Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
proceeding it has to be conceded that Habermas is open to criticism (Johnson,
2001). Serious objections have been made to the adequacy of the historiography
he deploys in elaborating the notion of the public sphere: some scholars reject
the ‘grand fall’ implications of his study (Hohendahl, 1979); others doubt whether
there ever really was a public sphere (Schudson, 1992). Elsewhere it has been
noted that Habermas has nothing to say about either the historical exclusion of
women from the public sphere (Landes, 1995) or what one might call the
‘plebeian public sphere’ (Keane, 1991) in recollection of the struggles of workingclass
groups to advance their representation. In addition, Habermas appears
insensitive to the charge that he understates the self-serving interests of the army
of professionals that maintains the public sphere (Calhoun, 1992). Finally, there
are questions to be asked about the status of rationality, to which Habermas
accords great significance in the operation of the public sphere, to which I shall
return below.
In spite of these qualifications, the idea of the public sphere offers an especially
powerful and arresting vision of the role of information in a democracy
(Curran, 1991, p. 33). From the premise that public opinion is to be formed in an
arena of open debate, it follows that the effectiveness of all this will be profoundly
shaped by the quality, availability and communication of information. Bluntly,
reliable and adequate information will facilitate sound discussion while poor information,
still less tainted information, almost inevitably results in prejudicial
decisions and inept debate. For this reason several commentators, notably
Nicholas Garnham (1990, 2000), have drawn on the notion of the public sphere
as a way of thinking about changes in the informational realm, using Habermas’s
concept as a means of evaluating what sort of information there has been in the
past, how it has been transformed and in what direction it may be moving.
More particularly, a conception of the public sphere has been introduced into
consideration of three connected matters. The first has been that of public service
institutions such as the BBC and the library network, with writers concerned to
argue that their informational function is being denuded especially, if not solely,
by attempts to transform them into more market-orientated and organised operations.
The second is a general concern for negative effects of the commodification
of information, a theme prominent among the Critical Theorists discussed
in Chapter 6. In so far as information is to be treated as something to be tradable
for profit, then commentators foresee deleterious consequences for the
public sphere, anticipating a deterioration in the quality of political discourse and
a decline in levels of participation (Boggs, 2000). The third area is the wider
context of contemporary communications, where commentators suggest that, for
a variety of reasons, there is an increasing amount of unreliable and distorted
information being generated and conveyed. Here the focus is on new systems of
communication which stress commercial principles and end up purveying little
but escapist infotainment, on the spread of interested information such as
sponsorship, advertising and public relations, and on an increase in the use of
information management by political parties, business corporations and other
interest groups which inflates the role of propaganda in the contemporary
information environment. Let us examine these scenarios in more detail.
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