Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
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able to read reports in The Times and the Morning Post. Can anyone seriously
sustain the argument that people are more impoverished informationally than
their forebears in the nineteenth century? Against this suggestion it is surely unarguable
that the public sphere is much more accessible today than ever it was
before – think, for example, of the ease with which one may participate in debates
on radio phone-ins, or of the facilitative role for organising meetings on the telephone,
or of the ease with which one may nowadays amass expert informational
assistance from the Internet.
Such trends have to be admitted. Yet we cannot ignore, too, the changes that
have taken place in the information domain – the commodification of knowledge,
the assault on the public service institutions, the emphasis on persuasion, the
escalation of advertising-orientated media, etc. – that mean the potential for and
practice of information management and manipulation are immensely enlarged.
Perhaps this is the paradoxical situation that we must acknowledge: the opportunities
for mendacity and routine interference as regards information are much
greater nowadays – and in this respect the public sphere is undeniably diminishing.
At the same time, there are countervailing tendencies that give people the
means and desires to extend and participate in a more open public sphere than
has hitherto been offered – educational levels are so much greater, the sheer
range and depth of information sources available today outshine that of previous
epochs, and the ways in which people can take part in public affairs should they
so wish are made much easier today than yesterday. Bruce Bimber (2003) powerfully
demonstrates that the Internet has greatly reduced the entry costs for
campaigners wanting to influence the political process. As such, there is a weakening
of established political parties and an opening up of politics to those adept
at website design and driven by a commitment to change.
Another criticism seizes on the value-based character of the public sphere
concept. Because it is an idealistic, even utopian, notion, then any real-world situation
will be found wanting by comparison. Those who object to this normative
basis of the public sphere may continue to raise two more particular complaints.
The first is that historical reality does not match up to Habermas’s depiction.
It appears that those who deplore the decline of public service institutions often
hold to the view that there was once a golden age of public service. But there
never was such a period! For instance, it is often observed that the BBC of
the 1950s and early 1960s, a period in which it enjoyed financial security and
widespread prestige, was also one in which the organisation was remarkably
exclusionary. Non-Oxbridge producers were rare, lower-class interests ignored,
the regions sidelined and ‘common’ accents absent from the airwaves. Who might
yearn for a return of this in the name of the public sphere? The second complaint
adds to this the unattainability of the public sphere precisely because it is utopian.
Far better, goes the objection, to engage with what is on the ground than measure
everything against what is unrealisable and was never realisable. Such a feet-onthe-ground
position might also help us appreciate what we have rather than
constantly complaining that public service is inadequate because it is set against
an unattainable ideal.
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