A
Review by Michael Higgins
This book may well
prove to be an important one for those interested in the
relationship between media and politics. It offers important
insights into the place of the audience in at least two parallel
discussions that have come to dominate that field. One of these
debates has centred on the place of the citizen in media, both in
terms of how they are addressed as a public and in how they are
involved as participants. From this, some extremely worthwhile
material has emerged, looking at how informal, confessional public
talk has developed as media spectacle, and offering conjecture on
the cultural and political implications of such practices. Another
still larger body of work has examined various strategies of
engaging public in issues around the democratic state. Running
through this latter debate has been the assumption that the
development of media outside the realm of traditional public service
has generated a new configuration of political culture, where
political arguments and policy outlines are ‘dumbed-down’ in the
name of media friendliness. In Media Consumption and Public
Engagement, Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham
engage in both of these debates, in a way that combines a focus on
the audience with an admirable clarity of approach.
The book calls into
question common assumptions regarding audiences. Too often, the
authors argue, these provide the backdrop to debate on media
responsibility. One of the notions challenged is that of “mediated
public connection” – defined as a taken-for-granted residual
capacity amongst audience members for intermittent citizen-like
activity – a consequence of which has been that academic and policy
discussion often alights on establishing the best mechanism to
transform these inherent qualities into attention. The authors
argue that this has skewed those debates on “political
disconnection” that have arisen from a supposed dearth of trust in
political establishments, coupled with comparatively feeble civil
institutions and structures, and set alongside patterns of
traditional and regularised media use. Some of these beliefs may
have some basis in research, but the authors insist that those
regarding media consumption certainly do not. Indeed, Couldry et
al point out that media institutions themselves have long
integrated the fragmented audience into their marketing, in ways
recently assisted by the development of participatory technology:
for some colleagues, offering the potential to encourage political
participation in the audience’s own terms, for other colleagues, the
provision of yet more cheery distraction for those audience members
content with political marginalisation.
One of the most
pleasing aspects of this book is its transparency of method, which
is first explained in chapter three, and then applied
conscientiously and with precision through to the penultimate
chapter eight. The findings are based around a diary project
involving a total of thirty-eight men and women across a range of
English regions. The authors also interviewed the diarists early in
the study, and involved some of them in later focus groups. This
diary phase is backed by a survey of 1000 people, designed to
establish norms of media consumption as they are articulated
alongside the perceived duties and actual practices of political
public connection. One emphasis at this stage is on establishing
exactly what such constructions as “political” and “public” mean to
those surveyed. Appropriately, the insights of the respondents are
preserved by the authors’ emphasis on the “descriptive or
explanatory language” used in the surveys.
What emerges is a
broad characterization of the political amongst the respondents.
Theirs is a definition that extends beyond the frameworks of
democratic statehood into a “public world” that includes “health,
education and family morality, race and identity, religion,
sexuality, music and film, and celebrity culture” (84). Consistent
with its long-standing status as something of a problematic term,
discussions of “public” also bleed into discussion of such
“quasi-public actions” as those forms of participation available on
such occasions as the eviction nights on Big Brother (70).
Yet, in spite of the emergence of an inclusive notion of the
political, the authors recommend caution over merely assuming any
association between political engagement and, for example,
entertainment media (85). Indeed, even where discussion of public
issues is highlighted by the respondents as a commendable pursuit,
the authors stress the disjuncture between activities of talk and
meaningful political action.
The sheer quantity
of discussion of the data offers up some fascinating insights along
the way. To take just one example, in what proves to be a complex
correlation between watching TV and political interest, the ideal
pattern of behaviour – for those who see political action as good
thing – seems to be a optimum amount of TV, where too much is
coincidental with disengagement (158). Also, what is seen as a
moral duty to keep up with the news among some respondents (159) is
confronted by the determination of others to block-out “particularly
intense” forms of news, including war coverage (102). The media
literacy described is sophisticated, complex, and sceptical. There
is, however, the occasional barb, such as hints of surrender to the
moralistic underpinnings of media content (112). Certainly, the
authors argue, what we find is a form of media literacy better
contemplated along with the socio-cultural situation of the
correspondents than through any predictive models of media
citizenship (109).
The issues
highlighted here have taxed political communications scholars for
much of the last century. In a study on citizen engagement in
politics now more than four decades old, Rokkan and Campbell (1960)
argue that two indexes have to be taken into account in establishing
political participation: namely, involvement in organised political
activity and attention to politics in media. They agree with
Couldry et al that the relationship between these two indexes
is far from straightforward and that political activity can be
independent of political use of media. However, the insights of
Couldry et al offer us a far more refined account of a
multi-generic media environment: we are asked to question how we
assess media consumption and to be attentive of how others define
the political. We should be grateful that Couldry et al’s
account of the relationship between media consumption and public
connection moves these debates on, even though the shifting
character of media, in terms both of genre and delivery platform,
mean that we will have to revisit the relationship between political
action and audience activity many times in the future.
In addition to their impressive contribution to
current scholarship, therefore, the conceptual and methodological
framework provided by Couldry et al seems likely to provide an
essential resource for years to come.
This book is a
demanding one to read, but it is a text I will certainly be
recommending to students engaged in postgraduate study of audiences,
or with any interest in the relationship between media and political
engagement. Perhaps the conclusion might have been lengthier and
more illustrative, and might also have been more boastful of the
book’s contribution to such debates as that over the “dumbing-down”
or otherwise of political media. Brief as it is, though, the
conclusion offers some telling advice. Addressing themselves to the
academy, the authors call for a more nuanced approach towards media
consumption as a series of political practices – and not just the
institutionally approved ones; political institutions, for their
part, are urged to appreciate the variety of productive media
consumption practices and to incorporate these in challenging
political disengagement; and media institutions are asked to instil
a culture of self-criticism and development into their public
service provision that takes account of audience practice.
Reference
Rokkan, Stein and
Campbell, Angus, ‘Citizen participation in political life: Norway
and the United States of America’, International Social Science
Journal 12, 1960, pp. 69-99.
Contact (by e-mail):
Michael Higgins
Biographical note
Michael Higgins is based at the
University of Strathclyde
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