Don't Talk Back!

2017 ◽  
pp. 85-104
Author(s):  
Edorodion Agbon Osa
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
The State ◽  
Community Level ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
The Public Sphere

Founded on the philosophy of advancing the course of democracy and acting as a stimulus for socio-cultural transformation at the community level, community broadcasting provides access to the public sphere by making its audience the main characters in the production and dissemination of its messages thus serving as a platform for the expression of the divergent views and opinions that exist at the community level. But almost a century after broadcasting was introduced to Nigeria as part of British imperialism, this grassroots form of broadcasting is yet to fully take off. Starting with a broad examination of public service broadcasting, this chapter discusses the state of community broadcasting in Nigeria, using Habermas' concept of the public sphere, and recommends its improvement given the crucial roles of community broadcasting in the society.

scholarly journals The Legitimacy of Public Service Broadcasting in the 21st Century: The Case of Scandinavia

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Håkon Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract The present paper examines the debate on the future of public service broadcasting (PSB) in Norway and Sweden in the 2000s. I have analysed the discourses on PSB that dominate the public debate in the two countries, the cultural policy related to PSB, as well as the legitimizing rhetoric of the Norwegian public service broadcaster Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) and that of the Swedish public service broadcaster Sveriges Television (SVT). Theoretically, the analysis draws on normative theories on the role of PSB in promoting democracy, culture and a well-functioning public sphere, as well as theories on democracy and the public sphere per se.

scholarly journals Public Service Broadcasting and the Public Sphere: Normative Arguments from Habermasian Theory

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Ramsey
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theoretical Category ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Uk

Discussing Public Service Broadcasting from the perspective of the public sphere has both historical form and theoretical rationale. This article surveys some of the arguments forwarded on the commonality between the theoretical category of the public sphere, and Public Service Broadcasting (PSB). Drawing from scholarly work over the past three decades, it also addresses the problems with this approach, outlining an argument against applying public sphere theory in this setting. This article then applies normative arguments drawn from Habermasian theory to the subject, arguing that public sphere theory remains a critical tool for studying PSB. This article suggests that on the public sphere principles of inclusion, deliberation and opinion formation, PSB helps sustain the notion of the public sphere, and indeed provides one of the most important realisations of it. In particular, this article focuses on PSB in the UK, and gives evidence from the case of the BBC to support its claims.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.

scholarly journals Contested Numbers: Census Controversies and the Press in 1960s Nigeria

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Gerardo Serra ◽  
Morten Jerven
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The State ◽  
Population Census ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract This article reconstructs the controversies following the release of the figures from Nigeria's 1963 population census. As the basis for the allocation of seats in the federal parliament and for the distribution of resources, the census is a valuable entry point into postcolonial Nigeria's political culture. After presenting an overview of how the Africanist literature has conceptualized the politics of population counting, the article analyses the role of the press in constructing the meaning and implications of the 1963 count. In contrast with the literature's emphasis on identification, categorization, and enumeration, our focus is on how the census results informed a broader range of visual and textual narratives. It is argued that analysing the multiple ways in which demographic sources shape debates about trust, identity, and the state in the public sphere results in a richer understanding of the politics of counting people and narrows the gap between demographic and cultural history.

scholarly journals AUTORITA’ AND AUTOREVOLEZZA: EXPLAINING CONTESTATIONS BETWEEN POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN THE AGE OF THE NEW MEDIA

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
Walter C. Ihejirika
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Connection ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

In many African countries, since the nineties, there is a subtle contest going on between religious and political leaders. At the heart of this contest is what Rosalind Hackett described as the redefinition of the categories of power and status, which cease to be primarily tied to material wealth or political connection, but rather to spiritual authority and revelation. This is a struggle for the hegemonic control of the society in the Gramscian sense of the term. While political leaders may use the coercive arms of the state – military might as well as their control of the financial resources of the state to impose their authority, religious leaders on the other hand assume the posture of moral icons, personalities endowed with superior knowledge based on divine revelation. As these contestations are played out in the public sphere, the way the leaders are able to portray themselves to their public will determine their followership. This explains the importance of mediation in the process of politico-religious contestations. In the eyes of the public, political leaders have the physical or raw power - the Italian concept of autorita; while the religious leaders have the moral power - autorevolezza. This paper uses these concepts as metaphors to present a general explanation of how the contestation between religious and political leaders plays out in the public sphere of the new media

Public Broadcasting through the Public Sphere: A Reimagining of Public Service Media in New Zealand

2014 ◽  
Vol 153 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Reid
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Broadcasting ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
Broadcasting System ◽  
Rural Broadband ◽  
The Public Sphere

During 2013, the New Zealand government heralded the launch of the Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) and Rural Broadband Initiatives (RBI) as significant tools across a range of economic and social policy areas, including the delivery of education and health services and the promotion of development policies for Maori. Conspicuously absent in the associated political discussion was the issue of public service broadcasting and the possibility for internet-based technologies to provide an efficient and cost-effective platform for the production and delivery of non-commercial public service media. The reason for this omission may be due to the governing National Party's historic disregard for public service broadcasting, as demonstrated by its disestablishment of a number of public broadcasting initiatives since 1999. Drawing on a Habermasian theoretical framework and Dan Hind's concept of ‘public commissioning’, the purpose of this article is to outline an alternative system for public service broadcasting based on a series of referenda and on open public debate. I begin by examining the present public broadcasting system and the traditional centrality of the state in governance and gatekeeping issues. I argue that the communicative potential of social media, enabled by universally accessible ultra-fast broadband, could provide an adequate platform for public gatekeeping, with the state having a significantly reduced role. I make the argument that the technological and resourcing mechanisms for such a system already exist, and the required shift in audience culture is already present in the consumption of entertainment and reality TV texts.

In and out of Othello

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poonam Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Indian Adaptation

Othello has been the play that seems to speak to current issues of racism and sexism for the last couple of decades. Recent Indian productions have stretched its relevancies further, particularly addressing the politics of identity, of individual and state, of belonging and othering. The 2014 award-winning Assamiya film Othello (We Too Have Our Othellos) appropriates and radicalizes the main concerns of the play to embody and critique the movements for self-determination that continue to rage in the state. The article examines this unusual Indian adaptation of Shakespeare that locates the play directly within the public sphere of the politics of the state through its singular focus on Othello as an ‘outsider’ figure paralleled by other such figures of contemporary Assamese society. It will contextualize the discussion of this film, its production and positioning within the film industry of Assam and attempt to define the nature of its adaptation. It will also glance at its similarities with the earlier film In Othello (2003), which too connected Shakespeare and Assam to illustrate the volatile configurations of the outsider/insider status in contemporary India.

(Un)Liberated and Contested Narratives

2019 ◽  
pp. 334-347
Author(s):  
Bongani C Ndhlovu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Contested Narratives

This chapter analyses the influence of the state in shaping museum narratives, especially in a liberated society such as South Africa. It argues that while the notion of social cohesion and nation building is an ideal that many South African museums should strive for, the technocratisation of museum processes has to a degree led to a disregard of the public sphere as a space of open engagement. Secondly, the chapter also looks at the net-effect of museums professionals and boards in the development of their narrative. It argues that due to the nature of their expertise and interests, and the focus on their areas of specialisation, museums may hardly claim to be representative of the many voices they ought to represent. As such, the chapter explores contestations in museum spaces. It partly does so by exploring the notion “free-spokenness” and its limits in museum spaces. To amplify its argument, the chapter uses some exhibitions that generated critical engagements from Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document