scholarly journals Trust and authority in the age of mediatised politics

2022 ◽  
pp. 026732312110726
Author(s):  
Anu Koivunen ◽  
Johanna Vuorelma

This article examines the role of trust in the age of mediatised politics. Authority, we suggest, can be successfully enacted despite the disrupted nature of the public sphere if both rational and moral trust are utilised to formulate validity claims. Drawing from Maarten A. Hajer's theorisation of authority in contemporary politics, we develop a model of how political actors and institutions as well as the media employ both rational and moral trust performances to generate authority. Analysing a Finnish case of controversial investigative journalism on defence intelligence, we show how the media in network governance need to critically evaluate the authority performances of political actors while at the same time enacting their own authority performances to retain their position within the governing network and to manufacture trust among networked publics. This volatile position can lead to situations where the media compete for authority with traditional political institutions.

Author(s):  
Valentina Arena

Corruption was seen as a major factor in the collapse of Republican Rome, as Valentina Arena’s subsequent essay “Fighting Corruption: Political Thought and Practice in the Late Roman Republic” argues. It was in reaction to this perception of the Republic’s political fortunes that an array of legislative and institutional measures were established and continually reformed to become more effective. What this chapter shows is that, as in Greece, the public sphere was distinct from the private sphere and, importantly, it was within this distinction that the foundations of anticorruption measures lay. Moreover, it is difficult to defend the existence of a major disjuncture between moralistic discourses and legal-political institutions designed to patrol the public/private divide: both were part of the same discourse and strategy to curb corruption and improve government.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312199133
Author(s):  
Christina Holtz-Bacha

With the surge of populism in Europe, public service broadcasting has come under increased pressure. The established media are considered part of the corrupt elite not serving the interests of the people. The public service media, for which pluralism is at the core of their remit, are a particular thorn in the side of the populists. Therefore, they attack the financial basis of public service, which is supposed to guarantee their independence. The populist attacks on the traditional broadcasting corporations meet with the interests of neoliberal politics and of those political actors who want to evade public scrutiny and democratic control and do no longer feel committed to democratic accountability. The assaults on the public service media are thus an assault on freedom of the media and further increase the pressure on the democratic system.


2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nyberg ◽  
John Murray

This article connects the previously isolated literatures on corporate citizenship and corporate political activity to explain how firms construct political influence in the public sphere. The public engagement of firms as political actors is explored empirically through a discursive analysis of a public debate between the mining industry and the Australian government over a proposed tax. The findings show how the mining industry acted as a corporate citizen concerned about the common good. This, in turn, legitimized corporate political activity, which undermined deliberation about the common good. The findings explain how the public sphere is refeudalized through corporate manipulation of deliberative processes via what we term corporate citizenspeak—simultaneously speaking as corporate citizens and for individual citizens. Corporate citizenspeak illustrates the duplicitous engagement of firms as political actors, claiming political legitimacy while subverting deliberative norms. This contributes to the theoretical development of corporations as political actors by explaining how corporate interests are aggregated to represent the common good and how corporate political activity is employed to dominate the public sphere. This has important implications for understanding how corporations undermine democratic principles.


2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank van Vree

An Unstable Discipline. Journalism Studies & the Revolution in the Media An Unstable Discipline. Journalism Studies & the Revolution in the Media During the last decade media and journalism have got into turmoil; landslides have changed the traditional media landscape, overturning familiar marking points, institutions and patterns. To understand these radical changes journalism studies should not only develop a new research agenda, but also review its approach and perspective.This article looks back on recent development in the field and argues for a more cohesive perspective, taking journalism as a professional practice as its starting point. Furthermore a plea is made for a thorough research into the structural changes of the public sphere and the role and position of journalism.


Author(s):  
Lene Rimestad

Columns generally take up a lot of space in the media. But what can an employed journalist write in his column? How is this particular freedom managed and shaped? In this article the columns written by journalists working for Berlingske Tidende are analyzed. The analysis covers two months before and after substantial changes in the paper in 2003. Two parameters are used in the analysis: Political: Is the column pro-government, anti-government, apolitical or mixed. And what sphere does the column cover: Does the column take place in the private sphere or the public sphere? Finally the changes in the period are discussed. But initially the column as a genre is defined.


Res Publica ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-270
Author(s):  
Spyros A. Walgrave

Although the quasi-confederal character of Yugoslavia, especially after the introduction of its 1974 constitution did not encourage the development of a genuine Yugoslavian public sphere wherepublic debate could transcend ethnic and republic divisions, it nevertheless allowed the formation of what could be called Yugoslav cultural space, a space within which social and political actors (feminist, peace movements) forged their identities regardless of the ethnic or national diversity that characterised their membership. However, the existence of this 'space' had a limited impact in Yugoslav politics partly due to the breakdown of inter-republic communication and the fragmentation of the Yugoslavian mass media. This paper traces the process of disintegration of the Yugoslav cultural space and the emergence of national 'public spheres' in the republics and provinces of former Yugoslavia and attempts to assess the role of the mass media and cultural institutions in these developments by identifying the key strategies of representation employed in the process of the fragmentation and 'nationalisation' of the public sphere of former Yugoslavia.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Ayish

Communication has proven to be an integral component of the terrorism phenomenon. To unravel the opportunities and challenges embedded in employing the media during terrorism, this chapter draws on research findings and practical experiences around the world to identify prime actors associated with this issue and to describe their objectives, tactics, and channels of communication. It is argued here that media constitute a vital resource in the war on terror with both terrorist organizations and states harnessing communication to advance their causes in the public sphere. In this context, four categories of media users have been identified: media institutions, terrorist organizations, governments, and citizen groups. The chapter discusses enduring issues associated with each actor's use of media and calls for evolving new conceptual frameworks for understanding media use during terrorism. It concludes by arguing that while we seem to have a huge pool of research findings and practical experiences related to using the media during terrorism, we seem to have a critical shortage in how we conceptually account for the different variables that define the use of media in terrorism situations.


2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Héctor Perla

AbstractThis article examines the determinants of public support for the use of military force. It puts forward a Framing Theory of Policy Objectives (FTPO), which contends that public support for military engagements depends on the public's perception of the policy's objective. However, it is difficult for the public to judge a policy's objective because they cannot directly observe a policy's true intention and influential political actors offer competing frames to define it. This framing contestation, carried out through the media, sets the public's decision-making reference point and determines whether the policy is perceived as seeking to avoid losses or to achieve gains. The FTPO predicts that support will increase when the public perceives policies as seeking to prevent losses and decrease when the public judges policies to be seeking gains. I operationalize and test the theory using content analysis of national news coverage and opinion polls of U.S. intervention in Central America during the 1980s. These framing effects are found to hold regardless of positive or negative valence of media coverage.


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