among Californian participants in two computer-based discussion forums over the
disorderly communication practices of other users. As he concludes:
Developing sound and fair rules for public electronic fora appears vital to realizing their potential
. . . In contrast to many expectations that . . . the new media would be supportive of more
democratic communication, if left normless, it might well undermine the very existence of
such forums by chasing key individuals, such as opinion leaders and public officials, off the
system.
4
And a few other studies have indeed detected signs of such a ight – e.g. among
US Congressmen, disappointed with the low quality of e-mails received from
their constituents (Davis 1999), and among US journalists, disappointed with the
domination of their newspaper’s reader forums by discourteous, extremist and
dogmatic minorities (Schultz 2000).
Nevertheless, past experience shows that with the introduction of a new and
widely available public affairs vehicle – which the Internet will become if broad-
ened access policies are effectively implemented – the ideas of communicators
about how they can optimally project themselves, and of audiences about how
they should be served, tend to change in line with what are perceived to be
the medium’s distinctive characteristics. Actors’ expectations are pivotal to the

direction of such change. Considered in this light, several elements of its potential
to enhance civic communication can be mentioned.
Unlike broadcasting, which has provoked long-running debates about how
far, when, and over what programmes its audiences may be regarded as ‘active’
or ‘passive’ (cf. Katz 1996 and Kubey 1996), the Internet is unquestionably a
medium of predominantly active users. Typically, one decides which web site to
visit and then, through a sequence of follow-up decisions, one may click on other
pages or pursue other links of interest, ponder the material received and possibly
even talk about it with others (though this is little studied and merits research).
Admittedly, the extent and depth of such activity should not be exaggerated or
idealized. Empirical studies of web site usage report far more exposure to main
than subsequent pages (Johnson 1999; Dutton et al. 1999), a practice to which
the concept of ‘sur ng’ has been applied. A useful next step in research into such
usage might aim to distinguish and measure the incidence of different modes of
such sur ng.4 But if Internet use tends to encourage and support a more active
disposition to communications than mainstream media use, some of this should
transfer over to people’s reception through it of news, public affairs and politics.
The Internet’s discursive role could also diverge from that of old media. Unlike
broadcasting, which works within tight time limits and essentially shows its
audiences other people discussing political issues, over the Internet it is possible
to involve large numbers of users themselves in a more full expression and
exchange of experiences and opinions on a given topic. It can be a medium for
engaging more widely in, not just presenting and following, civic dialogue.
For their part, politicians have shown increased concern in recent years
to exploit less mediated lines of access to the electorate than TV bulletins and
front-page news afford. And the Internet presents many opportunities for direct
communication to voters, which they can be increasingly expected to explore.
In recent writings, for example, the Chairmen of the US Republican and
5
Democratic Parties both hailed the latest presidential race as one in which there
would be a major advance of new media involvement, providing advantages for
the parties of less journalistically mediated access to the public and less costly
organization of efforts to get out the vote (Nicholson 2000; Romer 2000).
How this will pan out and whether it should be welcomed, however, remain
to be seen. Politicians and their publicity advisers will certainly not be auto-
matically cleansed of their original communication sins just by the advent of the
new media! Already presidential campaigns in the USA are increasingly sending
what used to be known as ‘press releases’ to news editors, anchors and reporters
via a frequent and heavy stream of e-mails. As a result (according to Marks 2000),
the presidential media campaign is ‘no longer so much a series of steps as an

endless wave’. A number of specialist Internet consultancy companies are also
springing up in the USA, offering their services to candidates and campaigns.
And, among other things, they are compiling lists of voters’ e-mail addresses to
be sent personally targeted messages and fashioning negative web sites – the attack
ads of the Internet, as they have been called – as in the HilaryNo.com site that was
created for Rudolf Giuliani’s senatorial campaign in New York.
But since all communication is a two-way process, politicians will have to take
account of voters’ receptivity (or otherwise) to such messages. Less committed
electors especially are unlikely to take much notice, unless something worthwhile
is clearly in it for them. And here is where some of the Internet’s other distinctive
features may come into play. One is its provision of large stores of data that
may be conveniently organized for retrieval and tapped into by users in line with
their particular informational needs. Another is the Internet’s mechanisms
for interactive exchange, enabling ‘more equality of the participants and a greater
symmetry of communicative power than one-way communication’ (Schultz
2000). As Hacker (1996) stresses, ‘The more democratic a communications
system, the more it will accommodate interactivity over mere connectivity’. All
this could be a source of expectations among users about how they should be
served on web sites, including political ones – given material they can get their
teeth into and think about, and raise questions or points about, should they feel
so inclined.
In short, the Internet allows direct communication between citizens and
politicians, enabling both to bypass the media. Here, then, may lie the Internet’s
greatest potential for change. It could introduce into the political communication
environment a different set of qualities from those that predominate today,
perhaps even constraining the mainstream media to take account of what people
are receiving over the Internet in their own coverage of politics. Politicians could
be expected to offer more solid back-up to their policy ideas. And political
6
journalists could be expected to concentrate less on process and more on

substance. After widespread new media diffusion, the relations of politicians,
audiences and the ‘old media’ may not be quite the same as before.
SOME POLICY IMPLICATIONS
What policy implications ow from this diagnosis? They arise in at least three
areas: for mainstream media; for open access to new media platforms; and for
creation of what may be termed a ‘civic commons’ in cyberspace.
Fo r mai nst ream med ia
Throughout Europe the public service remit of the continent’s once mighty public
broadcasters is under continual review by both governments and the broadcasting
organizations themselves. Needs for such reconsideration arise from ever-
intensifying multichannel competition; escalating costs of production, talent and
programming rights; shifting audience tastes; and the emergence of new digital
and interactive platforms, in which the appropriate role of public broadcasters is
unclear and contested. It is consequently dif cult to distinguish mere adaptation
to these many exigencies from a genuine reinvention of the ‘public service idea’
for application in new media conditions.
In these circumstances, the assured maintenance of large, well-resourced,
principled and distinctive public service broadcasters is vital. They must continue
to be expected to aim both high and broad in serving and re ecting all the popular
and minority dimensions of entertainment, culture and the arts; the needs of
children as all-round developing personalities and future citizens; in education,
the support needs of schools and life-long learning among adults; and the vitality
and integrity of civic communication (especially at this time when so much
mainstream political communication is at a low ebb). The British government’s
acceptance of this position appears implicit in a recent reference to the BBC by
the Minister for Culture, the Media and Sport as ‘the UK’s most important
cultural institution’ (Smith 2000).
Beyond that, however, since even a well-intentioned public broadcaster can be
distracted by a host of pragmatic preoccupations in the fast-changing multichannel
environment, measures are needed to ensure that a public service mission is core
(not just an extra add-on) to its activities. This need is illustrated by recent
indications that senior executives of the BBC are contemplating a major
restructuring of its two terrestrial channels, concentrating entertainment and
popular programming on BBC1 and more demanding and high-brow material on
BBC2. This could be a recipe for a gradual ‘ghettoization’ of its public service
7
programming – as well as of the audience for such programming. To counter this

threat, it may be advisable to place an obligation on a broadcaster like the BBC to
‘ensure that public service purposes and values are central to and realized in all
its services’.
And beyond that, governments should explictly expect their public broad-
casters to respond to the challenges inherent in the current upsurge of new
apsirations for participatory citizenship and deliberative democracy, and the
democratic potential of the new media. To this end, consideration should be given
to strengthening and reformulating their civic remit – possibly along the lines of
‘encouraging new forms of public involvement in civic affairs through interactive
and other appropriate means’.
For open access to new media pl atfo rms
At the level of media ownership and management, we are not necessarily entering
a new pluralistic age. The rapid growth of the new media has evidently trans-
formed the terms of competition among major communication rms. A wave of
mergers has resulted, creating huge conglomerates that will control both delivery
platforms and sources of high-value communications content. The pending
combination of AOL and Time-Warner is only the most newsworthy among
many examples of this process. In fact, a leading US investment analyst has
hailed this merger for allowing both parties ‘to bene t from a common strategic
vision’; creating ‘an unparalleled ability to cross-promote products across a broad
array of media platforms’; and enhancing ‘the stickiness of the AOL experience’
by ‘offering a broader array of Time-Warner information and entertainment
products’ (PaineWebber 2000).
A danger looms that in order to realize the envisaged bene ts, such combi-
nations will operate a ‘walled garden’ menu to the disadvantage of third-party
unaf liated content – deciding which services will be offered, or discriminating
against them in terms of high-speed, high-impact provision. As Shooshan and
Cave (2000) have put it, ‘a content provider needs leverage in order to be assured
of non-discriminatory access’. In light of all this, rm anti-discriminatory access
policies are needed, perhaps requiring the segregation of the provision of content
from the distribution channel.
Creat ion of a ‘civic commo ns’ in cyberspace
This is a period of de nition for the communications industry and its inuence
on society at large. Although the functions and uses of the Internet are still being
explored, powerful interests are striving to bend it to their own ends. Few if any
8
of these big players are likely to be out to boost citizenship! The ‘vulnerable
potential’ of interactive media to enhance public communications and enrich
democracy is consequently at risk of being submerged or marginalized.
In a sense, the present moment is analogous to the early days of policy making
for radio. In contrast to the commercial free-for-all that emerged in the USA
at that time, Europeans decided that public service broadcasting organizations
were essential if the new medium was to serve public purposes at all well. The
corresponding challenge today is to fashion and apply a public service remit for
the Internet and other online services.
In this context, policy consideration should now be given to ways of forging
a public, well-supported and vigorous ‘civic commons’ in cyberspace. How might

this be achieved? In essence, it might be advanced by creating an authority with
responsibilities for arranging, publicizing, moderating and reporting on the
outcomes of a wide range of exercises in electronic democracy. These would
involve eliciting, gathering and co-ordinating citizens’ reactions to and/or
deliberations upon problems faced and/or proposals issued by public bodies, who
would be expected eventually to react formally in some way to whatever had
emerged from the process. Such a requirement could help to ensure that politi-
cians and officials view the stimulation of increased participation not as mere
‘citizens’ playgrounds’ but as forums in which they must play a serious part.
Of course, within old and new media alike, many initiatives have burgeoned
in recent years to promote public consultation over political issues.5 They include:
civic networks in local authorities; community planning forums; citizens’ juries;
town meetings of the air; people’s panels; deliberative polling; the National Issues
Convention in the USA; forums sponsored by UK Citizens Online Democracy;
web sites launched by the Scottish Parliament to encourage citizens to transmit
their views on specied current issues; and a series of online discussions organized
by the Hansard Society and linked to parliamentary business in the UK. The
envisaged authority could bring many of these efforts under one electronic roof,
backing them up with substantial production resources and expertise, and
enhancing their visibility and status. Its role could be both responsive – to ideas
for such ventures put to it by others – and proactive – in proposing initiatives that
its staff might regard as opportune. Its reach should be as broad as possible.
Although it should tap the energies of already active community-minded
‘cybernauts’, it must not only ‘be for them’. In principle, it should be a port
of major call for all in the community who are concerned with issues involving
the future of the polity. The institution could be established either as a semi-
autonomous division of a public broadcaster such as the BBC, with links to its
News and Education departments, or as an entirely new entity. But to win and
9
deserve the trust of citizens and elites, it would have to be set up as an impartial,
public service body. Otherwise, its remit should be exploratory and develop-
mental, and its activities should be conceived as a cumulative civic learning
exercise, assessed in such terms in its periodic reports.
There is no fully worked out blueprint, however, from which such an
agency can or should spring. Its design and functions should emerge instead from
a wide-ranging process of civic discussion, in which many issues could be aired.
What, for example, are the respective advantages and disadvantages of relying on
public broadcasting systems to assume the new tasks or creating an independent
institution de novo instead? And should the civic commons be organized nationally
(which may appear anachronistic for a World Wide Web!), regionally or

internationally? These and other questions should be opened to broad debate.
But a more fundamental question may still be raised. Is investment in a large
of cial institution necessary or advisable? Why not just continue to let electronic
democracy initiatives bubble up here and there on an ad hoc basis? Four reasons
for trying to carve out a more ambitiously conceived and authoritatively grounded
‘civic commons’ appear key to us.
First, it would give tangible form to the principle that, in addition to all
those absorbing functions of entertainment, commerce, advertising and chatty
sociability, to which interactive media are naturally applied, they can and should
serve public interests of civic discussion and participation as well. Second, by
devoting more resources to that function, it could help it to become an accepted
part of our democratic framework – a sort of ‘parliamentary-plus’ democracy.
Third, it could stand as a safeguard against the exploitation of interactive civic
facilities for ulterior purposes – commercial gain, plebiscitary support, populist
agitation, administrative convenience or just to seem accessible in public relations
terms.
Finally, it would stand a better chance of unblocking our hardened civic arteries
than would a multiplicity of separate efforts. It could show leading politicians
and of cials listening and reacting to popular views rather than just addressing
or seeming to manipulate them. It could foster ‘an engaged political culture’
(Barnett 2000), especially if (as Wyatt et al. (2000) maintain) ‘it is in . . . ordinary
conversation about politics . . . that . . . democratic culture receives its most
concrete realization’. And if there is anything in Gould’s (2000) declaration that
politicians nowadays ‘cannot run things unless [they] are involved in a dialogue
. . . Democracy must become a continuing conversation, not just an occasional
interview’, then only a visionary effort pursued on broad-gauge lines can match
the present need for significantly increased popular connection with and
involvement in politics in these decidedly un-deferential times.
10
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This article is an expanded version of a paper that was presented at the London
School of Economics on 8 May 2000 to a seminar on New Media, Citizenship and
Democracy, sponsored by the Institute for Public Policy Research and the UK
Radio Authority. We are indebted to the following colleagues for their generous
responses to our requests for advice and comments: Stephen Coleman, William
Dutton, Bob Franklin, Richard Hooper, Colin Shaw, David L. Swanson and
Damien Tambini.
Professor J. G. Blumler
31 Blackwood Rise
Leeds LS16 7BG

icsjgb@leeds.ac.uk
NOTES
1 For a different assessment see Norris (2000).

2 Some of this is summarized in Blumler and Gurevitch (2000a).
3 This analysis is elaborated more fully in Blumler and Gurevitch (2000b).
4 Kosicki et al.’s (1987) typology of three dimensions of audience news information processing
might be adapted for this purpose. They distinguished what they termed ‘selective scanning’
from ‘active processing’ and ‘re ective integration’.
5 See Pratchett (1999) and Tambini (1999) for details.
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13

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Stellenbosch]

On: 20 March 2013, At: 21:43

THE NEW MEDIA

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THE NEW MEDIA AND OUR POLITICAL

political communication, Internet, democracy, new media policy,

Internet, for example, is a very different medium from television, it is almost

of that potential may be realized. Otherwise, however, it could be compromised

THE ELEMENTS OF POTENTIAL

question must be cautious. Their dissemination is unlikely to replace the old

But the explanation he proffered is also instructive:

Usenet groups reproduce chaos because discussion moderators or facilitators designed to

the medium’s distinctive characteristics. Actors’ expectations are pivotal to the

the presidential media campaign is ‘no longer so much a series of steps as an

journalists could be expected to concentrate less on process and more on

SOME POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Fo r mai nst ream med ia

programming – as well as of the audience for such programming. To counter this

and other appropriate means’.

For open access to new media pl atfo rms

Creat ion of a ‘civic commo ns’ in cyberspace

a public, well-supported and vigorous ‘civic commons’ in cyberspace. How might

(which may appear anachronistic for a World Wide Web!), regionally or

Leeds LS16 7BG

1 For a different assessment see Norris (2000).

Althaus, S.L. and Tewksbury, D. (2000) ‘Patterns of Internet and traditional

Katz, E. (1996) ‘Viewers work’, in J. Hay, L. Grossberg and E. Wartella (eds)

Tambini, D. (1999) ‘New media and democracy: the civic networking

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