THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC MEDIA CULTURES

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THE FUTURE OF PUBLICMEDIA CULTURESNick StevensonPublished online: 02 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: Nick Stevenson (2000) THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC MEDIACULTURES, Information, Communication & Society, 3:2, 192-214, DOI:10.1080/13691180050123703

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T H E F U T U R E O F P U B L I C M E D I A C U L T U R E S

Cosmopolitan Democracy and Ambivalence

Nick Stevenson

University of Shef�eld

A b s t r a c tThis paper seeks to tie in the arguments that can be connected to the developmentof a global media culture and concerns around cosmopolitan forms of democracy.This is done by considering arguments for: (i) a global human right initiative inrespect of global media conglomerates; (ii) technological change in respect ofdigital cultures; and (iii) the arrival of what Castells’s has described as the cultureof ‘real virtuality’. These views and perspectives are assessed in terms of thecontributions they are likely to make towards what I call a ‘cautious cosmo-politanism’. Finally I seek to make some de�nite policy recommendations thatmight help foster conditions in which cosmopolitan democracy could � ourish.

K e y w o r d s

cosmopolitan democracy, ambivalence, global media, humanrights, critical theory

I N T R O D U C T I O N

A series of ambivalences and oppositions make themselves apparent if we considerthe nature of globalized media cultures.1 The �rst, and perhaps most obvious, is the capacity of electronic media to transport images, text and voice throughtime and space opening us to the interrogation or indifference of ‘others’ who live in contexts far removed from our own. The modern media then in certainrespects remind us of the ways we live in a shared planet. However, we only have to consider for a moment the contexts and social settings within which wegather information and this picture is further complicated. For most of us mostof the time we engage with the media in privatized contexts where we arerendered largely passive. The media of mass communications is permanentlycaught between dialogue and fragmentation and engagement and boredom. Theglobal media’s capacity to make us aware of common concerns then is mitigatedby the comparatively isolated contexts within which we make our interpretations.Alternatively we might view this contradiction as falling between the circulationof the knowledge necessary for us to decide upon common norms, rights and

Information, Communication & SocietyISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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Information, Communication & Society 3:2 2000 192–214

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obligations and the rise of the home as an entertainment centre. Add to this thefurther complication that media audiences continue to be fragmented along thelines of taste, class, gender, race, age and nationality in terms of the media theyconsume and the picture that emerges is far removed from McLuhan’s (1994)idea of the global village. The modern media therefore continues to be constitutedthrough dual processes of unification and fragmentation. I shall call this thedialogic problem.

Second, the rapid development of media technologies has increased the volumeof information available, imploded established distinctions between public andprivate, and speeded up the delivery of information more generally. The rapidlyemerging information highways, the multiplication of television channels, theincreasing power of communications conglomerates and the development ofmedia technology are all driven by the instrumental logics of science and pro�t.The question as to whether more channels will enhance our ability to commu-nicate with ourselves about issues worthy of public attention is rarely asked. Againthe ambivalence here is that while we can point to instrumental logics withincommunication, which are contributing to processes of commodi�cation, feelingsof meaninglessness and a wider culture of super� ciality, we can also connect theseprocesses to the problematization of previously repressed areas of social experi-ence. These would include questions of gender and sexual identity, ecologicalquestions and relations between different world regions. I shall call this theproblem of instrumental reason.

As Taylor (1991) has made clear the problem of public recognition versus thesubjective inwards turn, and the problem of instrumental reason as opposed to more hermeneutic concerns can be reconfigured as questions to do with the individual and community, and strategic goal-oriented thinking as opposed to more open-ended forms of conversation. My argument then is not to press theoriginality of these dilemmas but to open out their inevitably ambivalent natures,and to look at the ways in which they have become transformed in heavily mediatedcultures like our own.

To these questions I want to add a third related issue which is the problem of identity. It seems to me that the development of media cultures not only posesquestions concerning dialogic involvement and instrumental reason, but alsoopens up issues connected with identity. This can be understood optimistically inopening out a form of cultural cosmopolitanism where humanity in generalexperiences new forms of cultural openness and engagement with previouslyexcluded others. However such processes can also be understood to stumble onsome of the more enduring features of modernity from the powerful centres ofglobal capitalism to the relative endurance of the national ideal. Again it seems


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to me that in seeking to understand the new communications environment or the development of modernity more generally we need to resist the idea that oneform of media governance will necessarily come to replace another. Here I amquestioning the impulse that makes us want to de� nitely decide questions ratherthan hold them in tension. For example, the development of a multichanneluniverse may well lead to audience fragmentation, the undermining of publicservice ethics and a relative decline in shared television experiences. Yet it mightalso herald new possibilities for local television companies, autonomy with theuse of hand held cameras and videos, more choice for the viewer and make itincreasingly dif� cult for the state to censor debate. We might then equally lookforward to a world which increases the power of large-scale multinationals andwhere new possibilities for interrupting the discourses of the powerful are utilizedby citizens and new social movements alike.

In order to explore these issues further I want to investigate a number ofreactions within the literature to the ambivalences that might be associated withcontemporary media cultures. First, I shall assess the arguments that the globalrecognition of rights to communication (as part of a human rights initiative) wouldempower ordinary people against states and large-scale media conglomerates.Second, I shall investigate the claim that the technological development of internetcultures will lead to an energized and more participatory civil society. Both ofthese positions raise questions in connection with dialogics, instrumental reasonand identity. They differ in that the � rst is primarily a political initiative whereasthe second is largely the result of technological change. Yet both imagine a futurethat has instituted a more substantial notion of democracy, than the time wecurrently inhabit. I want to offer a judgement of the feasibility of these and similarperspectives by considering more pessimistic counter claims. This is done not todismiss the imagination of the two viewpoints out of hand, but to conceive of thefate of media cultures through over optimistic scenarios inevitably invites criticismof a more pessimistic nature. Finally, I shall look at the critical intervention madeby the work of Castells (1996) through the argument that modernity has shiftedinto an age governed by the network society. As we shall see, this perspectiveargues that the coming together of informational capitalism, the decline of statepower and new forms of identity politics are reshaping contemporary social andmedia orders. However, as we shall also see, there remains a ‘democratic de� cit’at the heart of Castells’s thinking.

More centrally, I want to connect questions related to public media cultures,the three different perspectives under review and issues related to cosmopolitanforms of democracy. Following writers like Beck (1998a), Held (1995) andLinklater (1998) I shall argue that without a politically robust cosmopolitan

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culture, global civil society and cosmopolitan institutions we will remain a worldat the mercy of the interests of nation states and economic markets. Democracyhas to become a transnational form of governance by breaking with the culturalhegemony of the state. A cosmopolitan political community would then be basedupon overlapping or multiple citizenships connecting the populace into local,regional, national and global forms of governance. The cosmopolitan polity,guided by the principle of autonomy, would seek to achieve new levels of inter-connectedness to correspond with an increasingly global world. These dimensionsremain vital, surpassing older divisions in the democratic tradition between directand representative democracy by seeking to maximize the principle of autonomyacross a range of different levels. Within this framework therefore the argumentfor a cosmopolitan democracy is guided by the argument that problems such as HIV, ecological questions and poverty are increasingly globally shared concerns.

At stake, in respect of the globalization of the media, are questions such as the power of global media corporations to in� uence the democratic process, thenation’s attempt to divide the world into friends and enemies, the incorporationof different voices, agencies and perspectives from civil society and the promotionof more cosmopolitan orientations amongst the world’s peoples and cultures.While this seems like an agenda worth pursuing, one has to acknowledge that a fully inclusive political and cultural community (however morally desirable)will never arrive (Mouffe 1993). That is, the social and political imaginary is likelyto continue to be characterized by con� ict and division. Cosmopolitan democracyis simultaneously possible and impossible. Such a view breaks with certain utopianideals that seek an end to political antagonism, but places a cosmopolitan agenda(the attempt to renew democracy in a global age) at the centre of our concerns.

H U M A N R I G H T S , S O C I A L M O V E M E N T S A N DG L O B A L M E D I A

One of the most signi� cant moral and political achievements of humanity remainsthe 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The principles laid down in thisdocument recognize that everyone irrespective of national boundaries is entitledto the rights and freedoms held out in the Charter. The Charter has provided thebasis for international law setting out common standards that might reasonablybe expected by all peoples (Falk 1995a). The Charter, in Article 19, contains adefence of the freedom of information and rights of expression, that includes theright to impart and receive information irrespective of frontiers. Article 19 hasprovided the inspiration behind attempts by Third World nations in the 1970s tochallenge western media dominance, and a series of commissions and reports


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that issued declarations on the rights of peoples and the responsibilities of the global media. One such report, by the MacBride Commission, sought to safeguard the rights of journalists to ‘exercise their profession’. That suchrights are no closer to fruition than they were at the time the report was drawnup has been made evident in con� icts from the Gulf War to the genocide in theformer Yugoslavia. More recently Hamelink (1994, 1995) has argued that theglobalization of mass communication has lead to the disempowering of ordinarypeople when it comes to exerting power and control over their communicativeenvironments. Globalization processes have increased the power of large-scalemedia conglomerates and flooded the world with cheap standardized mediaproducts. These processes can only be reversed through a human rights initiativethat enables participation within cultural and political life by providing peopleswith access to information so that they might make autonomous decisions. Thus whereas global media empires are disempowering in that they infringe uponlocal cultural space and privatize access to information, human rights approachestreat knowledge as a collectively owned common good to be shared, debated and contributed to by equal citizens. The reduction in cultural space enables theWest to control the � ow of information and disempower ‘other’ peoples fromdeveloping their own sense of identity.

Starting from local networks the world’s peoples are encouraged to search for alternative sources of information exchange that emerge underneath the disciplinary power of the state and the commercial imperatives that governglobal media empires. The development of a genuine people’s media throughcommunity radio and newspapers and the burgeoning of a people’s communitynetwork over the Internet could form the beginning of local and global sourcesof information that provide alternative sources of communication. Politically we can afford to be optimistic about such movements due to the revolt of civilsociety. By this Hamelink means that alternative networks of communication willarise along with social movements like ecology and feminism. The emergence ofa ‘double citizenship’ or what Albrow (1996) has termed ‘performative citizen-ship’ means that such movements point to a new form of politics that seeks to link national internal struggles to more global levels of interconnection. As a � rststep in building upon these civic initiatives, Hamelink proposes the worldwideadoption of what he calls a ‘People’s Communication Charter’. The main aim ofthe charter is to raise the awareness of individuals and social movements as to theshared importance of securing both human and cultural rights. The charter thenbuilds upon Article 19 of the 1948 Declaration by granting people rights to freelyform an opinion, gain information, enter into public discussion, distributeknowledge, protect their cultural identity and participate in a shared public


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culture among others. The idea then is to make this both a movement of non-governmental forces (groups such as Amnesty, CND, Greenpeace, etc.) and tohave the charter adopted by the UN.

The most obvious and immediate objections to such arguments are that thedeclaration of human rights are not legally enforceable, and without the reformof the UN’s itself such charters have historically had little impact. The ‘People’sCommunication Charter’ on this cynical view ends up adding to the meaning-less pieces of paper that are produced by the UN’s bureaucracy. These proposalscould be further criticized in that they are unlikely to have any lasting impact onthe dominant rationale and structures of the global media. Such argumentshowever are as insightful as they are mistaken about the politics of human rightsand their connection to questions of cosmopolitan democracy and the media ofmass communication.

The first point to make is that the widespread acceptance of a ‘People’sCommunication Charter’ is not solely dependent upon its ability to produce legal effects. Like other human rights, that are widely accepted amongst non-governmental organizations, its ‘cultural’ existence gives groups something to appeal to and build a social struggle around. It is undeniable that in terms of its perceived moral legitimacy of such a process would be greatly enhanced ifthe charter were accepted by the UN. This would then give new social movementsa platform on which to perform a form of immanent critique whereby signatoriescould be embarrassed by their refusal to uphold the principles they had formallyagreed. Human rights documents in this respect are important in that they helpcreate a set of general political and cultural expectations which – when violated– potentially attract the attention of the media and political movements alike.There are of course no guarantees in this respect, but if movements for socialchange are able to point to international treaties or other collectively agreeddocuments it will aid them in making interventions into the global televisualarena. The argument being proposed here is that the economic (wealth andresources), political (in� uence over public policy) and cultural (modelling stocksof discourses and concepts) power of the new media order is such that an inter-national recognition of peoples rights in respect of information exchange couldindeed have an empowering effect upon the interrelation between local, nationaland more global public spheres.

The other argument is that without the reform of the UN and the eventualevolution of a global system of governance such resolutions are unlikely to havemuch impact. Indeed it is signi� cant that while media, economics and securitysystems have become globalized the institutional organization of democracyremains very much on the level of the nation state. In this view, the UN, if


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drastically reformed, could be the forerunner of a global parliament. This couldbe an integrated structure dependent upon local, regional and national bodies� nally leading to the global level. If such a demand seems somewhat utopian inthe present climate, we could begin this process by reforming the UN. Suchreforms might include, the empowerment of poorer nations in the SecurityCouncil, the alteration of the veto system, the creation of a new Human Rightscourt that did not proceed on an ad hoc basis etc. The argument here would bethat each age has had to rework democracy to � t speci� c social and historicalcontexts. Direct democracy worked in Athens as it was based on small homoge-neous communities, national representative democracy was appropriate in thatit came along with the rise of the national capitalism and nation states, whereas a global age requires a global government and democracy. Further, we mightcontinue, direct democracy implies a mostly oral public-sphere of face to facerelations, national democracy evolved along with print securing national‘imagined’ communities, and what McLuhan would term the ‘electric’ age, makespossible political participation that is less dependent upon physical space and more truly global than ever before. Held (1993,1995), for example, argues thatso called Westphalian models of governance (based upon national sovereignty) has been displaced by a UN charter model which recognises that peoples haverights irrespective of their national citizenship. These universal human rightswhich should be shared by everyone on the planet offers a direct challenge to the notion that nations set the internal standards by which they are judged. Of course there is no international law requiring states to directly apply theserights; states can opt out of these treaties (a number of nations in fact refused tosign the 1948 document, including South Africa and the countries of the formerEastern bloc) and human rights treaties contain considerable leeway for speci-� cally national solutions (Archibugi 1995). However, despite these restraints, we currently occupy an ill-defined zone between a world where nation stateswere all powerful and more global forms of governance. Held suggests that insteadof looking upon the UN as the outdated relic of the post-war era, we think of itanew as offering possibilities with regard to global democracy. Indeed what he proposes is the eventual implementation of a global cosmopolitan order whichis built upon local, regional, national and global levels of representation andgovernment. The cosmopolitan order could seek to instigate a more equitabledistribution of goods globally, put limits on a nation’s capacity to wage warfare,co-ordinate ecological initiatives and enforce internationally agreed standards forthe functioning of the media. This would give charters such as the one proposedby Hamelink more active purchase on the structuration of political institutionsand practice.


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On the other hand, Falk (1995b) argues that a global parliament wouldprobably serve the interests of global capital. What is actually required, he argues,is a deeper more normative commitment to democratic principles, and theradicalization of society through the acceptance of already agreed upon UNprinciples. In this respect, Falk treats democracy not just as a set of institutions,but as a binding ethical commitment. To be committed to democracy is to becommitted to a set of norms which include reciprocity, listening, respect,responsibility and the recognition of difference. Of course these values do notexist outside of institutional structures, but neither are they likely to be usheredin by simply setting up new tiers of government. The rebirth of a more substantivedemocratic media then can-not be assumed to be the simple ‘effect’ of humanrights treaties or programmes of institution-building. Yet there is no reason whycosmopolitan initiatives should not both seek to breathe new life into democraticforms of life, while simultaneously building new institutions. My view at least isthat cosmopolitanism would soon become an empty technocratic phenomenonunless it also remains open to democracy as a deliberative ideal (Miller 1993;Giddens 1994).

Yet the faith that we might have in the ‘People’s Communication Charter’ thenis undermined not so much by the trust it places in institutions as in people’sinitiatives generally. Civil society is currently made up of organizations which aim to reinstate patriarchy, ethnic nationalists, religious fundamentalists and all kinds of other causes that Hamelink would � nd himself out of sympathy with.This begs the question as to whether a charter that emphasises the ‘right’ to beheard can really solve the communicative crisis within civil society today. Thissituation is exaggerated by the fact that Hamelink’s manifesto fails to address what I shall call the ‘cultural’ question and notions of communicative obligation.The ‘cultural’ question remains how we go about imaginatively loosening thegrip that the nation continues to have upon popularly constructed horizons. Thefate of ‘other’ peoples is still extremely difficult to convert into a rallying point for change. People dying in far away countries are unlikely to become afocus for change, in the way running down ‘our’ welfare system or poisoning‘our’ people could be. For most of the people most of the time notions of community remain local and national. Paradoxically it remains a ‘real’ cosmo-politan political question as to how social movements might re-imagine relationsof solidarity in an admittedly increasingly interconnected world. There areevidently new possibilities emerging in this respect with regard to new commu-nications, diasporic population movements and the growth of tourism, but itremains an open question as to what kind of global civil society will come torepresent such dimensions. How might a cosmopolitan perspective respond


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to such questions? We can perhaps take heart from the fact that just as the sexeshave only just begun to problematize how they communicate with one anotherthe same could be said of different world regions. The demand that we understandrather than dominate one another occupies a comparatively short period in the history of humanity. Viewed optimistically we could all be on the cusp of amore globally informed cosmopolitan citizenship. However, as I have maintainedthroughout, without our political efforts, there are just as many good reasons forthinking that the so-called global age could be equally marked by more insularforms of imagining. Second, the media charter’s discussion of rights irrespectiveof obligations would, given the diverse rather than harmonious nature of civilsociety, not necessarily improve the quality of debate. The inclusion of morevoices in an already noisy global village may have the positive bene�t of gettingmore people heard, but actually achieve little by the way of reflexive under-standing.

My argument is then that we are some way off seeing the fully-� edged cosmo-politan development of a global public sphere underpinned by widely recognizedrights to communication. More likely are other developments whereby theagendas of commercial global media are interrupted by human rights groupingsin a struggle for recognition, world regional organizations asserting their right tointervene in the regulation of public communications and the nation continuingto dominate the collective imagination. This is, if you like, the ground upon whichthe cosmopolitan imagination has to work. That is, cosmopolitans need tochallenge agendas which seek to move against the formation of international law,the development of peaceful dialogue free of damaging stereotypes, and seek toaf�rm other principles such as self-determination and a commitment to humanrights more generally.

T E C H N O C U L T U R E S , M E D I A A N D C O M M U N I T Y

Current debates in respect of the development of new media technologies havea strong overlap with questions that are currently being asked about the nature of community. The media of mass communication is rapidly diversifying just at the point when old communal relations are increasingly open to question. Are new media technologies responsible for undermining a sense of communityby robbing people of participatory public spaces or are they the sites where morediversi� ed relations of solidarity can be made? Crudely we can divide argumentsin respect of the effects and transformations brought about by new media into opposing optimistic and pessimistic schools of thought. The pessimistspropose that the development of new media technologies can be coupled with the continuation of modernity and the destruction of communal forms of


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identi� cation and the progressive privatization and commodi� cation of publiclife. On the other hand, more post-modern frames see the emergence of theInternet, video, mobile phones and portable stereos as opening out newpossibilities for voices that have been traditionally excluded from public cultures.New, more affective attachments can be formed through underground networks,fan magazines, MUD sites and phone chat lines. Unlike traditional communitiesin which ‘individual’s’ are born into ‘co-present’ local relations; so called post-modern communities are more likely to be the result of ‘individual’ choice andthe product of mediation. Whereas one set of critics views the global triumph of capital as destroying the communal identi� cations that allow people to resistcapitalism; the other views community as a more � uid site and a potential placeof radical politics. To overstate the point, where one set of critics is mournful at the passing of old ties the other is celebratory in the hope that new ones mightbe made. To unpack these viewpoints. The pessimist’s camp houses a widespectrum of political viewpoints from old style radicals to cultural conservatives.For instance, Stallabrass (1996) argues the super information highway and cyberspace will not offer a utopian domain of free communication, but the perfectmarketplace that can operate through space and time at the � ick of a switch. Thosewho are currently excited about the future possibilities of the Internet are failingto ask who will control the information, work out to whom it is going to be madeavailable and in whose interests it is likely to be run. The answers to these ques-tions are all traceable back to the needs of global capitalism. For instance, so calledvirtual communities are places built upon irony and play unlike real communitieswhich are places of obligation and responsibility. If within cyberspace we are ableto disguise our identities this effectively denies the possibility of a genuinelydemocratic communicative exchange, where the particularity of the ‘other’ hasto be engaged with. Instead it creates a ‘kingdom of information, whose palatialhalls we may wander without fear, free from chaos, dirt and obscurity’ (Stallabras1996: 67). Cyberspace becomes a zone of irresponsible consumption where thepoor will never appear as subjects in their own right and only very occasionallyas ‘objects’ for discussion. Indeed the desire to create ‘virtual’ communities overthe web both points to the disappearance of ‘real’ communal relations beingtrampled under the atomising effect of commodity capital, and to the fact thathumans desperately need a sense of belonging and will create it with whatevertools they currently have to hand. The human need and desire for community is what is being currently manipulated by the advocates of cyber solutions. Thedemocratic and communal potential of much of the new media turns out to bean old con trick performed by capitalism’s need for ever expanding new marketsand enthusiastic consumers.


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However, as I have indicated, technological pessimism is not restricted to theMarxist left. From a markedly different political perspective, Gray (1995a, b)has similarly argued that the belief that technology is going to renew ourcommunities, solve ethical problems, and radically democratize our sharedpolitical world is the worst kind of utopian thinking. Communities are notsomething we change on a whim but are relatively enduring spaces of belongingand identification. The real political problem, and this is a view similar to one presented above, is that traditional communities are being destroyed by the excesses of free market liberalism. The solution to this does not lie in thereinvention of class politics, but with the renewal of social democracy that aimsto preserve and rethink community in a global age. Cyberspace, on this reading,is little more than a privatized comfort zone we retreat into to avoid increasinglydangerous public places. The image being presented here is not one of tech-nologies modelling society, but of the reverse. New media technologies are linkedto instrumental reason, processes of commodification and the individualisticretreat from the public more generally. Rather than becoming actively involvedin our communities we have retreated into the cosy privacy of the home.

Signi�cantly, the development of new communications technologies has beenread differently by writers who occupy less traditional frames of reference.Maffesoli (1996) questions the pessimistic projections of those who are concernedwith the fragmentation and privatization of the modern subject. He does this byarticulating a notion of the subject that is continually searching for emotionalconnection with intersubjectively related others. Maffesoli rejects the idea of theisolated individual split away from others through the operation of mass culture,and points to what he calls the ‘tribalization’ of the social. By this he means thatthrough the creation of football teams, self-help groups, friendship networks,Internet sites and religious associations individuals are increasingly likely to belongto a number of diverse and contradictory communities. What we are currentlywitnessing therefore is the de-individualization of modernity and the growth ofmore affective communities based less on utilitarian notions of self-interest thanon sociality. The new tribes are based upon shared sentiments, whether they areregular visitors of an Internet site, readers of a football fanzine or even occasionalviewers of a soap opera. These new emotional communities are constructed moreupon � eeting identi� cation and periodic warmth than the stability of traditionalties. Hence the argument here is not so much to bemoan the ways in whichcapitalism has destroyed traditional forms of association as to investigate thecreative ways in which social solidarity might be imagined in the late modern age.

Similarly the advent of digital television, according to its most enthusiasticsupporters, will rapidly expand the sheer amount of information available and


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provide greater interactive involvement for the viewer. Digital butlers will order and sort this information as the new smart television sets ‘learn’ about the preferences of their viewers. This promises no more boring nights at home slumped in front of the box, but an interactive universe where we mightspend the evening e-mailing a loved one in Australia, downloading material from the Washington Post or creating our own camera angles at a Derby Countyhome game (Gilder 1992, Negroponte 1994). In addition, the Internet due to itsless centralized and hierarchical nature opens new possibilities for oppositionalvoices to heard. This is largely due to the fact that computer cultures, unlike the more traditional ‘big media’, are based upon a two-way � ow of informationand consequently are structured in less hierarchical ways (Rheingold 1994,Kellner 1995). The public sphere then becomes progressively unfrozen the morethat technological advance allows for greater forms of participation by citizens.The Internet is exciting precisely because it disrupts existing regimes of powerand knowledge, whether this is within the academy or decentring the power ofthe previously powerful media in the public sphere.

What is immediately noticeable about this debate is that the new media is subversive for the optimists for the same reasons that the pessimists find ittroubling. For instance, whereas Stallabras (1996) bemoans the amount of junkand trash to be found on the World Wide Web, Plant (1996) � nds the Internetliberating precisely because it bypasses the usual gatekeepers of public culture. Thepessimists read the Internet as developing an individualistic withdrawal from thepublic, an acquisitive attitude towards commodities and the delights of consump-tive freedom rather than deeper forms of social responsibility. For the optimistsnew media technology helps open new forms of critical engagement, makes publicparticipation a real possibility (given the passing of old style, one-way � ow media)and fosters new forms of belonging. What is perhaps surprising is that criticaltheory with a tradition of dialectical reason and an awareness of the impoverishednature of thinking in binarisms can be so easily divided between optimists andpessimists in this way. My argument is in part that this sort of polarized thinkingactually exhibits a fear of the future. The modernists cynically feel that the pastwill continue to grind on through the present in such a way that the future simplybecomes the endless repetition of commodi� cation, technological reason andother features, which can all be associated with modernity. On the other hand,the post-modern view denies the more depressive aspects of social reality byseparating them from the revolution about to be accomplished, less throughhuman agency than through technological modelling. To borrow the metaphorsof lightness and weight from Kundera (1994) the view that the future is actuallythe continuation of the past represents a heaviness through which history endlessly


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repeats itself. This closes down the prospect of human contingency. The otherargument that new media cultures will liberate the future from the past appearsto be light when it is actually heavy. By this I mean that the future is not so muchviewed as an open possibility, but as already predestined. My point is not so muchthat both perspectives continue to have something to offer – this much is obvious;more that each viewpoint attempts to colonize the future, deadening itself frommore ambivalent possibilities. As psychoanalytic writers have pointed out, to be a mature subject is to have an awareness of the ways we have been written by wider narratives as well maintaining a sense of the future that is open to thatwhich is new and ‘other’ (Bollas 1994, Elliott 1996). The message here is thatwhether or not the development of new communications technologies offers new opportunities for social control or the revitalization of democratic life, willbe decided by wider political and social developments. While both sides of theargument raise substantive views, it is as if they have allowed themselves to de� nedby the discourse of the other, and in doing so have robbed us of a future de� nedby political agency.

A cosmopolitan perspective would then, as I argued earlier, need to avoidbecoming either overly optimistic or pessimistic with regard to technologicalchange. Cosmopolitans need to point, on the one hand, to the evident dangersof a future politics that expects a diversified public sphere to be delivered bytechnological change. Beck (1995) has argued that citizens need to be on theirguard against the possible emergence of an ‘authoritarian technocracy’. That is,rather than a re-activated public sphere being introduced by technology, it is justas likely to have the opposite effect. Democratic dialogue alternatively needs tointroduce into its repertoires the principles of doubt and uncertainty.Cosmopolitans, on the other hand, should also be prepared to utilize the manypotential bene� ts of a more disordered communications universe, offering as theydo new spaces for debate and re� ection. In particular, cosmopolitans would needto be open to the many possibilities for new forms of global interconnection thatnew media may help us to construct.

M A N U E L C A S T E L L S , T H E M E D I A A N D C R I T I C A LT H E O R Y

Castells (1996, 1997, 1998) has come the closest, of recent writers, in openingsome of the important political features of contemporary media cultures.Arguably, unlike the perspectives presented thus far, Castells outlines a view of contemporary media cultures that both deconstructs the polarities of the earlier discussion while connecting them to processes of substantial socialtransformation. Castells, as we have already seen, argues that the emergent


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‘information society’ is primarily born out of the changing relationship betweenglobal capitalism, the state and new social movements. However he is equallyclear that the development of new media, the diversi�cation of media messages,the implosion of politics and the media, and the development of the politics of‘scandal’ have all had far reaching effects upon the public sphere. The effects of these dimensions are multifarious and move in more than one direction.Television in particular and the media in general have become central and de� ninginstitutions in modern society. Castells illustrates this by pointing to the fact that television currently frames the language and types of symbolic exchange that help de� ne society. Unless a social movement, set of ideas, or commercialproduct appears on television it may as well not exist. From the advertising jingles we hum on the way to work to our opinions on the government’s latest set of social policies the media frames our sets of common understandings,knowledges and languages. The media then does not so much determine politicalagendas, but provides the background and context to political and social struggles.The centrality of modern communications in contemporary culture thereforedoes not deliver a mass culture, but what Castells calls a culture of ‘real virtuality’.The idea of a mass culture has now been surpassed by a media environment wheremessages are explicitly customized to the symbolic languages of the intendedaudience. The future will not so much be governed by a homogenous, massproduced culture repressing human diversity, but by a diversi� ed popular culturewhere competitive advantage comes through product differentiation and audiencesegmentation. For Castells (1996) ‘we are not living in a global village, but incustomised cottages globally produced and locally distributed’.

The newly emergent information society then is characterized by a mediaculture that is more individuated and less homogenous than before. Further, the culture of ‘real virtuality’ opens out a world where popular moralities and perceptions shaped by soap operas can have as much, if not greater, impacton modern sensibilities as the moral strictures of politicians. Indeed, we can probably think of numerous examples where the ‘popular’ and the ‘political’have become irreversibly intertwined. This might invoke soap operas raisingpolitical questions, the development of so called ‘info-tainment’, politiciansreceiving media training, protests deliberately designed to attract maximummedia exposure and the development of the art of media spin doctoring. Takentogether these aspects and others speak of a new media and cultural environmentthat presses the case that unless you are in the media then you are not in politics.Seemingly for Castells then the new media politics can foster both domination andpatterns of resistance. Here I shall open out two such examples from the manythat appear in Castell’s three volume study; they are the politics of scandal and


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some of the avenues social movements have explored by utilizing new mediatechnologies.

Scandal politics develops within the general context of an increasingly televisualsociety that has come to the fore against a backdrop where political concerns are frequently played out and reported as a cynical and strategic game. Thisprivileges the presentation of political issues in a fast-paced and punchy style that in turn prioritizes the culture of the sound bite. Further, the visualization andcorresponding trivialization of political issues through television gives an addedemphasis to the ‘personalities’ rather than the substantive issues at stake in politicaldebate. Television then produces a kind of binary politics where complex positionsare boiled down into digestible categories. The personalization of politics and thedecline of ideological contrasts between the major political parties produces the grounds for the central forms of struggle in the age of informational politics.In an era where moral and ethical distinctions between political parties are beingreplaced by more instrumental forms of maneuvering that seek to interruptthemes and positions previously occupied by opposing political parties, the whiffof scandal can create a sense of political division and untrustworthiness. The factthat major political parties are both involved in expensive forms of image makingwhile being simultaneously chronically underfunded makes them increasinglylikely to accept money under the table. Once this form of corruption becomescentral to the organization of mainstream politics this then provides ammunitionfor journalists and opposing political forces to expose corruption at the highestlevel. Scandal politics, therefore, becomes a daily threat if not an occurrence.

Although Castells brackets off the analysis here it is not hard to imagine a situ-ation in the future whereby political parties seek to attract support by constructingagendas and political teams that are ‘above’ scandal. Yet, if Castells is correct, suchattempts are likely to prove fruitless. We might even further extend this argumentby pointing to the future possible development of a kind of ‘scandal fatigue’amongst the electorate. Just as the reporting of distant wars, famines and humanrights abuses arguably has fostered compassion fatigue; so scandal fatigue couldequally lead to an unshockable form of cynical indifference amongst the vastmajority of the population. Scandal fatigue then would open out a situationwhereby the public sphere became drained of meaning and politics detached fromwider questions of value. However, if Castells retreads familiar themes withincritical theory demonstrating how media politics have become detachment fromideological positions these agendas are in turn seemingly interrupted by a varietyof social movements from below. Castells (1997) characterizes a variety of socialmovements as developing highly skilful media techniques in developing largelyreactive and defensive responses to economic globalization. By this he means that


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the movements under review do not so much articulate a vision of a futureemancipated society, but a more conservative attempt to preserve current socialidentities. For example, the Zapatistas in Mexico (who Castells describes as the� rst informational guerrilla movement) made skilful use of image manipulation(videos, Internet, etc.) to convert a small local struggle for dignity, democracyand land into a movement that has caught the attention of international publicopinion. Indeed the Zapatistas’s media connections made it impossible for theMexican government to use the state apparatus to forcibly repress their move-ment. This brings out one of the distinctive features of the network society: thatis, while the concentration of power and wealth is increasingly distinct from localcontexts our collective forms of meaning are more ready to hand. The task of anyoppositional movement must be to connect local experiences to a more globalagenda, and absolutely crucial in this process is the media of mass communication,given its capacity to shift information through time and space.

Castells argues that new media technology can contribute to the building ofnetworks amongst new social movements that might serve to reinforce relationsof dominance or alternatively call them into question. This picture is furthercomplicated elsewhere in discussing who actually uses the Internet. Here Castellsasserts that new media technologies reinforce existing social structures ratherthan transforming them. For instance, because access to the Internet is dependentupon economic and educational factors it is likely to reinforce the cosmopolitanorientation of social elites, rather than destroying social hierarchies in the way thatsome commentators had been expecting. New media technologies thereforesimultaneously reinforce relations of cultural capital, hierarchy and distinctionwhile enabling social movements to publicize campaigns and connect with distantpublics.

My argument therefore is that Castells’s concern for the cultural conditions of the public sphere in the informational age offers a more substantive agendathan questions simply linked to the granting of additional rights and the tracingthrough of the ‘effects’ of technological change. Further, he breaks with the view that we can coherently view the development of new media cultures in any straightforward way through the axis of domination or emancipation. InsteadCastells’s complex reading of modern informational cultures points towards amore nuanced position that views the evolution of media cultures and technolo-gies in a structured � eld capable of being transformed by political agency.

By viewing Castells in terms of the tradition of critical theory we might argue that he takes a less ‘pessimistic turn’ than is evident in Habermas (1989)and the early Frankfurt school. What Castells most clearly provides is a socialand historical understanding of the emergence of the ‘information society’. Like


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Adorno and Horkheimer’s (1973) account of the culture industry and Habermas’snotion of the public sphere the ‘informational society’ opens out a new criticalparadigm. Yet if one of the main agendas of critical theory is present others areabsent. Missing from Castells’s account is a more normative analysis that wouldprovide us with a critical standpoint from which to evaluate social change. In answer to this charge I think Castells would make two responses. The � rst, isthat implicit in much of what he says there is an agenda that seeks to map out thepossibilities for democracy and social justice. Second, that it is not for ‘experts’like him to hand down blue prints for social change; the history of actually existedsocialism has surely put paid to the desirability (or even feasibility) of gettingsocial reality to conform to the wishes of the intellectual vanguard. Such reasonsarguably cut critical theory off from moral and ethical questions. To put the pointbluntly, if it is worth arguing that the public sphere is becoming increasinglyinfected by a form of cynical reason and ‘show’ politics it is also worth makingsome broad suggestions on how we might begin to construct an alternative.Further if the media is becoming increasingly central to the self-definition of democratic societies then radical change will only come through citizensincreasing their involvement and participation within wider media cultures. Thequestion as to how democratic societies help foster public involvement as opposedto private withdrawal, communicative concerns as opposed to instrumentalstrategies and publicly engaged pluralistic identities as opposed to passivelyconstituted cultures is central to the concerns of critical theory. In doing this we should indeed avoid adopting the legislative ambitions of the expert, while also side stepping thinking that fails to open new critical possibilities. It is not that Castells believes that the world could not be otherwise, but that he missesthe implications a moral and ethical agenda could have for media and culture. IfCastells opens out a more complex view of the media’s position in modern societythan was evident in the other perspectives under review he also fails to develop a more normative response to many of the problems and questions that he helps identify.

However, these questions aside, Castells poses some dif�cult issues for thoseseeking to promote a cosmopolitan agenda. How do we ensure cosmopolitanorientations become more widely spread within society? Is it the case that thoseof a cosmopolitan orientation are most likely to be found amongst elites, withinglobal cities and in fields such as education? How might more cosmopolitandispositions become an ordinary part of everyday life? These questions areparticularly pressing given the emphasis Castells places upon social movementsas ‘reactions’ to globalization. While I cannot answer these questions in full theyserve as a warning, as we shall see, against cosmopolitan programmes which are


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overly abstracted from the cultural complexities of the modern world. Castellsposes key questions to thinkers like Held (1995) and Linklater (1998) who main-tain an overly Kantian concern with the moral justification of cosmopolitandemocracy.

A S H O R T A G E N D A F O R A C O S M O P O L I T A NM E D I A O R D E R

The importance of a moral and ethical dimension in media politics need not be seen as either turning away from the world into the comfortable certainties ofthe study or as pointless given the prevailing culture of cynicism and the abandon-ment of ideology by the main political forces. While it is true that relativisticthinking, a sense of meaninglessness, the dominance of money and power andtechnological reason remain determinant features of modernity; other questionsand opportunities remain. New social movements, mainstream political parties,the pervasive culture of human rights, new domains of re�exivity are just someof the forces keeping moral and ethical questions alive. Just as the ‘end of ideology’theorists in the 1960s had to revise their proclamations due to the revival ofMarxism, the same can also be said of Fukuyama’s more recent arguments thatwe have reached the ‘end of history’. Fukuyama (1992) argues that ideologicalcon� ict has been brought to an end by the collapse of state socialism and the global triumph of liberal democracy. If these arguments were applied to the mediathen the increasing dominance of the market over the censorious state would have ensured equal rights to communication and equal forms of recognition. Myargument is not only is this not the case, but that more rights, technologicaladvance, and the capitalistic expansion of the market does not necessarily lead us to understand the points of view of strangers any better than we did before.How to make a society more genuinely communicative is I think the central moraland ethical dilemma concerning the study of mass communications today.Arguably then we might have a really good bill of rights protecting free speech,widespread access to the most sophisticated media technology available and the greatest range of media products in human history to choose from but stillremain an uncommunicative society. Indeed one of the key questions we have todecide is the extent to which as a community we are willing to put limits on thedetermination of communications by economic and technical reason. Multi-channel access, digitally enhanced television and a fast moving sound bite culturemight serve our interests as consumers, but as cosmopolitan citizens it leavesmany questions unanswered. Further the revitalization of our communicativesensibilities requires a cultural politics that is more communitarian than liberalin focus. That is, if the revitalization of our culture is not to be secured through


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guaranteed rights and slicker forms of technology, it will have to come througha reworking of civil society, journalistic practices and the dominant media insti-tutions. In this context, I use the term communitarian guardedly in wishing todistance myself from much of the illiberal and generally repressive talk that goeson under its mantle2. However, I would want to point to the importance that thistradition continues to place upon ideas of overlapping communities, the criticalquestion of obligations as opposed to rights and the key importance of civil society.These questions, I would argue, are also key in respect of the model of cosmo-politan democracy I have been seeking to critically defend. For example, Held’s(1995) account places a considerable amount of emphasis upon the argument thatdemocracy can only be sustained in the modern world if a range of issues – fromglobal poverty to ecology – which escape the control of the nation state can be brought back under the control of political institutions. In other words, theproblem is that many forms of governance, such as the global media, currentlyescape the rule of law and impartial forms of rule. As we have seen, cosmopolitansurgently need to find new forms of democracy that are no longer exclusively tied to the nation state. These insights necessarily move Held into the realm ofinstitution building and a consideration of the world regional and global forms of democracy that may be appropriate to this end. The problem here is that thisneglects a range of cultural and social questions that are central to issues relatedto cosmopolitan democracy. Cosmopolitanism as a cultural idea needs to be linkedinto notions of urbanity, living with difference and a healthy respect for ‘other-ness’. However these dimensions need to be discursively and emotionallyimagined. In other words, how might we begin the process of nudging the worlda little more in this direction? How, if you like, do people begin the process ofthinking and feeling like cosmopolitans? How might cosmopolitan sensibilitiesbe promoted in communities that are based upon the increased global mobilityof some and the more place-speci� c identities of others? These are all questionsthat necessarily tie the issue of cosmopolitan democracy into the more culturalagenda I have sought to open here. While many of these issues remain open, I wantto make some brief suggestions as to how we might link questions of cosmo-politanism and the need to develop a more genuinely communicative society.There are, I think, in respect of public media cultures, four broad areas we mighttarget for critical forms of intervention.

Respo nsi b i l i t y and Par t icp at ion

The � rst point is to open out an ethic of responsibility and participation in respectof contemporary media and communication within society more generally. Themedia in terms of the range of voices that interrogate one another should be a zone


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of peaceful activity. One of the primary ways in which we act ethically is in the ways we choose to communicate with one another. This means that when weenter the public domain we are always seeking to judge the � ne line between ourrights to speak and our obligations to other members of the community. Whilesuch practices are likely to remain fraught with ambivalence all mature societieswill have to learn to live with the messiness of contradictory opinions andperspectives that are voiced across a diversity of channels of communication. As far as possible the mainstream media need to become channels of ‘inclusion’in terms of the overlapping cultural patterns that are allowed to interrogate oneanother. In this sense democratic communities can not afford to be ‘agnostic’ interms of the cultural capabilities of their citizens. The promotion of a vibrant civilsociety is perhaps above all dependent upon the communicative capacity of itsinhabitants. However despite attempts to promote civil exchange (that can belinked to literacy campaigns and how the education system teaches citizenship)there will undoubtedly be groups that need to be excluded. What Beck (1998b)calls ‘ugly citizens’ are likely to use alternative/unof� cial methods of informationexchange to promote a sense of in-group identity and cohesion. The point hereis for public systems of communication to keep the dialogue ‘open’ in the hopethat rogue citizens will rejoin the conversation at a future date.

Sc i ent i f ic Journa l ism

Scienti� c journalism needs to be held to question, not only in terms of traditionalnotions of bias, but also in respect of the promotion of re� exivity. The medianeeds to be opened up as far as possible in order to make sure ‘alternative’ voicesget heard while simultaneously making clear that any picture of a society(especially when it is distant from our own) is always partial. A democratic andcosmopolitan public sphere then depends upon how others spatially distant fromthe local contexts in which we live are represented in mainstream media.Journalistic culture therefore needs to become oriented less around the searchfor objective factual statements (as important as this remains) and more aroundopening up critical questions for discussion. Media professionals therefore willneed to search for new repertoires to stimulate re� ection rather than adhering to well-worn stereotypes. The promotion of a culture of critical engagement and doubt requires that journalists view themselves less as purveyors of hardtruths and more as interpreters of knowledges. This is particularly important for cosmopolitans, who are well aware the role that negative stereotyping canplay in fostering both ‘indifference’ to suffering and hostility towards others.


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Pub l ic Serv ice Broad cast ing

Western European societies continue to maintain a shared tradition of publicservice broadcasting. Despite the growth of new and alternative technologies inrespect of media cultures the culture of public service is likely to remain a key site.Television remains a more powerful medium at this point in history than all of theother media combined. New pressures in terms of audience share, increasingcompetition and the multiplication of new channels is all placing public servicebroadcasting under pressure. Yet reports of its demise are much exaggerated.The culture of public service broadcasting continues to have strong supporters in elite circles and needs to be robustly maintained. This is likely to become more rather than less important given the cultural standards and guarantees thatcontinue to regulate public service channels. That is, public forms of media remainwell positioned to serve a possible cosmopolitan age, but only if they are able toeffectively challenge state-centric views and promote genuinely inclusive and‘inter-national’ forms of dialogue.

Transnat ion a l Governance

The move towards more transnationl levels of governance (prefigured in the EU) should open the question as to the regulation of the global media. Thereshould be increasing concern as to the quality and type of information that isregularly crossing the boundaries of nation states. The kind of regulation requiredwill depend upon the different histories, traditions and sociological make up ofthe societies in question. For instance, in the European context the threat to mediaand cultural diversity is posed by large media conglomerates commercializingpublic space and creating new exclusions on the basis of price. However differentproblems in respect of media cultures face different world regions. For instance,in many African nations the crucial moral questions in terms of the public spherecould not be posed in terms of the colonization of communication by economicand instrumental reason. Instead other problems such as the underdevelopmentof civil society and exclusion from certain mediums of communication such as thetelevision and the Internet remain central (Stevenson 1999). Again this is an issuethat could be pro� tably taken up by different levels of governance including thepooling of sovereignty amongst African states and the UN.

These proposals are necessarily brief and are intended to point towards possiblefuture debates rather than being explanatory in their own terms. What they pointtowards is a future public debate that takes questions of cosmopolitan democracyin the context of communications seriously. Such a venture, as I have sought toargue, would need to be guided by the principles of cosmopolitanism, while being


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aware of the many con� icts and ambivalences such a project would inevitablybring to light.

Nick StevensonUniversity of Shef�eld

LG13 Elm�eldNorthumberland Road

Shef�eld, UKn.stevenson@shef�eld.ac.uk

N O T E S

1 A very different version of this paper appears in Stevenson (1999).2 If anyone requires an illustration of this point I suggest they read some of Etzioni’s (1999)

comments on the need to be more censorious in respect of the � lm industry and the re-intro-duction of public shaming.

R E F E R E N C E S

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Beck, U. (1995) Ecological Politicsin an Age of Risk, Cambridge: Polity Press.Beck, U. (1998a) ‘The cosmopolitan manifesto’, New Statesman 20 March

1998.Beck, U. (1998b) Democracy without Enemies, Cambridge: Polity.Bollas, C. (1994) Being a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self Experience, London:

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Society and Culture, Oxford: Blackwell.Castells, M. (1997) The Power of Identity; The Information Age: Economy, Society

and Culture, Vol 2, Oxford: Blackwell.Castells, M. (1998) End of Millennium; The Information Age: Economy, Society and

Culture, Vol 3, Oxford: Blackwell.Elliott, A. (1996) Subject to ourselves: Social theory, Psychoanalysis and

Postmodernity, Polity Press: Cambridge.Etzioni, A. (1999) The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic

Society, London: Pro� le.Falk, R. (1995a) ‘The world order between inter-state law and the law of

humanity: the role of civil society instituions’, in D. Archibugi and D. Held(eds) Cosmopolitan Democracy, Polity Press: Cambridge, pp. 163–179.

Falk, R. (1995b) On Humane Governance: Towards a new Global Politics, Cambridge:Polity Press.

Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, London: HamishHamilton.

Giddens, A. (1994) Beyond Left and Right, Cambridge: Polity Press.


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Gilder, G. (1992) Life After Television, New York: Norton.Gray, J. (1995a) ‘The sad side of cyberspace’, The Guardian, 10 April.Gray, J. (1995b) ‘Virtual democracy’, The Guardian, 15 September.Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,

Cambridge: Polity Press.Hamelink, C. (1994) The Politics of World Communication; A Human Rights Perspective,

London: Sage.Hamelink, C. (1995) World communication; Disempowerment and Self-Empowerment,

London: Zed Books.Held, D. (1993) ‘Democracy: from city-states to a cosmopolitan order?’, in

D. Held (ed.) Prospects for Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press.Held, D. (1995) Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to

Cosmopolitan Governance, Cambridge: Polity Press.Kellner, D. (1995) ‘Intellectuals and new technologies’, Media Culture & Society,

17(3): 427–48.Kundera, M. (1994) The Unbearable Lightness of Being, London: Faber and Faber.Linklater, A. (1998) The Transformation of Political Community, Cambridge: Polity

Press.McLuhan, M. (1994) Understanding Media, London: Routledge.Maffessoli, M. (1996) The Time of Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass

Society, London: Sage.Miller, D. (1993) ‘Deliberative democracy and social choice’, in D. Held (ed.)

Prospects for Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press.Mouffe, C. (1993) The Return of the Political, London: Verso.Negroponte, N. (1994) Being Digital, London: Coronet Books.Plant, S. (1996) ‘Connectionism and the post humanities’, in W. Charnaik,

M. Deegan and A. Gibson (eds) Beyond the book: Theory, Culture, and thePolitics of Cyberspace, Of�ce for Humanities Communication Publications,Number 7.

Rheingold, H. (1994) The Virtual Community: Sur� ng the Internet, London:Secker and Warburg.

Stallabras, J. (1996) Gargantura: Manufactured Mass Culture, London: Verso.Stevenson, N. (1999) The Transformation of the Media: globalisation, morality and

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Documents

THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC MEDIA CULTURES