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Democracy, Participation and Convergent Media: Case Studies in Contemporary News Journalism in Australia

Presentation to Journalism in the 21st Century: Between Globalisation and National Identity, ICA Regional Conference,

Melbourne, Australia, 16-17 July, 2009

Professor Terry Flew

Media and Communication

Creative Industries Faculty and ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation

Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Australia

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The 21st century zeitgeist

• “a period of unparalleled social creativity when we sought to devise new ways of working together to be more democratic, creative and innovative … creating a collective intelligence on a scale never before possible”

• Charles Leadbeater, We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production, 2008, pp. 3,5.

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Not the Internet, but social production

• Need to periodise Internet history – participatory claims of Web 2.0

• Associated factors in rise of social production (Yochai Benkler)– Rise of knowledge-intensive service industries– Co-ordinate effects of individual activities in

networked information environments– Rise of peer production and sharing of information,

knowledge and culture

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From mass communications media to convergent media/Web 2.0

MASS COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA (20TH CENTURY)

CONVERGENT MEDIA/WEB 2.0 (21ST CENTURY)

MEDIA DISTRIBUTION Large-scale; barriers to entry Dramatically reduced barriers to entry

MEDIA PRODUCTION Complex division of labour; media professionals as content ‘gatekeepers’

Easy to use web 2.0 technologies; small, multi-purpose teams as “preditors” (Miller)

MEDIA POWER Assymetrical – one-way communications flow

Greater empowerment of users/audiences through interactivity and choice

MEDIA CONTENT Tendency towards standardised “mass appeal” content

Segmentation of media content markets and “long tail” economics (Anderson)

PRODUCER/CONSUMER RELATIONSHIP

Mostly impersonal, anonymous and commoditised (audience as mass market target)

Potential to be more personal; rise of the produser (Bruns); user networks and communities

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Perspectives on media democratisation: beyond the “Cyberbole”

• Hype generates its own counter-hype e.g. Clay Shirky versus Andrew Keen

• Democratising potential of new media practices for news and journalism (e.g. McNair, Hartley, Bruns, Jenkins)

• ‘In the era of cultural chaos, people have access to more information than ever before. If information is the pre-requisite of knowledge, and if knowledge is power, other things remaining equal, this trend corresponds to a power-shift from the traditionally information-rich elite to the no longer so information-poor mass” (Brian McNair, Cultural Chaos, 2006, p. 199)

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Maximalism and optimism: Brian McNair, Cultural Chaos

• New developments in media have strengthened national public spheres and developing a globalised public sphere.

• Criteria:– Opportunities to produce and distribute media are

much more widely available– Opportunities for ‘diversity of bias and balance of

critical opinion’ have increased– Media competition and 24hr. news cycles stimulate

critical scrutiny of political elites

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Democratisation and media citizenship

• Democratisation is a difficult process to define – is the right to vote sufficient? If not, what else needs to be there?

• Citizenship as a way forward, but ‘potentially limitless’ in its scope of application

• Two traditions of citizenship and democracy (Held)– Developmental republicanism: focus on participation

and substantive equality of citizens– Protective republicanism: focus on freedom from

coercion and pluralistic division of powers

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Digital scepticism: Jurgen Habermas

• ‘lack of face-to-face interaction … in a shared practice of collective decision-making’

• ‘lack of reciprocity between roles of speakers and addressees in an egalitarian exchange of claims and opinions’

• ‘power of the media to select, and shape the presentation of, messages’

• ‘strategic use of political and social power to influence agendas’

• ‘fragmentation of … mass audiences into a huge number of isolated issue publics’

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Concept of “voice”• Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty (1970)• Voice as a politicised counter-point to exit (consumer

behaviour in markets)• Participation as linked to voice esp. in digital media

environments• How to avoid ‘revolution of rising expectations’ in political

communication• Democratisation may not appear a priority in liberal-

democratic societies, but other goals (e.g. media diversity) might

• Need to give citizenship some tangibility, rather than simply being a “good other” to “bad neo-liberalism”

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Is the challenge to established media loss of audiences or disaggregation of media content?• Australian evidence on established media outlets does

not show as much decline as the U.S. or Britain• Major online sites are based around established media

(ninemsn, ABC, SMH, The Age and News in Alexa top 25 for Australia)

• ‘It is the loss of control over the format and timing of the distribution of information that presents the true challenge to the traditional media … the value created by traditional media models is based on scarcity, but the Internet supports an environment of information abundance.’ (Miel and Faris, 2008, p. 5)

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Brisbane Times

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Fairfax print media titles have been successful online

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Online-only Fairfax Media titles

• The Vine (young people 18-29 y.o.)• Brisbane Times (Brisbane/S-E Queensland)• WAToday (Perth/Western Australia)• Online classifieds:

– Domain (houses)– My Career (jobs)– Drive (cars)– RSVP (personals/dating)

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Brisbane Times impact in SE Qld. market

• Very successful when launched

• Employs fraction of journalists of incumbent (Courier-Mail)

• Growth has slowed over 2008-09

• Minimal opening up for user-created content

• Dilemma is whether to invest in “hyperlocal” content generation or to be an inferior version of established media

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