I have my own media!

In this post I am going to provide a summary of my learning in the course of communicating policy and provide my final thoughts regarding the subject matter. Declining of the traditional media, use of social media and networking and its effect on the society as a whole and politicians' actions will be discussed.

According to Florian Sauvageau in the book "How Canadian Communicate IV" newspapers are, traditionally, the main producers of news – they set the public affairs agenda and if newspapers die, or if media sources continue to converge, it will adversely affect the functioning of democratic life. So, if newspapers set the public affairs agenda and if the crisis gripping newspapers worsens, it will affect all media and therefore the news system that nourishes democratic life. Nowadays, with all sorts of social media present, the news is covered by everyone with the same techniques, is written in the same style, is endlessly recycled from one medium to another and is remarkably similar. How does this affect our lives?

One of the major impacts of the declining traditional media is on the government. Elly Albiom suggests that because media coverage has a profound impact on the designs of government communications, and because media neither supports current democratic institutions or acts as an effective link in the process of governance, this results a circular process through which the government neglects to produce meaningful communication with the public, while the public becomes more and more disengaged from the democratic process. It is clear that media coverage has a profound impact on the design of government communications. The media have no interest in becoming a more effective link in the process of governance, nor do they currently have the ability to do so. This means ordinary people are intended to pay less attention to the politics and get busy with more entertainment. Moreover, the Government can worsen the problem when they determine that it is not in their interest to devote extraordinary efforts to engage the disengaged.  When there is no civic premium on sharing information and no practical way to encourage or enforce it—and worse still, when trying to connect demands a level of patience and commitment that people are unwilling to invest—logic says the likeliest outcome is more and more detachment from all but the most threatening or overwhelming kinds of information. That means a general fragmentation of knowledge about context, process, and even basic facts.

Besides the fact that ordinary people have less interest in politics with the increasing presence of the social networks, there are also some people who might pay more attention to the politics. Bloggers, activists and journalists are amongst this type of citizen and they have a lot of influence in the society. Is this enough? Can they help?

Richard Davis believes that political bloggers make up a small fraction of the total population and have limited use to politicians and political parties. The trend in blog readership has been toward blog aggregators: blogs like the Huffington Post and “RealClearPolitics” or “National Newswatch” in Canada that collect information for blog readers from a variety of sources. Such combining helps establish the blog as a one-stop source for information that appeals to a variety of tastes and ideologies. These aggregators likely will attract increasing amounts of blog traffic while independent and individual blogs may suffer. Political blogs—with their emphasis on political issues—offer the same diet of political News, as do national newspa­pers.

So, traditional media is declining and bloggers cannot help much! Imagine if politicians tried to engage people using social media to help solving the problem of the public being disengaged. Use of social media as was described in my previous post can have a huge impact on society and might be a suitable vehicle to be used by politicians. How influential is this tool and what is the best way to use it? David Taras and Christopher Waddell believe that social media played only a minor role in the 2011 election. The Quality of political discourse is declining and elections are less about policies and issues: “Journalism professor Jay Rosen once wrote that the primary mission of the communications media and, indeed, of journalism should be to “make poli­tics ‘go well’ so that it produces a discussion in which the polity learns more about itself, its current problems, its real divisions, its place in time, its pros­pects for the future.” If this is the standard by which media coverage of the”. Therefore, use of social media might not be as helpful as some politicians might think. However, in some cases the social media had a huge impact on decision makers’ decision. “The possibilities for social media to drive political communication and influence decision-makers are huge, but, as the 2011 election demonstrated, they remain little realized to date.”

I few assume using social media by government and politician can help engaging the public, we should dig a little more into this to find pros and cons. According to Christopher Waddell the new technology has actually contributed to a decline in the quality of journalism instead of increasing the quality: “Decisions to cut back on reporting staff, close bureaus, and replace reporters from local newspapers and TV stations with national news bureaus and national network reporters have broken the link between the public and the media that has been at the core of political communication.” Besides the quality of the news being sacrificed, a gap is also being created between voters and the media: “Instead of using technology to bridge the communications gap between voters in their communities and the media, the media has used it to turn its back on the public, forging closer links with the people reporters cover rather than with the people who used to read, watch, and listen to their reporting.”

Political parties are now in a state of constant combat and campaign readiness to manage the media, and this makes compromise difficult. So, the important question is why compromise is so difficult? Tom Flanagan has an answer to this question:  “The Canadian permanent campaign model, with its new emphasis on pre-writ advertising, was born of minority government, with public money serving as the midwife.”

Now that we found a couple of disadvantages of using social media by politicians, let’s look at some of the advantages of this besides engaging the public. The idea of permanent campaign can be introduced by using the social networking tools: “The permanent campaign, including prewire advertising, has shown itself to be potent political weaponry, useful for attracting new support groups, passing legislation, questioning the opposition’s policies, and undermining the image of the opposition leader—in short, for winning and holding on to power.”

Jonathan Rose supports the idea of permanent campaign in the book "How Canadians Communicate IV".  Permanent election campaigns have been transformative, resulting in a major shift towards political parties using advertising with greater intensity than they have in the past. “In the past, negative ads have been condemned in and of themselves; they have been seen as a poor form of communication that cheapens our democratic currency. A closer examination, though, suggests that they might have a legitimate role in providing information during an election campaign.” He also mentions “Negative ads are also justifiable if they further a discussion about a policy.” Therefore, it seems that using social media can help democracy and promote citizenship. Internet has changed the way in which Canadian political parties communicate in in that parties use the Internet to perform traditional campaign activities yet they have not embraced e-democracy. Tamara Small believes that “Like American politics, there is evidence that the Internet might become the venue for the dirtiest of attacks.”

Also, despite technological advances that can provide Canadians with more real time and accurate news in cases like military combats, evolution of official censorship under new regulations such “Operation Security” avoids Canadians to benefit from these advancements; “Sadly, it will probably be historians, not journalists, who will have to tell Canadians the whole stories of the Afghanistan and Libyan campaigns. That, in turn, and despite the best efforts of a courageous handful, speaks volumes about the gulf that still separates the Canadian military and the Canadian media in the fulfillment of their social and democratic responsibilities”.

As a conclusion, I think adapting with the all the changes that are happening these days is the only solution. "As the public no longer accepts the media playing that role and instead has created its own media, ignoring and undermining the institutional media along the way, the digital revolution creates the conditions and provides the tools for encouraging the same revolution in political communication."