Media Democracy Items

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 5, 2025, 9:53 PM

Media democracy is a democratic approach to media studies that advocates for the reform of mass media to strengthen public service broadcasting and develop participation in alternative media and citizen journalism in order to... Media democracy is both a theory and a social movement. It is against concentration in the ownership of media, and it champions diversity of voices and perspectives within the news system. Media democracy focuses on the empowerment of individual citizens and on the promotion of democratic ideals through the spread of information.[1] Additionally, the approach argues that the media system itself should be democratic in... Media democracy entails that media should be used to promote democracy[3] and that media itself should be democratic.[2] For example, it views media ownership concentration as undemocratic and as being unable to promote democracy,... The concept of a media democracy follows in response to the deregulation of broadcast markets and the concentration of mass media ownership.[citation needed] In the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass...

Herman and Noam Chomsky outline the propaganda model of media, which states that the private interests in control of media outlets shape news and information before it is disseminated to the public through the... Media democracy gives people the right to participate in media. It extends the media's relationship to the public sphere, where the information gathered can be viewed and shared by the people.[8] The relationship of media democracy and the public sphere extends to various types... In this conversation, hosted by the SSRC’s Media & Democracy program, program officer Mike Miller revisits an often overlooked topic—expectations and predictions for the internet in its early days—with Sarah J. Jackson (Northeastern University) and David Karpf (George Washington University). Understanding the pessimistic and optimistic outlooks journalists, entrepreneurs, and others had for the internet, where these predictions fell short, and whose voices were listened to, sheds light on the digital age’s present and future...

The SSRC’s Media & Democracy program has launched a series of workshops that put current controversies and debates into historical and cross-disciplinary perspectives. Here, Mike Miller and James Kirwan provide the key takeaways from a recent event on “A Modern History of the Disinformation Age.” Scholars at the workshop engaged the roots of our “epistemic crisis” regarding... In this conversation hosted by the Media & Democracy program, program officer Mike Miller discusses the trajectory of campaign financing in recent elections with Ciara Torres-Spelliscy (Stetson University) and Heath Brown (John Jay College... In particular, they address the impact of online fundraising and small-dollar contributions. The Media & Democracy program has released a report on the proceedings from its April 2018 conference on "Social Media and Democracy." Here, program codirector Kris-Stella Trump provides an overview of the report and... The media plays an essential role in modern democracies.

It informs, educates, and connects citizens. In a democratic system, the media has various functions that support the principles of freedom, equality, and justice. Understanding these functions is crucial for grasping the relationship between media and democracy. This article will dive into the core functions of the media in a democracy, exploring how it influences public opinion, accountability, and political participation. The media plays a vital role in a democracy by informing the public, promoting political participation, ensuring government accountability, and protecting individual rights. It shapes public opinion, fosters social cohesion, and ensures transparency, supporting democratic values and citizen engagement.

One of the most important functions of the media in a democracy is to provide accurate and timely information to the public. Citizens need to make informed decisions, particularly when it comes to voting and engaging in political discourse. Without a well-informed populace, democracy cannot function effectively. The media serves as the primary source of information on local, national, and international events. It informs citizens about government policies, election campaigns, and significant political and social issues. A free press ensures that people have access to the facts they need to participate in the democratic process.

One key tenet of most modern democratic societies is the separation of government powers into independent branches. In the United States, there are three such branches: a legislature that makes the laws (the legislative branch is further divided into two Congressional bodies, the House of Representatives and the Senate); a judiciary... In the United States, the operation of democracy is also affected by powerful businesses through political donations and lobbying. In 2010, the Supreme Court’s (5-4) Citizens United v. FEC ruling removed constraints on corporate political spending, further amplifying the voice of business in democratic debate. And according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the communication and electronics corporate sector, comprised of internet and telecom service providers, printing and publishing firms, and media content producers, spent over $110 million dollars...

As the populations of the global democratic powers grew larger, participation in democracy required the dissemination of knowledge to a more diverse and geographically vast citizenry. Mass media developed to meet this requirement, first in the form of print newspapers, followed by radio and television, and the Internet. Ideally, media should act as citizen resources, “provid[ing] citizens with what they need to be active participants in social and political life” (Croteau & Hoynes, 2005, p. 29). To achieve this ideal, two things should be expected of news media: distribute reliable information to as much of the population as possible, and serve as a watchdog to help root out corruption among... To meet the first expectation, the media should play a basic role as a provider of information that is necessary for rational democratic debate.

This idea is so important to the character of our democracy that the people’s right to free press, unencumbered by government censorship, is protected in the first amendment to the Constitution of the United... A healthy representative democracy is predicated on the electorate (all eligible voters) making informed choices; this in turn rests on the quality and veracity of information that they receive. The second expectation – that the press should act as a “watchdog,” alerting the public to abuses of power – rests primarily on news media and journalists who monitor the functioning of democracy by... Because of this role, the news media have historically been regarded as the fourth estate, supplementing the three branches of government by providing additional checks and balances. In modern societies, it is impossible to talk intelligently about democracy without considering the role played by print and electronic media in disseminating political messages to the public. Especially following the creation of electronic media in the twentieth century, the connections between democracy, political campaigns, public opinion, and journalistic practices have become the focus of great attention and anxiety among communication scholars.

Each new media innovation is evaluated for its potential effect on democratic politics, and media professionals are regularly criticized for practices that are perceived in one way or another as being antidemocratic. Also, as media have allowed politicians and political candidates to address large audiences, Richard E. Neustadt's contention in his book Presidential Power (1980)—that the real power of the U.S. president is the "power to persuade"—has become increasingly intuitive, with presidents and other politicians acquiring more and more channels through which to reach their constituents, in addition to their normal interactions with other appointed... The relationship between democracy and the media has been a regular topic of discussion ever since the emergence of liberal democratic theory as an intellectual force in Europe. In the seventeenth century, John Milton's Aeropagitica provided a libertarian argument for the right of free discussion, as such discussion presumably would lead to the rejection of false and unsound opinion and the discovery...

Although the free press guarantee in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution received surprisingly little attention at the time of the adoption of the First Amendment, that guarantee has been the object of much debate ever since. In part because of frustration with the early Federalists, Thomas Jefferson and other anti-Federalists were passionate defenders of the free press in the early days of the American republic. In the nineteenth century, the English philosopher John Stuart Mill articulated a fully developed justification for free speech and a free press, as silencing anyone might prevent the truth from being told and would... The modern media has only been able to convey up-to-date political information to the public for a little less than two centuries, thanks largely to technological innovations in print media and the rapid development... Furthermore, German sociologist Jürgen Habermas explains in his book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) that the rise of the politically oriented public sphere in parts of Europe and the United States...

In the emerging democratic societies of Europe and North America, newspapers became not only reporters of news but shapers of public opinion. However, as newspapers became increasingly dependent on commercial advertising for support, economic considerations meant that newspaper editorial policy and journalistic practice could also be influenced by those who controlled financial resources. The result, as described by Habermas, is that wealthy individuals or those who control wealth have more influence over public opinion and, ultimately, over what policies are changed than do members of the lower... Other scholars also have worried that, in addition to the economic forces that might distort public debate, the heavy reliance of the modern media on governmental sources of information might lead in some cases... As the relationship between democracy and the media has been considered throughout the twentieth century, much attention has been given to the extent of media effects, especially following the experience with government-produced propaganda during... If media coverage of politics and political campaigns has little influence on public attitudes and behaviors, then presumably people need not be concerned over the quantity and quality of attention that is paid to...

However, if media coverage of politics and political campaigns has a moderate or strong influence on public attitudes and behaviors, then protecting democratic government requires careful review—and possibly governmental regulation—of media, whether print or... Historically, some scholars have maintained at one time or another that the media have almost no effect or that the media have a strong, direct effect on audiences, but the vast majority of contemporary... Further complicating the relationship between democracy and the media has been the emergence of computer-based interactive media, including the Internet, and other new technologies, such as facsimile machines. New media forms provide ordinary people with unparalleled opportunities to distribute information quickly and inexpensively to large numbers of their fellow citizens. The democratic potential of such new media is sometimes described as being a way to compensate for the ownership of traditional media forms (e.g., newspapers) by fewer and fewer large corporations, given the concern... However, the proliferation of Internet sources has meant that the information provided on the Internet often is not accurate or, at the very least, Internet information has not been properly checked for accuracy.

Additionally, while some political observers have discussed the potential of Internet voting and campaign material distribution to rejuvenate interest in voting and in political activism, others have argued that the tendency of Internet websites... Of course, given the rapid development of the Internet and its steady increase in availability and ease of use, the political implications of emerging electronic media are far from certain, whether in historically democratic... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The term “media democracy” insinuates that the media and mediated communication are of central relevance for modern democracies due to their decisive influence on (or consequences for) political institutions (macro level) and political actors... Theoretically associated with the media democracy concept is the notion of a “media society.” This idea implies that traditional mass media, as well as the new online media, are pervading all spheres of society... The media society can be seen as the result of a process of functional differentiation making the media increasingly independent of their former sponsors which were, in the European tradition, primarily the churches and...

The media now operate according to a specific media logic and, due to economic necessities, guided by commercial rules in order to maximize their audience shares. Part of this evolutionary process took place following the development of communication technologies. But to a certain degree the process is also influenced by general tendencies of social change. <span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"> </span> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The media democracy concept signifies special aspects of the transformation of politics, in analogy to the notions of “media-centered democracies” (Plasser 2004), “mediated politics” (Bennett & Entman 2001), and the mediatization of politics (Mazzoleni... These terms imply fundamental political changes, particularly structural transformations of the political communication system and the public sphere leading to what Blumler & Kavanagh (1999) have termed “the third age of political communication.” According...

One key tenet of a liberal democracy, the dominant form of government today, is the separation of powers into the various independent branches of government, usually in the form of the legislature that makes... Societies in the past were relatively small and citizens were able to engage face-to-face or via handwritten messages in their deliberation and decision-making process. As populations grew larger participation in a democracy required mediation, i.e. communication is now mediated. The earliest mass media was the newspaper, followed by the radio and television, and today, the Internet. Because of its emerging function as a watchdog that monitors the running of the nation by exposing excesses and corruption, and holding those in power accountable, the media was regarded as the fourth estate,...

The media also plays a more basic role as a provider of information necessary for rational debate. A healthy functioning democracy is predicated on the electorate making informed choices and this in turn rests on the quality of information that they receive. The media, as an institution, has for a long time enjoyed the position as a trusted primary source of news and information. Due to the enlarging population, it has become no longer possible for every citizen to participate directly in the democratic process. This led to the the representational form of democracy where representatives speak and act on behalf of individuals. The media, in this environment, took on the role of being a voice of the people to those in government.

This evolution of the media into a place where the public can participate in the democratic process prompted Dahlgrens (1995) to separate the mediated public sphere into four dimensions in order to understand it... The media can be studied as an institution. Is the media independent or state owned? Do they serve the public’s interest or a narrow range of interests belonging to the owners of the media? Are government funded and government regulated media institutions used for public service or are they propaganda mouthpieces? When private corporations own the media are they furthering their own commercial interests or the public’s?

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