News, Public Opinion

and the Public Sphere

Politics 113: Politics and the Media
Lecture 4
Emma Blomkamp
Readings
 Required:
 Jurgen Habermas, ‘The Public Sphere: An
Encyclopedia Article’ (Course Reader)
 Recommended:
 J.D. Peters, ‘Historical Tensions in the Concept of
Public Opinion’ (ER)
 Further reading:
 Briggs and Burke, ‘Media and the Public Sphere
in Early Modern Europe’ (ER)
 Allan, ‘The Rise of “Objective” Newspaper
Reporting’ (ER)
Democratic communication

o Dialogue (Socrates)
o Dissemination (Jesus)
o Deliberation
(public opinion formation)
Democratic public opinion

 ‘All government rests on opinion’

David Hume, 1740

 Ancient democracy – the people rule

(directly)
 Modern democracy – the people rule
(indirectly)

News
 The public’s opinion rules media
(in principle)
 But what is ‘public opinion’? Public Govt
 Weakness of public opinion
"Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and
truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth
in it. The great man of the age is the one who
can put into words the will of his age, tell his
age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he
does is the heart and the essence of his age, he
actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense
enough to despise public opinion expressed in
gossip will never do anything great."
 
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1822)
in Philosophy of Right
Strength of public opinion
‘Public opinion represents a consensus,
which emerges over time, from all the
expressed views that cluster around an
issue in debate, and that this consensus
exercises power.’ 

 S M Cutlip, A H Center, and G M Broom,

Effective Public Relations (1994)
 The rise of public opinion
‘Public’ and ‘public opinion’ now politically central.
‘Public opinion’ a concept forged historically
 The rise of ‘the public’
 Ancient Greek political ideas
 Pre-democratic rule, e.g. monarchy, as
‘representative publicness’
 Appeals to the people’ (e.g. English Revolution)
 Rational citizens (Enlightenment onwards)
 Meanings of ‘public’
1. Visual-intellectual (openly visible or known to all
people)
2. Social-political (involving/concerning all citizens)

• Distinction: Public / Crowds / Masses

 The rise of public opinion
Revolutionary ideals
 American Revolution, 1776-
 ‘Public opinion sets the bounds to every government, and is
the real sovereign in every
free one’ - James Madison, 1790
 First Amendment, 1791
 French Revolution, 1789-
 Article XI, Declaration of the Rights of Man and
Citizen, 1789
 Original term: opinion publique
 ‘Public opinion [is] a tribunal’
- Marquis de Condorcet (1793)
 Public opinion: the model
 Public opinion + media = modern agora
 A (modern) democratic model
 Sovereign people » ‘public opinion’ »
responsive government
 Media’s ideal role
News media » informed opinions »
further discussion »
‘public opinion’ » news media »
responsive government
 The rise of the ‘public sphere’
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere (1962/1989)
 Sphere of rational-critical public
political debate, oriented towards
consensus (‘deliberative’)
 Public sphere ‘ideal type’
 Free from power (state, commercial)
 Rational-critical discussion
 Generating ‘public opinion’ as political
consensus/control
 Access for all citizens
 Media informing, facilitating, representing
Habermas’s public sphere
 Historical model, modern ideal
 Concepts arose in ‘concrete situation’
 Feudalism » commercial society (‘bourgeois’)
 Private individuals assembled as ‘public’
 Rational-critical discussion, informed/reflected
by media
 Constitutional rights institutionalising public
sphere

- E.g. English coffee houses, early 18th C.

 Forging the public sphere
Case study: The Spectator (1712- )

 ‘The moral weeklies were a key

phenomenon . . . In the
Spectator the public held up a
mirror to itself’ Habermas
 Spectator ideal
 Critical; rational
 Objectivity v partisanship
 Modelled on dialogue/
discussion
 Fostering deliberation
 Autonomy from commerce
 Context: the rise of news
 News as old as humanity
 Oral, scribal
 But revolutionised in print era
 Impetus: trade, politics, literacy
 Commodification and
communication
 Limits: small trade, censorship,
illiteracy
 18thC: growth of periodical press;
emergence of daily newspaper
 Ye olde media analysis

 Items of public
interest
 Scandals and
sensationalism
-continuity and
change...
 Twin faces of news media
 Public service-type ideals
 Rhetoric of ‘the public interest’,
truth-seeking, impartiality, etc.

 Partisan and commercial realities

 Public’s interest: press widely reviled but
widely read
 ‘Dull Read, vile Applebie, and Mist; the worst
rogues that ever pist, are these three journalists’
(1710)
Press, politics, principles
‘Growth of Fourth Estate’
 Political news for popular audiences. . .
 . . .as product of industrialised media
 Media/journalists professionalised
 Increased reach, resources, credibility
 Media/journalists and their norms
‘institutionalised’
 News values, routines, writing styles
 Media ideals reasserted as professional principles
against political and commercial pressures
 Public service of news
‘Ideals’ articulated in 17-18th centuries
 Overlapping arguments for press freedom
 ‘Private’ rights/interest
 Self-expression
 Free press, free market
 Public service
 Informing the public (news,
knowledge, truth)
 ‘Enlightenment’ role

 Representing the public

(public opinion)
 Watchdog press,

Fourth Estate
Transformation of public sphere
Towards ‘mass’ media
 19th-20thC – media’s ‘industrial revolution’
 Political enfranchisement/conflict
 Literacy rise; censorship decline
 Commercial impetus – advertising
 Technology. . .
 1814: steam press
 5,000 copies per hour

 1846: rotary press

 20,000 copies an hour

 1840s: telegraph
 1872: linotype
 ‘Mass media’ transformation
 Mass communication 9
8
7
 19th-20thC – press, 6
5
cinema, radio, TV 4
3

 Mass audience 2
1
0
 Mass market: 1800 1900 1950

industrialisation/ Highest-selling newspaper (millions)

commercialisation of 10
media 8

 ‘Mass appeal’: human 6

interest news, tabloid 4

tendencies 2

 n.b. ‘mass’ an imagined 0

1920 1923 1924 1939
as much as a real unity UK radio sets (millions)
Building businesses
 Commercial 90
80
70
concentration 60
50

The Press
40
 30
20
 1910s ›: rise of 10
0
‘media barons’ 1900 1920 1940 1960 2000

and newspaper Newspapers owned by groups (US, per cent)

groups 350
300
 Cinema 250
200
 1930s-40s: ‘Big 150

five’ dominate 100

50
industry 0
1900 1939 1946

Top studios' film revenue (US$ millions)

Public opinion polls
 Promoting democratic expression?
• Equal weighting to individual voices
• Protection from tyranny of the
minority, vocal interest groups
 Undermining democratic expression?
• Anonymous voices
• Misleading measurement of public
opinion
• Set agenda and simplify issues
• Manipulation to gain desired results
 Public opinion and the
public sphere: summary
What is public opinion?
What is the public sphere?

Next week: Rethinking the Public Sphere

 Was there a public sphere?
 Is there a (global) public sphere?
 Can there be a better public sphere?