Democracy and the contemporary media: What is the problem?
Recent political events – Brexit, Trump, populist movements in Europe – have brought renewed scrutiny of the public sphere and worries about the processes of public opinion formation. Recent criticisms of the media environment have highlighted ways in which public discourse is both too exclusive and...
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| Format: | Book section |
| Language: | English |
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Routledge
2021
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| Summary: | Recent political events – Brexit, Trump, populist movements in Europe – have brought renewed scrutiny of the public sphere and worries about the processes of public opinion formation. Recent criticisms of the media environment have highlighted ways in which public discourse is both too exclusive and too inclusive. This chapter discusses how the current media environment might undermine democratic self-determination and egalitarian social relations. It discusses the potential conflicts among the various values that underlie the value of democracy, and suggest two mechanisms by which conflicts among these values can be attenuated: collective intelligence and mediated deliberation with a ‘division of interpretive labor’. The chapter concludes by suggesting some avenues for normative reflection and empirical research. Problematic public discourse raises a number of concerns from an egalitarian perspective. Failure of public discourse to include certain perspectives deprives their adherents of an appropriate channel of influence. |
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