The Political Economy of Mass Media: Implications for Informed Citizenship

2 Informed citizenship is taken as fundamental to democratic governance. Deliberation, political participation and holding elected officials accountable for their actions presuppose an electorate capable of expressing informed opinions. In modern democracies, the institution entrusted with delivering relatively costless access to public affairs information is the news media. In recent years, however, as outlined below, significant changes to the regulatory and economic framework within which news organizations function have called into question the media " s ability to make good on this civic responsibility. In this chapter, we focus on two key transformations in the media landscape. First, news organizations the world over are moving in the direction of a profit-driven or market-based model. Second, the revolution in information technology has set off an explosion in the quantity of media choices available to consumers. The net impact of these changes on the news audience is twofold. First, market pressures coupled with enhanced consumer choice have reduced the public " s exposure to news programming, thus increasing the number of citizens who are either ignorant or misinformed about current affairs. Second, people who seek out news are increasingly turning to sources that provide a limited perspective on political issues, but one they find agreeable. Thus, the emerging media environment is unlikely to nurture voters " civic potential: on balance, more people will be in a position to tune out the news altogether, while those who tune in are exposed to a narrow range of perspectives on the issues of the day. Conventional theories of political knowledge posit that attributes of the news consumer (such as educational attainment) are the principal determinants of political knowledge. No matter how knowledge is defined-as textbook-based civic knowledge, the ability to locate the policy positions of political parties, or familiarity with current events and issues (for a discussion of alternative definitions of political knowledge, see Schudson 1998), scholars have treated indicators of political involvement or motivation as the key discriminators between the more and less informed. The list of " usual suspects " includes generic interest in politics (e.g. " How often do you follow news about government and public affairs? ") and the strength of an individual " s partisan affiliation (strong partisans are more informed). The argument is that people with stronger political " drive " regularly pay closer attention to the news and current events. The demand for political information can also be …