Rickety bridges: Using the media in deliberative democracy

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 175-183

  Parkinson, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 29144458165     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123406000093     Document Type: Review

References (63)

1. Robert Goodin, 'Democratic Deliberation Within', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 29 (2000), 81-109;
2. Michael Walzer, 'Deliberation and What Else?' in S. Macedo, ed., Deliberative Politics: Essays on 'Democracy and Disagreement' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 58-69.
3. Four solutions are surveyed by John Dryzek, 'Legitimacy and Economy in Deliberative Democracy', Political Theory, 29 (2001), 651-69. The media solution appears in various forms in
4. Jon Elster, Deliberative Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 2;
5. Archon Fung, 'Survey Article: Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences', Journal of Political Philosophy, 11 (2003), 338-67;
6. James Nickel, 'Free Speech, Democratic Deliberation, and Valuing Types of Speech', in S. Chambers and A. Costain, eds, Deliberation, Democracy and the Media (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), pp. 3-9;
7. David Ryfe, 'The Practice of Deliberative Democracy: A Study of 16 Deliberative Organizations', Political Communication, 19 (2002), 359-77;
8. Cass Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech (New York: Free Press, 1993), p. 130.
9. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1996), p. 97.
10. James Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991);
11. Fishkin, 'The Televised Deliberative Poll: An Experiment in Democracy', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 546 (1996), 132-40;
12. Fishkin, The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 130, 175;
13. Robert Luskin, James Fishkin and Roger Jowell, 'Considered Opinions: Deliberative Polling in Britain', British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002), 455-87;
14. Alison Park, Roger Jowell and Suzi McPherson, The Future of the National Health Service: Results from a Deliberative Poll (London: Social and Community Planning Research, 1998), p. 2.
15. For a discussion of the effects of the media on the deliberators themselves, see Rachel Gibson and Sarah Miskin, 'Australia Deliberates? A Critical Analysis of the Role of the Media in Deliberative Polling', in J. Warhurst and M. Mackerras, eds, Constitutional Politics: The Republic Referendum and the Future (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2002), pp. 163-75.
16. John Uhr, Deliberative Democracy in Australia: The Changing Place of Parliament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. xiii.
17. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Harmondsworth, Midx.: Penguin, 1974), p. 75.
18. Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 228-9;
19. Benjamin Page, Who Deliberates? Mass Media in Modern Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 2.
20. David Beetham, ed., Defining and Measuring Democracy (London: Sage, 1994), p. 39;
21. Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 221.
22. Luskin, Fishkin and Jowell, 'Considered Opinions', p. 456.
23. Richard Anderson, 'The Place of the Media in Popular Democracy', Critical Review, 12 (1998), 481-500.
24. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought) (Boston, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991).
25. For a summary of the literature on media influence on voting behaviour and a presentation of new evidence, see Neil Gavin and David Sanders, 'The Press and Its Influence on British Political Attitudes under New Labour', Political Studies, 51 (2003), 573-91.
26. Fishkin, The Voice of the People, p. 14.
27. Fishkin, The Voice of the People, p. 162.
28. Luskin, Fishkin and Jowell, 'Considered Opinions', fn. 20.
29. Joseph Capella and Kathleen H. Jamieson, 'News Frames, Political Cynicism, and Media Cynicism', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 546 (1996), 71-84;
30. Shanto Iyengar, 'Framing Responsibility for Political Issues', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 546 (1996), 59-70.
31. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, p. 124;
32. Susan Stokes, 'Pathologies of Deliberation', in J. Elster, ed., Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 123-39.
33. John Langer, Tabloid Television: Popular Journalism and the 'Other News' (London: Routledge, 1998);
34. Rodney Tiffen, News and Power (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989).
35. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, p. 126.
36. Tiffen, News and Power, p. 22.
37. R. A. Peterson, 'Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Mass to Omnivore and Univore', Poetics, 21 (1992), 243-58.
38. For example, spending on the state-owned BBC in Britain has been explicitly tied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to success in attracting an audience (House of Commons, Official Report, 15 July 2002, column 22).
39. A similar trend has been identifed in the United States - see Matthew Kerbel, Sumaiya Apee and Marc Ross, 'PBS Ain't So Different: Public Broadcasting, Election Frames, and Democratic Empowerment', Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 5 (2000), 8-32.
40. Iyengar, 'Framing Responsibility for Political Issues', p. 62;
41. see also John Street, Mass Media, Politics and Democracy (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 150-2.
42. Ralph Negrine, Politics and the Mass Media in Britain (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 141;
43. Tiffen, News and Power, pp. 52-3.
44. Langer, Tabloid Television, p. 45.
45. Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle, pp. 34-6.
46. Doug McAdam, 'Movement Strategy and Dramaturgic Framing in Democratic States: The Case of the American Civil Rights Movement', in S. Chambers and A. Costain, eds, Deliberation, Democracy and the Media (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), pp. 117-33;
47. Sean Scalmer, Dissent Events: Protest, the Media and the Political Gimmick in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002).
48. Street, Mass Media, Politics and Democracy, p. 49.
49. Gavin and Sanders, 'The Press and Its Influence on British Political Attitudes under New Labour';
50. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 377;
51. Street, Mass Media, Politics and Democracy, chap.4.
52. SCPR is now called the National Centre for Social Research, having changed its name in 1999. To avoid awkwardness in the text and references, I will refer to it by the older name throughout.
53. Episode One, 4 July 1998, 8:00-9:00pm; Episode Two, 5 July 1998, 2:30-3:30pm; Episode Three, 5 July 1998, 7:00-8:00pm. Note that just under half of episode three consisted of edited material from the first two; only 25 minutes out of 49 was new material.
54. The figures are based on counting up the time in minutes allocated to the various participants, firstly in the event agenda given to group facilitators (Figure 1), and secondly in the broadcast version of the deliberative poll (Figure 2). I have credited time to a participant group where they and their opinions are the primary focus, not just where they are the only ones speaking. The 'all plenaries' category includes the time devoted to the health policy experts and the politicians; the 'all public' category is the total time devoted to the lay participants, including the informal sessions which, for Fishkin, are just as much a part of the deliberative experience as the facilitated small group sessions. Both totals exclude briefings by the organizers and compère, or interviews and discussion just between the compère and organizers, or, in the case of Figure 2, direct-to-camera presentations by the compère alone. I have not separated out the vox pops or other interviews with lay participants in Figure 1 because they.
55. Episode 2, 3:07pm.
56. Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation, p. 9.
57. David Denver, Gordon Hands and Bill Jones, 'Fishkin and the Deliberative Opinion Poll: Lessons from a Study of the Granada 500 Television Program', Political Communication, 12 (1995), 147-56.
58. Michael Schudson, 'The Sociology of News Production Revisited', in J. Curran and M. Gurevitch, eds, Mass Media and Society (London: Arnold, 1996), pp. 141-59.
59. SCPR manager, interview.
60. An issue long-recognized by the public relations industry. See Walter Lindenmann, 'Setting Minimum Standards for Measuring Public Relations Effectiveness', Public Relations Review, 23 (1997), 391-408.
61. Michael Moran, Governing the Health Care State: A Comparative Study of the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
62. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement.
63. See Whitney Randoph and K. Viswanath, 'Lessons Learned from Public Health Mass Media Campaigns: Marketing Health in a Crowded Media World', Annual Review of Public Health, 25 (2004), 419-37.