How We Are Governed : Investigations of Communication, Media and Democracy [1 ed.] 9781443862394, 9781443854061

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How We Are Governed

How We Are Governed: Investigations of Communication, Media and Democracy

Edited by

Philip Dearman and Cathy Greenfield

How We Are Governed: Investigations of Communication, Media and Democracy, Edited by Philip Dearman and Cathy Greenfield This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Philip Dearman, Cathy Greenfield and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5406-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5406-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface .............................................................................................vii Chapter One ....................................................................................... 1 Investigating Communication, Media and Democracy Philip Dearman and Cathy Greenfield Chapter Two .................................................................................... 10 Convergent Media Policy Terry Flew Chapter Three .................................................................................. 31 Notions of Guardianship Mary Griffiths Chapter Four .................................................................................... 53 Truth Over Justice: The Leveson Inquiry and the Implications for Democracy Des Freedman Chapter Five .................................................................................... 75 Dialogue and Interaction? German Political Parties on Twitter and Facebook–An Analysis of the 2011 State Elections Andreas Elter Chapter Six .................................................................................... 108 Mediated Politics in Australia: Towards a Qualitative Evaluation Brian McNair Chapter Seven................................................................................ 124 Governmentality and Performance: Reassessing Reality TV David Nolan

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Chapter Eight ................................................................................. 142 Citizen Journalism and Changing Practices of Citizenship: The Case of Singapore’s STOMP Portal Lucy Morieson Chapter Nine.................................................................................. 159 Reading Cyber-Safety: Co-Regulatory Partnerships, Empowered Citizens and Markets for Education Philip Dearman Chapter Ten ................................................................................... 184 Media, Populism and Democracy: The Case of the Resource Super-Profits Tax in Australia Cathy Greenfield and Peter Williams Chapter Eleven .............................................................................. 205 Tender Intimacies: Power, Proximity, Personality in Australian Transnational Broadcasting John Tebbutt Contributors ................................................................................... 228 Index .............................................................................................. 232

PREFACE

Originating initially from work presented at the Media, Communication and Democracy: Global and National Environments conference held at RMIT University in September 2011,1 this book explores and demonstrates the interdisciplinary relations between communication and politics. It gathers together scholarship within the field of Communication & Media Studies whose focus is on the formal arenas of politics and public policy as well as on politics in the broader sense of an informal negotiation of social relations of power between people. Overall, the book coheres around the authors’ concerns, dispersed across many different domains, with how we are governed. The book’s attention to this question revolves particularly, though by no means exclusively, around how communicative practices and technologies are integral to governing. Asking how we are governed means considering whether the arrangements entailed in the instances presented here can best be described as democratic or otherwise. It is a question informed by the view that Communication & Media Studies is asking the right questions when it seeks to make a contribution of some sort to “democratic potentialities” (Gouldner in Halloran 1998, p. 14). Each chapter focuses on some empirical instance or instances of media–politics and of media–democracy relations, on how these have been or are being exercised, on how they are being interrogated and reinvented. Some are strongly informed by the studies of governmentality associated with Foucault’s historical work on relations of power and knowledge, explicitly pursuing a governmental description and analysis of communication practices and technologies. Others complement a governmental approach through their attention to formative policy struggles and pervasive negotiations of power. The chapters take readers from the current limits of media regulation and the erosion of authority of elected politicians (Flew), to questions about the guardianship of public life, the various forms this has taken in contemporary Australian politics, and the emergence of activist organisations operating across adjacent media as self-appointed monitors or intervenors in this regard (Griffiths); from questions about whether judicial inquiries, such as the Leveson Inquiry in the UK, are able to hold the powerful to account or instead are a means of containing and limiting anger (Freedman), to the actuality of Web 2.0 communication in the

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formation of “the will of the people” in Germany (Elter); from questions about how to weigh optimistic perspectives on citizen participation in politics against pessimistic views of a “shallow brutality” afforded by various “new” media (McNair), to the straitening of democratic arrangements through predominant kinds of televised economic literacy (Nolan); from new opportunities for online participation in the “illiberal democracy” of Singapore (Morieson), to overlaps and tensions between training for citizenship and market formation in public-private partnerships concerning cyber-safety in Australia (Dearman); and from the concerted public relations challenge ranged against one national government by a transnational business-backed market populism (Greenfield & Williams), to a consideration of personal and political rivalries caught up in decisions about how Australian “soft power” can be extended through television programming broadcast into Asia (Tebbutt).2

Bibliography Halloran, James. D. 1998. “Mass Communication Research: Asking the Right Questions.” In Mass Communication Research Methods, edited by Anders Hansen, Simon Cottle, Ralph Negrine and Chris Newbold, pp. 9–34. London: Macmillan Press.

Notes 1 The conference was jointly organised by the European Union (EU) Centre (RMIT University), the School of Media and Communication (RMIT University) and the Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe Project (University of Oxford). Several papers presented at the conference have since been published in Volume 45 of Communication, Politics & Culture, which is available at www.rmit.edu.au/cpcjournal. 2 All chapters included here have been blind peer reviewed.

CHAPTER ONE INVESTIGATING COMMUNICATION, MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY PHILIP DEARMAN AND CATHY GREENFIELD

The fortunes of democracy and the role of media in those fortunes is a currently boundless topic. The urgency of climate change response, the challenge to liberal-democratic institutions and norms of an Asian century and of violent internecine struggles in Middle Eastern nations, the dominance of transnational finance sectors, the political disaffection of some citizenries and the authoritarian energising of others—all make for a thick vein of description and speculation about the capacities and fitness of existing democracies,1 routinely bound up with allied interest in the future of established models of journalism, their current performance, and the social and political consequences of pervasive digital technologies. In other words, the relations between media and democracy presently make for a rich field of inquiry. It encompasses, for example, the practices and consequences of WikiLeaks (the emblematic digital organisation of early 21st century “communicative abundance” (Keane 2009)), changing technologies for educating and informing citizens, and new ways of undertaking electoral and political campaigns. It is a field marked by various reports and reviews seeking to establish appropriate policy directions for nation-state regulation of media in a period of digital convergence, and by the formation of new online models for the guardianship of public life. It is a field rife with democracy’s political competitor, the latent “auto-immune disease” of populism (Alonso et al. 2011, p. 12). And it is a period when the daily business-cycle and all its tips and tricks has displaced social policy concerns from mainstream news agendas (even if you have a view, like some, that they no longer matter!) and when, as ever, what we call democracy operates on different scales and is attached to widely varying objectives.

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This book takes stock of matters arising at this time, which are at once “political” and “communicative”. Our aim in this chapter is to briefly outline an approach to communication, media and democracy which departs from the instrumental sense of communication that can be the price of Political Science’s focus on legislative and party politics and polities (what is the limit of their power? are they on message? do they know their audience?), which accepts the importance of various media in doing and understanding capital-P Politics but at the same time engages with the diverse senses of communication that are bound up with the social relations of power in lower case-p politics—in, for example, the political economy of health, or of aging, or of finance.2 This introduces two points. First, attention to communication is not satisfied by media-centric study,3 and, second, politics necessarily spills over from the important but (dominantly) narrower concerns of Political Science. In arguing this we wish to assist an ongoing “redistribution” (Latour 2007, p. 814) of possible conceptions of politics and communication, a move which does not at all displace attention to media texts or political administrations, but which multiplies the things that can be said about these fields of communication and politics. In this way, our interests diverge somewhat from the more familiar ambit of the sub-discipline of Political Communication. 4 They align more, to take just one example, with the identification of the political in the daily negotiations of “everyday investors” within pervasive technologies of investment in financialised economies (Langley 2008, p. 91). But, just as Dean included analyses of national states in his overview of “the continued force of the political” and diverse early-21st century projects for “governing societies” (2007, p. 2), neither do we stand back from attention to electoral politics. Precisely how the more circumscribed sense of electoral politics figures in the overall politics–media nexus we are pursuing deserves a little consideration, despite it being arguably a well-worked relation. We can take our cue here from a number of scholars, starting with Thomas Meyer who at the turn of the century could convincingly argue that a lot of otherwise good scholarship takes an “overly broad and sweeping approach” to how media affect the process and structure of politics (Meyer 2002, pp. 58–59)5 and a lot more to boot is limited to a conception of the media–politics nexus in the weak sense of “influence”. Meyer’s case in Media Democracy: How the Media Colonize Politics (2002) is an amalgam of established theses about the public sphere, about the dominance of television and infotainment, and of less familiarly stated concerns and assumptions. These latter are to do, especially, with his account of what politics consists of, or the domain of politics. His

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perceptiveness on this count, about politics, is what makes Media Democracy a useful starting point: too often in writings about media and politics there is either a lack of specification of politics, or its too narrow conception through either a functionalist political sociology or an instrumentalist political science. Meyer’s account of politics’ threefold aspect—polity, policy, and political process—and his emphasis on the “intermediary sector of politics” as well as parties, captures more usefully the scale, time-frames and (to employ an awkward but apt phrase) constitutive extensiveness of politics. Polity designates constitutions, systems of rules, unwritten norms, and political cultures. Policy involves the effort, always in evidence, “to find solutions for politically defined problems by means of programs for action” (Meyer 2002, p.12), and the political process is “the effort to gain official acceptance of one’s chosen program of action” (p. 12). The political process is organised by parties and—especially in its crucial “protracted duration” (Meyer 2002, p. 41)— by intermediary bodies (including churches, trade unions, non-government organisations such as groups promoting social security) that provide “forums, stabilizing factors and sources of energy for the long-term discourses about the definition of problems and alternatives for action” (2002, p. 22). The particular weightings and specific assembling of these dimensions may vary considerably, but all are entailed, all are important albeit in different ways from one case to another. With this understanding of politics in place, Meyer avoids the common mistakes of claiming either too much for the role of media in relation to the political domain, or too little—as simply external “influence”. Despite his strong assertion that politics has been colonised by dominant characteristics of the media, (crystallised by Meyer as its “uncompromising presentism” (2002, p. 44), an outcome of its dual filters of news values and of aestheticising rules of presentation) and that this colonisation has farreaching consequences for the operation of democratic politics in all its aspects, still politics goes on outside its media presentation: the question of whether political programs have really worked never quite pales into insignificance under the blinding klieg lights of media attention; in fact the traditional questions reassert themselves when we are faced with the experience of crises in our everyday lives. (2002, p. 76)

As Meyer puts it, “but old-fashioned politics is never fully eclipsed” (2002, p. 75). Or yet again, the communicative culture of politics is not completely exhausted by media culture, even as that media culture is a “characteristic and crucial part of it” (2002, p. 76).

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All these considerations are useful for dealing more precisely with the disposition of the neighbourliness between media and politics—a metaphor that allows for all the varied kinds of relations possible between neighbours, and, hopefully, displaces the lure of deterministic explanations. Our metaphor of neighbourliness is designed to avoid making either “politics”, endowed with a singular character, or “the media”, as some kind of unified totality, into a determining cause. Meyer’s overall thesis is that what now typically exists is media democracy, understood as the colonization of politics by the mass media [which] fundamentally changes the role and mode of operation of political parties. To the extent that parties have to—or perhaps want to—submit to the functional imperatives of the logic of mass communication, their communicative time-frame and center of gravity shift; they respond differently to their political environment. (Meyer 2002, p.24)

Parties having, or wanting, to submit to the imperatives of accelerated and intensifying digital social media applications is of course currently altering the communicative time-frame and calculations of political parties.6 Peter Dahlgren has more recently drawn on Meyer in his investigation of the state of media and political engagement in Western democracies, whereas he says, “the media have become the prime scene of politics” (2009, p. 53). He also notes that this is a scene where there are now more actors and forces making themselves felt: spin doctors, public relations experts, media advisors and political consultants, and all their various practices. To add to this, we can note Nigel Thrift’s suggestive observation that “[p]olitical life in democracies is a life constantly stirred by the media” (2008, p. 250). This is his way of referring to the saturation use of affective technologies—new technologies of affect which have migrated from corporate practices of “generating engagement” in consumers (2008, p. 248) to the parliamentary political arena (in, for example, political advertising, daily tracking polls, the techniques of the permanent campaign). Most obvious in new alignments between politics and consumerism, the use of these technologies of affect mean that political time is being reshaped into “an increasingly anxious business” (Thrift 2008, p. 250), punctuated by the production of “affective firestorms” around issues or around politicians, and all this “against a general background of increasing lack of formal political engagement in the population as a whole” (2008, p. 250). A further contribution to our understanding of the current state of media–politics relations we take from David Nolan (2008) and his identification of the trends of celebrity journalism, of the dominance of

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image, and of commercial imperatives. While attention to such trends is hardly new, Nolan’s suggestive contribution is to locate these as the particular elements of a recognizably neoliberal regime of governing within which journalism relays norms such as scepticism about expertise, on the one hand, and, on the other, enthusiasm for markets rather than government bureaucracies to ensure a “democratic” conduit for the wants of the ordinary person. In other words, Nolan pays attention to what a lot of journalism is teaching audiences about what counts as democracy. None of these writers treat the intimate relations between media and politics as a new thing, as if politics had some earlier, separate existence from communication technologies. Neither are they particularly sanguine about the consequences of the current state of media–politics relations for democratic politics, though it would perhaps be more accurate to say that none of them are engaged in anything so reductive as reading the fortunes of democracy off the state of these relations. We mention these writers here precisely because they approach these media–politics relations, instead, as the current conditions within which struggles for, and against, democratic arrangements (or for and against deepening or extending these arrangements beyond those of electoral democracy) are being conducted. Some other writers have drawn attention to aspects of broader media– power relations which are said to facilitate, though certainly not guarantee, “more social justice and more democracy” or “democratic transformations” (McNair 2006, p.17). Brian McNair has done this with his analysis of the cultural chaos spawned through the proliferation of communication channels, a chaos that does not belie the efforts and successes of power elites at exercising control in societies, but provides capacity for “disruption and interruption, even subversion of established authority structures” (2006, p.3). John Keane’s (2009) descriptions of “communicative abundance” in media-saturated societies—especially the abundance provided by the Internet—similarly see it, in partnership with a strong human rights agenda in the post–WWII period, as enabling a new form of “monitorial democracy”, a significant supplement to electoral representative democracy. Both McNair and Keane take pains not to fall into overblown claims for the social and political benefits of either cultural chaos or communicative abundance. 7 If there is a hint of populism in their respective diagnoses of elites and their authority being now more susceptible to disruption or to scrutiny—populism because this susceptibility is to the benefit of those who are “not elites”—then both writers are aware of the traps of crude populism. This crude kind of populism circulated widely in early equations of the affordances of the

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Internet, interactivity especially, with a general reviving of a Jeffersonian democracy, in the ideal of “all individuals [being] able to express themselves freely within cyberspace” (Barbrook and Cameron 1996, p. 45). As Barbrook and Cameron put it in the mid–1990s, this “Californian ideology” of technological determinism and libertarian individualism became the “hybrid orthodoxy of the information age” (1996, p. 49). Subsequent criticism of the utopianism of this orthodoxy notwithstanding, claims about the inherent democratising effect of the Internet continue to proliferate in rationales for the adoption of social media in electoral politics, in businesses and in other organisations. While such claims are presented as being about democracy, they are better understood as populist or riding on a populist notion of democracy. Populism is a view of democracy in which the figure of “the people”—or an equivalent identity like “the public”, or a less homogeneous aggregate of individuals—is both central and taken as the natural basis for governing. This view conflates democracy with popular sovereignty—a doctrinal truth in liberal representative democracies but guaranteeing therefore only doctrine, not democratic practices and relations. Implicit in this view is the romantic assumption that constituencies and their interests are given, natural, pre–political, and that “the people” as the preeminent constituency, requires simply the expression of its interests for politics, or governing, to take its rightful course. Hence the view that the Internet will confer a democratic benefit, by extending to “ordinary people” a means of expression that has previously been blocked. This is of course, a povertystruck notion of democracy, not because it values expression or “voice”, but because it stops at “voice” and because it treats interests or what is being voiced as somehow given, somehow pre-social, thereby radically circumscribing the scope and role of democratic politics. To distinguish democracy from this populist view, to think about it in terms of how power is exercised rather than in terms of sovereignty or right, is to view it as the practical arrangements through which people come to participate in decision-making concerning activities they are engaged in or affected by. This view of democracy as a technology for decision–making and the disaggregation from populism that it allows leads us to a small but not unimportant point regarding how we work on media– politics. Identifying what particular configurations of media–politics relations mean for democracy is not to be done in terms of whether these relations allow or block expression of the interests or will of “the people” or the public or ordinary individuals in aggregate. More pointedly, it is not to look for whether certain media have “democratic affordances” that they can somehow inevitably lend to the activity of politics. Rather it is to be

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interested in how, and with what rationale, particular media—overlapping, contesting, and adjacent old and new media—are used to bring into being particular kinds of constituencies able to formulate particular interests. It is to apply an empirically attentive and non-reductive eye to the diverse and dispersed operations of governing, from electoral politics to civics education, from regulatory frameworks to the formative routines and practices of citizen journalism, from reality television to international diplomacy—and to pose the question of their contingent contribution to democratic arrangements for public decision-making. In formulating the scope of this volume we were particularly interested in scholarship whose focus is on the formal arenas of politics and public policy, on connections that can be made between politics and communication technologies and practices, as well as on politics in the broader sense of an informal negotiation of social relations of power between people. In different ways, this scholarship tells us something about how a range of populations is governed in the 21st century, how the conditions of that governing are contested and negotiated. These populations are various: located in particular countries, ranged across national borders, and embedded in specific organisations or institutions. To say they are “governed” is to use an older notion of government, the sense of a pervasive, complex and heterogeneous exercise of power that extends well beyond the State, though by no means ignoring it.8 The virtue of approaching politics in terms of a broad governing of populations is that it highlights the ongoing work of forming and re–forming political constituencies and interests. It guards against common sense assumptions that these are ever simply given—whether in the form of a public, elites, classes, or communities—and that the work of politics, and of communication, more or less follows in their wake.

Bibliography Alonso, Sonia, John Keane and Wolfgang Merkel. 2011. “Editors’ Introduction: Rethinking the Future of Representative Democracy.” In The Future of Representative Democracy, edited by Sonia Alonso, John Keane and Wolfgang Merkel, pp. 1–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barbrook, Richard and Andy Cameron. 1996. “The Californian Ideology.” Science as Culture 6 (26) Part 1: 44–72. Chen, Peter. 2013. Australian Politics in a Digital Age. Canberra: ANU E Press.

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Curran, James. 2012. “Reinterpreting the Internet.” In Misunderstanding the Internet, edited by James Curran, Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman, pp. 3–33. Oxon: Routledge. Dahlgren, Peter. 2009. Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication, and Democracy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Davis, Aeron. 2010. Political Communication and Social Theory. Oxon: Routledge. Dean, Mitchell. 2007. Governing Societies: Political Perspectives on Domestic and International Rule. London: Open University Press. Dean, Mitchell and Barry Hindess. 1998. “Introduction: Government, Liberalism, Society.” In Governing Australia: Studies in Contemporary Rationalities of Government, edited by Mitchell Dean and Barry Hindess, pp. 1–19. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Keane, John. 2009. “Monitory Democracy and Media-saturated Societies.” Griffith Review 24: 1–23. —. 2010. “Democracy in the 21st Century: Global Questions.” http://johnkeane.net/48/topics-of-interest/democracy-21stcentury/democracy-in-the-21st-century-global-questions. Langley, Paul. 2008. The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in Anglo-America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2007. “Turning Around Politics: A Note on Gerard de Vries’ Paper.” Social Studies of Science 37 (5): 811–20. Mattelart, Armand. 1996. The Invention of Communication, translated by Susan Emanuel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McNair, Brian. 2006. Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge. Meyer, Thomas. 2002. Media Democracy: How the Media Colonize Politics, with Lew Hinchman. Cambridge: Polity. Nolan, David. 2008. “Tabloidisation revisited: the regeneration of journalism in conditions of ‘advanced liberalism’.” Communication, Politics & Culture 41 (2): 100–118. Thrift, Nigel. 2008. “The Political Arena.” In Non-Representational Theory: Space/Affect/Politics, pp. 247–254. London: Routledge.

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Notes 1 On these and further considerations see, for example, Keane’s (2010) overview essay outlining the “global questions” facing democracy; and Davis on the “crisis literature” of established democracies (2010, pp. 13–16). 2 This is an approach which informs our teaching in the Politics Economies Communication program at RMIT University, as well as the ambit of Communication, Politics & Culture, a journal with which we both have editorial connection. 3 See Mattelart (1996) on what is marginalised in media-centric approaches to communication. 4 Though see Davis (2010) for a well-informed discussion of methodological limits of the field and an innovative expansion of it, including rethinking the professionalisation of party politics through the “governmentalisation” of states and their rulers (p. 40). 5 Thanks are due here to Peter Williams’ generative reading and discussion of Meyer’s work with us. 6 See, for example, Chen’s (2013) exploration of the implications of digital media for Australian political life. 7 The kind dealt with by Curran’s (2012) sober assessment concerning the Internet’s contribution: “the internet has not revitalised democracy” (p.17). 8 A sense of the term which preceded the dominant, broadly liberal, and conceptually narrower notion of government (Dean and Hindess 1998).

CHAPTER TWO CONVERGENT MEDIA POLICY TERRY FLEW

Introduction This chapter considers the implications of convergence for media policy from three perspectives. It notes the traditional concerns and priorities of media regulation, from the theoretical perspectives of public interest theories, economic capture theories, and capitalist state theories. While it has been said that “regulation of the media of communication is as old as blood feuds over insults, and…as classic an issue as deciding whose turn it is to use the talking drum or the ram’s horn” (Michael 1990, p. 40), how it has been evaluated differs considerably across different theoretical paradigms, with the “economic of politics” approach, in particular, challenging the dominance of public interest approaches to understanding media regulation. This has become particularly relevant in the early 21st century, where questions of how media are regulated, how they should be regulated, and whether they should be regulated at all, are being asked worldwide. A series of changes in the media environment have necessitated new approaches to media policy, associated with: media convergence; media globalisation; the blurring of boundaries between media forms and industries; the greater ability of media consumers to themselves become producers of media content and distribute this material across global media platforms such as YouTube; and the uncoupling of media content from particular media platforms (e.g. TV being watched on smart phones, Internet content being accessed from “smart” TVs). Such changes have been seen as marking a shift from the mass communications media paradigm of the 20th century, towards a convergent social media paradigm, requiring not only new policies for new media, but a wider rethink of both the principles of media policy and the regulatory instruments through which it is enacted (Flew 2011).

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Media convergence presents a number of challenges to national systems of media regulation, including: (1) determining who is a media company; (2) regulatory parity between “old” and “new” media; (3) treatment of similar media content across different platforms; (4) distinguishing “big media” from user-created content; and (5) maintaining a distinction between media regulation and censorship of personal communication. These questions are discussed in light of the failed attempts to reform media policy in Australia, based on a series of media policy reports undertaken in 2011–12, including the Convergence Review, the Finkelstein Review, and the ALRC National Classification Scheme Review. In the conclusion, I argue that public interest approaches to media policy continue to have validity, even as they grapple with the complex question of how to understand the concept of influence in a convergent media environment.

Media Policy and Regulation: Competing Perspectives National media regulation developed over the 20th century with the rise of mass media of film, broadcasting and, to a lesser degree, print. In particular, broadcast media were subject to extensive government regulation on the basis of “public good” characteristics of the media product, and the need to manage access to spectrum. Industry-specific regulations governing ownership, content and standards were developed, arising from the perceived centrality of the broadcast medium to public communication, the capacity of media owners to influence public debate, and concerns about potential risks to children and others from exposure to harmful media content (Doyle 2002; Picard 2011). While many of these regulations are “negative” in the sense of setting controls over access to broadcasting licences or restrictions on what can be screened, there have also been more “positive” regulations, that aim to stimulate various forms of local content production, including local drama, provision for cultural and linguistic minorities, children’s programming, and documentary and factual programming. Public service media have been central to such provision in many parts of the world, and until the 1980s held a monopoly over broadcasting in many nations. In Europe, where public service broadcasting has been strongest, the European Union approved a protocol that defined the mission of public broadcasting as being “directly related to the democratic, social and cultural needs of each society and to the need to preserve media pluralism” (Schejter 2008, p. 1609). In other parts of the world, such as

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Canada, Japan and Australia, public service broadcasting exists as part of a dual system with regulated public broadcasters, who have legislated requirements in terms of local content provision. Even in the United States, typically seen as the least regulated media market, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has sought to maintain principles such as localism, where the public interest obligations of broadcast licencees include the expectation that they provide programming that will “serve the needs and interests of their communities of license” (FCC 2008). In terms of why media regulations take the form they do, the principal answer has been that they serve the public interest. Robert Horwitz has observed that “the ‘official’ view of legislative intent” is one where: Regulation is established in response to the conflict between private corporations and the general public. The creation of regulatory agencies is viewed as the concrete expression of the spirit of democratic reform (1989, p. 23).

In relation to media policy, van Cuilenburg and McQuail have observed that: Policy formation in this, as in other fields, is generally guided by a notion of the ‘public interest’, which democratic states are expected to pursue on behalf of their citizens. In general, a matter of ‘public interest’ is one that affects the society as a whole (or sections of it) rather than just the individuals immediately involved or directly affected. (2003, p. 182)

The criticism of public interest theories of regulation has been about whether they are naïve in terms of understanding actual practices of media policy and regulation. The normative proposition is that “regulatory administration neither adds to nor subtracts from the policy decided by law makers…[and] civil servants are simply office carriers dedicated to carrying out the duties that constitute their particular role” (Christensen 2011, pp. 97–8). However, critics have argued that the history and conduct of regulatory institutions has seen regulatory failure, arising out of factors such as media regulators developing a common worldview with the industries they regulate, the ability of regulated industries to influence regulator conduct, and ways in which the political process bears upon how regulators approach the industry in question (Horwitz 1989, pp. 27–9). The critique of public interest theories of regulation has gone in two very distinct directions. Economic capture theories have argued that regulatory failure arises out of two inter-related processes: regulated

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businesses use the process as a way of securing economic rents and controlling the entry of new competitors into the market, while government regulators maximise self-interest by working closely with regulated businesses, to the apparent detriment of the public interest (Christensen 2011, pp. 97–9). Drawing upon neo-classical economics, and applying rational choice theory to the political and policy spheres, these theories identify the problem of regulatory reform as being one where the benefits of the status quo are concentrated among a small number of industry and policy “insiders”, and the costs of change are well understood by these interests, whereas, the benefits of change are more uncertain and diffused among the population more broadly (Dunleavy and O’Leary 1987, pp. 108–11). As these theories are typically put forward by those with a strong belief in the positive role played by markets in economic life, and indeed evaluate politics as akin to economic behaviour in “markets” for political power and influence, the characteristic recommendation arising is that there should be deregulation, or a reduced role of governments in controlling the activities of private corporations, combined with measures to increase the level of overall competition in those industries (Berg 2008; cf. Stedman-Jones 2012, pp. 126–33). Alternatively, technological change and changing consumer tastes and preferences are identified as themselves driving change towards a preferred deregulatory outcome: the take-up of cable and satellite television in the 1980s and 1990s, and the role now being played by the Internet in enabling alternative modes of content delivery and new services, are seen as undermining the traditional foundations of media regulation. The second major critique of public interest theories of regulation comes from capitalist state theories, which have viewed liberal pluralism as both politically naïve and intellectually complicit in regimes of power and domination. Proponents of this critical approach argue that regulatory agencies, and particularly those who head them, come to hold common class interests with dominant corporate actors. Barrow (2007, p. 91) draws attention to Ralph Miliband’s observation in The State in Capitalist Society (1968), that political power in capitalist democracies had “shifted from the legislative to the executive branch of government and to independent administrative or regulatory agencies”. This meant that even though governments “speak in the name of the state and are formally invested with state power [that] does not mean that they effectively control that power” (Miliband 1968, pp. 49–50). In the current context, such arguments have been associated with critiques of the political ideology of neoliberalism, where it is argued that “human well-being can best be

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advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills, within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade”, and that “the role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices” (Harvey 2005, p. 2). A number of authors have argued that neoliberalism has been the ascendant ideology in media policy internationally since the 1980s. David Hesmondhalgh proposed that the political influence of neoliberalism “helped to de-legitimate public ownership and certain forms of regulation in nearly all forms of economic activity” (2013, p. 131). Des Freedman argued that a shift towards neoliberalism in US and UK media policy drove “a much narrower and more consumer-oriented role for the media” and a much greater focus on “the largely economic benefits that may accrue from the exploitation of the media industries” (2008, p. 219). Toby Miller has summarised neoliberalism as a doctrine that “understood people exclusively through the precepts of selfishness…[and] exercised power on people by governing them through market imperatives” (2009, p. 271). We can note, then, that arguments for media policy reform to address the challenges of convergence can be interpreted as being about government regulation better serving the public interest in a time of rapid change. But this brings us to the prior question as to how the public interest is itself understood. From the perspective of economic capture theories, the public interest would be best served by giving freer rein to individuals and markets, by reducing the overall amount of media regulation. Chris Berg, from the Institute of Public Affairs, a public policy think tank that “supports the free market of ideas, the free flow of capital, [and] a limited and efficient government” (IPA 2013), argues that media regulations are based upon a now outdated paradigm of media scarcity that is “entirely unsuited to the contemporary media landscape” where “an infinite range of news and opinion can be now gathered at almost no cost from the Internet, produced by professionals and, increasingly, amateurs” (Berg 2006). A corollary of this argument is that regulations that are nationally-based are simply rendered inoperable in an age of globally networked media. Australian Internet activist, Mark Newton, has argued that “searching for local provincial regulatory responses to a global phenomenon” will only lead to regulatory responses which are “obsolete by the time they’re published, overtaken by global developments which pay scant attention to Australian regulators” (Newton 2011). Capitalist state theories tend to look for the dominant corporate interests in a field such as media policy, to determine whether they are the real forces driving such changes. Hesmondhalgh summarises the neo-

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Marxist perspective on media policy as one where “in general, policy bodies in modern capitalism work towards combining the accumulation of capital on the part of businesses with a certain degree of popular legitimation”, even if such an analysis “does not always account for how they operate in practice” (Hesmondhalgh 2013, p. 125). A common argument from this perspective is that much of the current “convergence talk” overstates the significance of the changes taking place, in what James Curran has termed “millenarian wish fulfillment” by “the foes of established media organisations, hankering for the equivalent of divine retribution” (Curran 2010, p. 468). In a similar vein, Graeme Turner critiques “digital optimists” who, he argues, draw upon a binary opposition between old and new media, where “the old media is corporate, bullying, exploitative, elitist and anti-democratic, while the new media is grassroots, collaborative, independent, customizable, empowering and democratic” (Turner 2010, p. 128). Public interest theories of media regulation, then, have been challenged from both the political right and the left, and from libertarians and Marxists. From the market-libertarian perspective, the Internet is foregrounding a new era of individualism to which media regulation appears as a misguided attempt to resurrect a collectivist past of media scarcity and limited consumer choices. From the left-critical perspective, media policy reform is frequently seen as a ruse, attempting to smuggle in neoliberal political agendas under the guise of cybertarian policy discourse. As Maxwell and Miller (2011, p. 594) put it, the “touchstone [of convergence] is environmental destructiveness, tied to the power of the military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex and managerial command over labour”. If media convergence is simply a synonym for new modalities of corporate power, it is hard to see how public interest discourses can be deployed in relation to its management.

The Challenges of Convergence The 2010s have been a period in which significant proposals for media reform have been developed through comprehensive policy reviews. In the UK, while the Leveson Report has been the most prominent public engagement with questions of how to regulate news media and journalism (discussed by Des Freedman in this volume), the current government has also committed to a comprehensive review of the Communications Act, with new legislation to go to Parliament by 2014 (DCMS 2012). In Singapore, the Media Development Authority completed a Media Convergence Review in 2012, observing that “policy and regulatory

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frameworks, which were designed for traditional media platforms and industry structures, are no longer able to cope with the characteristics of the converged media environment” (MDA 2012, p. 5). A range of reviews took place in Australia over 2011–12, including the Convergence Review (Convergence Review 2012), the Independent Media Inquiry (Finkelstein 2012), and the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Review of the National Classification Scheme (ALRC 2012; see, Flew 2012; Flew and Swift 2013, for reviews of these inquiries). All of these inquiries have grappled with the observation, made by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), that “regulation constructed on the premise that content could (and should) be controlled by how it is delivered is losing its force, both in logic and in practice” (ACMA 2011, p. 6). The Convergence Review observed that: Australia’s policy and regulatory framework for content services is still focused on the traditional structures of the 1990s—broadcasting and telecommunications. The distinction between these categories is increasingly blurred and these regulatory frameworks have outlived their original purpose. (Convergence Review 2012, p. vii)

In a similar vein, the former Chair of the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Konrad von Finckenstein, told the Banff World Media Festival in 2011 that: The industry is going through fundamental change in technology, in business models and in corporate structures. It has become a single industry, thoroughly converged and integrated. Yet it continues to be regulated under…separate Acts, which date from 20 years ago. Authority continues to be divided among different departments and agencies. (Theckedath and Thomas 2012, p. 4)

Convergence has been defined as “the interlinking of computing and ICTs, communication networks, and media content that has occurred with the development and popularisation of the Internet, and the convergent products, services and activities that have emerged in the digital media space” (Flew 2008, p. 28). Meikle and Young (2011) have proposed that convergence can be understood across four dimensions: x Technological—the combination of computing, communications and content around networked digital media platforms; x Industrial—the engagement of established media institutions in the digital media space, and the rise of digitally-based companies such

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as Google, Apple, Microsoft and others as significant media content providers; x Social—the rise of social network media and Web 2.0 services such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and the growth of user-created content; x Textual—the re-use and remixing of media into what has been termed a “transmedia” model, where stories and media content (for example, sounds, images, written text) are dispersed across multiple media platforms. In its Review of the National Classification Scheme, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC 2012, pp. 66–74) observed that convergence occurs in parallel with a series of other changes in the global media and communications environment: 1. Increased access to, and use of, high-speed broadband Internet. It has been estimated by Cisco that the global IP traffic in 2016 will be greater than that for every year from 1984 to 2012, as 3.4 billion people are now accessing the Internet, using 19 billion networked devices (Cisco Systems 2012). 2. Digitisation of media products and services. It is estimated that 72 hours of video are uploaded every minute onto YouTube, and four billion videos are viewed every day worldwide from that site alone. Similarly, the Apple iTunes store sells over 10 million songs per day, making it by far the major music retailer worldwide. 3. Globalisation of media platforms, content and services. At one level, it can be argued that media globalisation is not a new phenomenon, as Hollywood movies and American television programs have been a feature of the global media landscape for most of the 20th century. What has changed has been the extent to which digital media content can be sourced, distributed and accessed from any point in the world to any other point in the world. This has led to the rise of content distributors such as YouTube, and media platforms such as Apple iTunes and the Android Market, that span national boundaries and regimes of jurisdictional authority. 4. Acceleration of innovation. The World Intellectual Property Office has observed, for example, that the number of patent applications worldwide has grown from about 1 million in 1995 to 1.9 million in 2008, and the number of patents granted has grown from 450,000 in 1995 to 750,000 in 2008 (WIPO 2010).

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5. Rise of user-created content. An important shift in the media associated with convergence is the rise of user-created content, and a shift in the nature of media users from audiences to participants, resulting in the blurring of a once relatively clear distinction between media producers and consumers (Jenkins 2006; Bruns 2008; Leadbeater 2008). 6. Greater media user empowerment. The rise of user-created content and the shift in the nature of audiences towards a more participatory media culture is associated with greater user control over media. This is partly related to a greater diversity of choices of media content and platforms, but also to the ability to achieve greater personalisation of the media content that one chooses to access. 7. Blurring of public-private and age-based distinctions. Historically, there has been more extensive regulation applied to the media that has been publicly available or distributed (cinema, radio and television) than towards print media (books, newspapers, magazines), whose distribution and consumption were considered to be more private and personal in nature. As all media content is now increasingly distributed and consumed online, in environments that are public in terms of their access platforms yet private in terms of their consumption, it is substantially more difficult to restrict access to online content through age-based verification measures.

Policy Dimensions of Media Convergence It is a feature of all current reviews of media policy that the radical changes in the media landscape require rethinking of both core principles and appropriate policy instruments. Five issues, in particular, have become considerably more complex: 1. Identification of the relevant media industry actors, as the relationships between devices, platforms, services and content are becoming increasingly blurred, and as the rise of “new media” giants such as Google and Apple raises new questions about their relationship to forms of media regulation, such as ownership and content rules, that have traditionally been premised on established media industry “silos”. 2. The question of regulatory parity between “old media” and “new media” platforms and services. This has both a historical

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dimension, as the broadcasting industry has traditionally been subject to extensive forms of regulation, but also presents the question of parity between nationally-based media and “deterritorialised” media platforms such as YouTube and IPTV. 3. The question of equivalent treatment of media content across platforms, as digital content now moves easily between print, broadcast and online, and can be accessed across multiple devices. 4. The threshold of influence for media content and its providers, or when is media “big enough” for regulation to be appropriate, in light of the rapid growth of user-created content and small-scale online distribution platforms (e.g., blogging, online video hosting). 5. The continued validity of distinctions commonly made between “media content” and personal communication, and expectations that the latter should have “free speech” protections from government oversight or censorship, as differences between modes of communications based on their “mass” or “public” qualities are blurred in the context of media convergence. In relation to determining who are now the key media players in a convergent media environment, the contribution of media economist Eli Noam has provided important insights. Addressing the perennial question of whether the concentration of media ownership is increasing or decreasing, and using US media from 1984 to 2005 as the basis for his empirical analysis, Noam (2009) finds that the “digital optimists” are right to perceive that concentration is less pronounced in 2005 than it was in 1984, and that the Internet is an important part of that trend, but that the “digital pessimists” have also been right to observe an increase in media concentration between 1996 and 2005. Noam argues that the key to understanding media ownership questions lies in recognising that a twotier media system has been evolving, with large integrator firms operating in oligopolistic market structures now at its core, surrounded by a large number of specialist firms that undertake much of the actual content production (Noam 2009, pp. 436–437). The second half of the 2000s was a period of crisis for many of the media conglomerates that had dominated the previous decade—companies such as Time-Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Viacom/CBS and Sony—triggering debate about whether there is a “crisis of the media moguls”. But in many of the media markets in which these media giants operate, their challengers are now big ICT and software companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft: newspapers compete for reader attention with online news portals; TV networks battle

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with YouTube for the attention of screen media consumers; TV programs, music and movies are increasingly downloaded from iTunes or Netflix; and so on. From the perspective of media concentration measures, as considered by Noam, this generates questions about what constitutes the boundaries of an industry, a market etc. From the perspective of media policy and regulation, it also presents the question of territorial jurisdiction. Broadcasters have been regulated by governments not only because of their perceived influence in a given community, but also, as the holders of licences granted by national governments, they are historically easier to regulate. Governments have possessed the power to allocate access to spectrum, and broadcasters could be permitted to operate in a defined geographical space (nation, region, city) by virtue of being awarded a licence by the relevant regulatory agencies. In the case that comes closest to the corporatist models critiqued by economic capture theories, commercial broadcasting licencees could secure above-average profits by restricting competition. This, in turn, justified a series of quid pro quos being attached to these licences, including commitments to local content, program standards, children’s programming, and programs for minority audiences (Flew 2006). The broadcast licensing regime has been challenged worldwide by cable and satellite television since the 1980s, and has also been criticised as anti-competitive and as thwarting innovation and the development of new services. In its 2000 report to the Australian government, the Productivity Commission argued that there was a need to dismantle “a policy framework that is inward looking, anti-competitive and restrictive” (Productivity Commission 2000, p. 5), although the fact that it continues over a decade later attests to the continuing political influence of Australia’s commercial free-to-air broadcasters. Services such as subscription television, which commenced in the 1990s, were made subject to national laws and regulations as part of their operating conditions, but this has proven to be impossible for services such as YouTube and new Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) services, which effectively operate outside national territorial jurisdictions, and are not “broadcasters” as defined under current laws. It is important to note that being outside national regulatory systems is not the same as being unregulated. What goes up onto YouTube or onto Facebook can be managed, although it is through ex post mechanisms such as user ”flagging” for potentially inappropriate forms of content (Crawford and Lumby 2011). On an international scale, some of the dilemmas this presents were seen in Google’s response to protests worldwide about the

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“Innocence of Muslims” video posted on YouTube. While rejecting a US State Department request to take down the video, and successfully defending its right to host the video in the US Federal Court, it nonetheless geo-blocked access to the video in Libya, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan, for fear of further inflaming Muslim feelings about the offending video. Whatever the merits of the approach Google took to the video, it can be argued that “the incident shows…Google is acting like a court, deciding what content it keeps up and what it pulls—all without the sort of democratic accountability or transparency we have come to expect on questions of free expression and censorship” (Rosen 2012). The question of regulatory parity arose in the Australian context around the issue of local content requirements. The Convergence Review argued that government intervention to support the production and distribution of Australian and local content continued to be in the public interest:1 There are considerable social and cultural benefits from the availability of content that reflects Australian identity, character and diversity. If left to the market alone, some culturally significant forms of Australian content, such as drama, documentary and children’s programs, would be underproduced. (Convergence Review 2012, p. viii)

While it is difficult to quantify the impact of existing Australian content standards for commercial free-to-air broadcasters, the Review estimated that the cost difference between imported content and locallyproduced content in the same program genre would be in the range of 1:4 to 1:10. Even if there is an audience preference for locally-produced content, it was concluded that “while some Australian content may deliver higher ratings and therefore higher advertising revenues over time, in most cases this will not offset the substantially higher production costs” (Convergence Review 2012, p. 64). It was estimated that the removal of existing Australian content requirements for commercial free-to-air broadcasters would lead to an overall reduction in expenditure on local production of 43 per cent, with a 90 per cent decrease in local drama expenditure and the complete disappearance of locally produced children’s programming. On top of the overall decline in local production, there would be a shift away from drama and children’s programming towards lower-cost light entertainment genres (Convergence Review 2012, p. 64). This would lead to significant job losses in the Australian film and television industries, with considerable flow-on effects, as well as having adverse social and cultural impacts, including reducing resources available

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for innovative forms of locally-produced new media content (Convergence Review 2012, pp. 65–66).2 While the Convergence Review discerned the adverse industry and cultural policy consequences of removing Australian content requirements for commercial free-to-air broadcasters, the question of what would be appropriate policies to secure local content production in the context of media convergence and demands for greater regulatory parity is less clear. The Convergence Review Committee proposed the creation of a Converged Content Production Fund that would assist with the funding of innovative content across media platforms. The Converged Content Production Fund would be supported by a mix of direct government funding, spectrum fees paid by radio and television broadcasters, and contributions to be made by eligible content service enterprises, in lieu of requirements to make a set amount of expenditure on local content. The Convergence Review’s approach has its critics. Goldsmith and Thomas (2012) questioned whether “Australian content” was still being primarily defined in terms of the screen production industries and the staples of TV drama, documentaries and children’s programs, arguing that “its focus on the immediate agenda of the established Australian production sector, rather than the opportunities genuinely arising from new platforms and services, represents a lost opportunity” (Goldsmith and Thomas 2012, p. 450). Flynn (2012, p. 474) observed that “the lines between ‘professional content’ and ‘user-generated content’ are increasingly blurred”, and that “as more made-for-Internet content is created, distinctions between professional and user-generated content are likely to become contested”. Google Australia commissioned a study by the Boston Consulting Group, titled Culture Boom: How Digital Media are Invigorating Australia (Belza et al. 2012), which argued that local content regulations in the new media environment were unnecessary, as Australian online content creators were already generating a consumer surplus for Australians as well as generating new export opportunities. Leonard (2012, p. 3) observed that “the broad cross-platform agenda [made] the Report unusual, if not unique, in global terms”. He observed that the Convergence Review’s commitment to basing regulations on the size and influence of a content provider, rather than on the platform upon which content was delivered, was ground breaking. At the same time, in terms of aiming to “future proof” media legislation in the face of unpredictable convergence dynamics, such regulatory radicalism also ran the risk of upsetting both the established media players, by not granting them special status, while also upsetting new media players by appearing to threaten the laissez faire environment in which they have largely been able to operate thus far.

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Paradoxes of Media Influence The question of the appropriate scope of convergent media policy necessarily returns us to questions of media influence. The various Australian media policy reviews in 2011–12 dealt in different ways with media influence, but all insisted upon an ongoing role for public interest regulations in addressing it. The Convergence Review identified government regulation of media ownership as continuing to be important since: A concentration of services in the hands of a small number of operators can hinder the free flow of news, commentary and debate in a democratic society. Media ownership and control rules are vital to ensure that a diversity of news and commentary is maintained. (Convergence Review 2012, p. viii)

In its National Classification Scheme Review, the ALRC acknowledged how media convergence had fragmented media audiences into a series of often non-overlapping niches, but, nonetheless, concluded that the concept of community standards in relation to media is not simply an artefact of limited media outlets, and that “the development of the Internet does not in itself provide a rationale for abandoning restrictions on content or regulations based on community standards” (ALRC 2012, p. 84). The question of media influence, or media power, typically emerges in simple and complex variants. Simple variants may refer to the power of the Murdoch media, or Silvio Berlusconi, or FOX News, or the BBC, depending on what country you are in and often on what your political affiliations are. Yet such definitions are far too subjective to operationalise from a policy viewpoint. A considerably more complex version can be found, for example, in Manuel Castells’ Communication Power (2009). Defining power as “the relational capacity that enables a social actor to influence asymmetrically the decisions of other social actor(s) in ways that favour the empowered actor’s will, interests, and values” (2009, p. 10), Castells’ overall thesis is that power is shifting from identifiable media agents—the much-discussed media moguls—to the networks themselves. Large media corporations can certainly play a dominant role within and through such networks, but so too, under certain circumstances, can much smaller yet more nimble entities, be they WikiLeaks, environmental campaigners, or hacker groups such as Anonymous. In the Australian media policy reviews of 2011–12, there were two attempts to define more precisely the point at which a media entity may be deemed sufficiently influential as to warrant regulation. The first, and

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much criticised approach, was that of the Finkelstein Review into news media regulation, which proposed that news media and small press “publishers” that would be subject to the jurisdiction of the News Media Council would include news Internet sites that exceed 15,000 hits per annum, paralleling a readership for print-based media of 3,000 print copies per month (Finkelstein 2012, p. 295), a figure that was widely criticised as necessarily intruding upon blogging and very small online media that made no claims to be “journalism” in its traditional forms (Flew and Swift 2013). A more complex approach was developed by the Convergence Review through the concept of a Content Service Enterprise (CSE). The rationale behind CSEs was: As media content of wide appeal is increasingly delivered on new platforms like the Internet and mobile networks, rules based on the concept of a “broadcasting service” are increasingly ineffective. A new approach is required that identifies the major media enterprises that the community expects to be regulated. The Review believes that a regulatory framework built around the scale and type of service provided by an enterprise rather than the platform of delivery is best suited to this environment. The Review has developed the concept of a ‘content service enterprise’ to identify significant enterprises that have the most influence on Australians. The legislation currently declares that the degree of regulation should be in proportion to the level of “influence” a category of service is “able to exert in shaping community views in Australia” … Under the Review’s approach, the focus of regulation is significant enterprises that provide professional content to Australians. (Convergence Review 2012, p. 7, p. 9)

The Convergence Review proposed three criteria whereby a media firm could be considered to be a CSE: 1. Professionally produced content over whose distribution it had effective control. 2. Significant revenues derived from Australian-sourced content: the Review proposed a threshold figure of $50 million a year. 3. A significant Australian audience and/or number of Australian users: the threshold proposed was 500,000 a month. Using these criteria, it was proposed that the major radio and television broadcasters were CSEs, as were the News Limited and Fairfax media

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groups. Significantly, just outside of the revenue/user thresholds were Google, Apple and the leading Australian telecommunications company, Telstra. So, while the CSEs, in practice, were largely the already-regulated broadcasters, the Convergence Review clearly flagged that since “the relative influence of significant media enterprises will change over time”, the CSE framework would “provide a flexible model under which community expectations of major media entities may be fulfilled into the future, regardless of the technology or delivery platform used” (Convergence Review 2012, p. 13). It rejected the proposition that regulation of the Internet was wrong in principle, and held that overseas media enterprises operating in Australia should be subject to Australian regulations: There have been some suggestions that the Review’s recommendations for the regulation of content service enterprises represent an attempt to regulate the Internet. The Review’s proposal for regulation of significant media entities, which are increasingly operating across a range of platforms, is specifically designed to be platform neutral. Any enterprise with a significant presence in Australia should be accountable in Australia. This is particularly true of those in the media. Just as online banking is regulated in the same way as banking in the branch, significant media enterprises should be expected to meet the expectations of the Australian public irrespective of the platform used. (Convergence Review 2012, p. 13).

Given the issues raised in such inquiries, the Gillard Government’s response was ultimately anti-climactic. In March 2013, after months of delay, the Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, presented a series of six bills to the Australian House of Representatives, dealing with a range of matters including extension of the ABC and SBS Charters to include their online activities, a proposal to permanently reduce licence fees for commercial broadcasters in exchange for new Australian content commitments, and the establishment of a Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA). The PIMA was to have powers to determine whether any future media takeovers and mergers may adversely affect the diversity of what was termed “news media voice”, as well as overseeing the operation of self-regulatory arrangements as they pertained to news media, with particular reference to fairness, accuracy, privacy, complaints handling and “community standards”. The legislation failed to gather adequate support from cross-bench MPs to proceed, and was subject to a ferocious campaign on the part of News Limited papers such as the Daily Telegraph and The Australian.3 It would appear that a Coalition government will not proceed with the recommendations from these reviews if elected, but the

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issues raised about the future of public interest media regulation in Australia remain significant, and subject to political decisions about how to address them.

Conclusion This chapter has identified a range of challenges to media policy arising out of changes in the global media environment associated with convergence, as well as responses at the level of public policy to those developments. The concept of convergence refers, at one level, to the growing uncoupling of media content from particular devices and platforms, which challenges the 20th-century model of platform-based media regulation. More broadly, it co-exists with a range of developments that include media globalisation, the rise of user-created content, accelerated innovation in media and related industries, and the “demassification” of media generally. It has observed that the Australian media enquiries of 2011–12, namely, the Convergence Review, the ALRC National Classification Review, and the Finkelstein Review, have sought to address five contemporary dilemmas of media policy: (1) determining who is a media company; (2) regulatory parity between “old” and “new” media; (3) treatment of similar media content across different platforms; (4) distinguishing “big media” from user-created content; and (5) maintaining a distinction between media regulation and censorship of personal communication, given the very different history and architecture of the Internet compared with the broadcast media. At the heart of these dilemmas are questions about what media influence now means in a convergent media environment, where the relationship between the provider and the platform is a shifting one, and where new media companies are as much enablers of content distribution as they are producers of media content. The media inquiries considered here have struggled to find the right balance in addressing these questions, but I would argue that the questions themselves remain at the core of 21st-century media policy. In this respect, criticisms of media policy as simply outdated extensions of the “nanny state”, as argued by some economic capture theorists, or as primarily reflections of an ascendant global neoliberalism, as argued by capitalist state theorists, underestimate the complexities of the issues arising. It may well be time to rethink the skepticism that many commentators have about the concept of a “public interest”, and see it as something more than an ideological cloak for the nefarious activities of meddling bureaucrats or

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multinational media moguls. In doing so, we would also need to recognise that the circumstances in which public interest regulation is being pursued have become considerably more complex and potentially contradictory in the context of convergent media.

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Hesmondhalgh, David. 2013. The Cultural Industries (3rd Edition). London: Sage. Horwitz, Robert. 1989. The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications. Oxford: Oxford University Press. IPA (Institute of Public Affairs). 2013. “About the Institute of Public Affairs.” http://www.ipa.org.au/about. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: When New and Old Media Collide. New York: NYU Press. Leadbeater, Charles. 2008. We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production. London: Profile. Leonard, Peter. 2012. “Making Converged Regulation Possible.” Communications Law Bulletin 31 (2): 15–31. Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. 2011. “Old, New and Middle-Aged Media Convergence.” Cultural Studies 25 (4–5): 585–603. MDA (Media Development Authority). 2012. Media Convergence Review—Final Report. Singapore: MDA. Meikle, Graham and Sherman Young. 2011. Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Michael, James. 1990. “Regulating Communications Media: From the Discretion of Sound Chaps to the Arguments of Lawyers.” In Public Communication: The New Imperatives, edited by Marjorie Ferguson, pp. 40–60. London: Sage. Miliband, Ralph. 1968. The State in Capitalist Society. London: Merlin. Miller, Toby. 2009. “Albert and Michael’s Recombinant DNA.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 23 (2): 269–75. Newton, Mark. 2011. Submission to the DBCDE Convergence Review. http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/ 143378/Mark_Newton.pdf. Noam, Eli M. 2009. Media Ownership and Concentration in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Picard, Robert. 2011. “Economic Approaches to Media Policy.” In The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy, edited by Robin Mansell and Marc Raboy, pp. 355–65. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. Productivity Commission. 2000. Broadcasting. Report No. 11. Canberra: AusInfo. Rosen, Rebecca. 2012. “What to Make of Google's Decision to Block the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Movie?” The Atlantic, September 14. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/what-to-makeof-googles-decision-to-block-the-innocence-of-muslimsmovie/262395/.

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Schejter, Amit. 2008. “European Union: Communication Law.” In The International Encyclopedia of Communication, edited by Wolfgang Donsbach, pp. 1609–15. Oxford: Blackwell. Stedman-Jones, Daniel. 2012. Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Theckedath, Dillan and Terrance Thomas. 2012. Media Ownership and Convergence in Canada, Library of Parliament Publication No. 201217-E. Ottawa: Library of Parliament. Turner, Graeme. 2010. Ordinary People and the Media. London: Sage. Van Cuilenburg, Jan and Denis McQuail. 2003. “Media Policy Paradigm Shifts: Towards a New Communications Policy Paradigm.” European Journal of Communication 18 (2): 181–207. WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation). 2010. World Intellectual Property Indicators. Geneva: WIPO.

Notes 1 In the Convergence Review Final Report, “Australian content” was taken to be that produced by Australians, while “local content” was defined as “news and information that is of direct relevance to a local community” (Convergence Review 2012, p. 175). For areas other than news and information, it is Australian content that is the relevant concept. 2 As an example of what a less-regulated media content environment would look like, the Convergence Review cited the digital multichannel services introduced after 2008 by the commercial networks. While these new channels have been a ratings success, capturing up to 25 per cent of the television audience, Australian content accounts for only 5–21 per cent of total programming, as compared to 59– 75 per cent for the main channels, and local drama content is 0–8 per cent of total material broadcast on these largely unregulated channels (Convergence Review 2012, pp. 69–70). 3 In a memorable front page, the Daily Telegraph placed a picture of Senator Conroy alongside Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-Un and Robert Mugabe, proclaiming “These despots wanted to control the media”, and then “Conroy joins them”. For an overview of the Conroy proposals, see Flew 2013.

CHAPTER THREE NOTIONS OF GUARDIANSHIP MARY GRIFFITHS

Introduction: Upholding Egalitarian Values All Australians are entitled to freedom of speech, association, assembly, religion, and movement. (“Living In Australia” 2013)

Since 2007, visa applicants who intend to reside or work in Australia must sign a statement that they will abide by Australian values. The entry hurdle, which is managed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, is intended to improve the speed and ease with which newcomers adapt to their adopted culture. In addition to the statements about the five freedoms upheld in Australia, the document includes an outline of other values: “the equality of men and women and a spirit of egalitarianism that embraces mutual respect, tolerance, fair play and compassion for those in need and pursuit of the public good”. The Life in Australia book, on the same website, explains key values in 29 languages. So many translations denote a precisely judged instance of both cultural confidence and a claim to openness to difference, as well as indicating that many arrivals are from non-democratic countries. Despite the propositions about the conditions and expectations of representative democracy, newcomers find—at a local level—contradictory evidence of the general consensus on what constitutes the five freedoms, particularly freedom of speech, a necessary component of the guardianship of public life. The first three years of the second decade of the 21st century can be seen as difficult times in British and Australian mediated democracies. In Britain, the Leveson Inquiry revealed the undemocratic and criminal aspects of journalistic and political culture; and in Australia a minority government committed to a large-scale progressive policy agenda struggled to retain its contingent hold on power. Throughout the period, Australian journalists noted a “toxic”, hostile political culture in Canberra

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and elsewhere in public life; and that some of their peers—less committed to the guardianship of public life and more involved in business survival— were implicated in coproducing, with politicians, a damaging public perception of representative government and political processes. Powers in a democracy are unbalanced when journalists and parliamentarians simultaneously lose the respect of the public. Such apparently difficult periods are not necessarily a negative phenomenon in the history of democracies nor a cause for depression amongst those with egalitarian values. This chapter aims for a descriptive mapping and analysis of what this period’s consequences may be for what it foregrounds as the guardianship of public life. In the media sector, industrial processes are underway which produce new challenges and forms of competition, speeding up news cycles and downsizing, and potentially corrupting, traditional journalistic practices. Contemporary doubts about the effectiveness of media self-regulation have begun to resonate globally (Nielsn 2012). The rise of non-elected voices and publics in the online environment presents a stark contrast to the period before 24/7 news cycles and industry sector reform. In their flexible capacity to test conventions, mobilise citizens and influence policy debate, the new agencies in public life—in Australia high-profile online opinion-makers such as the conservative blogger Andrew Bolt, campaign groups and lobbies such as GetUp!—are empowered by three factors: a digital environment with multiplatform interactivity and self-regulation, or at least relatively light touch restraints; a public willingness to subscribe and participate online; and the operational opportunism and versatility they display, as opposed to the established apparatuses, conventions and modes of operation formally constraining media organisations and government. Powerful self-elected voices appear to be changing perceptions of the effectiveness of traditional political culture, in reaction to a legislative context in which, as an audit of the fragility of Australian democracy points out, “many fundamental political conventions are unwritten or ad hoc”, meaning that, “many of the rights contained in Australian law can be amended or repealed by any government with the necessary majority” (Yencken and Henry 2008). Public trust in the selfregulation of media, and in the provenance of information consequent on what Keane calls “communicative abundance” has been damaged, perhaps irrevocably, by evidence of failures on the part of some journalists and organisational cultures to uphold their primary democratic mission. Such failures invite a return to the task Keane sets in an essay on “monitory democracy”, in which he questions the “profound implications for how we think about and practise democracy and journalism in the coming decades”

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(Keane 2009, p. 1). Central to such an investigation is a consideration of the contemporary guardianship of public life in an egalitarian society experiencing volatile political tensions. The argument moves into territory more conventionally seen as the issue of “public interest” (for example, in policy studies approaches to the media Inquiries in the UK and Australia), in order to identify practices of guardianship arising from a conjunction of circumstances in each country’s public life. To do justice to the argument about the conditions in which diverse notions of guardianship emerge, are contested and can be enacted, the Australian and UK analyses require detailed descriptions of political cultures. In the following sections, the negative influence of manipulative populism is discussed, before the judicial guardians and citizen-guardians who emerged during the Leveson Inquiry are described. A brief outline of the Australian version of manipulative populism underpins a discussion of the disconnection—both from the public, and from one another—of journalists and politicians in their roles as traditional guardians of public life; and an explanation is given for the inevitable failure of proposed media reforms and the emergence of self-elected guardians. But I begin with classically derived notions of guardianship, normative ideas of the fourth estate, and a discussion of contemporary failures.

Contemporary Guardianship and the Commons The commons gives us a new vocabulary for imagining a different sort of future. It lets us develop a richer narrative about value than the one sanctioned by neoliberal economics and policy. It helps us do what the Market/State has trouble doing–keep important parts of nature and culture and community inalienable and cultivate an ethic of sufficiency. (Bollier 2013) Also, particularly in a society where voters’ preferences are freely expressed, citizens may act as top-level guardians. By “top level”, we mean above all other guardians. (Hurwitz 2007, p. 289)

Notions of the guardianship of public life evolve to suit the times and are embodied in institutions, technologies and individuals, as this chapter will show. The fundamental issues—of the integrity, representativeness and accountability of guardians, and of those who self-elect to be guardians—still characterise modern discussions of governance, the origins of which lie in the earliest forms of democracy. Juvenal’s question of “who guards the guardians?”, originating in classical times, still applies to understanding and accepting inherent tensions in regulatory processes

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of delegating powers as well as to deliberations about how those powers are proscribed, represented, and made transparent and accountable to the demos. The epigraphs above are pertinent to the dilemmas facing governments of digital information societies attempting to work against a background of, and regulate, powerful media institutions and citizens’ sense of entitlement to participate. The first sees, in a return to the discourse of the commons, ways of defending values in culture and community against the market and the state, a point rejoined later in the chapter when describing the “commons” operating in influential, though not necessarily representative or democratically organised, online citizen groups. The second view of guardianship also privileges the power of citizens, and places the highest levels of guardianship potentially in their hands. Presenting two classically derived notions of guardianship, Hurwitz (2007) argues that it is more logical to accept Plato’s optimistic, pragmatic view of human nature and the productive role of self-interest in the regulation of illegal behaviour, than Juvenal’s cynicism. The latter he represents in a powerful regressive image of guardianship: first, second and third-level guards watching ad infinitum (2007, p. 286). Hurwitz’s perspective on the failure of processes of economic policy formation and enforcement at a time of impending global financial crisis is equally relevant to media regulation. For the economics laureate, the question of enforcing guardianship becomes a self-interested game of “genuine implementation” of a desired public good. Success in maintaining truthfulness to this purpose rests with those he calls “intervenors”, a concept close to the agency described in Keane’s “monitory democracy”. This kind of guardianship is how news and public affairs journalism has typically been seen, and fourth estate guardianship of public life persists as a fundamental concept in debates about the commons. But journalists as guardians do not only mediate in public life and political culture: they also have a stake in the market, self-regulate their sector, and even mediate public understanding of governments’ proposals for increased regulation. They effectively function as lobby groups during discussions of media reform, but possessing special power to mediate arguments and influence audiences. They may collude with political powers to maintain their own power. Garnham suggests that media workers occupy a “distinct socio-economic group with its own interests” while supplying the primary tool, in entertainment content, to mediate “the relationship between the systems world and the lifeworld” (1992, pp. 367– 374).

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Controversy continues about propositions of media’s perceived autonomy, efficacy, self-interest and accountability; about its ability to self-regulate as a profession and a business. This has intensified in the last three years in the UK and Australia, where media regulation has come into sharp focus for different reasons. When Lord Leveson reprised Juvenal’s question in his opening remarks at the Leveson Inquiry on November 14, 2011— The press provides an essential check on all aspects of public life. That is why any failure within the media affects all of us. At the heart of this Inquiry, therefore, may be one simple question: who guards the guardians? (The Leveson Inquiry 2011)

—the query resonated in Australia. Citizens in both countries were once almost unquestioningly confident about ceding significant guardianship powers to mainstream media, expecting it to work in the public interest. Journalism’s history gives credibility to such beliefs, as evidenced in the work of individual reporters who hold that “speaking truth to power” is the primary reason for being in the profession, as in Rachlin’s expression of a journalist’s vocation and professional ethics: Journalism’s first obligation is to tell the truth. Its first loyalty is to the citizens. Its essence is discipline of verification (sic). Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover. Journalism must serve as an independent monitor of power. It must provide a forum for public criticism and debate. It must strive to make the news significant, interesting, and relevant. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional. Trust and credibility are the foundations of journalism, and the integrity of the journalist is its cornerstone. (Rachlin 2013)

After Leveson, this statement reads as a corrective call to action and purpose, although it outlines a once normative sense of the press. The status of journalists has been diminished; they have lost their privileged role in terms of exclusive access to power and information, and to the attention of citizens. In digital democracies, traditional means of communication and surveillance have been redistributed and are now owned by potentially unrepresentative individuals and groups; abuses of that communicative power take place; circumstances enable new actors to appear to exert more influence than elected representatives in public life, sometimes beyond the control of the nation state; and there is a failure of trust in older media arrangements once seen as supplying necessary checks

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and balances. The first legitimate question to ask is, “where are the guardians”?

Revealing Faustian Pacts—“Manipulative Populism” Revisited The answer depends in part on understanding that the mediation offered by journalists to maintain powers of guardianship has altered in favour of providing entertainment content. The competition for a share in the media market drives trends towards tabloidisation and increases in lifestyle, entertainment and opinion content relative to current affairs journalism, across the world. Events in the UK from 2002 onwards showed that political culture, and industrial change in the media, had produced conditions in which media workers were willing to act illegally to obtain such content. Abuse of privacy and communications carriage technology became routine in seeking competitive advantage. Popular support for tighter media regulation, including establishment of state regulators in the UK and Australia, grew after criminal activities such as phone hacking by News International employees were reported in the UK. The Leveson Inquiry was followed by Australia’s Independent Media Inquiry, or the Finkelstein Inquiry as it became known. The two are often compared, but different imperatives initiated them. The seriousness of the issues before them was hardly comparable; they operated in different political cultures; they drew different levels of public attention; and they have had contrasting results. Given Australian media’s reactions to the setting up of Finkelstein, it is important to rehearse in some detail why Leveson was necessary, and why—out of dismal failures in political and media culture—the guardianship of public life became a significant national discussion, from which new guardianship practices emerged. In the UK, a Guardian journalist, Nick Davies, led and tenaciously pursued investigations into cases of phone hacking, despite police dismissal of concerns about wider breaches.1 Parliamentarian Tom Watson took up the public fight, before it was generally accepted that a broadbased judicial investigation was necessary, and Leveson established. Its findings and recommendations lend weight to arguments above about mediated political culture and perceived deficits in democratic vigilance. Political journalist Peter Oborne (2007) argued that a new relationship between UK political and media elites was responsible for the attrition of checks and balances in democratic governance. Maintaining that “a hubristic Political Class has chosen to govern in alliance with media rather than through Parliament” (2007, p. 297), Oborne traced this development

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to the time when media spin became a distinguishing feature of the Blair government. Blair and his immediate advisors offered privileged media access to policy announcements, prior to cabinet or internal party discussion. Oborne saw these practices as breaches of necessary protocols, undermining the requisite distance between democratic powers. He described the development as “manipulative populism”, a self-interested relationship between media elites and political elites which exhibited a concerning similarity to the “pre-democracy phase” of British political history, the period before the universal franchise was granted to appease mass discontent, expressed in violent attacks on privilege and property (2007, pp. 297–330). Concluding his analysis of the pact between a government in power and the media it needs and feeds, Oborne proposed that the history of support for appropriate procedure by David Cameron (then in opposition) was cause for hope. He asked the “most political pressing question in the UK”: when in government, would Cameron choose to initiate “an insurgency against the Political Class – or…[will he] in due course become no more than another manifestation of its alluring, corrupt and anti-democratic methodology?” (2007, p. 343). Cameron was not long prime minister when his own Director of Communications, Andy Coulson, ex-editor of The News of the World, was arrested on charges of phone hacking, and Cameron’s close personal connections with senior News International figures like Rebekah Brooks were revealed. Brooks was later arrested with her husband for seeking “to pervert the course of justice…and conspiring to intercept communications” (BBC News 2012). After Leveson, Cameron did not, either, immediately endorse the recommendations for tighter media controls, in the name of defence of free press principles. The professional and ethical failures in UK journalism had, in fact, been widespread enough to warrant a strengthening of government oversight in the new digital environment. As widespread commentary noted in 2011, in 2006 when Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire were arrested for phone hacking it seemed that a “rogue” defence was believable, and these activities were limited to individual reporters. The same defence was next applied to The News of the World, and finally to News International operations. Five years later this defence was completely discredited with the exposure of an entrenched journalistic culture of illegality. Former prime ministers, members of the royal family, victims of crime, families of soldiers killed on active service as well as media celebrities had been affected. Rupert Murdoch admitted before a Parliamentary committee the scale of his humiliation on “Democracy Day”, as it was named in a rapidly published blow-by-blow account of the national investigation, Dial M for

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Murdoch (Watson and Hickman 2012, pp. 238–254). This book, in which the authors passionately vindicate their pursuit of the truth, can be read as demonstration of and thematic account of guardianship of different kinds. The filmic narrative includes “dramatis personae”, script characterisation, and symbolic incidents (such as Watson civilly pouring James Murdoch a glass of water in a break in proceedings). The inclusion of the quotidian minutiae, in which the guardianship of democratic practice operates, makes the account of the agency of citizens compelling. It includes memorable illustrations of the confrontation between traditional guardians: a News of the World editorial crystallises press arrogance of the time and demonstrates the routine intimidation of Parliament and competitors: “We’ll take no lessons in standards from MPs—nor from self-serving pygmies who run the circulation-challenged Guardian” (Watson and Hickman 2012, pp. 105–106). According to this perspective, popularity apparently guarantees immunity from comment, and the law. Murdoch’s (albeit privately stated) defiance led to his recall to the UK Parliament in July, 2013. Murdoch’s humiliation and subsequent organisational and other changes in News International—resignations, board removals, sackings, compensation of victims, closure of a lucrative tabloid, loss of SkyB and impact on shares—did little to appease public disgust, particularly over revelations of phone hacking of victims of crime, as in the Millie Dowler and Madelaine McCann police investigations. As over 4,000 invasions of citizens’ privacy were estimated to have occurred, there emerged a climate of insecurity and distrust in the institutions and apparatuses guarding UK public life. The visual spectacle and process of the Inquiry attracted intensive coverage across all UK and Australian media, including, in the latter case, subdued NewsLtd coverage. Sophisticated interpretations and invitations to citizens to be involved included interactive infographics at Leveson BBC, print and online chronologies at The Guardian, and commentary on evidence as it was presented live in The Telegraph. Daily session transcripts archived on the Inquiry website, and associated documentation from witnesses, allowed unprecedented international public access to forensic explorations of activities linking media power and political power. Keane argues that power-scrutinising devices can have “surprising success” in the hands of “the unrepresented” (Keane 2011, p. 231) and the inquiry provided examples: not only had a judicial guardian exerted trusted power, but citizen-witnesses became “top-level guardians”, although at some cost to themselves. As Leveson later acknowledged, intrusions into citizens’ privacy were repeated, perforce, in the hearings,

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and he commended the civic virtue displayed in enduring them again. New political actors emerged: witnesses who became citizen-guardians, garnering public trust both through their comportment at the Inquiry, and their restrained, thoughtful arguments about media and democracy, validated by their experiences as targets. Over two days, 28–29 November, 2011, Sienna Miller spoke about levels of surveillance and intrusion that had damaged family trust; an army intelligence officer described confronting a hacker—a previous colleague—who had sent him a Trojan virus; and Anne Diamond spoke about the emotional blackmail by The Sun photographer who followed the private funeral of her baby son (The Leveson Inquiry 2011). Witnesses reacted to the Leveson Report in mixed ways. According to an online report from The Independent on November 29, 2012: some welcomed the condemnation of “outrages” and the proposal for an independent regulator to ensure a responsible free press; others were cautious about the “last resort” of the statutory regulator. Several levels of trust had been damaged: in media culture and in a democratic commons safe for citizens. Could a judicial Inquiry, with a senior judge as a trusted guardian of the state presiding, restore trust in the way delegated authority operated in civil society? The Inquiry had been independent of government, and used its own website to attempt complete transparency about its procedures, and its funding and decision-making. When it found that prima facie evidence existed that more senior News International staff had been involved in criminal activities, public reaction was intense and defensive of the need for probity in public life. By October, 2012, after lengthy hearings, the traditional guardians of public life, news media, had come to symbolise much of what was wrong with contemporary British democracy, although other institutional guardians were also found culpable, including three senior Metropolitan police officers. The Inquiry, despite meeting Keane’s definition of a “powerscrutinising device”, could be seen as symbolic of a severe falling off in the state of national guardianship and, with its far-reaching failures in media guardianship, of a “crisis of democracy”. There is an alternative interpretation: that public contributions to the Inquiry and the clarity and orderliness of the accessible digital archive deepened a historically significant debate about journalism’s culture, practices and ethics, and led to pressure on a Conservative government and reluctant prime minister to protect individual citizens’ rights not to be exploited by the press. The Leveson Inquiry, as an example of monitory democracy, signifies a productive way to strengthen trust in what Benedict Anderson referred to as the secular ways in which people imagine themselves in relation to each other. That is not how it appeared to a

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defensive press, which accused both the Leveson Inquiry and the activist media reform group Hacked Off of being the pawns of left-wing radicals.2

Australian Reverberations and Differences Different historical, cultural and political aspects of guardianship shape the Australian polity’s readiness for media regulation debates and convergence policy proposals. The events of the last five years in Britain, and the trends in political and media culture which helped produce them, are useful references for comparison and reflection on contemporary notions of guardianship in Australia. Here some detail is required. Democratic arrangements in Australia are shaped by shared connections with the Westminster and US systems, as well as by News International’s history of corporate dominance in the media sector. In 2007, the year Tony Blair left office and an era of political conservatism in Australia came to a close, there seemed to be fewer signs that manipulative populism (in the particular way Oborne defined it) had taken root in Australian political culture. When the Australian Labor Party won the 2007 election with a landslide victory, this changed. Effective forms of presidential-style electioneering had been used to market Kevin Rudd on social media, adding to his mass popularity. The new prime minister became a magnet for media attention, and courted it. By 2009 the only national broadsheet, The Australian, a newspaper with a small elite circulation, voted him “Australian of the Year” for his handling of the GFC, pragmatically reversing its former antagonism. Bernard Keane, a Crikey commentator, was quick to point out this volte-face on 24 January, 2010: For the conspiracy-minded, and I know there are one or two of you out there, one might wonder whether News Ltd feels the need to get on the right side of the Prime Minister, having managed to get itself thoroughly offside with him since the 2007 election. Now, media organisations should get themselves offside with governments, but it should be for the right reasons not, in The Oz’s case, the Right reasons. (Keane 2010)

Rudd’s term as prime minister quickly demonstrated that manipulative populism operated in Australian democracy but, when compared to the UK version, with distinctive complications. Manipulative populism offers the temptation of speeding up political agendas by bypassing accepted Cabinet protocols, and collaboration with the administrative arm, by directly addressing all citizens through the media on all matters, often in response to “non-scientific” but influential news polling. In addition to

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committing to increased public consultations on policy as part of ambitious e-government implementation, the Rudd government immediately deployed features of direct democracy, a move initially welcomed, but proving a Trojan horse with regard to maintenance of party authority, stability and unity. The strategy built on Rudd’s popularity and communication skills, and included egalitarian gestures of openness. Selected citizens were invited to intensive face-to-face policy deliberations with the Prime Minister and senior executives: for example, at a national meeting, “Australia2020”, and at regular local Community Cabinets. In retrospect, while this approach signaled intentions to be radical and inclusive, it had longer term potential to undermine the value proposition of representative government: that the polity decides by ballot which representatives are elected to govern and then expects them to do so.3 In 2010, loss of public trust in and respect for Parliament and politicians grew on Rudd’s abrupt removal as PM. He was popular at the time, and remained a popular alternative leader in opinion polls into 2013. When he unwisely challenged Julia Gillard for the party leadership and lost in 2012, his colleagues unleashed unprecedented vitriolic attacks on his leadership style and character.4 The display further disgusted sections of the population for whom the Australian motto of a “fair go” and respect for the underdog is a lived experience. The public brawls within the ALP, the aggressive negativity of the conservative Opposition, and the ad hominem Parliamentary Question Time led to low levels of trust in political culture. A 2012 Essential Media Poll on the loss of trust in institutions indicated that trust in all but the ABC, the national broadcaster, had fallen; with total trust in Federal Parliament falling to 22%, the lowest, in comparison with the High Court at a high of 60% (Essential Media 2012). The poll lent authenticity to reiterated criticisms from citizens and commentary from both sides of the political media spectrum about the behaviour of politicians. Codes of conduct were suggested. As the polling agency summed up the democratic temperature: So, Australians are watching fights between politicians they don't trust on news media they don't trust, feeding the cynicism of a battle-weary public. The ideal solution would be a new political compact between our leaders – a focus on visionary leadership, credit where it's due, a shared sense of responsibility for restoring a sense of trust in our leaders and institutions. (Lewis and Woods 2012)

This statement also presents the conundrum of manipulative populism: a co-dependent but unequal relationship between government and media. In Australia a close alliance between politicians and influential media,

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particularly NewsLtd and Sydney and Melbourne talkback radio, helps manage the constant opinion polling which is one of the sticky techniques for readership, and voter, retention. The 24/7 news cycle, tabloidisation trends in mainstream media, and the struggle for diminishing markets have had reductive effects on the reporting of politics and policy issues. This contributing context was cited in the Minister for Communications’ announcement in 2013 of a package of media reform legislation. The build-up to this announcement was a period of changing relations between government and media. The risky tactic of manipulative populism ceased to be an effective option for the ALP government during and after the nation’s fierce mining tax debates (2010–2011; see Greenfield and Williams in this volume), and despite effectively designed, detailed and executed processes of government consultation run by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (Griffiths 2013), The Australian became a site of trenchant conservative opposition to the proposed Clean Energy Legislative Package 2011. It became controversial and divisive legislation. NewsLtd’s “OpEd” gave no quarter to Prime Minister Gillard. A grudging admission from The Australian that Gillard “could do process” (Australian 2010) was followed by a daily onslaught branding the Prime Minister a liar, initiated by ALP election promises on carbon tax. Julia Gillard was subsequently the target of relentless, belittling personal commentary, as news items focused on “her” removal of Rudd, her judgment, voice, life choices, dress and domestic arrangements (Summers 2012), thus reprising a zero sum game of loutish and divisive gender politics. This was best illustrated by a Parliamentary showdown between the party leaders on October 8, 2012. The Opposition’s needling of the first female Australian prime minister on the “shame” her recently dead father would allegedly be feeling about her performance if he were still alive, culminated in a vigorous speech from Gillard on misogyny, as well as on the need to respect judicial process in a case concerning accusations of inappropriate conduct involving the Speaker of the House. The 15 minute speech generated an international YouTube following (over 2.2 million hits). The Prime Minister called out Opposition leader Tony Abbott, and the originator of the comment, talkback host Alan Jones, for their unchecked misogyny. She became a global figurehead for a determined anti-sexism grounded in evidence-based argument. Media coverage was initially downplayed and the speech was treated as a feminist pratfall by the Australian press gallery, as yet more evidence of the discourse of personal antagonism that the gallery had developed to explain debates in Parliament.5 Yet Gillard’s speech made the correct (and largely ignored) point about respecting process and was significant in that

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regard (however advantageous that point also was for her beleaguered minority government). The instance seemed to establish Gillard as an authoritative resolute leader for international publics, illustrating a widening gulf between the ways influential journalist elites read events, and how such a speech seemed to actually play out in the public domain. As journalists realised the difference, revisionist accounts were published days and weeks later. Well into 2013 the speech was still being flagged as a significant public issue in discussion of leadership polls, popularity and the electoral chances of the major parties. The point of providing this detail is that the speech was visible evidence of a Parliamentary leader’s guardianship of the protocols and civility of public life. Gillard courageously propounded a public ethics of gender equality when another ethic of political self-preservation would have recommended dignified silence: her exercise of guardianship on this matter rebounded, it seemed, in ever worsening opinion polls for the Prime Minister and charges of “playing the gender card”. While recent Australian public debate on media self-regulation was initiated, and then partly framed, by events leading up to and including the Leveson Inquiry, it was subsequently animated by the events in mediated Australian political culture just described. These contingencies help us grasp the disposition towards and fate of the models of guardianship of public life raised through and around this debate.

Independent Media Inquiry: Civil Disconnects It is worth noting that a special kind of citizen guardian was proposed in the Australian Media Reform Package but the idea came too late, and was pitched unceremoniously into too divisive a public debate, already infected by the bad feelings about political culture, and by a media disgruntled at the idea of increased regulation. In May, 2011, Senator Steven Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, announced that, in addition to a Convergence Review, the government intended to set up an Independent Media Inquiry. Under the direction of Judge Finkelstein, a former Chief Justice of the Federal Court, it would ensure the strength of regulatory processes and industry structures. The Inquiry prepared the civil society ground for debate. The investigation of media governance originally looked like an opportunist echo of UK initiatives; journalists referred to its establishment and recommendations as a kneejerk reaction. The reasons to establish an Australian inquiry were: first, an unease over the market dominance of NewsLtd; secondly, public debates about freedom of speech and of the

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press, triggered by high profile individuals being charged with racism,6 the leaking of documents, hate speech and/or corruption, focused on perceived deficiencies in the regulation of media practices; thirdly, the accelerating scale of public scandals diminishing respect for Parliament, and calling into question even-handedness in political news reporting; and finally, digital economy practices which had outstripped the remit of existing regulatory frameworks. Judge Finkelstein noted the international origins of the Inquiry, and the accusations of bias that had been made against NewsLtd and the Daily Telegraph. The Australian Inquiry was altogether more low-key than Leveson. In all only 41 people gave evidence. However 11,000 submissions were received. Finkelstein and Inquiry members visited the newsroom of The West Australian, and talked to academics attending the Freedom of Expression Roundtable at the University of Melbourne. The Report Overview flags the role of media in a liberal democracy, the impact of the Internet on media, and in Sections 5 and 7 the “deep-seated weaknesses” in professional standards, and the disconnect between public and media “on some key questions of ethics” (Finkelstein 2012, pp. 17–18). Hostilities ensued. Minister Conroy had earlier inflamed public reactions about curbs on freedom of speech by his strong advocacy for mandatory filtering of the Internet, a measure which failed to receive sufficient public support, and from which government resiled in November, 2012. That decision placated civil liberties and industry activists, but infuriated those with conservative and stronger child protectionist views, and it underpinned further public controversies. Following the issues on mandatory Internet filtering, public expectations were that together the Independent Media Inquiry and Convergence Review would propose a media “super-watchdog”. So, the initial proposal of a tax-payer-funded independent News Media Council for print, broadcast and online media was welcomed in some quarters, despite being widely represented in media coverage as having the potential to erode the freedom of the press. But lack of public consultation and time for Parliamentary deliberation on the regulatory changes proposed made their acceptance unlikely. By March 14, 2013, opposition to media regulation had reached new heights, when it was announced via government media release that establishment of a Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA) would be part of a legislative package forming government’s response to recommendations from the reports from the Convergence Review and Independent Media Inquiry. Six complex bills were introduced two days later. Two bills were passed dealing with a range of non-controversial issues such as television

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licences and provisions for increased Australian content. Four others were met by a storm of media aggression, particularly, but not exclusively, from NewsLtd and Fairfax representatives. In what was later questioned by other journalists for its lack of even-handedness, one Murdoch tabloid—The Telegraph—likened the Senator, on its front page, to the usual fascist dictators noted in debates about state-controlled media. Cartoonists weighed in immediately with depictions of state censorship, none addressing the actual provisions of the proposal. NewsLtd CEO Kim Williams publicly decried the lack of consultation with media over the legislative package. In an ABC interview with host Tony Jones, Williams accused the Labor government of seeing his organisation as oppositional, before publishing an open letter to Senator Conroy consisting of over twenty critical, legal and densely argued pages. Representatives from the two other key players in the Australian mediascape, Fairfax and West Australian Newspapers, questioned the reasons for such intrusions into press business at Parliamentary committees, indicating that Australian comparisons with UK press failures were unfounded (Bryant 2013). These reactions echoed others’ expressions of outrage from media representatives during and after the Finkelstein inquiry. As the Media Reforms package was provoking intense media and public opposition on its introduction into Parliament, media coverage redoubled on perceived prime ministerial failures and an imminent leadership challenge by Kevin Rudd. These threats gained credence in the twittersphere, from hearsay and possibly “planted” false sources. Leadership challenges had been a source of continuing media speculation since 2010, when Rudd’s removal was seen widely, and erroneously, as procedurally undemocratic. In the furore of the vituperative regulation and leadership debates, media organisations were accused of political bias and media politicisation on a US scale, and of self-interest, lobbying, and interference with Parliament. In return, media representatives, such as NewsLtd CEO Kim Williams, reprimanded Conroy and Parliament for stepping outside of democratic remits (ABC 2013). Unsurprisingly, neither the full reform package nor the leadership challenge went ahead. The bill proposing a PIMA had been particularly divisive. The general haste in presenting complex legislation, the lack of routine consultations in that stage of the parliamentary process and, finally, the perceived undemocratic tendencies in both Parliament and coverage of the concurrent media reform and leadership debates seemed to signal a “debacle” for the government (Murphy 2013). PIMA was an institutional innovation in media reform, providing what could be described as a “top-level” guardianship role. It would have allowed

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citizens targeted by media to appeal, not to what was seen as the ineffectual Australian Press Council, but to an ombudsman with the power to require that press corrections received appropriate prominence in publications; and, with oversight of media diversity, to ensure that the interests of regional Australians were not ignored. It was evidence of guardianship as “public trust placed in an individual citizen” as a servant of the public good, appointed through processes comparable to similar Ministerial appointments. As a hybrid answer to the Platonic and Juvenalian models, it was an idea of merit, jettisoned in haste and mutual hostility.

Self-appointed guardians as “intervenors” We need to know we are not alone, but are part of something bigger. (Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance 2013)

Another model of guardianship is found in online political groups. Such activist groups have had great success in forwarding their agendas since GetUp! Action for Australia first started presenting itself as if it were a virtual alternative voice for the nation. The intimate forms of address used—“we” and “you”—allied with viral rights-based media campaigns have proved persuasive and been copied by other activist groups, as the epigraph shows. Subscribers number over 600,000 (at June 2013). Unlike Hacked Off’s single energetic focus on media reform, GetUp! has run diverse campaigns associated with issues already attracting public attention. 140,000 petitioners joined the campaign against Internet filtering, Save the Net, and supporters gave $125,000 to help air the witty anti-internet filter advertisement, Censordyne. Campaigns have directly engaged with democratic issues, namely, Cleaning Up Tasmanian Politics, Political Donations, and Don’t Let Them Stop You Voting, the campaign with the fastest successful outcome. An associated organisation, Community Run, commented favourably on the government’s policy proposal to protect Australian content (Communityrun.org 2012), however, GetUp! did not involve itself in media reform debates through a focussed campaign, although its representatives spoke on selected issues. Although the surprise introduction of detailed legislation might account for its silence, a more pertinent explanation is that GetUp!’s guardianship works on consensus about issues already framed by media, demonstrating its mainstream public affairs dependency and, therefore, the limits of its interventionist potential.

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GetUp! has been instrumental in mobilising conservative groups, which copy its populist strategies for intervening in public life. The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance (ATA), with the watchdog logo “fighting tax, regulation and waste” was launched on May 1, 2012, to a fanfare of welcoming comments from the conservative think tanks, free marketers, and political organisations and bloggers with whom it is affiliated: Australian Conservative, Menzies House, Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs, Mannkal Economic Education Foundation, Catallaxyfiles.com, economics.org.au, Quadrant, and the Australian Libertarian Society. Called innovative and exciting by associates, user comments on one of its supporters’ blogs were, among the ad hominem attacks typical of online commentary, mainly critical about ATA’s declared transparency, and undeclared political affiliation (CatallaxyFiles 2012a). Its business plan drew a more measured response from a commentator who noted that it is “well-linked and ambitious” and “aggressive” (CatallaxyFiles 2012b), and that CEO, Tim Andrews, “has real form in organising climate sceptics” and campaigns against Gillard. ATA has international connections to well-funded US conservative activists such as the Koch Brothers (Fisher 2012). ATA’s initiating steward is NewsLtd journalist and popular conservative blogger, Andrew Bolt, already noted as an “intervenor” in freedom of speech controversies. ATA is clear about its self-elected remit to reclaim Australia as: a unique grassroots advocacy & activist organisation, dedicated to standing up for hardworking Australian taxpayers. We oppose the high taxes, wasteful spending, and crippling red tape that are hurting Aussie families and businesses, and provide a voice for everyone who opposes the biggovernment agenda.

ATA is similarly clear about the space in public life that it intends to occupy. Before others could draw comparisons with GetUp! it does so itself: political discourse in Australia has been dominated by numerous highly effective left-wing astroturf groups such as GetUp!, with no counterpoint challenging them or providing public support for sound public policy. (ATA, “FAQ”, 2012)

Using the discourse of small business opportunity, ATA asserts that its operational structures are less command and control or top-down, and dedicated instead to empowering individual activists to create their own “franchise” in a decentralised network. The aim was to launch “chapters”

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of “right-minded citizens”. The organisation’s guardianship ambitions are to eschew the toxicity of current party machine politics. It remains to be seen how easily it creates a non-partisan space for itself in public life. In both cases, the self-elected guardians stand against representative government through loose associations, and they are not required to comply with party regulations or professional media codes of practice. They do not publish membership lists online, although GetUp! has been forthcoming about its organisational culture and how decisions are taken to identify potential campaigns. The status of these guardians lies somewhere between a political organisation and a public affairs platform. Their choice of when and where to intervene may be ideologically formed, but both organisations are at pains to suggest citizen inclusivity and individual empowerment.

Recognising the Moment The chapter has used the political backdrop of the media Inquiries in the UK and Australia to discuss practices in the guardianship of public life. Some productive forms have emerged, because and in spite of detrimentally close alliances between media and political elites, and evidence of different kinds of press failures. The salient points about the investigations and reactions to media reform, and to citizen protection are that, despite the criminality or hostility, proposals for media reform are addressed to polities no longer in the hands of traditional mediators of the systems and life worlds. “Communicative abundance” brings many new actors into public life to form unfamiliar relations and blur the roles of traditional guardians. Both political and media elites are challenged by their presence, especially when the energy behind such arrivals is often fuelled by discontent with the status quo, and in favour of change whether it be in the conduct of parties, Parliament or the practices of journalism. While contemporary journalism still exhibits a number of the operational, formative features of the fourth estate outlined by Rachlin, some are now missing as online social networking alters the contexts and conditions governing public life. News media are operating in uncharted territories, in which the protocols for, and practices of, interacting with subscribers, revenue providers, government, regulators and powerful elites are subject to change. Its guardianship role will never be the same. The idea of deliberative national conversations—no longer time bound, as in Benedict Anderson’s conception of moments of imagined belonging—is hard to maintain in the face of the fragmentation of content and publics following the uptake of digital technologies. Self-appointed guardians of public life

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can invigorate public life, but post-representative democracy and “monitory democracy” still seem a long way off. Meanwhile, post Leveson, the UK Parliament has unfinished business with Rupert Murdoch which will undoubtedly affect News International’s future mediation of UK life. Australia faces debates critically important to the sustainability of its shared egalitarian values: before its government is the task of restoring of trust in democratic procedures. The latter may be hampered by a disgraceful legacy: popular countenancing and selected media encouragement of the bullying of one of its guardians, the first female prime minister. In future, the presence of citizens as guardians, committed to representative government, the five freedoms, and a free and thoughtful press, while they contribute civilly to the diversity of debate in public life, will matter.

Bibliography ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). 2013. “News Limited Condemns Government’s New Media Laws.” Lateline, March 13. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3715145.htm. ABC Radio National. 2011. “Andrew Bolt Judgment.” Breakfast, September 29. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/andrew-boltjudgment/3589214. ATA (Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance). 2012. https://www.taxpayers.org.au/. Australian. 2010. “Needed: A policy for Julia, direction for Labor.” Editorial. September 9. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/needed-a-policy-forjulia-direction-for-labor/story-e6frg71x-1225916087426. BBC News. 2012. “Phone Hacking: The Main Players.” BBC News, August 30. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12296392. Bollier, David. 2013. Commons as a new paradigm for governance, economic and policy. Transcript. PTP Foundation. http://p2pfoundation.net/Commons_as_a_New_Paradigm_for_Governanc e,_Economics_and_Policy#4._The_Value_Proposition_of_the_Commons. Bolt, Andrew. 2011. “The Salem trial of conservative journalists.” Herald Sun, November 9. http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/co mments/the_salem_trial_of_conservative_journalists/.

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Boyle, James. 2008. The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. New Haven London: Yale UP. Bryant, Nick. 2013. “Storm over Australia’s press reform proposals.” BBC News, March 20. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21840076. CatallaxyFiles. 2012a. “Comments: The Australian Taxpayers Launch.” http://catallaxyfiles.com/2012/04/12/the-australian-taxpayers-alliancelaunch/. —. 2012b. “Two Articles on Freedom.” http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/02/25/two-articles-on-freedom/. Communityrun.org. 2012. http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/keeping-australian-stories-ontv-is-vital-keeping-conroy-to-his-word-is-the-battle. Connor, Mark. 2011. “Andrew Bolt on Trial.” Quadrant May: 16–22. Essential Media. 2012. “What Next For Public Broadcasters in the Digital Age.” July 10. http://essentialvision.com.au/what-next-for-public-broadcasters-in-thedigital-age. Finkelstein, Ray. 2012. Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation, assisted by M. Ricketson. Canberra: Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Fisher, Dan. 2012. “Inside the Koch Empire: How the Brothers Plan to Reshape America.” Forbes, December 24. http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/12/05/inside-the-kochempire-how-the-brothers-plan-to-reshape-america/. Garnham, Nicholas. 1992. “The Media and the Public Sphere.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig J. Calhoun, pp. 367– 74. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Griffiths, Mary. 2013. “Empowering Citizens: A Constructivist Assessment of the Impact of Contextual and Design Factors on the Concept of Shared Governance.” In E-government Success Factors and Measures: Concepts, Theories, Experiences and Practical Recommendations, edited by J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, pp. 124–41. Hershey, Penn.: IGI. Hurwitz, Leonid. 2007. “But Who will Guard the Guardians?” Nobel Prize Lecture, December 8. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2007/hur wicz-lecture.html. Keane, Bernard. 2010. “Why Is Kevin Rudd Australian of the Year?” Crikey, January 24. http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2010/01/24/why-is-kevin-ruddaustralian-of-the-year/?wpmp_switcher=mobile

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Keane, John. 2009. “Monitory Democracy in Media-saturated Societies.” Griffith Review 24: Participation Society, 1–23. http://griffithreview.com/edition-24-participation-society/monitorydemocracy-and-media-saturated-societies. —. 2011. “Monitory Democracy.” In The Future of Representative Democracy, edited by Sonia Alonso, John Keane, Wolfgang Merkel and Maria Fotou, pp. 212–35. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Lewis, Peter and Jackie Woods. 2012. “Loss of Trust Spreading Beyond Parliament.” The Drum, June 14. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4070694.html. “Living in Australia.” 2013. “Living In Australia: Five Fundamental Freedoms.” Department of Immigration and Citizenship. http://www.immi.gov.au/living-in-australia/choose-australia/aboutaustralia/five-freedoms.htm. Murphy, Katharine. 2013. “Bad Day on Top of a Debacle.” Age, March 23. http://www.theage.com.au/action/printArticle?id=4133563. Nielsn, Rasmus K. 2012. “What is Happening to Our Media?” Open Society Foundations, December 10. http:www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/what-happening-ourmedia. Oborne, Peter. 2007. The Triumph of the Political Class. London and New York: Simon & Schuster. Rachlin, Samuel. 2013. “The Successes and Challenges of Journalism Today.” Thanks to Scandinavia, November 7. http://thankstoscandinavia.org/2781/the-successes-and-challenges-ofjournalism-today-a-conversation-with-samuel-rachlin/. Summers, Anne. 2012. “Her rights at work: the political persecution of Australia’s first female Prime Minister” (R rated). Human Rights and Social Justice Lecture, University of Newcastle, August 31. http://annesummers.com.au/speeches/her-rights-at-work-r-rated/ 2012. The Leveson Inquiry: Culture, Practice and the Ethics of the Press. 2011. Official Site. http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/. Watson, Tom and Martin Hickman. 2012. Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain. New York: Penguin. Yencken, David and Nicola Henry. 2008. Democracy under siege. Albert Park: The Australian Collaboration. http://www.australiancollaboration.com.au/pdf/Essays/Democracyunder-siege.pdf.

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Notes 1The Guardian was alone in its pursuit for some years. In 2010 it was still drawing fire from News International in, for example, a letter from Rebekah Brooks, then editor of The Sun, to John Whittingdale, chairman of the culture and media committee, in response to Guardian allegations: “The Guardian coverage has, we believe, substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/16/phone-hacking-cover-up-denials. 2 Hacked Off, the online activism lobby, represented by celebrity phone-hacking targets such as actor Hugh Grant, was given a space to contribute to final drafting of media reform legislation, denied to media businesses. http://hackinginquiry.org/. 3 Julia Gillard, Rudd’s successor after a 2010 ALP caucus coup, found that a call to citizen participation in government (i.e. another Community Cabinet to decide on the future of Australia) was roundly derided. 4 In a NewsLtd interview given at the time by the serving Attorney General, for example, Nicola Roxon said Rudd “wanted, with four days’ notice on one occasion that I can recollect, to take over the entire health system, didn't have any materials for cabinet, didn't have legal advice.” http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/ breakingnews/attorney-general-nicola-roxon-says-kevin-rudd-ran-governmentludicrously/story-e6frf7jx-1226280266166#sthash.6lej3anF.dpuf. 5 Not all were unresponsive to social media. The Sydney Morning Herald reported “There’s also been a fair share of commentary about the role social media played in spreading the speech around the world and speculation about why this speech was so popular overseas, but not covered on Australia’s front pages”. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/gillards-misogyny-speech%E2%80%95-one-month-on/. 6 Andrew Bolt, a NewsLtd journalist, defended himself (and lost) against racist speech accusations after calling the indigenous origins of eleven prominent Australians into question. See Connor (2011), ABC Radio National (2011) and Bolt (2011).

CHAPTER FOUR TRUTH OVER JUSTICE: THE LEVESON INQUIRY AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR DEMOCRACY DES FREEDMAN

Truth Commissions and Public Inquiries When Sir Christopher Meyer, former British Ambassador to Washington and chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, announced that the Leveson Inquiry (hereafter “Leveson”) was part “show trial, seminar and truth commission” (Doughty 2012), he touched a nerve in one of the most controversial subjects of the day. Was Leveson—set up by Prime Minister David Cameron in July 2011 to examine the “culture, practices and ethics” of the press following the revelation of phone hacking and other illegal activities by a top-selling British newspaper— simply a talking shop, an academic exercise of no interest to the bulk of the population, or a genuine opportunity to offer redress to the victims of phone hacking and to purge the UK press of its most unethical practices? Meyer was by no means sympathetic to the whole venture and believed it would end up proposing a new regulatory system that would inhibit rather than protect press freedom, but he was not the only public figure to use the language of truth commissions. The academic and commentator, Timothy Garton Ash, evoking memories of its most celebrated example, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that was set up following the collapse of apartheid, wrote that “[l]ike a truth commission, this inquiry exposes the horrors of a bad recent past. We gasp as we hear story after story of intrusion and intimidation, a mother’s agony, a child driven to take his own life” (Garton Ash 2011). The radical lawyer Michael Mansfield placed Leveson alongside other high-profile public investigations into, for example, the conduct of the Iraq War, the shooting of 26 unarmed civil rights protestors on “Bloody Sunday” in

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Derry in 1972, and the events at Hillsborough in 1989 when 96 Liverpool football fans died amidst police allegations that the fans themselves were to blame. Mansfield (2012) argued that all these inquiries arose from the failure of the judicial system to do its job—to investigate crimes and punish those responsible—and called for a permanent truth commission, instead of one-off ad hoc inquiries, that would be able to “investigate systemic abuse”. Surely, however, you cannot equate the horrors of apartheid—the death squads, the denial of basic human rights and the prolonged agony of millions of black South Africans—with the practices of unethical reporting? How can you compare the coercive power of a major state with even the most poisonous piece of journalism? After all, as Garton Ash (2011) noted in relation to press misdemeanours, “this is Britain we are talking about, so the unchecked power that created this culture of fear was not the military or secret police; it was tabloid newspapers”. Of course, it is true that the crimes are not equivalent and that it is neither possible nor desirable to map the South African experience onto the British one as if context counts for nothing. For one thing, it would be a disservice to those who struggled against apartheid given the absence, by and large, of any concerted resistance to even the worst excesses of press power. Secondly, although it is true that the UK is marked by rising inequality (OECD 2011), falling levels of trust in major public institutions, a population burdened by austerity, a political class with credibility problems and a media system dominated increasingly by the bottom line, this is not quite the same as the naked brutality of apartheid. But there are, nevertheless, perpetrators and victims in relation to phone hacking and, despite their very different origins, dynamics and outcomes, both events—the TRC and Leveson—reveal a situation in which key actors in the state and the private sector are associated with criminal behaviour arising from a concentration of elite power, a fundamental lack of accountability and a disregard for the lives of ordinary citizens. In his analysis of Leveson, Doug Kellner argues that the phone hacking scandal shows: the dangers to democracy in allowing powerful media conglomerates to emerge and to use their power without regulatory constraint to promote their own corporate interests and the interests and ideology of the political party which shares their corporate agenda, thus producing a crisis of democracy. (Kellner 2012, p. 1193)

Just as with the TRC in South Africa in the 1990s, basic democracy has been found wanting in the UK and there is, as a result, a need to

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identify the scale of the crimes committed and to press for changes to prevent any repetition of these crimes. In both countries, public investigations and hearings have been one of the methods used. This chapter attempts to use the frame of the “truth commission” to assess the extent to which Leveson was able to achieve the objectives described above: to address the roots and highlight the main features of the phone hacking crisis and to produce recommendations that would “cleanse” the press and provide at least some comfort to its victims. In particular, it argues that truth commissions are fundamentally contradictory institutions that both express and contain demands for reform and justice, and therefore provide the perfect lens through which to make sense of a phenomenon like Leveson that has been attacked by all sides since its inception. By comparing the two events, the chapter will reflect on whether it has been possible for Leveson, as Mansfield argued was necessary, to investigate systemic abuse, or whether it has been trapped within a much narrower analysis and, thus, been rendered relatively redundant as a force for change. The first question to consider is whether we can even treat Leveson as a form of truth commission (TC). I argue that we can. The main objective of a TC is, perhaps not surprisingly, to uncover the “facts” of the events that led to the setting up of the inquiry. Rotberg (2000, p. 7) argues that the rationale for a TC is that “the inexplicable should be understood, that actual murders and murderers will be unmasked, that unmarked graves will be located”—in other words to discover where the “bodies” are buried. This depends on the willingness of protagonists to take part and of victims to testify in order to reconstruct a fact-based account of the conflict “insofar as this aim is humanly and situationally possible after the fact” (Rotberg 2000, p. 3). Truth is seen here as emancipatory in its own right, as expressed in the slogan often attached to the TRC, that “the truth will set us free”. Many argue that a TC is better placed than a criminal prosecution to extract the truth, as it allows for multiple accounts and perspectives rather than putting one individual on trial. As Martha Minow suggests (2000, p. 238), “[f]or truth telling, public acknowledgment of what happened, and attention to survivors, a commission of inquiry actually may be better than prosecutions”. This emphasis on the value of truth-telling as an end in itself positions the TC as a particularly liberal and idealist institution where the endgame is not so much about enforcement but enlightenment. Michael Ignatieff (1998, p.173) makes this point explicitly: Truth commissions can and do change the frame of public discourse and public memory. But they cannot be judged failures because they fail to change behaviour and institutions. That is not their function.

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This links to a further outcome of TCs: that through knowledge of the facts, a mutual understanding between the protagonists may emerge and a process of reconciliation may take place. Justice is understood here in its “restorative” rather than “retributive” sense, giving back to victims their voice and, as they are listened to, their self-respect. As the human rights scholar Elizabeth Kiss puts it, justice requires that we “affirm the dignity and agency of those who have been brutalised by attending to their voices and making their stories a part of the historical record” (2000, p. 73). TCs, therefore, are part of the reconstruction of a fresh, inclusive historical narrative that will help to overcome past injustices—in many ways, the embodiment of deliberative forms of democracy where, despite criticism that questions of power are often elided from the process (Dryzek 2000), the mere existence of multiple, debating voices is seen as essential to building democratic structures. The result of this, however, is that TCs inhabit a very uncomfortable space between uncovering truths, restoring dignity and delivering change. Kiss, for example, also talks of recognition-based forms of justice which “entails acknowledging the distinctive identity of the other” (2000, p. 73), in part through oral testimony at public hearings. However, it is far from clear how justice can, in reality, be delivered without holding perpetrators to account and without changing the circumstances that led to the committing of the crimes in the first place. This is particularly a problem in Leveson in the sense that the key mechanisms through which to achieve recognition are precisely the institutions under investigation. According to Nancy Fraser (2000, p. 118), struggles for recognition ought not simply to be fought on the basis of an “identity model” which essentialises collective identities, but also on a “status model” which is connected to what she describes as “distributive injustice” and therefore has claims for redistribution at its heart. This was a major debate throughout the TRC where, as we shall see, some victims’ groups criticised the Commission for emphasising truth and reconciliation at the expense of, for example, reparations and economic demands. While Kiss (2000, p. 75) talks about the ability of TCs to identify the “structural causes of human rights violations” and thus to uncover patterns of behaviour which may then be challenged, the influential South African academic, Andre du Toit, remarks that this relegation of retributive and social justice is characteristic of many TCs which are more comfortable with a focus on individual cases of abuse: truth commissions typically give priority to gross human rights violations rather than to systemic injustices, and thus judge the primary moral need as having to deal with victims and perpetrators rather than with beneficiaries and bystanders or collaborators. (du Toit 2000, p.127)

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The tension between the individual and the collective, between the incidental and the systematic, and between the search for truth and the pursuit of justice, has marked the conduct and effectiveness of many TCs and, as this chapter argues, of public inquiries such as Leveson as well. The latter are not as likely to emerge in the often unsettled and transitional circumstances of TCs but they nevertheless point to a breakdown in established systems of accountability and justice. While they may arise in very different contexts, their objectives and functions are similar to those of TCs that take place in apparently more turbulent places. According to a recent report by the CEDR (2012), public inquiries are designed to provide catharsis, accountability and reassurance to the public, to restore credibility and legitimation to the legal process, to give political gains to the governments which set them up and to search for reconciliation and closure. Essentially, however, they are “fact-finding tools” used to “establish a course of events, to attribute responsibility and to highlight recommendations to limit the chances of an incident occurring again” (CEDR 2012, p. 11). Leveson followed precisely this brief and, in doing so, expressed many of the same tensions and contradictions that are at the core of the debates on the track record of TCs: whether they are effective mechanisms for identifying what has gone wrong, for allowing victims to speak, for holding the powerful to account and for achieving change, or at least the conditions for change; or, rather, whether they are a means of containing anger, of siphoning it off into a prolonged judicial process and, in terms that are familiar to observers of Leveson, of kicking urgent issues into the “long grass”.

Leveson as Truth Commission Despite the reservations expressed earlier about making any easy comparisons between the origins and impact of the two events, there are nevertheless a number of common issues that may help to clarify the possibilities and the underlying limitations of Leveson, the real focus of our analysis. The rest of the chapter addresses the role of the public, the value of testimony, the impact of criticism, and the systemic failures that blunted the ability of both investigations to deliver the changes in which so many had invested their hopes.

The role of the public The TRC was initiated at the behest of the new South African government in 1995 and authorised by President Nelson Mandela himself;

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Leveson was set up following an intervention by Prime Minister David Cameron in response to the phone hacking crisis in July 2011. However, in both cases, the real inspiration was public outrage at the course of events. Popular demand for justice in post-apartheid South Africa may have been particularly intense but there was also a genuine sense of anger amongst the population when the Guardian first revealed that Britain’s top-selling newspaper, the News of the World, had employed a private investigator to hack into the mobile phone messages of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler. The revelation was met with an immediate campaign calling on advertisers to boycott the newspaper. Following the decision by large companies such as Ford, Renault, Sainsburys, Coca Cola and NPower, to withdraw their advertising, its owner, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled News International, decided to publish one last (ad-free) issue before shutting it down permanently. The mood was such that the former Times assistant editor, Mary Ann Sieghart (2011) wrote about the “success of people power” in making it normal, in fact, virtually compulsory in polite company, to condemn Murdoch’s media power at the time. According to Michael Mansfield (2012), with Leveson—just as with the Bloody Sunday and Hillsborough inquiries—“the impetus for an inquiry did not come from the system itself but from the families and friends of the victims”. In other words, it was pressure from below that gave birth to the investigations. Of course, it is true that the inquiries were shaped by the interests of those who formally designed them (in ways that we shall examine later), but it is nevertheless significant that without grass-roots pressure for an investigation of the facts, it is unlikely that either inquiry would have taken place. Furthermore, Leveson remained popular with the public even after some of its critics in the press attempted to paint it as an expensive and undemocratic waste of time. A YouGov poll in October 2012, towards the end of Leveson, found that a mere 6% of those polled thought that the government should not implement Leveson’s proposals for press reform. Seventy per cent suggested that they would respect any political leader who stood up to the power of the press, with 71% agreeing that politicians are too close to proprietors and editors and, therefore, cannot be trusted to protect the rights of ordinary people from intrusion. In a grim result for press owners, a mere 8% said they trusted editors to ensure that their journalists can operate in the “public interest”. Significantly, in a clear demonstration that the issue of press ethics crossed party lines, Lord Justice Leveson himself was most trusted by Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters (the two parties making up the ruling coalition), while 59% of the readers of the Daily Mail and Daily Express declared their trust

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in Leveson, thus placing themselves in conflict with their own newspapers who, as we shall see, campaigned vociferously against Leveson (YouGov 2012). At the height of the press campaign against Leveson and just before the publication of the Leveson Report in November 2012, a further YouGov poll indicated that 79% of the population supported an independent press regulator “established by law” and, perhaps even more astonishingly, 86% of those polled said that phone hacking and intrusions would continue to happen if the existing system of self-regulation was allowed to continue. Ordinary people, in other words, continued to place more faith in Leveson than in the ability of the press to regulate itself. The other crucial point to make here is that, unlike the truth commissions in Chile and Brazil which were held in private, both the TRC and Leveson were held in public with live television coverage and, not surprisingly, a packed press gallery. In the case of Leveson, all evidence was transcribed and, along with individual witness statements, put online very quickly. Indeed, both inquiries were not simply media events but, to varying extents, they were suffused at times by the voices of the public. Du Toit, for example, argues that the TRC, by conducting its business in an open and accessible way, was “public and democratic” (2000, p. 129), no more so than when it organised hearings up and down the country so as better to reach out to excluded and marginal voices. For the journalist, Antje Krog, who covered the TRC for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC): It is ordinary people who appear before the TC. People you meet daily on the street, on the bus and train—people with the signs of poverty and hard work on their bodies and their clothes. In their faces you can read astonishment, bewilderment, sown by the callousness of the security police and the unfairness of the justice system…And everybody wants to know: Who? Why? Out of the sighing arises more than the need for facts or the longing to get closure on someone’s life. The victims ask the hardest of all the questions: How is it possible that the person I loved so much lit no spark of humanity in you? (Krog 1999, p. 67)

For du Toit, the impact of the victims’ stories was such that they were able to produce “local or sectional narratives in tension with or even contesting the generalised framework proposed by the TRC” (2000, p. 129), once again, emphasising the democratic character of the hearings. Leveson, too, heard very powerful testimony from the victims of inaccurate reporting and press harassment—precisely the sort of “truth telling” at the heart of the truth commission model. Frequently derided by the press as celebrities who are quick to use the media but who then

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complain about negative coverage, many of the victims did not have any kind of celebrity status and were thrust very reluctantly into the spotlight. The testimony of families like the McCanns, the Dowlers, the Watsons and the Bowles all spoke about the pain and shock they had suffered at the hands of a sensationalist press. Consider, for example, the evidence provided by Margaret and Jim Watson who, following the murder of their daughter in an unprovoked attack, read articles that unjustifiably blamed their daughter for what happened. This was an allegation which traumatised their son to the extent that he killed himself, and was found holding copies of the press reports. As Margaret Watson told Leveson (Leveson, November 22, 2011), the existing complaints body, the Press Complaints Commission, had not protected her family: So, the journalists in this country kicking on about the chilling effect if you do away with the Press Complaints Commission—which you have to do away with—but if you do away with the Press Complaints Commission, it will have a chilling effect on journalists. What about the deadly effect it has on the victims, and the misreporting, the malicious lies, the malicious falsehoods?

In another particularly disturbing example of press intrusion, Christopher Jefferies was accused towards the end of 2010 of the murder of a 21-year-old woman, Joanna Yeates, and hounded by the press until he eventually won damages in July 2011 from eight titles. Jefferies was accused of everything from being a murderer to a peeping tom, from being gay and bi-sexual to being a sexual predator, and told Leveson that the press had effectively ruined his reputation following the witch hunt against him. Just one fragment of his evidence (Leveson, November 28, 2011) provides a powerful reminder of the consequences of inaccurate and stereotyping journalism: Jefferies: [I]t is, I think, incontestable that the whole slanting of the reporting was intended to be as sensational, as exploitative, as titillating and to appeal in every possible way to people’s voyeuristic instincts. Leveson: It’s worse than that, because besides doing that, it was creating a picture of you which was extremely damaging and potentially abusive to any proceedings. Jefferies: Oh, indeed yes. Yes. Leveson: Besides being entirely false.

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There are, however, some significant differences between the representation and participation of the public in the TRC process in comparison to Leveson. While the TRC toured South Africa holding hearings in small villages as well as the largest cities, and heard evidence from some 2200 people, Leveson was held in one single location, the Royal Courts of Justice, and heard from 337 witnesses, the vast majority of whom were not “ordinary” victims but politicians, civil servants, commentators, editors, executives and various sorts of “experts”. Indeed, according to Grayson and Freedman (2013, p. 71), Leveson deliberately excluded some voices (for example, disabled people and victims of Islamophobic coverage) because Leveson was “principally oriented towards the most direct and personalised forms of press abuse” in order to secure a consensus for regulatory change. Although Brian Cathcart, the founder of the Hacked Off campaign that was central in pressing for an inquiry, is right to suggest that Leveson was more open than previous press inquiries and that “civil society moved in” (2012, pp. 8–9) in a way that it had not previously, the voice of the general public was still marginal when compared to the range of experiences that were heard in the TRC. After all, wholehearted public support for an inquiry is not the same as the actual mobilisation of the public inside the inquiry process. Everyone may be “hacked off” (Cathcart 2012), but it does not necessarily follow that they are tuned in. The most moving aspects of the TRC were certainly the victims’ testimony where, as Krog puts it (1999, pp. 152–3), “[e]ach word is exhaled from the heart, each syllable vibrates with a lifetime of sorrow”. In Leveson, notwithstanding the effectiveness of some of the victims’ stories, the main drama largely involved, as we shall see, those with power, in particular the media moguls and politicians whose relationships are too often shielded from public scrutiny. In the TRC, however, the atmosphere changed when the politicians entered the scene. Krog notes the “striking” difference between the political and “civilian” hearings and recalls that, following the emotion of the ordinary witnesses, the hall now “smells of silk, aftershave and testosterone…it’s the hour of those who scrum down in Parliament. The display of tongues freed into rhetoric—the signature of power” (Krog 1999, pp. 152–153). In both cases, though, the drama was in the hearings themselves as opposed to the final reports which were rather more subdued unlike, for example, the Chilean and Argentine TC reports that led to criminal prosecutions. Krog argues that the TRC’s focus was lost following the conclusion of the victims’ hearings when the Commission moved into a more bureaucratic and politicised phase: “No more the voices, like a

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leaking tap in the back of your mind, to remind you what the Commission is all about” (1999, p. 358). By the time the South African political class took to the stage or, in the case of Leveson, when the report went to Downing Street to be considered further and turned into legislative proposals, the proceedings had lost much of their power. The true significance of both events, as many advocates of truth commissions insist, lay in the sheer unraveling of the facts and in the opportunities for both perpetrators and victims to talk, rather than in the squabbling that followed. Truth, as du Toit notes, seems to triumph over retributive justice in the typical truth commission (2000, p. 127).

Media power in the dock The “truths” revealed to Leveson were indeed startling and revealed corruption and complicity involving politicians, press executives and the police at the highest levels of British society. There were nearly 5000 names in the notebook of the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire who was hired by the News of the World to listen in to people’s voicemail messages (Cathcart 2012, p. 12). Mulcaire and Clive Goodman, royal editor of the NOTW, were arrested and jailed in 2006 and yet, despite the industrial scale of the phone hacking and illegal access to private information (as well as the investigations into these practices by the House of Commons select committee on communications and the Information Commissioner), the police failed to follow up with any more prosecutions, and the vast majority of the press, with the notable exception of the Guardian, chose not to report on the issue. Evidence provided to Leveson offered a persuasive explanation for their inaction: that there was either direct collusion between the parties involved, or an unwillingness to shine a light on the relationship between proprietors and politicians. For example, Leveson heard evidence from the Metropolitan Police’s deputy assistant commissioner, Sue Akers, that the Sun newspaper, another of Murdoch’s popular titles, had set up a “network of corrupted officials” and created a “culture of illegal payments” in the police and other public services (Leveson, February 27, 2012). It uncovered the existence of intensive corporate lobbying—there were 1,056 texts, 191 phone calls and 158 emails between News Corp executives and the Culture Department during the former’s attempted takeover of the UK’s biggest broadcaster, BSkyB (Leveson, May 24, 2012)—and an unhealthy intimacy between senior politicians and media executives. David Cameron held 1,404 meetings with industry figures while in opposition (Leveson, June 14, 2012), hobnobbed with Rupert Murdoch on the Greek island of

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Santorini in order to “build a relationship” with him, and then rode a horse in the care of former News International CEO, Rebekah Brooks, that had been loaned to her by the Metropolitan Police. Guardian journalist Gary Younge, reflecting on the more than 60 meetings involving News Corp executives and government ministers between May 2010 and July 2011 (an average of one meeting per week), argued that this proved the existence of a “parallel, unaccountable universe where actual decisions are made and deals are done” (2012). The hearings laid bare the private channels of communication between media executives and senior politicians (and their special advisors), and provided a huge amount of evidence about the operation and extent of media power and politicians’ willingness to bow down before it. In a textbook definition of press influence, all the more revealing because its author devoted himself to the cause of pursuing media support while prime minister, Tony Blair wrote in his witness statement that: newspapers are used by their owners/editors as instruments of political power…The consequence of [which] is that any politician who falls out with a section of that media, or in respect of whom they turn hostile, has a serious and potentially politically life-threatening problem…the principal purpose of using such power is, in my judgment, as much political, i.e., to advance views, as it is about interests. (Blair 2012)

Throughout Leveson, the perpetrators provided nuggets of information about the power of a handful of media owners to gain special access to Downing Street and to lobby government not simply for business advantage but to promote their own ideological agendas. Blair’s former press secretary, Alastair Campbell, recalled in his witness statement that the editor of the Sun made it clear that if Labour adopted a skeptical approach towards the European Union, “it was likely to be the final piece of the jigsaw before Mr Murdoch agreed the paper would back Labour” (Campbell 2012), which is precisely what it went on to do. When Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of the Sun just before this episode, attempted to play down his influence, he was then publicly challenged by Robert Jay, lead counsel to Leveson (Leveson, January 9, 2012). M. I was always astonished that a prime minister would want to meet a tabloid journalist with one GCSE [exam]. I was—I wondered where the equivalence was in that discussion. J. I think you diminish your importance, Mr McKenzie. You were in a position of immense power. You had 4 million plus purchasers of the paper, many more people reading it. You held influence over public opinion, and

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Media power, a taboo subject in the press for so long, became a news staple during Leveson. Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, happily noted that all the main party leaders and senior police chiefs turned up to the News Corp summer party in June 2011, just before the phone hacking scandal broke, “as it were, to pay court” to Murdoch (Leveson, May 15, 2012); Aidan Barclay, chairman of the Telegraph Media Group, admitted to Leveson that he sent a text to David Cameron before the 2010 election saying that he would “arrange [a] daily call during the [election] campaign as discussed” between the editor of the Daily Telegraph and future prime minister Cameron (Leveson, April 23, 2012); the owner of the London Evening Standard and the Independent, Russian billionaire Evgeny Lebedev even tweeted after his appearance at Leveson: “Forgot to tell #Leveson that it’s unreasonable to expect individuals to spend £millions on newspapers and not have access to politicians” (Hatterstone 2012). These were, during Leveson, virtually “common sense” claims about the media, circulated to and shared by millions of people. And yet they were potentially dynamite: the clearest possible exposition of how power operates at the highest levels, “telling us a great deal about how Britain’s political class in particular and ruling class in general collude, connive and corrupt systemically and systematically” (Younge 2012).

The scale of criticism Knowledge about power does not make one powerful but it can certainly help to create the conditions for a challenge to power. The truths revealed during Leveson concerning media intrusion and media power helped to galvanise campaigners for media reform, both those pressing for a more accountable and effective form of press regulation (such as Hacked Off) and those also focusing on the need to tackle concentrated media ownership (such as the Media Reform Coalition and Avaaz). Yet, just as the TRC was criticised by both left and right from the very beginning, so too was Leveson attacked by a range of voices, most notably by established press interests warning that Leveson constituted an attack on press freedom, as well as radical voices concerned that Leveson was simply “yet another example of established power investigating itself” (Media Lens, in Morning Star, 2012). That truth commissions draw fire

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from all sides is, of course, to be expected given the polarised conditions from which they emerge, but it also reveals something about the “middle ground” that the investigations often occupy in order to draw in opposing voices—victims and perpetrators—better to seek reconciliation and consensus. According to its deputy chair Alex Boraine, “[m]any white Afrikaners accused the TRC of being biased and one-sided” (2000, p. 153) while the Afrikaans press sought to paint it as an ANC plot and “had from the start sought to undermine the legitimacy of key commissioners, the institution itself, and its findings” (Villa-Vicencio and Verwoerd 2000, p. 284). This is very similar to the activities of sections of the British press in relation to Leveson. While the Afrikaans press described the TRC as a “commission of lies and revenge” (Villa-Vicencio and Verwoerd 2000, p. 285), an editorial in the Sun (on November 6, 2012) reacted to Leveson’s rather reasonable proposal for a new independent regulatory structure which would be based on voluntary membership and overseen by a body recognised in law, as “Stalinist-style State regulation of newspapers” that, if introduced, would mark “the end of free speech in our country” (Sun 2012). “Westminster’s backing for a Press Ombudsman”, argued Tim Luckhurst, one of the voices at the heart of the industry-backed Free Speech Network set up specifically to quash Leveson’s proposals, “would become President Putin’s State Censorship Committee, Robert Mugabe’s Ministry of Truth or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Board of Righteousness” (Luckhurst 2012). These hysterical and rather nonsensical claims, given that the British press is not only already subject to multiple forms of statute (including libel and contempt of court) but is actually the recipient of some £600 million per year as the result of the zero rating of VAT, were designed to characterise the entire Leveson Inquiry as unnecessary and undermining precious principles of free speech. As with the TRC, its opponents acknowledged that crimes had been committed but argued they were the actions of misguided individuals. Where the law had been broken, the law should then be used against the offenders—despite the overwhelming evidence in both cases that the law had failed to protect the victims which is why the inquiries were convened in the first place. In the light of these specious defences of democratic freedoms organised by the very institutions against whom victims had testified, it is hardly surprising that voices from a radically different perspective attacked not only the hypocrisy of these entrenched interests but also the inquiries themselves for failing to take adequate action to tackle them. In South Africa, victims’ groups like the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation argued that justice could not be achieved without

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punishing the perpetrators and highlighted a popular sentiment of “No reconciliation without Reparation”. The family of murdered activist Steve Biko, together with other victims, actually challenged the legal basis of the TRC in 1997 arguing that the Commission was “a vehicle for political expediency” which “robbed them of their right to justice” (Independent 1997). In Britain, fifteen years later, similar arguments were proposed against Leveson, that this was about “ruling class recuperation” in which one faction of the state sought to discipline and humble the “unruly elements” of the Murdoch empire (Garland and Harper 2012, p. 419). A focus on challenging just one element of private power, it was argued, ran the risk of marginalising the more essential surveillance and consensusbuilding roles of the state itself. Just as he had criticised the TRC for failing to pursue “proper prevention and compensation” (Pilger 2008), the celebrated investigative journalist, John Pilger, now accused Leveson of being essentially concerned with “the preservation of the system”. He noted that “Leveson has asked nothing about how the respectable media complemented the Murdoch press in systematically promoting corrupt, mendacious, often violent political power whose crimes make phonehacking barely a misdemeanour” (Pilger 2012). The critiques emanating from the left all contain a strong element of truth but ignore the possibility that the exposure of media power during the course of Leveson might help to radicalise victims’ groups and other media reform campaigners and, in turn, stimulate more fundamental questions about how best to seek not just a more ethical press but a truly accountable media system. Indeed, one significant difference between the contexts of the TRC and Leveson is that, given the scale of the antiapartheid movement and the industrial strength of black workers, an institution like the TRC was seen as crucial in order to foster a sense of “moving on” and thus re-establishing conditions for a stable capitalism. Leveson is likely to play no such role: it was, after all, only grudgingly conceded by David Cameron and has been consistently attacked by government and press elites. As long as Cameron refuses to implement Leveson’s core recommendation, the statutory underpinning of a new press regulator, there is little indication that phone hacking victims will see Leveson as delivering the justice they deserve. On the other hand, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, the architects of the TRC, firmly supported both its creation and its findings. The Leveson Inquiry, far from being a precondition for the restoration of credibility in the corporate media, seems to have exacerbated the problem that we have a press that is accountable more to its owners than to its readers. It is true that the structuring of Leveson fits the propaganda model notion of containing

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debate within acceptable limits (Herman and Chomsky 1989), but it also raised fundamental questions about the location and exercise of power in the UK that, if acted upon by activist organisations, could have laid the basis for a more sustained challenge to the hegemony of corporate media. The left has a responsibility in this context to amplify these arguments about the flaws of an entrenched media power as part of a broader argument about the operation of the capitalist state.

Systemic failures: “we die into reconciliation” (Antje Krog) The radical critics are certainly right to point to the tendency of truth commissions, partly because of their stated objective to highlight victims’ experiences, to personalise issues that have systemic causes. This affects the questions posed, the witnesses called and the recommendations proposed—even within the remits handed down to the inquiries from “on high”. There is, almost inevitably, a stronger emphasis in TCs on individual “bad apples” who are said to be responsible for past crimes than on the societies from which they emerge or the systems that they serve. Krog (1999, p. 143) quotes a South African psychiatrist who condemns the process by which “individuals are targeted as the scapegoats for past atrocities. And that allows other citizens to deny any complicity”, thereby encouraging the TRC to individualise systemic problems. This explains the attention paid to questions of morality and ethics (du Toit 2000; Gutmann and Thompson 2000) above those of economics and politics. A further flaw in the whole structure of truth commissions is, as we have already mentioned, the gap between their articulation of injustices and their ability to press for legislative and structural remedies. While the TRC was at least linked to formal legal processes of amnesty, Leveson was not only advisory (with the prime minister essentially free to accept or reject its recommendations) but was actually separate from the criminal proceedings in relation to phone hacking. This is partly deliberate: if protagonists are to tell the truth, the idea is that they should not do so under threat of prosecution. The problem is that while individual culpability is at the heart of the inquiries, there is no way of actually holding individuals to account for their actions. So, just as F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president of South Africa, stated, “I’ve never been part of any decision taken by Cabinet, the State Security Council or any committee authorizing the instruction of such [human rights] abuses” (quoted in Krog 1999, p.157), Rupert Murdoch was equally free to tell Leveson that “I’ve never asked a prime minister for anything” (Leveson,

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April 25, 2012) despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Without the possibility of pressing charges, even the most incriminating evidence does not necessarily lead to any further action. The privileging of victims’ voices and experiences and the need to avoid punishment (and, in the case of the TRC, the question of reparations) further undermines the ability of TCs to press for structural change. Even Antje Krog, a firm supporter of the TRC, admits to getting worn down by the Commission’s determination to achieve reconciliation above retribution: “Compromise, accommodate, provide, make space for. Understand. Tolerate. Empathize. Endure…without it, no relationship, no work, no progress is possible. Yes. Piece by piece we die into reconciliation” (1999, p.54). This is particularly the case with the two final reports which were designed to be politically pragmatic and lack the passion, drama and revelations that characterised many of the hearings. Two of the authors of the TRC report note that despite the many attacks on the work of the Commission its eventual findings were barely challenged, partly because of the many constraints placed upon the scope of the final report (VillaVicencio and Verwoerd 2000, p. 288). This is certainly true of the 2,000 page Leveson Report, which is majestic in its exposition of some of the problems, but whose recommendations are either modest (in the case of its plans for a new regulatory body) or positively anaemic (in its attitude towards ownership and police corruption). So, for example, while Leveson heard a vast amount of evidence about the extent of corporate lobbying and the private meetings (and “brief encounters”) between executives and ministers, the Report shies away from recommending any meaningful changes to media ownership rules that might make individual enterprises less powerful and therefore politicians less likely to kowtow towards them. Dozens of pages are devoted to News International’s purchase of the Times and Sunday Times in 1981 and to News Corp’s attempted takeover of BSkyB in 2010–11, events where the evidence presented to Leveson demonstrated clear political interference and clientilism (Freedman 2011), yet where Lord Justice Leveson, in relation to the latter, finds “no credible evidence of actual bias on the part of Mr Hunt [the culture secretary]” (Leveson 2012, p. 1407). The absence of a “smoking gun” should not be allowed to detract from the reams of other evidence of daily contacts between the Culture Department and BSkyB lobbyists, and their shared desire to see the takeover go through. Leveson simply notes “the striking use of the language of common cause to communicate a sense of shared purpose” (2012, p. 1392); others would call this an outrageous abuse of ministerial privilege in the service of a powerful corporation.

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The Report’s conclusions about the behaviour of the police were even more disappointing and unsuited to the evidence presented to Leveson. As we have seen, the Metropolitan Police (“Met”) refused for many years to investigate allegations of phone hacking while Leveson itself heard about the “network of corrupted officials” and the “culture of illegal payments” involving the police (Leveson, February 27, 2012). After both the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the Met resigned in July 2011 following criticism of their roles in the phone hacking episode (the Commissioner having dined with News Corp executives 18 times since 2006), it was then revealed that a quarter of the Met’s public affairs staff had previously worked for News International and that a senior News of the World journalist had been employed by the Met as a PR consultant. We have since seen the arrests of 12 police officers as part of Operation Elveden which is investigating payments made by journalists to public officials. It is true that, in order to avoid prejudicing forthcoming trials, the Leveson Inquiry was obliged to be circumspect about its relationship with current police investigations into phone hacking and related issues. This fails, however, to explain the blunt conclusions in the Report that “[t]he Inquiry has not unearthed extensive evidence of police corruption” and that “the notion that this [lack of integrity on the part of the police] may be a widespread problem as a matter of fact is not borne out” (Leveson 2012, p. 981). This appears to be less a problem with the evidence than a generalised institutional reluctance to produce recommendations that may upset the applecart and undermine the potential for consensus. Justice, therefore, is blunted by the structural limitations of truth commissions’ overarching desire for reconciliation.

Conclusion The Leveson Inquiry, as with the TRC, may have yielded a treasure trove of evidence of past crimes, may have allowed some people to rediscover a sense of dignity in terms of “repairing and healing the trauma of the victims” (Krog, 1999, p. 498), may have established powerful narratives of criminal and unethical behaviour and may have brought the details of past injustices to the attention of millions of people, but this does not mean that justice has been served. Corrupt organisations, complicit relationships and corrosive systems have been individualised, decontextualised and stripped of their systemic characters in order to pursue politically pragmatic resolutions. Without challenging the underlying conditions that gave rise to the inquiries themselves, both the TRC and Leveson were, to differing extents, captured by precisely the power relations they sought to investigate and hold to

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account. This is especially true with Leveson where press power—the subject of the Inquiry—has consistently attempted to challenge, undermine and distort proceedings in the hope that things will soon return to normal. As the journalist Nick Davies (2012) predicted so presciently in the Guardian immediately following the publication of the Leveson Report, the danger is that, despite nearly 18 months of public outrage and inquiry, the debate will now “be conducted under the same old rules—of falsehood, distortion and bullying”. At the time of writing, the fate of Leveson’s recommendations are unclear. The most likely resolution is a Royal Charter, originally proposed by the government, that will set up a regulatory system with a small measure of independence but one that is open to manipulation by politicians who will remain very much in awe of the power of the press. Indeed, negotiations on the Charter took place behind closed doors, with media and political interests inside and the victims of phone hacking outside. Already, the possibilities that were opened up in July 2011, when public anger was at its greatest and elite power at its most apologetic, seem a long way away. In this context, to what extent did Leveson offer a genuine platform for media reform and democratic change? Simon Jenkins, an influential columnist for the Guardian, initially dismissed Leveson for exaggerating the threat of Rupert Murdoch and for diverting attention from other more significant areas. Yet, the longer it went on and the more he saw politicians and media executives squirm, Jenkins changed his mind. He now considers there is real virtue in “subjecting all unaccountable power to a ‘show trial’. As with [the] Chilcot [Inquiry] and Blair’s Iraq, the judgment matters little. The value lies in the public staging, in the pillory, the humiliation. It is still badly needed in the case of the banks” (Jenkins 2012). This is the strength of a public inquiry: of making life difficult for those who usually evade scrutiny in the hope that the less powerful may be better armed. However, despite the best intentions of truth commission advocates, the truth does not set us free unless we also have the ability to set the agenda and make the changes that are necessary. We need to be honest about the limitations of the truth commission model and to see the problems identified in both the TRC and Leveson not simply as the result of the behaviour of a handful of “bad apples” but as representative of profoundly undemocratic regimes. Consider the sound advice offered by Nancy Fraser that, when reflecting on how best to secure justice: we should look beyond trait-based explanations to the broader patterns of stratification, the causal mechanisms which produce hierarchy and the ideological strategies, such as personalization, that obscure them. (2012, p. 51)

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What the TRC and Leveson demonstrate is that we need not only to hear from victims but also to examine the systems that produce the perpetrators, not simply to seek agreement but to fight for equality, and not only to strive for reconciliation but to argue for redistribution if the crimes that led to the inquiries are not to re-occur. Truth commissions and public inquiries, whatever short-term advantages they may offer, are never going to be able to have the redistributive power of social movements and popular revolts that strive not simply for truth but for meaningful change.

Bibliography Note that all references in the text to “Leveson” followed by a date refer to oral evidence presented to the Inquiry, which can be found at: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/. Blair, Tony. 2012. Witness Statement to the Leveson Inquiry. May 28. http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2012/05/Witness-Statement-of-Tony-Blair1.pdf. Boraine, Alex. 2000. “Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: The Third Way.” In Truth v. Justice, edited by Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, pp. 141–157. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Campbell, Alastair. 2012. Witness Statement to the Leveson Inquiry. April 30. http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ SecondWitness-Statement-of-Alastair-Campbell.pdf. Cathcart, Brian. 2012. Everybody’s Hacked Off. London: Penguin. CEDR (Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution). 2012. Inquiry into Inquiries: Reinventing the Public Inquiry. http://www.cedr.com/docslib/CEDR_Inquiry_into_Public_Inquiries_Pr ospectus.pdf. Davies, Nick. 2012. “Leveson report: a nightmare—but only for the old guard of Fleet Street.” Guardian, November 30. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/nov/29/leveson-reportnightmares-not-real Doughty, Steve. 2012. “Leveson’s press inquiry ‘at risk of being a show trial’ former ambassador says”. Mail Online, April 17. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130821/Sir-ChristopherMeyer-Levesons-press-inquiry-risk-trial.html Dryzek, John. 2000. Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Du Toit, Andre. 2000. “The Moral Foundations of the South African TRC: Truth as Acknowledgment and Justice as Recognition.” In Truth v. Justice, edited by Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, pp. 122–140. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fraser, Nancy. 2000. “Rethinking Recognition.” New Left Review 3: 107– 120. —. 2012. “On Justice.” New Left Review 74: 41–51. Freedman, Des. 2011. “Did UK minister work for government—or Murdoch?” CNN.com, April 25. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/25/opinion/freedman-murdochminister. Garland, Christian and Stephen Harper. 2012. “Did Somebody Say Neoliberalism? On the Uses and Limitations of a Critical Concept in Media and Communication Studies.” tripleC 10(2): 413–424. http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/396. Garton Ash, Timothy. 2011. “We must be free and able to defend private lives against tabloid tyranny.” Guardian, November 24. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/23/levesoninquiry-press-freedom Grayson, Deborah and Des Freedman. 2013. “Leveson and the Prospects for Media Reform.” Soundings 53: 69–81. Gutmann, Amy and Dennis Thompson. 2000. “The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions.” In Truth v. Justice, edited by Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, pp. 22–44. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hatterstone, Simon. 2012. “Evgeny Lebedev: Don't call me an oligarch.” Guardian, May 5. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/may/05/evgeny-lebedevevening-standard-oligarch Herman, Edward and Noam Chomsky. 1989. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon. Ignatieff, Michael. 1998. The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. New York: Henry Holt. Independent. 1997. “Apartheid enforcer sticks to ‘farcical’ story on Biko killing.” September 11, p.2. Jenkins, Simon. 2012. “Leveson's phone-hacking show trial has a cruel virtue.” Guardian, February 29. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/28/levesonphone-hacking-show-trial-cruel-virtue Kellner, Douglas. 2012. “The Murdoch Media Empire and the Spectacle of Scandal.” International Journal of Communication 6: 1169–1200. Doi: 1932-8036/2012FEA1169.

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Kiss, Elizabeth. 2000. “Moral Ambition Within and Beyond Political Constraints—Reflections on Restorative Justice.” In Truth v. Justice, edited by Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, pp. 68–98. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Krog, Antje. 1999. Country of My Skull. London: Vintage. Leveson, Lord Justice. 2012. An Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press: Report. 4 volumes. London: The Stationery Office. Luckhurst, Tim. 2012. “Statutory regulation of British newspapers would create a constitutional absurdity.” Press Gazette, October 26. http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/tim-luckhurst-statutory-regulationbritish-newspapers-would-create-constitutional-absurdity Mansfield, Michael. 2012. “Hillsborough shows why we need a permanent truth commission.” Guardian, October 30. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/29/hillsboroughneed-truth-commission Minow, Martha. 2000. “The Hope for Healing: What Can Truth Commissions Do?” In Truth v. Justice, edited by Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, pp. 235–260. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Morning Star. 2012. “Leveson: A Tiger with No Teeth?” 8 July. OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). 2011. Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising. Paris: OECD. Pilger, John. 2008. “Honouring the ‘unbreakable promise’.” March 28. http://johnpilger.com/articles/honouring-the-unbreakable-promise. —. 2012. “The Leveson Inquiry into the British press—oh, what a lovely game.” May 31. http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-leveson-inquiry-intothe-british-press-oh-what-a-lovely-game. Rotberg, Robert. 2000. “Truth Commissions and the Provision of Truth, Justice and Reconciliation.” In Truth v. Justice, edited by Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, pp. 3–21. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sieghart, Mary Ann. 2011. “Power has shifted back to the people.” Independent, July 11. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/mary-annsieghart/mary-ann-sieghart-power-has-shifted-back-to-the-people2311673.html Sun. 2012. “No Censors”. Editorial. November 8, p.8. Villa-Vicencio, Charles and Wilhelm Verwoerd. 2000. “Constructing a Report: Writing Up the ‘Truth’.” In Truth v. Justice, edited by Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, pp. 279–294. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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YouGov. 2012. “Daily Polling.” October 3–6. https://docs.google.com/ file/d/1QNZTnumuchfdfuUaKIztgkVXNA1sMLWB2cpCOho2PM3X wX2-OqJBukwv12Hq/edit?pli=1. Younge, Gary. 2012. “A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy.” Guardian, May 7. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/06/levesonmurdoch-cameron-brooks-privilege.

CHAPTER FIVE DIALOGUE AND INTERACTION? GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK– AN ANALYSIS OF THE 2011 STATE ELECTIONS ANDREAS ELTER

Introduction The political “spring” in the Middle East, the so-called “Arabellion”, and the worldwide protests against the power of the financial markets and the Occupy movement: as different and difficult to compare as these events are, discussions of all of them have focused on a “new” medium of communication—Web 2.0. Both the daily press and academic research (Abold 2005; Arnold and Neuberger 2005; Zimmermann 2006; Schweitzer 2006; Chadwick 2009; Zittel 2010; Lilleker and Jackson 2011) have discussed to what extent the Internet and—since around 2005—social media might be able to initiate a new, participatory democratic movement, and to what extent these media are themselves a part of this participatory movement and restructuring of the public sphere (Shirky 2008; Li and Bernoff 2008). Arguments that had first appeared with the spread of the 1.0 Internet generation have re-emerged as part of this debate (Möller 2005), raising hopes that the new media might be able to promote a new political discourse and strengthen civil society. On the other hand, a growing number of critical voices take a more sceptical and less visionary (or indeed utopian) viewpoint, calling for closer examination and empirical analysis of the Web 2.0 phenomenon (Van Audenhove et al. 2005). In retrospect, Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign can be seen as pioneering in this regard. He was the first to use Web 2.0 resources comprehensively in his campaign, although he also drew on the 2005

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Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s campaign strategy. The key to Obama’s success lay in his ability to offer interested recipients a direct feedback channel via these new communication media, providing a platform where they could express their opinions directly and immediately (Elter 2010b). Here, his campaign succeeded in transforming the communication situation from “one to many” to “many to many”. The effects of this were felt far beyond the US, including in Germany. Some even saw the offerings of Web 2.0 as heralding a new architecture of political communication (Chadwick and Howard 2009; Pannen 2010). Thus it was hardly surprising that in the 2009 German federal elections,1 all the German parties started building up a Web 2.0 offering to gain access to new groups of voters. The new forms of virtual political campaigning also gave rise to new expectations. However, the federal election of 2009 showed clearly that Obama’s strategies could not be transferred seamlessly to Germany. Ultimately, fewer citizens cast their votes than in the 2005 election. Most German parties had used the Obama campaign as their model and had tried to adapt it to the German context, but therein lay the reason for their failure (Elter 2010a, pp. 21f.). The fundamental differences between the diverse political and media systems in each country became particularly obvious in regard to Web 2.0. What became known as the Americanisation theory (Dörner 2001; Meyer 2001) did not apply here. The candidates were too different, the party systems were too different, and the potential target groups were too different. The reasons for the German electorate’s generally lukewarm response to political Web 2.0 campaigns are equally diverse (Abold 2005; Römmele 2005).

Selected Structural Data for Internet Usage in Germany In general, the observable trends in the socio-demographic factors of age, gender and education in regard to Internet usage in Germany are stable: 87 per cent of men use the Internet, but only 67 per cent of women; the Internet remains a medium for those with a higher level of formal education; in 2011, 39 per cent of those leaving secondary school with only a basic level of qualifications used the net, as opposed to 94 per cent of university graduates (Forschungsgruppe Wahlen 2011a).2 When using the Internet for political content, which is the focus of this study, clear differences between age groups are evident: while 68 per cent of men below the age of 34 use the Internet to read the news and political content, this is true for only 58 per cent of over-35s and 53 per cent of over-59s; the percentages for women are somewhat lower at 56 per cent of female

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Internet users under the age of 34, 45 per cent over the age of 35 and 41 per cent over the age of 59 (Forschungsgruppe Wahlen 2011b). It should be mentioned that the German research group Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, whose results are quoted here, was enquiring into general Internet usage for political content, not specifically use of Web 2.0. No distinction is drawn between the news and more advanced forms of political information, or between passive use (such as reading newspapers’ online offerings) and active use (such as maintaining personal blogs or entering into a virtual dialogue with political parties). If this was taken into consideration, an even clearer picture of the typical Web 2.0 user researching political content would likely emerge: male, with a high level of formal education and no older than 35 (cf. Bräuer 2008). This usage behaviour alone stands in marked opposition to the German socio-demographic average, and thus contradicts democratic structures that should be concerned with including as many different social groups as possible. Rather, one could speak of Web 2.0 being used by a media elite or digital avant-garde (Wolling, Seifert and Emmer 2010).

Object of Study The present study examines post–2009 developments at state level. While case studies of parties’ Web 2.0 offerings—particularly politicians’ blogs—already exist (Schweitzer 2010; Koopmans and Zimmerman 2010; Kluver and Jankowski 2007; Ferdinand 2004; Coenen 2005), studies that go beyond and focus on a broader cross-section, including the new channels Facebook and Twitter, are unexplored territory for research as far as Germany is concerned. This study aims to fill that gap, at least partially. 2011 presented itself as an ideal period of investigation: seven new state parliaments were elected in this year—in largely agricultural and rural states whose population density is comparatively low (e.g. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), in heavily populated city-states with a modern urban electorate (e.g. Hamburg and Berlin), and in federal states with several regional and local centres (such as Rhineland-Palatinate or Baden-Württemberg). The total of seven examples provided sufficient variance and representativeness for a cross-sectional study. In all seven state elections, the Web 2.0 communication of six parties was examined (42 individual evaluations altogether) in order to establish whether differences between the various federal states existed. For this purpose, the social networking sites Facebook and the microblogging site Twitter were defined as Web 2.0. Of the parties that stood for election, those that entered the respective state parliaments were selected. The

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Pirate Party was also included, as its followers showed a particularly high affinity with Web 2.0.3

Research Procedure The methodology selected was a combined quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The individual design of this study focused the analysis on dialogic and interactive patterns of communication (see Method and Research Design, below). State associations were cross checked to verify the respective accounts and profiles and exclude possible fakes. As parties’ political communication is particularly concentrated around the elections, the period of investigation per state election was set at one month—a total of seven months altogether. Not only the week immediately preceding the day of the election, generally called an election campaign’s “hot phase”, was analysed, but also the two weeks before and two weeks after. Thus, changes in parties’ Web 2.0 behaviour could be identified with reference to the election date.

Objectives The intention was to establish the extent to which a participatory approach to politics and voter involvement was promoted and extended by Web 2.0 strategies. This idea of collaboration and the thesis that dialogue is extended to include different, new participants supposedly is one of the central elements of Web 2.0 communication (Münker 2009; Benkler 2006; Gladwell 2000; Howe 2008). These hypotheses need to be tested particularly in the case of political parties, for a number of reasons. Firstly, parties in Germany are constitutionally defined as participating in the formation of the political will of the people. Secondly, according to the logic inherent in their system, they have the strongest interest in immediately translating the participation of politically interested citizens into votes. Thirdly, Web 2.0 communication in theory opens up the possibility of establishing new, deliberative forms of democracy. In general, these are seen as a way of “widening the circle of those eligible to vote and extending and intensifying voters’ participation in the debate and decision-making process on public affairs” (Schmidt 1995, p. 169). Shaping the public sphere in this way in principle gives the individual a chance to shift his or her participation to a point prior to the actual political voting process (Lösch 2005). To what extent did the German state parties make use of this chance in 2011? In order to find an answer to this question, the dialogue between

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parties and population via Web 2.0 needed to be quantified: did all parties use the channels in question? How frequently did they “speak” with interested users and potential voters there? Has any expansion of discourse thus become evident? Or has citizens’ participation remained marginal and event-dependent? In order to answer these questions, focus was consciously laid on parties’ official offerings on Facebook and Twitter, as these channels represent the parties externally within the virtual world. An examination of the Web 2.0 activity of individual party members or candidates was purposely avoided, as these do not officially represent the party as a whole, nor are they legitimised by it.

Method and Research Design The research design primarily followed quantifiable criteria. In some categories, this automatically led to qualitative criteria also. Quantitative and qualitative elements cannot always be clearly distinguished when it comes to content analysis (Paier 2010; Früh 2007); in our case, the one determines the other, for our aim was observe whether, and if so, how often users reacted to parties’ communication offers, thus resulting in dialogue. In this regard, the combination of quantitative and qualitative elements was inherent in the study’s design. The research design was broken down into several steps. First of all (step A) we examined the Web 2.0 channels relevant to the parties. At this point, initial similarities and differences could already be detected. We then (step B) measured the quantity of communication on the various channels. How many tweets did a party send? How many entries were to be found on their Facebook profiles? The tweets or posts appearing in the respective accounts were first archived (stored as a txt file using the web version), later formatted and converted to a PDF file. This step allowed the data to be checked and tracked at any given point of the study. Following an initial inspection of the complete material, a multi-stage codebook was developed (step C), which took the political parties’ homepages into account alongside relevant Web 2.0 offers on Twitter and Facebook. However, as this article is concerned with Web 2.0 communication, the results of the homepage evaluations will not be considered here, for they can be classed as part of the Web 1.0 generation. Each of the parties examined was given its own identification number (ID). Then coding criteria were defined according to the mode of the respective object of enquiry (the homepage and social media accounts). Thus the analysis of the parties’ homepages is based on criteria IA1 (interactivity rate), IA2 (connectivity rate) and IA3 (dialogue rate). The

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interactivity of and dialogic connection between individual offerings was examined (step D), so as to provide an answer to the central question of the participatory elements of Web 2.0 communication. This step applied to both homepages and social media. In order to determine interactivity and dialogue, re-tweets, comments on the profiles and walls of parties and comments and reply functions were counted and documented in absolute numbers. In order to include these numbers in the coding system, two categories each for the communication channels Twitter and Facebook were defined: “dialogue rate” (IAF1, IAT1) and “update rate” (IAF2, IAT2). The intention was to measure on the one hand whether and to which extent each party engaged in conversation with their “stakeholders”, and on the other how up-to-date their accounts were. As the data was evaluated weekly, it was possible to track how often posts were written during each week of the study. The study’s next step was to code the entire material. It should be mentioned in conclusion that the present study’s material consisted of more than ten thousand posts and tweets for the seven state elections (n=10,044), which inevitably produces various limitations.

Limitations of the Study Originally, a further, purely qualitative step was to be followed. Which topics were mentioned? How did the party react in terms of content? Which communicators commented particularly frequently? Were comments neutral, questioning, opinionated or defamatory? However, during the course of the study it became evident that this step would not make any significant contribution to knowledge. No representative statements could have been made on the basis of the data gathered, which would have resulted in distortions with no significance for the overall comparison. Because of these prior considerations, the idea of a purely qualitative analysis was abandoned and a combined approach chosen. This deliberate limitation had the following consequences for the individual channels: on Facebook, how often a party made contact with Web 2.0 users was measured (i.e. entered into dialogue, responding to users’ comments and questions), but not which direction this dialogue took in terms of content. If significant characteristics became obvious during the course of quantitative analysis, a qualitative evaluation followed, during which the respective posts and tweets were captured manually—that is, were read. In the case of Twitter, how often a party communicated with its followers was measured specifically (@-tweets were counted), but not the explicit content of this communication.

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Selected Data Evaluation According to State In the following, the raw data on the seven state elections and the respective parties will be presented. The main focus is the “dialogue rate” on the channels Facebook and Twitter, which enables observations on the volume of communication flow and the bi-directionality of communication. Thus communication is seen here in the Habermasian sense as action oriented towards reaching understanding (Habermas 1999), or in a dialogic sense. For there can be no discourse without dialogue—and no participation without discourse. In this study, participation is understood to be active and not simply the passive reception of content.

Hamburg The evaluation for this northern city-state revealed first of all that the state association of the Pirate Party possessed no Facebook profile of its own, and the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) no Twitter account. Accordingly, no communication took place with these parties on these channels. Looking at the “dialogue rate” in regard to parties’ Facebook activities, a disparate picture emerges. Responses to the content posted by parties differed in strength. The socialist party, named “Left Party”, lagged far behind the others, although as far as the currency and number of its own posts (update rate) are concerned, it was the strongest party (90 posts altogether). These posts received a total of 53 comments by 52 users. The Left Party reacted with five comments, three of these during the “hot phase” of the election campaign (second WS), and one comment each in the first and third WS.4 For all parties, the fourth WS (the second week after the election date) is characterised by a significant decrease in the frequency of posts, which again results in a markedly lower number of comments both by users and the parties themselves. The liberal Free Democratic Party’s (FDP) posts were commented on a total of sixty times. As far as the evaluation of dialogue is concerned, the FDP emerges as the weakest party, responding to its users’ remarks with one single comment (in the first WS). The real surprise of the evaluation was the CDU: with its comparatively “low effort” in terms of posts during the period of study (23), it achieved 86 comments in three of the four weeks of the study. During the fourth week there were no posts and thus no comments. The high level of user participation in the second WS was particularly pronounced for the CDU. With 68 comments, this was the week with the highest number of responses.

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The two strongest parties in terms of the number of comments made were the Green Party with 180 comments and the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with 265 comments. Both parties had nearly the same output (Greens 71, SPD 67 posts). Although users of the SPD’s profile left roughly a hundred more comments than the Green supporters, the SPD only responded half as often. The SPD commented on the remarks users had left on their profile a total of six times, the Greens twelve times. In summary, it can be observed that all parties presented their Facebook accounts as a platform of exchange for voters and only entered further communication themselves to a very minor extent (see Table 1, and all subsequent tables, at end of chapter). Whilst the CDU dispensed with a Twitter account, the Pirate Party was particularly active on this channel—though not in top position in regard to communication output (82 tweets). However the Pirates achieved the highest number of conversations (@-tweets) with 14 @-tweets altogether, sent to various followers, mainly during the first two weeks of the study. After the “hot phase” the party’s involvement grew less, both on Twitter as a whole (only one tweet in the fourth WS), and in dialogue with their followers (one conversation). Nonetheless, the Pirates maintained their top spot. They were followed by the SPD, which had sent more tweets (148) but only entered into dialogue with its followers ten times (also in the first three weeks of the study). The Greens (4 @-tweets) and the Left Party (1 @-tweet) were far behind the two parties just mentioned in their numbers of conversations, although the number of tweets sent was only marginally lower than that of the Pirate Party. The FDP did not enter into dialogue at all, sending no @-tweets (see Table 2). Overall, then, three trends can be observed for Hamburg, revealing a case similar to that of Facebook: first, parties were much less active in the weeks following the election; secondly, there was no connection between conversation output and dialogue detectable; and thirdly, most of the parties were obviously not interested in establishing a closer dialogue, as they responded to their users’ and followers’ comments only sporadically. The chain of communication was usually broken off after the first response.

Saxony-Anhalt In the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt neither the CDU nor the Left Party owned a Facebook account. Half of the SPD’s posts were made in the week prior to the election, and in none of the weeks of the study did they reply to any of the users’ comments. Unlike in Hamburg, users

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reacted most frequently to the FDP in comparison to the other parties. But this party, too, only responded to comments during the first week of the study. The Green Party had the lowest number of posts, but received the highest number of reactions, to which it again responded with a nominally low number of comments. However, even this low number was significantly higher than that of the other parties. The Pirate Party proved something of an exception, as it was the most active, with 606 posts—that, however, produced no response from users (see Table 3). In contrast to their Facebook results, the Pirate Party achieved higher reaction rates with a high communication output using the communication medium Twitter (652 tweets). By contrast, the Greens and the SPD sent no @-tweets. In summary, it can once again be observed that all parties tweeted four times as frequently in the second WS (the week before the election) as in the other weeks (see Table 4).

Rhineland-Palatinate The Facebook activity in Rhineland-Palatinate confirmed the trends observed in the other federal states. Once again, all parties had the highest output during the second week of the study. The Pirate Party was, again, the most active of all the parties, and it received the highest number of responses. The Greens only received half as many comments from users, but that was five times fewer posts than the Pirates. This, once again, revealed the trend that no verifiable connection exists between communication output and reaction rate. Furthermore, the lack of dialogue was remarkable, despite the evident interest on the part of the users. The CDU serves as an example of this: its 164 posts received 69 comments, but it only felt compelled to respond with a further comment once. This behaviour can also be observed in the other parties. It is also striking that the SPD had no account, and the FDP only posted once in four weeks (see Table 5). Unlike the other states, all of the parties in Rhineland–Palatinate had a Twitter account. Their usage patterns confirm the trends evident on Facebook. Once again, it was the second week of the study that showed a particularly high level of communication. The Greens’ and Pirates’ outputs and responses were nearly identical to those on Facebook. Via both channels the Pirates were ahead, but with markedly more effort on their part. The Green Party—with nearly 100 fewer tweets—sent nearly the same number of @-tweets as the Pirates. The SPD had almost the same level of primary output as the Greens and the Pirate Party—but followed it up with only 13 @-tweets. In this regard, the Greens were the most

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efficient communicators in terms of establishing dialogue. On Twitter, too, the FDP showed itself to be the least communicative party. During the whole period of study, it only wrote eleven tweets (see Table 6).

Baden-Württemberg In this south-western state, the same trends manifested themselves initially as in neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate, the closest to BadenWürttemberg socio-demographically of all the states holding a 2011 election. There are, however, also some unusual regional features. For example, the Pirate Party had no account on Facebook, and the CDU was the most communicative party by far. However, the CDU only responded a paltry ten times to the impressive 730 Facebook comments it received. Unlike in Rhineland-Palatinate, the FDP was markedly more active in Baden-Württemberg. However it, too, only responded three times to the comments visitors left on its wall. The same trends as in RhinelandPalatinate could be observed for the SPD and the Greens. The SPD wrote almost as many posts as the most actively communicative party (CDU), but only wrote half the number of responses. The Green Party made comparatively few posts (69), and achieved a high response—437 comments, but only responded three times (see Table 7). The CDU’s poor election outcome is the reason for its high reaction rate. During the second week of the study—which included the day of the election—the party received an unusually large number of comments from frustrated supporters discussing the results of the election. This was shown in the qualitative analysis—more than 80 per cent of comments referred to that topic. In the case of the Greens, the high number of responses was due to their unusually good performance, which meant that for the first time ever in that state they participated in the government. On Twitter, the FDP took first position in Baden-Württemberg with 422 tweets, but only reacted with one @-tweet, and their messages were only forwarded (re-tweeted) 18 times. There is no question of dialogue becoming more intense. The case of the SPD is different: their proportion of tweets to @-tweets was over 50 per cent. The CDU and the Pirate Party produced nearly the same number of tweets. However, 53 of the Pirates’ tweets were directed at their followers, whereas the CDU sent only one @tweet. Across all parties, it is striking that—unlike the other parties—the SPD and CDU tweeted by far the most, not in the second but in the first week of the study (see Table 8). As the qualitative analysis revealed in the case of the CDU, this was due to the fact that this week marked the beginning of their real world “MapBus” campaign (a play on the name of

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their candidate, Stefan Mappus). In the case of the SPD, the high communication output was caused by a television debate. Thus, in both cases we are dealing with event-dependent variables.

Bremen The Hanseatic city’s most active party communicator on Facebook was, once again, the Pirate Party. It produced the most posts, but failed to create much dialogue, as it received the lowest number of user comments. Otherwise, similar trends and tendencies manifested themselves in the city-state as in the other states. Moreover, a further trend could be confirmed in Bremen: a party’s political orientation has no obvious influence on how actively they communicate in Web 2.0. Thus the CDU and the Left Party posted with almost the same frequency, although the Left Party gained more responses. The SPD, by contrast, only allowed members access to its profile, and thus could not be included in the study (see Table 9). Only the Pirate and Left Parties made use of the communication medium, Twitter, in Bremen. Thus, no adequate comparison can be drawn with other federal states. In the case of the Pirates, the high number of retweets in the second week of the study is striking, as is the fact that the Left Party’s tweets produced no reaction whatsoever (see Table 10).

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Parties in this north-eastern state used the communication medium of Facebook much less frequently. Only the Pirate Party managed to achieve more than 100 posts. The comments reveal the same picture: neither users nor the parties themselves were particularly communicative, with the exception of the Pirate Party and its profile users. It is striking, even with this low communication flow, that the CDU, FDP and SPD did not react at all to the few comments they received—they sought no kind of interaction or dialogue whatsoever (see Table 11). The picture for Twitter was not much different; only the Greens and the Pirate Party had an account. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania forms a remarkable exception in regard to many of the evaluation criteria due to its particularly low flow of communication (see Table 12).

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Berlin Senate elections were held in the federal capital in 2011. The Left Party is the most communicative party according to all Facebook parameters: it wrote 332 posts, which received 528 comments. Most of them occurred during the second WS—once again confirming the familiar pattern. However, the flow of communication did not stop in the other weeks either. The party itself reacted to users’ comments exceptionally frequently, with a total of 95 responses. The frequency was similarly high each week. Berlin was the only state in which the Pirate Party entered the state parliament, gaining nine per cent of votes. But the Pirates posted far less than the Left Party. Thus, even in this striking example, where the Pirates gained a huge increase in votes, no connection between communication output and electoral success can be detected. However, the Pirates received 291 comments and were thus able to create dialogue. The Greens posted comparatively few (66) posts, but received around three times as many comments (183). In the case of the FDP, too, almost the same proportion of posts and user comments can be observed. The party posted 43 times, and received nearly three times as many comments (see Table 13). The traditional major parties, CDU and SPD, received considerably fewer comments on Facebook. This is not really surprising considering socio-demographic factors and the structural data on Internet usage. As the capital, where people from the entire country move to, Berlin has a much stronger “net community”. The target group’s affinity with the “younger” parties is much greater, even outside the virtual world than with the traditional parties, which are often seen as “old school”. This trend could have an exponential effect in Web 2.0. In addition, Facebook users in Germany can generally be counted as part of a younger target group. The picture is more differentiated when it comes to Twitter. In comparison to the Pirate Party, the SPD sent fewer tweets, but posted more than twice as many @-tweets. And the CDU was not represented on this medium at all. Here, a division of parties into “old” major and “young” Web 2.0–friendly no longer seems appropriate (see Table 14).

Summary of Results—Overall Evaluation A final comparison of the results of the individual evaluations leads to the inevitable conclusion that no homogeneity can be observed empirically between the different federal states. The state parties’ activities on Facebook and Twitter cannot be explained according to any simple pattern. The central

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research question was intended to ascertain whether Web 2.0 activity encouraged greater political interaction and dialogue, or even pointed towards elements of a more deliberative democracy. The results provide answers to this question that are, of necessity, uneven and require differentiation. On the macro level (in regard to society as a whole and a general change in values), the answer to the question would have to be no, as neither the offerings nor the reactions they elicited (interaction) were comprehensive; the number of communicators was too small to be able to talk of a general change in communication between citizens and parties in Germany. On the meso level (purpose-driven structures within the parties), the answer is ambivalent. On the one hand, most of the parties in nearly all of the states used Web 2.0 to contact voters as part of their campaign; on the other hand, there are striking exceptions (see the individual evaluation for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, or the Twitter offerings in Bremen). No uniform line can be detected within the parties either. Thus, one and the same party was very active and communicative in one state, achieving good reaction rates, while in another state it was reticent and its actions achieved only limited success in intensifying dialogue. It is on the micro level (individuals or small groups) that elements of deliberative democracy are most likely to be observed. The Pirate Party serves as an example here, but even for this party, no direct correlation between communication output and reaction can be proven empirically. Neither can any connection or direct proportion be measured between the level of communication activity and electoral success. As evidenced, the Pirate Party achieved great success in Berlin, with nine per cent of the votes, but in the other states—where it was just as active—it did not enter parliament. This leads us to the central theses that can be drawn up on the basis of this study, and that require further study in order to be verified or falsified.

Conclusion and Final Theses In spite of the heterogeneous results of the study, clear trends are evident, from which the following theses can be posed: a) All political parties are especially active immediately prior to the election (second week of the study), and also receive the greatest response during this period. However, no trend towards developing any longer-term dialogue with voters on Web 2.0 can be observed. b) No connection can be proven between a party’s political orientation and its activity on Web 2.0. c) On average across the states, the Greens and the Pirate Party

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achieved the highest reaction rates and, thus, were most likely to encourage public dialogue. d) There are differences—sometimes significant—between individual federal states. On the basis of the data available, we can posit that political communication on Web 2.0 plays no role worth mentioning in (non-city) states with large rural and agricultural areas. The more densely-populated and urban the state (in this study, particularly the city-state Berlin, with its exceptional position as capital), the more intense parties’ political Web 2.0 communication appears to be. e) Event-dependent communication (e.g. reactions to electoral success or failure, or local special events) plays a far greater role than longer-term communication. Thus, parties’ communication on Facebook and Twitter can be seen as issue-driven. These cases also produced the highest user reaction rates, which lead to distortions in the study. It is possible, therefore, for a party to have received many Facebook comments (such as congratulations from users on their election success, as in the case of the Greens in Baden-Württemberg), but to have made only a minimal response (only two general posts saying thank you to all supporters at once). That is the nature of a communication medium which is able to reach an unlimited number of addressees with only one message. Quantitative distortion effects of this kind can be compensated for by a qualitative analysis of the data. However, quantitative data remain essential in regard to the research question, for, even if low reaction rates can be explained qualitatively, the quantitative result remains a fact. When the party’s response is only minimal, no new dialogue is created, even if a high number of communicants are reached. In the sense of discourse theory, statements of thanks to voters or announcements of campaign events are not understood as dialogue or interaction here. This example shows a general methodological problem in the study of communication in Web 2.0, or rather a problem of definition affecting basic assumptions. Of course, a high number of tweets or countless clicks on the “Like” button of a party can be taken as evidence that communication takes place there, however this does not immediately suggest that interaction also occurs. If political communication in Web 2.0 is understood not simply as sending out advertising messages, but instead as a medium of dialogue in an information society (Sarcinelli 2009, p. 17), the reaction to tweets and posts and the resulting patterns of interaction will also have to be observed. From the point of view of research, further quantitative analyses that

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focus on the meso and micro levels are thus required. They should not be seen as contradicting a broader, quantitative study such as the present one, but rather as complementing it. The problem with individual analyses and case studies is that their findings are only relevant to their particular object of study, and cannot be taken as a representative pars pro toto. Put differently, even if a party is especially active in one state and promoted dialogue there, or if a small group of people achieved a high number of reactions, it does not necessarily result in a dialogue relevant for society as a whole. In fact, it is easy to find examples of successful politicians’ weblogs, such as that of the SPD member of parliament Ulrich Kelber. However, if only around half a dozen communicants altogether actively take part in the dialogue there (see Coenen 2005, p. 16), reaction rates may shoot sky-high—but there is no broad dialogue with society. In this regard, many Web 2.0 forums and blogs—and as has been demonstrated, debates on Facebook and Twitter—are still like virtual meetings of pub regulars. On the meso level they can be relevant (Schönberger 2005), but politicians who blog or post in the online world can also make fools of themselves (Coleman 2004), and hinder rather than promote dialogue. In any case, the fact that possibilities for participation exist does not mean that they are actually used. It would thus be fatal to draw conclusions from the purely technical existence of new communication media on their influence, or on a general change in the process of communication (Van Audenhove et al. 2005, p. 287). As this study has shown, new Web 2.0 communication media can be used in completely different ways, both in terms of frequency and content—but, above all, in terms of attitude to dialogue. Studies in recent years on the level of digital democracy in Europe all reached the same conclusion—that there is considerable catching-up to do in this area (see Trechsel et al. 2003; ITA 2005; Van Audenhove et al. 2005). On the whole, this also applies to the German parties in regard to Facebook and Twitter (apart from the exceptions in the individual evaluations mentioned above). In conclusion, despite a considerable rise in communication output, no consistent evidence of a general expansion of political dialogue in Web 2.0 can be found for the German state elections of 2011. Equally, there seems to be little justification for apodictic predictions for the future based on the data gathered. Further detailed analyses and longer-term longitudinal studies are required. Nonetheless, it was possible to identify new trends. This study sees itself as a contribution to basic research in the field of political communication in Web 2.0, and deliberately intends to offer scope for further investigation.

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Bibliography Abold, Ronald. 2005. Wahlkampf in der Blogosphäre. Bamberg: Baces. ARD/ZDF Onlinestudie. 2011. http://www.ard-zdf-onlinestudie.de/index.php?id=271. Arnold, Klaus and Christoph Neuberger eds. 2005. Alte Medien – neue Medien. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Bräuer, Marco. 2008. “Politische Kommunikation 2.0—Grundlagen und empirische Ergebnisse zur Nutzung neuer Partizipationsformen im Internet.” In Kommunikation, Partizipation und Wirkungen im Social Web, edited by Ansgar Zerfaß, Martin Welker and Jan Schmidt, pp. 188–209. Köln: Halem. Chadwick, Andrew and Philip N. Howard. 2009. The Handbook of Internet Politics. New York, NY: Routledge. Chadwick, Andrew. 2009. “The Internet and Politics in Flux—Guest Editor’s Introduction.” Journal of Information Technology and Politics 6 (3–4): 195–196. Coenen, Christopher. 2005. “Weblogs als Mittel der Kommunikation zwischen Politik und Bürgern—Neue Chancen für E-Demokratie?” In Erkundungen des Bloggens. Sozialwissenschaftliche Ansätze und Perspektiven der Weblogforschung, edited by Jan Schmidt, Klaus Schönberger and Christian Stegbauer, Special Issue of kommunikation @gesellschaft 6: 1–31. Coleman, Stephen. 2004. “Connecting Parliament to the Public via Internet. Two Case Studies of Online Communication.” Information, Communication & Society 7 (1): 1–22. Dörner, Andreas. 2001. Politainment. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Elter, Andreas. 2010a. Bierzelt oder Blog? Hamburg: HIS. —. 2010b. “Doch kein Wundermittel: Wahlkämpfe und Web 2.0.” Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen 23 (3): 64–70. Ferdinand, Peter. 2004. The Internet, Democracy and Democratization. London: Frank Cass. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen. 2011a. Internetstrukturdaten II. Quartal 2011. http://www.forschungsgruppe.de/Umfragen/Internet-Strukturdaten/web _II_11.pdf. —. 2011b. Internetstrukturdaten III. Quartal 2011. http://www.forschungsgruppe.de/Umfragen/Internet-Strukturdaten/web _III_11.pdf.

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Früh, Werner. 2007. Inhaltsanalyse, 6th edition. Konstanz: UVK. Gladwell, Malcolm. 2000. The Tipping Point. New York, NY: Little Brown. Habermas, Jürgen. 1999. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Howe, Jeff. 2008. Crowdsourcing. New York, NY: Crown Publishing. ITA (Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). 2005. Europeans have a Say: Online Debates and Consultations in the EU. Vienna. Kluver, Randolph and Nicholas W. Jankowski. 2007. The Internet and National Elections: A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning. New York, NY: Routledge. Koopmans, Ruud and Ann Zimmermann. 2010. “Transnational political communication on the Internet.” In The making of a European public sphere, edited by Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham, pp. 171–94. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Li, Charlene and Josh Bernoff. 2008. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press. Lilleker, Darren G. and Nigel A. Jackson. 2011. Political campaigning, elections, and the Internet: Comparing the US, UK, France and Germany. New York, NY: Routledge. Lösch, Bettina. 2005. Deliberative Politik. Moderne Konzeptionen von Öffentlichkeit, Demokratie und politischer Partizipation. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Meyer, Thomas. 2001. Mediokratie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Möller, Eric. 2005. Die heimliche Medienrevolution. Wie Weblogs, Wikis und freie Software die Welt verändern. Hannover: Heise. Münker, Stephan. 2009. Emergenz digitaler Öffentlichkeiten. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Paier, Dietmar. 2010. Quantitative Sozialforschung. Vienna: Facultas. Pannen, Ute. 2010. “Social Media: Eine neue Architektur politischer Kommunikation.” Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen 23 (3): 56–64. Römmele, Andrea. 2005. Direkte Kommunikation zwischen Parteien und Wählern: Professionalisierte Wahlkampftechnologien in den USA und in der BRD. Wiesbaden: VS. Sarcinelli, Ulrich. 2009. Politische Kommunikation in Deutschland. Wiesbaden: VS. Schmidt, Manfred G. 1995. Demokratietheorien. Eine Einführung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

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Schönberger, Klaus. 2005. “Persistente und rekombinante Handlungs-und Kommunikationsmuster in der Weblog-Nutzung. Mediennutzung und soziokultureller Wandel.” In Neue Medien im Alltag. Befunde aus den Bereichen: Arbeit, Leben und Freizeit, edited by Alfred Schütz, pp. 276–294. Lengerich: Pabst. Schweitzer, Eva Johanna. 2006. “Professionalisierung im OnlineWahlkampf? Ein Längsschnittvergleich deutscher Partei-Websites zu den Bundestagswahlen 2002 und 2005.” In Die Massenmedien im Wahlkampf: Die Bundestagswahl 2005, edited by Christina HoltzBacha, pp. 183–212. Wiesbaden: VS. —. 2010. “Normalisierung 2.0: Die Online-Wahlkämpfe deutsche Parteien zu den Bundestagswahlen 2002–2009.” In Die Massenmedien im Wahlkampf: Das Wahljahr 2009, edited by Christina Holtz-Bacha, pp. 189–244. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Shirky, Clay. 2008. Here comes Everybody. London: Penguin. Trechsel, Alesander, Raphael Kies, Fernando Mendez and Philippe C. Schmitter. 2003. Evaluation of the Use of New Technologies in Order to Facilitate Democracy in Europe: E-democratizing the Parliaments and Parties in Europe. Report. European Parliament, Scientific and Technological Option Assessment (STOA): Directorate-General for Research. Van Audenhove, Leo, Bram Lievens and Bart Cammaerts. 2005. “Neue Demokratie durch neue Medien?” In Alte Medien – neue Medien, edited by Klaus Arnold and Christoph Neuberger, pp. 263–290. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Wolling, Jens, Markus Seifert and Martin Emmer. 2010. Politik 2.0? Die Wirkung computervermittelter Kommunikation auf den politischen Prozess. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Zimmermann, Ann. 2006. Demokratisierung und Europäisierung online? Massenmediale politische Öffentlichkeiten im Internet. PhD diss., University of Berlin. Zittel, Thomas. 2010. Mehr Responsivität durch neue digitale Medien? Die elektronische Wählerkommunikation von Abgeordneten in Deutschland, Schweden und den USA. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

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Notes 1 Individual parties had already developed a rudimentary Web 2.0 strategy during the 2005 federal election and preceding state elections. 2 See also the largely corresponding data of the online studies carried out by the public TV channels ARD and ZDF, available at http://www.ard-zdf-onlinestudie.de/index.php?id=271. 3 In Germany, the Pirate Party constituted itself largely online (for example, through “liquid feedback” channels), and its concerns in terms of themes and content also focus on the Internet. 4 WS = week of the study

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Table 1: Hamburg/Facebook Party posts

CDU

FDP

SPD

User comments

Left Party

Party’s responses

“Like” button

WS1

2

4

4

0

30

WS2

19

68

66

3

219

WS3

2

14

13

0

60

WS4

0

0

0

0

0

Total

23

86

83

3

309

WS1

14

19

17

1

85

WS2

18

16

16

0

117

WS3

6

18

17

0

100

WS4

3

7

7

0

22

Total

41

60

57

1

324

WS1

25

30

26

1

180

WS2

28

168

166

2

433

WS3

8

51

42

2

156

WS4

6

16

15

1

71

Total

67

265

249

6

840

Pirate Party

Green Party

Number of users

NO ACCOUNT WS1

29

47

35

1

99

WS2

27

68

56

9

185

WS3

8

37

32

2

47

WS4

7

28

20

0

47

Total

71

180

143

12

378

WS1

42

24

23

1

321

WS2

36

19

19

3

365

WS3

6

6

6

1

81

WS4

6

4

4

0

59

Total

90

53

52

5

826

Dialogue and Interaction?

95

Table 2: Hamburg/Twitter Party

Tweets

CDU

FDP

WS1

21

0

0

WS2

23

0

0

WS3

4

0

0

WS4

0

0

0

48

WS1

40

2

3

WS2

61

11

5

WS3

8

1

2

WS4

15

0

0

Total

Pirate Party

148

WS1

22

4

3

WS2

27

8

10

WS3

6

0

1

WS4

1

0

0

WS1

28

2

1

WS2

36

4

1

WS3

5

2

1

WS4

6

0

1

Total

Green Party

82

Total

Left Party

@

NO ACCOUNT

Total

SPD

RT

87

WS1

35

4

1

WS2

21

14

0

WS3

1

2

0

WS4

1

0

0

Total

79

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Table 3: Saxony-Anhalt/Facebook Party posts

Party

User comments

CDU

FDP

SPD

Pirate Party

Green Party

Left Party

Number of users

Party’s responses

“Like” button

NO ACCOUNT WS1

32

12

11

3

63

WS2

93

35

26

0

102

WS3

7

2

1

0

14

WS4

0

0

0

0

0

Total

132

49

38

3

179

WS1

76

5

5

0

46

WS2

107

11

9

0

106

WS3

44

0

0

0

21

WS4

16

1

1

0

6

Total

243

17

15

0

179

WS1

111

0

0

0

0

WS2

249

0

0

0

0

WS3

69

0

0

0

0

WS4

177

0

0

0

0

Total

606

0

0

0

0

WS1

22

2

2

0

64

WS2

21

12

12

2

62

WS3

15

8

8

3

52

WS4

12

15

12

5

43

Total

70

37

34

10

221

NO ACCOUNT

Dialogue and Interaction?

97

Table 4: Saxony-Anhalt/Twitter Party

Tweets

FDP

99

24

4

WS2

108

77

11

WS3

1

12

0

WS4

0

5

0

341

WS1

57

2

0

WS2

81

11

0

WS3

46

1

0

WS4

17

1

0

Total

Pirate Party

216

WS1

26

86

16

WS2

84

166

35

WS3

20

42

4

WS4

14

158

1

Total

Green Party

652

WS1

17

1

0

WS2

16

5

0

WS3

7

4

0

WS4

9

5

0

WS1

10

1

1

WS2

11

15

1

WS3

7

13

1

WS4

3

6

0

Total

Left Party

@

WS1

Total

SPD

RT NO ACCOUNT

CDU

Total

64

69

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98

Table 5: Rhineland-Palatinate/Facebook

WS1

Party posts 34

User comments 10

Number of users 9

Party’s responses 0

“Like” button 171

WS2

114

33

31

1

323

WS3

10

18

18

0

150

WS4

6

8

8

0

37

Total

164

69

66

1

681

WS1

1

0

0

0

1

WS2

0

0

0

0

0

WS3

1

0

0

0

0

WS4

0

0

0

0

0

Total

1

0

0

0

1

WS1

52

30

14

3

48

WS2

107

20

17

5

161

WS3

15

4

2

2

25

WS4

12

5

4

1

9

Total

186

59

37

11

243

Party

CDU

FDP

NO ACCOUNT

SPD

Pirate Party

Green Party

Left Party

WS1

6

6

4

0

30

WS2

23

14

14

1

91

WS3

3

4

4

0

54

WS4

3

4

4

0

39

Total

35

28

26

1

214

WS1

9

5

5

0

47

WS2

13

5

5

1

81

WS3

2

2

2

0

15

WS4

0

0

0

0

0

Total

24

12

12

1

143

Dialogue and Interaction?

99

Table 6: Rhineland-Palatinate/Twitter Party

CDU

Tweets

RT

@

WS1

50

23

1

WS2

101

15

5

WS3

5

4

0

WS4

4

2

0

Total

FDP

210

WS1

6

0

0

WS2

4

0

0

WS3

0

0

0

WS4

1

0

0

Total

SPD

11

WS1

29

18

3

WS2

107

61

10

WS3

0

6

0

WS4

1

6

0

WS1

24

26

23

WS2

107

27

36

WS3

13

16

3

WS4

8

4

0

Total

Pirate Party

241

Total

Green Party

287

WS1

5

10

12

WS2

89

11

45

WS3

5

0

1

WS4

4

0

2

Total

Left Party

184

WS1

10

0

0

WS2

14

0

0

WS3

2

0

0

WS4

0

0

0

Total

26

Chapter Five

100

Table 7: Baden-Württemberg/Facebook

WS1

Party posts 83

User comments 141

Number of users 108

Party’s responses 0

“Like” button 1,635

WS2

86

558

WS3

1

31

399

9

2,626

20

1

19

WS4

0

0

0

0

0

Total WS1

170

730

527

10

4,280

169

14

12

2

40

WS2

258

49

44

0

193

WS3

7

10

7

1

14

WS4

0

0

0

0

0

Total

434

73

63

3

247

Party

CDU

FDP

SPD

WS1

42

87

72

14

496

WS2

76

177

132

13

899

WS3

28

73

56

5

345

WS4

14

71

51

9

136

Total

160

408

311

41

1,876

Pirate Party

Green Party

Left Party

NO ACCOUNT WS1

22

82

70

0

601

WS2

26

212

190

3

1,152

WS3

13

99

74

0

529

WS4

8

44

34

0

188

Total

69

437

368

3

2,470

WS1

24

65

55

12

465

WS2

61

133

106

7

924

WS3

4

23

11

2

79

WS4

12

13

12

1

110

Total

101

234

184

22

1,578

Dialogue and Interaction?

101

Table 8: Baden-Württemberg/Twitter Party

CDU

Tweets

RT

@

WS1

103

0

0

WS2

64

0

0

WS3

0

0

0

WS4

0

0

0

Total

FDP

167

WS1

163

4

0

WS2

254

5

1

WS3

6

8

0

WS4

0

1

0

Total

SPD

442

WS1

57

39

143

WS2

35

4

10

WS3

15

1

0

WS4

7

0

41

WS1

8

3

5

WS2

63

16

38

WS3

17

8

10

WS4

0

0

0

Total

Pirate Party

352

Total

Green Party

168

WS1

69

8

4

WS2

84

4

26

WS3

8

2

2

WS4

5

5

4

WS1

41

3

5

WS2

94

14

6

WS3

16

11

5

WS4

13

2

0

Total

Left Party

Total

221

210

Chapter Five

102

Table 9: Bremen/Facebook

WS1

Party posts 36

User comments 7

Number of users 7

WS2

28

13

WS3

4

1

WS4

0

Total WS1 WS2

Party

CDU

FDP

Party’s responses 0

“Like” button 84

13

0

118

1

1

7

0

0

0

0

68

21

21

1

209

19

2

2

0

43

31

13

12

0

133

WS3

2

1

1

0

39

WS4

2

0

0

0

6

Total

54

16

15

0

221

WS1

60

2

1

1

19

WS2

152

7

6

0

42

WS3

75

7

7

0

27

WS4

23

0

0

0

2

Total

310

16

14

1

90

NO ACCOUNT

SPD

Pirate Party

Green Party

Left Party

WS1

14

4

4

0

42

WS2

36

29

23

5

133

WS3

5

4

4

0

7

WS4

2

2

2

1

3

Total

57

39

33

6

185

WS1

21

14

10

6

92

WS2

33

48

23

2

183

WS3

6

16

7

0

18

WS4

4

1

1

2

5

Total

64

79

41

10

298

Dialogue and Interaction?

103

Table 10: Bremen/Twitter Party

Tweets

RT

CDU

NO ACCOUNT

FDP

NO ACCOUNT NO ACCOUNT

SPD

Pirate Party

WS1

15

16

11

WS2

34

100

11

WS3

14

59

9

WS4

12

15

1

Total

297 NO ACCOUNT

Green Party

Left Party

@

WS1

2

0

0

WS2

11

0

0

WS3

4

0

0

WS4

6

0

0

Total

23

Chapter Five

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Table 11: Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania/Facebook Party

CDU

FDP

SPD

Pirate Party

Green Party

Left Party

WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total

Party

User

Number

Party’s

“Like”

20 23 5 9 57 3 15 1 0 19 6 2 0 2 10 37 69 13 25 144 22 17 6 10 55 5 22 3 0 30

3 10 0 0 13 0 2 1 0 3 0 1 0 5 6 7 41 3 8 59 2 2 2 3 9 0 24 4 0 28

3 9 0 0 12 0 2 1 0 3 0 1 0 4 5 7 38 3 8 56 2 2 2 3 9 0 24 4 0 28

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 5 1 1 9 0 2 1 0 2 0 2 0 0 2

38 61 6 12 117 3 5 1 0 9 8 4 0 2 14 46 173 34 80 333 64 82 42 84 272 8 122 26 0 156

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Table 12: Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania/Twitter Party

Tweets

RT

CDU

NO ACCOUNT

FDP

NO ACCOUNT NO ACCOUNT

SPD

Pirate Party

WS1

25

28

12

WS2

54

30

45

WS3

4

6

4

WS4

11

7

5

Total

Green Party

231

WS1

17

17

3

WS2

47

16

11

WS3

4

3

0

WS4

6

3

4

Total Left Party

@

131 NO ACCOUNT

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Table 13: Berlin/Facebook Party

CDU

FDP

SPD

Pirate Party

Green Party

Left Party

WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 Total

Party posts 9 23 0 1 33 17 26 0 0 43 25 29 0 1 55 13 6 6 0 25 28 30 0 8 66 76 175 44 37 332

User comments 32 34 0 11 77 26 112 0 0 138 33 28 0 2 63 138 68 85 0 291 52 63 0 68 183 84 204 138 102 528

Number of users 26 33 0 10 69 19 76 0 0 95 25 21 0 2 48 109 56 79 0 244 49 54 0 48 151 73 169 98 68 408

Party’s responses 0 0 0 1 1 2 4 0 0 6 4 5 0 0 9 6 3 1 0 10 9 5 0 4 18 23 25 22 25 95

“Like” button 157 379 0 40 576 90 132 0 0 222 166 219 0 2 387 376 189 480 0 1045 245 382 0 98 725 434 1316 299 171 2220

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Table 14: Berlin/Twitter Party

Tweets

FDP

1

0

0

WS2

5

2

0

WS3

0

0

0

WS4

0

0

0

WS1

56

5

2

WS2

39

3

11

WS3

0

0

3

WS4

1

0

1

8

Total

Pirate Party

121

WS1

47

1

2

WS2

88

9

4

WS3

2

1

1

WS4

2

0

0

Total

Green Party

157

WS1

131

25

56

WS2

41

14

57

WS3

0

1

3

WS4

14

0

0

Total

Left Party

@

WS1

Total

SPD

RT NO ACCOUNT

CDU

342

WS1

32

1

6

WS2

215

8

21

WS3

35

0

21

WS4

25

1

3

Total

368

CHAPTER SIX MEDIATED POLITICS IN AUSTRALIA: TOWARDS A QUALITATIVE EVALUATION BRIAN MCNAIR

Introduction Contemporary political culture unfolds in an environment of expanded media and accelerated news cycles, in which publics have access to more information, and more opportunities to participate in the public sphere, than ever before. The elite–mass, vertically structured, nation–state bounded public sphere (which has existed for around four centuries and to which political science scholars attribute much of the credit for the establishment of liberal democracy in early modern Europe, through its capacity to create informed and critical publics) (Davis 2010; Louw 2010; Aalberg & Curran 2011), is being replaced by or—we might more accurately say—absorbed into a globalised, digitally-networked, horizontally-structured sphere of many publics, whose individual members routinely employ online tools to interact and overlap with each other and political elites with unprecedented immediacy and intimacy. Although they still play an important role in sifting and sorting the cultural chaos of the globalised public sphere (McNair 2006) by helping citizens make sense of the complex communicative environment which confronts them round the clock, the significant channels of political communication are no longer only the press and broadcast media of the 20th-century analogue era, nor the 24-hour TV news channels of the post-CNN period. Now they include all the online sites of the “old”, top-down media, plus the blogosphere and social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. The latter have become important political outlets through the mass take-up of personal computers and mobile devices, by means of which citizens may access information, share it, and engage with each other and their governors at national and transnational level.

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The quantitative expansion and globalisation of the public sphere (which has greatly complicated the communication challenges faced by political actors), has been accompanied by enhanced opportunities for public participation in political discourse. No longer is access to the media restricted to letters to the editor, but incorporates SMS, email, Twitter, online feedback to newspapers, video uploads on YouTube, phone calls to talkback radio and participation in TV studio debate programs. Citizens also have access to the blogosphere as producers of their own “citizen journalism” and user-generated content. The emergence of these new platforms and spaces for public political speech has been accompanied by the enhanced scrutiny of elites in all spheres of life, and politics no less. Increasingly, this scrutiny has extended into the personal affairs (often literally) of politicians, with notable examples including Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s complicated marriage(s), and Silvio Berlusconi’s “bunga bunga” parties, salacious details of which were reported extensively in the Italian and global media in recent years. The arrival of WikiLeaks took this trend a stage further with the dumping of huge quantities of confidential government documents and data into the public domain. John Keane (2009) has described as “monitory democracy” what others have identified as a qualitatively more intense and relentless media scrutiny of governments, parties and political leaders across the board (McNair 2006). From a normative perspective one might think that, where information is knowledge and knowledge is power, where citizens are active in ways never before possible, and where political elites are subject to unprecedented scrutiny in both their public and private lives, this new kind of public sphere can only be positive for good governance. In this environment citizens and publics (and those in authoritarian societies where they are neither citizens nor publics endowed with opinions which elites must respect and respond to) engage with politics not only as consumers of political media but as participants interacting with political media. To a greater extent than ever before in democratic history they are creators of political media (Bruns 2008). Yet pessimism about the negative impact of political media on the democratic process is widespread in public and scholarly debate. Political scientists, media and communication studies academics, journalists and politicians are frequently heard bemoaning the state of the political media, and public political discourse in general.

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Mediated politics—the debate Citizens are alleged to be disillusioned and disengaged from politics, turned off by a dysfunctional media. Former Australian Labor (ALP) minister Lindsay Tanner condemns the “sideshow” generated by the 24hour, real-time, always on news culture of the digital era, in which “announceables” take precedence over policy substance (2011). He blames the pressures imposed by the media for the hollowing out of political substance in news, and its replacement with empty rhetoric designed to capture the headlines rather than advance the cause of good governance. This is a modern variant of Daniel Boorstin’s (1962) familiar argument about the pseudo-event and how, with the rise of TV in the 1960s, public political discourse became increasingly about the manufacture of an audience-friendly spectacle rather than boring old substance—the media “happening”, designed to communicate something other than mere policy. Tanner’s book expressed the view, commonplace in Australia and elsewhere in the democratic world, that there was a real, authentic politics which was being marginalised or ignored by a profit-hungry, spectacleaddicted media in favour of “infotainment” or worse—sleaze and scandal about the private lives of politicians. Politicians like him wished to talk real politics, to be focused on policy and substance, but the media’s hunger for “announceables” forced capitulation to its distorted agenda and relentless pace. These arguments were made against the background of a perceived crisis of democratic legitimation in Australia, for which both the media and the political class have been blamed by various commentators. The crises of legitimation and communication have been inherently linked, as they have been in Europe and the United States since at least the 1990s. In Australia, the period running up to the 2010 federal election and since, has seen regular debate and commentary not just on key policy matters (and, of course, there has been some of that), but on the presentation of these by politicians, their coverage by media organisations, and the impact of both on democratic engagement. Although Australia has a compulsory voting system, which, to a degree, masks public dissatisfaction and disengagement, there is a widespread view that citizens are cynical and disillusioned with the political process, in large part because of the way in which it is covered in news, current affairs and other media formats. Former Coalition leader and prime minister Malcolm Fraser, quoted on the cover of Tanner’s book, asserted that “the relationship between politicians and the media degrades public life and diminishes our future”.

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In May 2013 the ABC news and current affairs public participation format Q&A presented a special edition featuring Prime Minister Julia Gillard and an audience of young people. Itself an attempt to engage publics in the political process, the program included an exchange between presenter Tony Jones and Gillard in which he noted a recent poll showing public dissatisfaction with politics, and she responded with an assessment of the challenges that posed to both politicians and media practitioners. TJ: In those days [referring to earlier, less mediated times] you didn’t get polls as you got this morning suggesting an awful lot of [people] are completely fed up with politics, bored with it, are turning away, tuning off. JG: That does concern me…In terms of what happens, the mechanics of politics, I think it’s harder, with the quickness of the media cycle, the immediacy of it, to sustain some of the deeper debates that people want to see us have, and I think that does frustrate people. I’d like to find some better ways of doing that, I think our whole nation would, rather than some of the quick turnarounds, the conflict-driven media cycle. That’s a challenge for all of us as we adapt to this new information environment. (ABC 2013)

In a piece for The Monthly, responding to an ALP leadership crisis in March 2013, the latest in a succession since the deposing of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (2007–2010), and an extended period of extraordinarily intemperate and personalised political debate in the Australian parliament, broadcaster Waleed Aly echoed Tanner’s “sideshow” thesis with this analysis of the relationship between an expanded media environment and political crisis: The new media landscape clearly has much to answer for here. Crisis is swift because news and commentary are swift and judgement is instant. Then it’s shared, constantly, and mostly with those who agree. Viewpoints become amplified rather than nuanced. So we forestall cool, reflective debate, and wind up with a public conversation that has almost no ability to persuade. Everyone’s in a war, everyone has a gun, and we’d much rather go on firing than sit through dull peace negotiations. Political discussion has become a militarised zone. Perhaps that’s why parties are increasingly reaching for the nuclear option. As the debate gets faster and therefore shallower, our politics must become more presidential because image and personality are the only effective weapons left. This is particularly true given the collapse of serious ideological difference between the major parties. Every political problem therefore becomes a leadership problem. When you’re confronted with political disaster, there’s only one thing to do: get new leadership. (Aly 2013)

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Aly concludes that, “it’s early days, but it would seem the rapid, shallow brutality of our political conversation reflects a coarsening and hollowing out of our very public culture: a culture of more judgement and less restraint, of sanctimony unearnt through reflection, of instant rhetorical gratification”. In Tony Blair’s farewell speech as prime minister of the UK in June 2007 he made a similar argument, as he reflected on how the political communication environment had changed during his fourteen years as Labour leader (and eleven as prime minister): When I fought the 1997 election–just ten years ago–we took an issue a day. In 2005, we had to have one for the morning, another for the afternoon and by the evening the agenda had already moved on. You have to respond to stories in real time. Frequently, the problem is as much assembling the facts as giving them. Make a mistake and you quickly transfer from drama into crisis. (Blair 2007)

Blair made another critical observation in his speech, referring to the political media collectively as a “feral beast”, which hunts as a pack for politicians’ blood. There were three problems with political journalism, as Blair saw it: First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down. News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light. Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgement. It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial. Third, the fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.

Blair’s farewell speech was a carefully targeted attack on the political media with which he had wrestled for fourteen years as Labour leader and ten as prime minister. Driven by competition and facilitated by digital technology and the expansion of the media space to be filled by political news, mediated politics had become a spectator sport, gladiatorial in nature, in which policy substance and deliberation had been squeezed out by a journalistic focus on political style and personality. Moreover, political journalism increasingly assumed the worst of politicians, judging their motives to be always deceptive, cynical, rather than public-spirited. Political culture had become vicious and mean, wild and out of control.

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Media practitioners, in turn, blamed politicians and the rise of managed political communication and public relations, or “spin”, for the increasing adversarialism and combativeness of their approach to the governing elite. In an environment where politicians are coached and briefed by aggressive, paranoiac media advisers not so far removed from the caricature offered by The Thick Of It’s Malcolm Tucker. With their determination to keep their party or government “on message”, and communicating with a clear and coherent message dictated from the centre, the aggressive interviewing and reporting styles of recent times, it was argued, are a necessary and desirable response. Blair’s observations, made at the end of a highly successful career in government in which the “feral beast” had not prevented three landslide electoral majorities for the Labour Party, were examples of an ongoing critique of political media dating back at least to the early 1990s. Then, and ever since, observers had noted two trends in democratic political culture, which were perceived to be generating Blumler and Gurevitch’s “crisis of public communication” (1995), and damaging democracy as a consequence. The word “damaging” was frequently used, alongside “undermining”, “degrading”, “infecting”, and so on—all terms suggesting a deterioration in political culture from a normative past ideal to a corrupted present day reality. The first was the growth of managed political communication associated with Bill Clinton in the US and New Labour in the UK. Authentic political speech, went the critique, had been replaced by the “packaging of politics” (Franklin 1994) rooted in commercial marketing and public relations, but applied with ever greater intensity to the realm of public affairs. This was also the era of the identification of “spin” as a serious threat to the democratic process, as techniques deployed by the Clinton White House were adopted by Labour in the UK, and increasingly throughout the democratic world, including Australia. The second trend to which Blair’s “feral beast” metaphor referred was the growth of what James Fallows (1996) called, in a still-useful term, hyperadversarialism: the transformation of legitimate (and necessary) journalistic scrutiny into a violatory and nihilistic confrontationalism. Hyperadversarialism was alleged to be destructive rather than deliberative in respect of good governance, obscuring from citizens more about politics than it revealed. In earlier work, and drawing on views expressed during in-depth interviews with leading practitioners of the adversarial interview technique, I characterised the two trends as elements in a dialectic of communicative evolution (McNair 2000; McNair 2001). The relationship

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between political communication and political journalism can be understood as akin to a communicative arms race, in which politicians and journalists engaged in silo-hardening escalations intended on the one hand (the politicians) to avoid unspun reality, and on the other (the journalists) to expose it. The aggressive political interview was an intelligible and indeed legitimate response to the increasingly managed political rhetoric of the era of spin. Of course there were and are examples of journalistic excess, when scrutiny becomes primarily a performance of the journalist’s own power and skill, but the trend towards more aggressive and forensic political journalism was not, in itself, I argued, a bad thing, if it helped cut through the “bullshit”, identified as characteristic of political speech in modern democracy by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt (2005). In addition to this argument I identified a third trend of importance in understanding the evolution of political culture: the decline of popular deference towards political elites, fuelled by long-term socio-cultural movements and requiring an elite response of unprecedented accessibility to and engagement with their publics. Political media in the UK and other countries were being transformed by this trend in the late 1990s and into the 2000s, as illustrated by the growth of live studio debates in which members of the public engaged, often aggressively, with their governors, up to and including prime ministers. Today, in Australia as in the UK, such encounters are commonplace, and the politician who dismisses them, or refuses to participate, is at risk of being labeled aloof and out of touch. Those in the political and scholarly communities who criticised journalistic hyperadversarialism, also tended to condemn the more raucous and unruly manifestations of this trend towards public participation as symptomatic of the degradation of the public sphere. The “crisis” narratives of the 1990s and 2000s frequently featured anxieties about the growing presence of the ordinary public in the public sphere, and the resulting “sound of the crowd” (McNair 2000). In Australia, Graeme Turner’s Ordinary People and the Media (2010) expressed many of these anxieties in the context of broader trends, such as the rise of reality TV and confessional culture. For Turner, the form of public participation media known in Australia as “talkback radio” was, if not inherently antidemocratic, then “demotic…unruly, contingent and potentially cacophonous” (2010, p. 117). Such expressions of public voice were often “empty” of politics, and thus of limited democratic value. Where there was politics in talkback, it would often be reactionary, or hateful. I have argued to the contrary, that the emergence of the public into the public sphere—not merely as readers and audiences but as participants in debate and producers of political speech—is both a cause and a

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consequence of post-WW2 cultural democratisation, with both desirable and undesirable outcomes for the way we are governed (McNair 2000). Media forms, such as talkback radio and live studio debates involving publics and their governors (actual or aspiring) in unscripted engagement, are a response to the broader decline in the social deference characteristic of the advanced liberal democracies from the middle of the 20th century onwards. They have reinforced and contributed to that decline by giving visibility to public engagement, thus normalising and making it legitimate and making it, indeed, the signature of a truly democratic society in the age of mediated politics. Politicians in the 21st century must make themselves available to direct scrutiny not just by academic experts and journalists, as used to be the case, but by ordinary people through the variety of media platforms which enable their participation in political debate. This is a qualitatively new, and arguably more democratic, form of public sphere in so far as it requires the political actor to be directly accountable to the citizen, and to listen to what he or she says. Some politicians resist this demand, and some democratic political cultures have not yet evolved to the point where they require it as a matter of course (deference remains a feature of many countries in Europe, for example, although it is in decline everywhere as the tools and opportunities for public participation and engagement expand and spread). Availability for direct engagement with publics, however, is an increasingly routine feature of contemporary political communication, as demonstrated by Julia Gillard in Australia during her period as prime minister (for example with appearances on the ABC’s Q&A), community fora around the country which were televised live, Twitter feeds and Google “hangouts”. This is not to say that all expressions of the public voice heard in these contexts are progressive (however one defines that term), or welcome. People are people, and a public sphere which gives genuine voice to the people will reflect them in all their diversity of type and belief. That is one hallmark of a truly democratic culture, regardless of the politics and ideologies of those who do the speaking. Democracy is not inherently the driver of progressive ideas and values, though we tend to assume that a well-functioning democratic political culture will provide sufficient information to deliver electoral outcomes and governments which will provide the best life chances and living standards for the greatest number of people in a given society. By exposing racism in a reality TV context, for example, a TV program may inspire public debate amongst sectors of the population who would not read the broadsheet press, or access the current affairs media where racism is more likely to be critically analysed and discussed in some

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depth by experts who are agreed on its inherent wrongness. To raise the topic in an “infotainment” context may well engage a much broader section of the population in thinking about the issues, including those who are actually racist and may not have had their views challenged in such a manner before. Precisely this situation occurred in a 2008 TV series of the UK’s Celebrity Big Brother, after “star” Jade Goody made what was perceived to be a racist comment in relation to her Indian co-celebrity, Shilpa Shetty. The self-outing of Goody’s casual racism led to her repentance and a public purging of the offensive belief. We cannot know to what extent Goody’s calculations as to what was best for her career drove this outcome. However, the outpouring of grief in the UK which accompanied Goody’s subsequent illness and premature death highlighted this Damascene TV moment in its narrative of an ignorant but kind-hearted and well-intentioned member of the English working class who, when confronted with the reality of ethnic diversity, renounced her racist ways. The reality TV context in which this process occurred sparked a frank and often angry public debate—raucous, even—but one that, one might suggest, is an inevitable consequence of a debate involving “ordinary” people. To deny or downplay its democratic significance is to miss the point of an expanded public sphere. Research undertaken by this author in the early 2000s provided evidence to support the view that these trends in the political public sphere—the greater accessibility of political elites, enhanced opportunities for public participation in political debate, including engagement with executive leaders and public figures at the highest level—were generally welcomed by citizens, or at least those in the UK who were surveyed for a funded research project on democracy and participation (McNair, Hibberd and Schlesinger 2003). At a time of perceived crisis in British democratic participation, as indicated by historically low electoral turnouts, this work invited members of the public assembled in focus groups to give their views on the performance of different types of political media, ranging from straight news and current affairs to studio debates of the Q&A type (the BBC’s Question Time) and prime-time TV programs in which the prime minister would be exposed to live audience questioning and interaction (ITV’s Ask The Prime Minister). The latter format became a distinctive feature of the Blair era, reflecting his desire to communicate directly with the public, free of the editorial interventions of the mainstream political media. Part of New Labour’s largely successful pitch to the UK electorate was the senior leadership’s readiness to engage with voters, and to be challenged by them on core policy matters. The programs were often unruly, but they also

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introduced a layer of elite accountability into British political culture which had not been present before. Focus group responses made clear that this was a welcome innovation in political media terms. As in Australia today, there was in the UK around 2001–02 a perceived distrust and lack of engagement between publics and politicians, a perception borne out in the research findings. Said one focus group participant: I think politicians have their own way of talking, and the general public don’t really understand half of what they are talking about because they have got their own jargon. And another: I don’t think they want you to understand, and I think that’s the problem…It’s always the educated people that get the voice. We need more folk like us that are wanting to get in about it and express their opinions and get answers from the politicians.

When shown specific examples of public participation programs such as Question Time, the focus groups were largely positive in their responses. Some examples: I suppose it does give the public a chance to air their views as well as the politicians, although sometimes the politicians try and use it as a soap box sort of thing. It’s really the only time that you see politicians interacting on a stage with the public. I think it’s very valuable. I think people are much more likely to sit down and watch a programme like Question Time than they are to pick up and read a newspaper on that particular issue. I think it’s much easier. You can just sit back and watch it. It’s the same with listening to the radio. I think it catches your eye because they’re not just telling you information, they are actually having a debate about it. They are bringing in people from the audience. That could be you or I sitting there. I think that is more appealing than just being told the information on the news programme. It’s much less formal, and the interaction between the panel and the audience packages the political stuff more attractively. It’s a way in which a lot of us can buy into a process that’s otherwise pretty remote. We’ve got no access to the politicians or the issues at any time other than the general election, and at least there’s a chance to gauge the mood of the people.

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Mediated politics in Australia The debate about the democratic significance of these trends—a more aggressively inquisitorial media environment, greater public participation in political communication, a more accessible and transparent (at least in appearance) political class—continues, not least in Australia. This essay was written in the first half of 2013, a time of extreme political volatility in Australia, and in the run-up to a general election following three years of minority Labor government. By that stage in the political cycle, Prime Minister Julia Gillard had survived not one but two attempts at leadership “spills”, ministers had resigned or been sacked for disloyalty to the leader, major policy initiatives had been dumped, reversed or quietly dropped, and a Coalition opposition was confidently looking forward to a landslide majority in the election of September that year. Labor’s internal party turmoil, rather than the Coalition’s policy prospectus (which remained sketchy and vague right up to the eve of the election), were widely assumed to be the cause of the former’s poor standing in the opinion polls. Australia’s political media were, and remain, the key arena in which these events played out to the citizenry. Indeed, they often became major actors in debates, such as that which erupted around communication minister Stephen Conroy’s proposals for news media reform, announced in early March 2013. These proposals, and the Finkelstein Report (Commonwealth of Australia 2012) on which they were based, represented Labor’s governmental response to the perception that some Australian media—News Ltd’s titles, in particular—were actively hostile to the party, and required reining in by means of a strengthened regulatory regime. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the proposals were criticised not just by News Ltd but by the great majority of media companies for their potentially adverse effect on press freedom. An infamous Daily Telegraph front page portrayed Conroy as a dictator comparable with Stalin, Mao and Kim Jong Un, prompting further debate on the quality of political media and the “public conversation” (see Waleed Aly’s observations above). So, what is the state of the Australian political media in the second decade of the 21st century? If one were to undertake a health and fitness appraisal of the political public sphere, what would one find? How do Australian voters perceive the democratic role of a more participatory public sphere on the one hand, and a more irreverent, “hyperadversarial” political media on the other? What does it mean to talk about a “public sphere” in the digital context? In Habermas’ (1989) classic formulation, the political public sphere was conceived as an elite space of educated, wealthy, mainly male

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participants who accessed political knowledge from narrowly-defined news formats and outlets (broadsheet newspapers, “serious” TV news and current affairs, periodicals). More recently, as democratic societies have experienced major transformation of their social and cultural patterns (the establishment of women’s rights, for example, and the promotion of multiculturalism), scholars have adopted a more inclusive, and arguably more democratic, model of a niched or segmented public sphere servicing multiple publics. It now comprises “straight” news and journalism but also formats which combine elements of journalism with entertainment, and which relate to the popular as well as elite sectors of the media market, such as talkback radio, or daytime TV talk shows (Hartley 1996; McNair 2000; McNair et al. 2003; Higgins 2008). A typical edition of the Q&A studio debate program, for example, in its efforts to represent modern Australia, will include men and women, politicians and entertainers, from a variety of ethnicities and social backgrounds thus reflecting a diverse but, in theory, balanced set of political profiles in the make-up of its panel. Its audience will be similarly constructed, and the show often begins with a caption indicating the stated party political affiliations of those members of the public who have come forward to participate. Alongside the new forms of public participation in political debate, scholars have described the rise of a “post-modern” public sphere (Brants and Voltmer 2011). Here, issues such as the lifestyle and personality of celebrities, including politicians, traditionally regarded as trivial in the democratic context, can create the opportunity for discussion and debate of “serious” issues such as ethics and fitness for public office (Hartley 1996; Lumby 1999; McNair 2000; McNair 2012). At the same time, alongside the apparent rejection of traditional news formats by younger citizens (Turner 1996; Harrington 2005), entertainment media such as satirical TV shows have been seen to play an increasingly important role in informing citizens (young and old) about politics, and also in scrutinising political activity in new and more engaging ways (Baym 2010; Harrington 2012). The contemporary public sphere can be argued, therefore, to encompass the political media in all their diversity, extending the classic Habermasian definition to include not merely journalistic forms of coverage and commentary such as news, current affairs and public participation formats, but hybrid and non-journalistic forms such as satire (The Chaser, Mad As Hell, At Home With Julia, The Hollow Men, The Thick Of It), and “infotainment” formats such as ABC’s Kitchen Cabinet with Annabel Crabb—an innovation intended to humanise politicians (and thus engage audiences) by portraying them in the domestic environment.

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All of these outlets for political discourse, from “serious” news to entertainment (or “infotainment”) have the potential to play a role in the totality of the political public sphere and enabling the maintenance of an informed, critically aware, empowered electorate. To assess that role and its effectiveness in contributing to good governance with greater precision, it is necessary to ask such questions as: How do these different forms address the issues of the day? How does the normatively preferred, overtly-elitist tone of a current affairs magazine such as ABC’s Sunday morning current affairs magazine, Insiders—these are the people who know, because they are on the inside—compare with the less reverential tone of the ABC’s The Drum, or the overtly satirical approach of The Chaser, or the family friendly Sunrise? What did the 2011 ABC sit com At Home With Julia say about Australia’s first female prime minister, and how did audiences hear or interpret those messages? Each format may cover some of the same issues, but each will do so with different emphases, and in a very different style. How do audiences respond to contrasting interviewing styles? In March 2013, for example, the 60 Minutes current affairs strand on Channel 9 interviewed Coalition leader Tony Abbott about a range of issues, which straddled the personal and the political boundaries. Did the fact that his sister had come out as a lesbian, left her husband and moved in with her lover, affect his opposition to same sex marriage? An awkward question, yes, but the interview was less than combative, and framed by a succession of gentle images and scenes of Abbott family life, with endorsements of his character by family members, including his wife and sister. The interview could reasonably be interpreted as an attempt to humanise the then opposition leader at the outset of a general election campaign, and especially in the context of considerable negative coverage of his alleged “misogyny” and homophobia in the preceding months and years. In contrast, an interview by Leigh Sales of the same politician on 7.30 Report would tend to be more adversarial, challenging the subject’s responses and pushing for more information. Responses would be scrutinised rather than accepted at face value. The subject may well be contradicted, and his or her integrity challenged. And then there is the “shock jock” style of interview heard on talkback radio, where a presenter such as Alan Jones openly attacks his political subjects, even to the extent of making remarks which become the subject of ethics inquiries and later have to be retracted. How important are these and other stylistic variations in persuading audiences not just to access the programs, but to think about the political issues they address?

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The simple answer is that we do not know. Public debate on the state and performance of the Australian public sphere has proceeded on the basis of little more than subjective opinion and anecdote. The views of voters themselves on the performance of their political media have been largely absent. In an attempt to address that gap, researchers at Queensland University of Technology have embarked on an ARC-funded evaluation of the political public sphere, which includes the systematically-assembled views of citizens, media producers and politicians. 1 A key aim of this research is to establish how members of the Australian public evaluate the effectiveness of the various formats in which politics is debated, and what “effective” means in this context. From there, the aim will be to provide media practitioners with advice and guidance on how to make programs about politics which have the potential to engage audiences in thinking about the issues which concern them, and which politicians are tasked to manage. On the assumption that “good governance” requires an informed and engaged citizenry, able to engage in meaningful deliberation around complex policy issues, our research will deliver empirical data on what audiences think about the quality and role of the political media currently available in the Australian environment. It will enable an informed, evidence-based intervention in the ongoing debate about the state of the Australian public sphere as perceived not by politicians and media actors, but actual publics.

Bibliography Aalberg, Toril and James Curran eds. 2011. How Media Inform Democracy: A Comparative Approach. London: Routledge. ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). 2013. Q&A, Episode 14, May 6. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/vodcast.htm. Aly, Waleed. 2013. “The sport of killing leaders.” The Monthly. Issue 88. http://www.themonthly.com.au/essay/2013/04/02/1364874982/waleedaly/sport-killing-leaders. Baym, Geoffrey. 2010. From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Blair, Tony. 2007. On Public Life. Lecture delivered at the Reuters building, Canary Wharf, London, June 12. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6744581.stm. Blumler, Jay and Michael Gurevitch. 1995. The Crisis of Political Communication. London: Routledge. Boorstin, Daniel. 1962. The Image. New York: Basic Books.

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Brants, Kees and Katrin Voltmer eds. 2011. Political Communication in Post-modern Democracy: Challenging the Primacy of Politics. London: Sage. Bruns, Axel. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang. Commonwealth of Australia. 2012. Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation, by the Hon. R. Finkelstein, QC. Canberra: Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Davis, Aeron. 2010. Political Communication and Social Theory. London: Routledge. Fallows, James. 1996. Breaking the News. New York: Pantheon Press. Frankfurt, Harry. 2005. On Bullshit. New York: Princeton University Press. Franklin, Bob. 1994. Packaging Politics. London: Routledge. Habermas, Jurgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger. London: Polity Press. Harrington, Stephen. 2005. “The ‘democracy of conversation’: The Panel and the Public Sphere.” Media International Australia, incorporating Culture and Policy. (116): 75–87. —. 2012. “The Uses of Satire: Unorthodox News, Cultural Chaos and the Interrogation of Power.” Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 13 (1): 38–52. Hartley, John. 1996. Popular Reality. London: Arnold. Higgins, Michael. 2008. Media and Their Publics. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Keane, John. 2009. The Life and Death of Democracy. London: Simon & Schuster. Louw, Eric. 2010. The Media and the Political Process. London: Sage. Lumby, Catharine. 1999. Gotcha: Life in a Tabloid World. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin. McNair, Brian. 2000. Journalism and Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge. —. 2001. “Public Relations and Broadcast News: An Evolutionary Approach.” In No News is Bad News, edited by M. Bromley, pp. 175– 190. London: Longman. —. 2006. Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge. —. 2012. “WikiLeaks, Journalism and the Consequences of Chaos.” Media International Australia (144): 77–86.

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McNair, Brian, Matthew Hibberd and Philip Schlesinger. 2003. Mediated Access: Broadcasting and Democratic Participation in the Age of Mediated Politics. Luton: University of Luton Press. Tanner, Lindsay. 2011. Sideshow: Dumbing down Democracy. Sydney: Scribe. Turner, Graeme. 1996. “Post-Journalism: News and Current Affairs Programming from the Late '80s to the Present.” Media International Australia, (82), 78–91. —. 2010. Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn. London: Sage.

Notes 1 Politics, media and democracy in Australia: public and producer perceptions of the political public sphere (ARC Discovery Project 2012000187. The chief investigators on the project are Professor Brian McNair, Dr Stephen Harrington and Professor Terry Flew.).

CHAPTER SEVEN GOVERNMENTALITY AND PERFORMANCE: REASSESSING REALITY TV DAVID NOLAN

Introduction This chapter engages with a particular reality TV format, the popular UK “business pitch” program Dragons’ Den, to reconsider the role played by television in contributing to contemporary democratic and governmental relations. Drawing on work that has sought to consider reality TV within networks of neoliberal governance, the chapter begins by demonstrating how the program can plausibly be read as a neoliberal technology of government. However, the question of whether this technology is effective or not is another matter, and I turn later in the chapter to consider the implications of Skeggs and Wood’s (2012) argument for re-assessing governmentality and its relevance to considering the role played by media in contemporary sociopolitical relations. Finally, the chapter returns to consider how we might make sense of this program’s contribution to the relations of government that inform and circumscribe contemporary democracy.

Performative Realism: The Social as a Game As numerous analyses have suggested, “neoliberalism” refers not only to a resurgence of faith in the tenets of neo-classical economics as principles for ordering social relations, but also to a qualitative distinction in practices which, rather than merely assume the existence of markets as natural entities, actively seek to restructure social relations such that they operate as markets or quasi-markets (Burchell 1996; Foucault 2008). As Daniel Fridman has put it, “while old liberalism’s rationale is that government institutions should secure and supervise the natural behavior

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of atomised, rational, entrepreneurial individuals, neoliberalism’s rationale is that the government artificially creates the conditions for such behavior to occur” (2010, p. 291, emphasis added). Fridman’s reference to “the government” refers to a particular case study analysis of educational programs explicitly designed to produce a consumer “mentality” promoted by the Argentinian Junta government, and thus to a neoliberal state initiative undertaken by an illiberal regime. In analyses of forms of “governmentality” undertaken in liberal-democratic polities, however, it is more common to view “government” as referring not only to state initiatives, but also to techniques that, incorporating forms of expertise and authority that cross the nominal line dividing state and civil society, equip citizens with particular capacities and potentially influence both how they think about and practise their own conduct. Indeed, Fridman places strong emphasis on the role played by Argentina’s financial press in supporting the promotion of particular, economically-oriented subjectivities centred on forms of economic calculation and consumer rationality. For example, he analyses the role of financial papers in popularising financial and consumer literacies to both enable and incite subjects to orientate and manage themselves as “market actors”. This parallels Greenfield and Williams’ (2007) analysis, produced in the very different context of Australia, of the role of media in financialisation. Their analysis demonstrates how finance news became, over the last two decades in particular, an increasingly central aspect of everyday news reporting. This, they argue, served to contribute to the production of a “financialised we”, translating the somewhat esoteric language of the market into compelling dramatic narratives, while constructing its audience as “possessors of an identity as shareholders or would-be shareholders, characterised by financial independence (or the struggle to attain it), seized by aspirations and disposed to consider events as opportunities for investment” (2007, p. 419). Such analyses of “media governmentality” already situate the work of media as a performative rather than merely representational one, since their significance is read as one of equipping and forming subjects rather than merely performing a representational role. This emphasis on the performative role played by media in constructing (rather than merely “representing”) reality has been particularly central to discussions of reality TV. Indeed, in an influential essay, John Corner proposed that a defining quality of the genre is that it overtly “performs the real”, giving up on a naturalistic documentary aesthetic to produce a form of realism that does not seek to deny its own artifice: .

Big Brother operates its claims to the real within a fully-managed artificiality, in which almost everything that might be deemed to be true is

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Corner positions this development as arising in a “post-documentary context”, and contrasts reality TV to a “civic” (Griersonian) documentary tradition. Where the latter called critical attention to problems of collective concern, he suggests, reality TV formats exist primarily as entertaining forms of diversion that are “far less clear in terms of their use value” (2002, p. 262). This approach has been criticised for presenting an overly linear analysis that positions reality TV negatively as an escapist departure from or giving up of a (valued) documentary tradition, an approach that risks missing the productive genre hybridity that serves to simultaneously reconstruct and undermine documentary realism. Thus, in a revealing analysis of the “gamedoc” sub-genre, Wesley Metham argues that a key aspect of such formats is that they blur the distinction between “the social”, as an extant domain outside the game space, and the (clearly constructed) game being played: The elements of the social and the game are at work in all reality TV programs. In reality television the faces of the social and of the game continually shift places, the social is undermined through the game, but the social re-emerges. Though the genre undermines the social, it also cannot exist without the social…[R]eality TV is caught in a vacillation between the social as-it-is and the social as a game… (2006, p. 243, p. 245)

The importance of this “vacillation” is not that it abandons realism, but that it involves a different mode of realism in an altered governmental conjuncture. While, on one hand, this calls into question Corner’s suggestion that a generic “post-documentary” shift involves abandoning a civic use-value grounded in representational ethics in favour of mere diversion, it also suggests that claims that “we can displace the debates over realism, reality and representation altogether” (Bratich 2007, p. 7) go too far. In considering the relation between distinct reality-based genres, the suggestion that one form centres on representation and the other on performance is too linear. Indeed, what Corner’s apparent nostalgia for representational ethics glosses over is how “civic” documentary representations always involved a performance whereby particular lives, “social problems” and accounts of reality, largely constituted by the diagnoses of governmental authorities and social expertise, performatively constituted the significance of lives and situations of others as it told them (Bruzzi 2006). Rather than abandon realism, reality TV instead eschews naturalism through genres in which lives are no longer “told” but enacted

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by subjects on and through television (Skeggs and Wood 2012, p. 55) in constructed games that are presented as extensions and/or encapsulations of the games of life in which subjects are routinely required to perform. It is through this generic shift that, it is argued, reality TV can be located as a neoliberal technology of government through which subjects engage vicariously with the problem of how to govern themselves by reference to the guiding judgments of experts, in various domains from clothes to cooking, interpersonal relations, domestic life and business (Weber 2009; Ouellette and Hay 2008; Lewis 2008). Such accounts have noted that the simultaneous rise of genres that centre intensively on normative problems of the government of self have coincided with transformed practices of state government, wherein state provisions of know-how regarding, for example, how to gain employment, have been repositioned as areas of both private, market-based provision of services and individual responsibility. Notably, however, the proposal is not that such transformation is simply engendered by the state but, drawing on Michel Foucault’s analytic of “governmentality” (2007, 2008), that changes in both state and civil society are produced through a complex, interactive network of relations that involve mutual shaping, “translations” between distinct domains, and scope for potential conflict and contradiction. “Governmentality” thus refers to relational networks of power and authority that, in respectively and collectively seeking to target and reform aspects of subjective personhood and conduct to produce particular goals, seek to engender forms of “selfhood” as the outcome and condition of governmental practice. Such accounts, notably, while not inattentive to the relations between, for example, transformed economic conditions and changing television formats (see, in particular, Ouellette and Hay 2008, pp. 24–31) avoid reducing such transformation to superstructural effects of a political economic base. They are, for example, sensitive to the impacts of the rise of other sites of authority, perhaps most notably “therapeutic culture” and its promotion of techniques of selfinspection and reformation that have been adopted and translated across a range of other practices concerned to target individual and collective conduct. Other studies have focused more particularly on the relationship between the “business” sub-genre of reality TV and wider neoliberal practices. For example, in their analysis of The Apprentice, Couldry and Littler (2011) suggest that reality TV games bear a particular affinity with, and indeed performatively reproduce, a neoliberal ethos that has increasingly come to govern everyday workplaces. Thus, they focus on how The Apprentice serves to naturalise and legitimise surveillance, relies

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on an acceptance that contestants must conform to the requirements of an absolute external authority, and serves to negotiate the performance of team-based work tasks while continuing to operate on the premise of a self-interested individualism. Equally, the terms of each game rest upon a performance of authenticity that relies upon a successful remodeling of the self, such that success becomes premised upon the marketable authenticity borne of “being yourself”, with the significant proviso that this self must have internalised the values of an external authority (whether that be the employer or the market) against which individuals come to be judged. Notably, they point towards how such remodeling and internalisation of corporate values mirrors contemporary managerial demands that corporate values be internalised and performatively displayed as authentic, such as the requirement that workers in the UK supermarket chain Asda display a “real smile” (Couldry and Littler 2011, p. 270). Their description of The Apprentice serves to highlight the affinity between reality TV’s games and wider neoliberal practices, as well as the degree to which both share a constructivist ontology, where both the social and the self are simultaneously figured as “real” and as malleable. Identity and action are positioned as an expression of “self”, while self-hood is also refigured as a social avatar, a continual work in progress.

The Game of Life: Neoliberal Constructivism and Dragons’ Den Following Metham’s point regarding the characteristic blurring between the social and games, it is notable that an aspect shared in common by otherwise distinct forms of neoliberal thought is an eschewing of a naturalistic in favour of a cultural view of markets. Mitchell Dean (1999, pp. 55–59; pp. 149–175) has emphasised this point by reference to two distinctive styles of neoliberal thought, articulated by the post-war German “ordoliberal” movement, on one hand, and the influential arguments of Frederick Hayek on the other. Both the ordoliberals and Hayekian liberalism depart from classical liberalism in that they no longer regard markets as natural entities inhabited by rational calculating individuals, but they do so in rather different ways. The ordoliberal view of markets is “profoundly anti-naturalistic and “constructivist”: it is no longer a domain of quasi-autonomous processes but a reality to be secured by an appropriate juridical, institutional and cultural framework” (Dean 1999, p. 56). Hayek’s perspective, by contrast, does not see the market as something that has or can be contrived by forms of state rule. Rather, both markets and the rule of law that enables markets to operate stand for

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Hayek as products of a “cultural evolution conceived as the development of civilisation and its discipline”, through which “rules of conduct are selected that help human groups adapt to their social environment, prosper and expand” (quoted in Dean 1999, p. 156). Within Hayekian liberalism, markets themselves, forms of individuality that are adapted to and shaped within market environments, and forms of regulation that provide the political and legal conditions upon which markets can operate, all stand as outcomes of a civilising process that is necessarily independent of the constructive work of any particular governmental agency. Neoliberalism cannot of course be reduced to two of its articulations, however influential they may have been, any more than it is best understood as a translation of theory into practice. Nevertheless, we may note that these distinctive forms of neoliberal thought both embody “anti-naturalistic”—though not “anti-realist”—views of the market. On the contrary, not only do both regard markets as real entities with their own properties and effects that must be respected, but they both position markets as the primary reality around which the role of government is to be defined and delimited. The paradoxical realism shared by neoliberalism and reality TV, thus, is one in which social realities, including markets, are unambiguously presented as the product of a practice of construction, a fact which does not diminish, and may enhance, their realist status. Such realism may be seen as particularly strongly enacted in market-based programs like The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den, which each contain elements that further blur the distinction between “game” and “reality”. First, unlike the imaginatively contrived scenarios of, say, Survivor or Big Brother, the premises for both shows are grounded in verisimilitude (relating to, respectively, the market phenomena of the business pitch and the longform interview). Likewise, rather than offering cash prizes that serve to differentiate the world of television from that of everyday life, in both programs the prize is the offer of a partnership that extends beyond the world of television into the “real world”, in the form of a business partnership or a job which will involve a continuation of, rather than a departure from, the work performed on television. Indeed, in both cases, the “prize” is yet to be earned in a corporate environment that will depend on the successful performance of business acumen. Dragons’ Den is a program in which viewers watch individual entrepreneurs present a pitch for a novel product or service to a group of five multi-millionaire “dragons” who, if the pitch is successful, invest their own money in the product and form a business partnership with the entrepreneur-competitor. In this analysis, focusing on the UK version of the program, I am particularly concerned to consider how the structure of

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the engagement performed by Dragons’ Den positions viewers as potential bearers of a disciplinary gaze, and might thus be read as a means or mechanism through which audiences are recruited to participate in a certain pleasurable performance of judgment that is carried beyond the program. Given this focus, I will touch on representational aspects of the program, albeit briefly since the question at stake in reading Dragons’ Den moves beyond its textual construction of reality. In representational terms, Dragons’ Den has attributes that serve to construct the market in ways that parallel those of The Apprentice. In particular, the Dragons, like the figures of Donald Trump and Lord Sugar in The Apprentice, are represented as possessors of a charismatic and individualised authority, such that their business success appears associated with their personal qualities. Indeed, their attributes are explicitly mythologised, both through the connotations of their status as superhuman “dragons”, and by reference to their representation as “selfmade” men and women. Indeed, all references to other social factors that might have contributed to their success are erased, with the exception of a reference in the program’s introduction to how one of the dragons “left school with only three O-levels”, reinforcing a myth that the market is a level playing field. This authority is, arguably, bolstered through the use of BBC economics editor Evan Davis as the show’s presenter. Davis performs a significant role in the mise-en-scene of the program, in that he performs an impartial role (narrating and explaining aspects of the Dragons’ judgment to viewers, without directly passing judgment himself). Davis serves to provide an inter-textual seriousness to Dragons’ Den in reproducing his role of translating economic knowledge into “common sense”, while bolstering the credentials of the program as a bona fide representation of the market. At the same time, however, Davis may also serve to produce, even as he mediates, a distance between the viewer and the dragons. The use of Davis is also suggestive of the program’s desire to incorporate a pedagogic dimension as, like The Apprentice, Dragons’ Den similarly offers an entertaining means through which audiences can gain access to forms of expert commentary regarding the necessity of business planning, market-testing, gaining entrepreneurial experience and, not insignificantly, drawing on relevant forms of expertise. Both Davis and the dragons themselves frequently emphasise that what the achievement of an investment involves is not only capital, but also the opportunity to gain from the benefit of the dragons’ expertise in establishing and growing a business. Viewers also gain indirect access to such expertise through the program and its website, which incorporates a “business school” segment

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that incorporates a glossary of economic terms used on the program, as well as an “enterprise” section through which Davis introduces nine “key areas of business” (BBC 2013). In this respect, Dragons’ Den reproduces the broader promise of self-improvement that Ouellette and Hay (2008) suggest is key to the genre’s appeal, while also positioning the program as an extension of a tradition of “public service” pedagogy and responding to governmental imperatives that the BBC demonstrate its performance according to market-based criteria of popular appeal (Born 2004). Indeed, given the success of the program, both in terms of its generation of numerous successful ventures and its enduring popularity (with the BBC having commissioned 10 series since its launch in 2005), it could also be read as a clear example of a successful public-private partnership, wherein state institutions serve to promote and incorporate linkages with private enterprise. If the program’s pedagogic dimension also serves to locate the program as a source of disciplinary training for viewers, however, the program is not without a punitive dimension: indeed, the two might be read as mutually supportive.

Discipline And Humiliation Nick Couldry has argued that reality TV operates as a “theatre of cruelty”, offering ritual enactments of the “truths” of neoliberalism, which “would be unacceptable if stated openly, even if their consequences unfold before our eyes every day” (2008, p. 3). This description appears particularly relevant to Dragons’ Den, a program in which humiliation forms a key part of the program’s spectacle. Indeed, both in its introduction and in previews for subsequent episodes at its close, the program continually centres on the harsh criticisms made by the dragons, highlighting lines such as, “I've never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life”, “I think this has all the ingredients of the classic business disaster”, and “I just question why you've turned up today”. Thus, Dragons’ Den not only offers a means by which audiences gain access to forms of television-accredited market expertise, but operates as a spectacle of public humiliation, wherein the failings of a proposal are treated as moral failings for which the subject is morally admonished. An important aspect of the program's realism relies on the premise that failure and success are not arbitrary, but rest upon a system of objectively existing rules of conduct defined by the market itself. As the dragons lambast the shortcomings of proposals, they are presented as a failure to conform to the norms of marketability, demand and planning that are presented as emanating from the market as an independent reality. In this

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way, Dragons’ Den constructs a position where the viewer can derive (sadistic) pleasure from a process of public judgment, and in which the dissemination of expertise provides an apparently transparent means of inviting spectators to vicariously participate in a process of normative assessment. Thus, though viewers may disapprove of the manner in which judgments are made, it is the process through which the viewer becomes party to the process of judgment (which is made intelligible on their behalf) that makes the program, at least potentially, pedagogic and pleasurable. The disciplinary aspect of Dragons’ Den, in this respect, derives from the manner in which it locates individuals as both bearers and subjects of a governmental gaze. Several authors who have been concerned to investigate such disciplinary aspects of reality TV (Trottier 2006; Andrejevic 2004; Palmer 2003) have drawn not only upon Foucault’s model of “panopticism”, but also on the discussion of “synopticism” developed by Thomas Mathiesen (1997). While Foucault’s discussion of panopticism needs no introduction, Mathiesen disputes the trajectory of Foucault’s account of a shift away from a form of power (associated with both public celebrations and executions) in which the many witness the power of the few, to one in which the few observe and act upon the conduct of the many. The major problem with this account, he suggests, is that it ignores the rise of the mass media during exactly the period at which Foucault posits such a transition occurs. The media, Mathiesen suggests, is not primarily panoptic but “synoptic”: rather than an “allseeing” (pan-optic) power, the prefix “syn” means “together” or “at the same time” (Mathiesen 1997, p. 219). Mathiesen argues mass media, which typically produce a situation in which the many see the few (whether these be politicians, journalists or celebrities), are primarily synoptic mechanisms. Here, his concern is not to deny that panopticism plays a major role in modern power relations. Rather, he stresses that the growth of its opposite, the synopticon, is not only also evident over the course of the same historical period, but that “they together, precisely together, serve decisive control functions in modern society” (1997, p. 219). This perspective on the joint functioning of panopticism and synopticism provides an illuminating perspective on the operations of Dragons’ Den. Clearly, the program performs synoptically, as a form of mass spectacle in which the few are presented before the many. Clearly, too, it provides a means by which an elite, privileged few (the multimillionaire “dragons”) are placed in a position in which they can make their pronouncements, and communicate their perspectives, to the

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many. This power to articulate the terms of normative business judgment is, in addition, enhanced by the fact it is presented as an accessible, “common sense” perspective, rather than in the esoteric language of economics. It is this connection between the judgments of the dragons and the judgments of viewers that flatters the audience into the belief that such judgments, indeed the entire spectacle of the program, are made on their behalf. Like other “spectacles of shame” discussed by Gareth Palmer, the program constitutes an instrument of discipline in which “the power of the norm is vested in the audience” (Palmer 2003, p. 132). The subject who departs from market-based norms is both provided with advice (discipline) and/or subjected to ridicule (punishment). However, this process also incorporates panoptic dimensions. Most obviously, such programs come into being through the operation of a whole machinery of audience research, which seeks to deploy ever more sophisticated techniques for surveying viewing habits and preferences as a basis for constructing further programs audiences will watch. Regardless of whether the object is to generate ratings and revenue, to “educate” audiences, or both, the goal is to deploy techniques of surveillance to act upon how viewers regulate their own conduct. Thus, the technique of shaming, featured on previous successful examples of reality programming, is redeployed as a disciplinary means to persuade viewers to watch Dragons’ Den. More significant, however, is the manner in which the contestant–entrepreneurs featured are also “ordinary people” who are likely to be socially familiar to (if not personally known by) members of the audience. In this respect, the position of “observer” of the program’s synoptic spectacle is strictly temporary, coinciding only with its actual duration (and even then, rather ambiguously). At the moment they turn away from the program, the audience member returns to a position in which they, like those they have watched, must concern themselves with the problem of adapting themselves to a market environment. Dragons’ Den, in this respect, merges the two functions to produce a mechanism through which the many come to watch the many, such that each audience member becomes the potential bearer of, while also being subject to, the normative gaze of market rationality.

“Dividing Practices” and Complex Governmentality The reading so far has been concerned to demonstrate how Dragons’ Den can be made sense of as a “technology of government”, by focusing not only on how it “represents” market-based norms as common sense modes of assessing conduct, but how it works to performatively operationalise

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such norms through the production and rehearsal of an economy of judgment that, while positioned as deriving from the objective rules of the market, is extended by the program’s own operations. This conception of television, as a performative mechanism through which neoliberalism becomes extended, largely aligns with other analyses of reality TV formats as technologies of government that, according to Ouellette and Hay, “are guided by an unstated impetus to bring less educated, lower-income populations up to middle class standards” (2008, p. 6). While in the case of “lifestyle” programming this may involve a wider focus on issues of taste and social norms, in this particular case, the “middle class values” in question are those of entrepreneurialism and constructing forms of identity that can secure one’s success in a competitive market. Yet it is important to pause here, and consider some questions that remain begged by this claim. Is there really such an “unstated impetus” on the part of programmakers? To what extent, if at all, can Dragons’ Den be read as performing the function of inculcating the working classes with middle class values in practice? Is this the only available way to read its operations? Or, to the extent that it can be seen as such a disciplinary mechanism, to what extent is it likely to be successful? In relation to the “impetus” of the program, it is important that we take care that, in considering governmentality as emerging from the intersection of a complex of governmental practices, that particular practices should not be equated with intentionality. This is a point emphasised by Graeme Turner, who suggests that while commercial programming designed to sell particular products (formats, audiences and advertising) has the capacity to produce cultural effects, “the motivation behind the activities which produce these unintended cultural effects, most of the time, is commercial rather than political or cultural” (2010, p. 68). The BBC, informed by a public service tradition whose legitimacy has been more strongly justified by reference to educating and enlightening audiences, could perhaps more plausibly be read as harboring a pedagogic mission. Yet whether this equates to an intention to “inculcate middle class values” or promote a culture of neoliberal subjectivity is more questionable. Here it is worth recalling that the role of Evan Davis, while lending a certain gravitas to proceedings, can also be read as a distancing mechanism that enables the program’s position to be distinguished from that of the dragons’. Indeed, if the program can be read as a neoliberal technology of government, then it is more likely an effect of the opportunistic adoption of a format that enables the BBC to successfully manage the twin imperatives to be publicoriented in a measurable way (i.e. popular), while retaining aspects of the public service mission to educate audiences in areas of social importance,

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in this case managing their own business affairs. In adopting the latter as a focus, we could argue it is the fact that the public is already confronted with the problem of how to be enterprising as an imperative that structures everyday life, rather than any desire on the part of producers to promote it, that is the crucial factor. The manner in which the program brings economic rationalities and forms of expertise into play can thus be read as a consequence of a venture that is underpinned by institutional imperatives, which nevertheless leads the BBC to act as a conduit between audiences and other sites of governmental discourse and agency, rather than a particular intention on the part of producers. There may also be reasons to doubt whether the program functions to inculcate middle class standards in working class audiences, or at least whether such a claim can be made without considerable qualification. Returning to our analysis, it was noted that the program performs not only as a potential disciplinary mechanism, but serves as a mechanism of humiliation and shame, producing a judgmental subject position that viewers may apply to others or to themselves. Yet it is questionable whether shame and humiliation serve as a motivating affect. Skeggs and Wood (2012, p. 69) draw on Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza to suggest that positive affect serves to increase subjects’ power to act, while negative affects serve to diminish such capacity, and can be deployed to exercise power over others by diminishing and delimiting their scope for action. Here a double mechanism at play within television’s work of governing not only serves as a basis for communicating social norms and equipping subjects with capacities to remodel themselves in conformity to those norms, but also developing a spectacle through which particular subjects are shown to be unable to govern themselves appropriately, a problem deriving from their (im)moral interiority. Indeed, Skeggs and Wood note, it is exactly through the establishment of a “constitutive outside” that the establishment and boundary policing of normative forms of individual and collective identity occurs. The affect of “shame” refers not only to feelings produced in relation to a desire to be connected to others, as Annette Hill (2008, p. 196) has argued , but also to feelings provoked by what Foucault calls “dividing practices”, whereby lines are drawn between those subjects whose identities are amenable to governmental norms, and those whose social or embodied status is identified as actually or potentially problematic relative to the health and productivity of the wider population (Foucault 1994). If this suggests that a program like Dragons’ Den, as a neoliberal technology of government, might be seen as a mechanism to include, equip, and empower some subjects, while simultaneously excluding and

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disempowering others, the question of the impact of the program is another matter. Indeed, it is the problem of “reading off” the governmental effects of programs that provides Skeggs and Wood’s major critique of readings of reality TV programs as effective technologies of government. Here, they suggest the shift to governmentality has returned analysis to a practice of textualism, “giv[ing] rise to a renewed interest across television and media scholarship into questioning the ‘messages’ of television” (Skeggs and Wood 2012, p. 137). Shifting its theoretical lens away from the manner in which media operate as an ideological apparatus on behalf of an hegemonic class, media become re-read as integrated within a biopolitical apparatus that seeks to instrumentalise individualisation by schooling subjects to engage in “self–work” (Heelas 2002) that serves to uphold and naturalise a neoliberal political regime. One problem with this argument, according to Skeggs and Wood, is that it rests upon an assumption of uniform textual effects, and indeed upon the assumption of “possessive individualism” as both premise and outcome of its reading, such that it is individual subjects who, as possessors of a will to selfimprovement, actively engage in forms of self-work that construct them as the ideal subject of neoliberalism itself. Another, they suggest, is a “lack of historic and contemporary specificity in many governmentality analyses where neoliberalism comes to signify so many different practices” (2012, pp. 137–8). In contrast to “reading off” textual effects, Skeggs and Wood’s analysis is concerned to engage both theoretically and analytically with the reactions of actual audiences. Returning to their arguments regarding affective politics, they suggest alternative readings occur as reactions to processes of denigration (which have the potential to be disempowering) in order to “protect ourselves from their negative affects” (2012, p. 68). For example, the deployment of forms of gender and class denigration contribute to the production of alternative “circuits of value”, which depend on social location and that become embedded over time. Drawing on empirical evidence from focus groups, they demonstrate that reality TV holds different appeals for different subjects who are equipped with values and dispositions that are informed by their positions within class and gender relations. Thus, for example, they note that middle class women tend to be much more disposed to practices of self–work than working class women (yet ambivalent about whether reality TV could facilitate this, since they saw self–work as a longer-term process of selfinvestment). Working class women, by contrast, often treat such selfinvestment as impractical, and they countered the economy of value proposed by Wife Swap with alternative forms of value through which they

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could claim forms of social esteem. Thus, for example, Skeggs and Wood find “motherhood” provides a significant alternative site of value that has historically appealed to women whose opportunities to accrue value are limited by an economy of capital structured through constitutive forms of gender and class exclusion and subordination. This alternative value regime, they suggest, is particularly appealing to women whose class position limits both opportunities for “self–work”, and its potential to improve their material and social standing as grounds for a sense of selfworth. Thus, they summise, the value of the self–work ethic is: …a specific form of address to those who envisaged and could convert their energy, with access to the right resources, into future potential. It did not speak to those who are unlikely to have access to the means to generate value from the time and energy invested in low paid work…Full-time motherhood both offsets the low value produced through low-paid work, whilst also offering the potential for moral and affective value. (Skeggs and Wood 2012, p. 199)

This identification of alternative regimes of value provides an important corrective to reductive and over-confident appraisals of the political effects of reality TV. They go on, however, to suggest this provides a grounds for entirely rejecting governmentality analyses on the grounds that, in practice, what actually occurs through reality TV is “the failure of the Foucauldian ‘conduct of conduct’, the governmental requirement for self-disciplining and care of the self” (2012, p. 67), precisely because “self–work” is a project that appeals to, and is taken up by, the middle classes: Attempts to put back behavioural elements after breaking them down (through the trope of self-transformation) enable us as audiences to see how utterly incoherent, contradictory and unstable the production of subjectivity is and thus the impossibility of the governmentality project. If people did self-govern, as is suggested, they would not need the constant call to perform properly…Governmentality and performativity are theories for understanding bourgeois behavior—for those that unconsciously do perform the proper person. (Skeggs and Wood 2012, p. 67)

While there is much that is unexceptionable here, this critique of the governmentality framework conflates particular deployments of it with “governmentality” as an approach. In short, it is directed at work that draws on the framework to propose a general reading of the production of “responsibilised” neoliberal subjects, produced through textual practices that equip and remodel selves as market-oriented individuals, in a manner that aligns with sociological accounts of “individualisation”. The problem

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here lies less with the governmentality analytic than with such a singular and linear reading of it. A premise of the governmentality approach is that its success is always likely to be, at best, limited and that governmental attempts to target and direct subjective (and collective) conduct “are rarely implanted unscathed, and are seldom adjudged to have achieved what they set out to do. While ‘governmentality’ is eternally optimistic, ‘government’ is a congenitally failing operation” (Miller and Rose 1990, p. 10). Indeed, if “governmentality” has a virtue, it is precisely that it might enable an analysis of power relations that allows consideration of how particular actors may be subject to (as well as engage in) multiple and non-totalisable practices of government, as a consequence of the multiplicity and variety of practices and sites through which authority is (and has been) deployed. It is for this reason that recent work has raised critical questions about whether readings of governmentality through a meta-historical narrative of the subject, such as Nikolas Rose’s analysis of classical, social and advanced liberalism (Rose 1999), do not problematically repeat a tendency to reduce governmentality to a general and singular trajectory of (primarily economic) government that displaces attention to the specificity and complexity of governmental relations in particular historical situations (Collier 2009). Rather than dismiss Skeggs and Wood’s work, however, my concern here is to distinguish between those parts of their argument that are useful and those that are, to my mind, problematic. On one hand, what they provide is not only an important critique of the tendency to deploy governmentality approaches to “read off” how texts are productive and reflective of an all-encompassing trajectory toward neoliberal subjectivity. They also demonstrate how reality TV’s governmentalities, with their class and gender-based dividing practices and the varied reactions to these, not only founder upon the historical legacy of alternative values (which may serve to inform rival governmentalities), but that its operations are themselves likely to be productive of such difference. On the other hand, their claim that a governmentality approach is necessarily blind to such contingent and resistant outcomes to governing tactics seems, at best, unnecessary. A Foucauldian emphasis on power as relational and distributed, and as both produced by and productive of multiple governmentalities that are simultaneously partially effective and inevitably founder, is more consistent with their approach than they appear to acknowledge.

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Conclusion This chapter has sought to demonstrate the affinity between variants of neoliberalism that are underpinned by a “performative” (rather than naturalistic) ontology and the performative realisms characteristic of reality TV. It has also sought to show how particular programs, perhaps most obviously “market games” such as Dragons’ Den, can be plausibly read as “technologies of government”, and in ways that go beyond an engagement with, without entirely discounting, their “representational” aspects. The widespread reach of such technologies, and the continued significance of media institutions that exercise both panoptic and synoptic power, make such analysis important in understanding the range of ways in which we are governed, and the particular role played by television in contemporary formations of liberal democracy. As James Hay (2011) has recently argued, “democracy” does not represent a singular and quantifiable touchstone against which political arrangements can be defined as democratic or otherwise, but rather gains specific, material articulations at particular historical junctures. Indeed, it is possible to read Dragons’ Den as a text that represents a “democratising” technology, in the sense that it provides a means by which forms of potentially useful and “empowering” knowledge are made widely accessible to subjects involved in managing their economic wellbeing. This is, nevertheless, a form of “democracy” that is highly circumscribed, both in the sense that it articulates a democratic form that both representationally and performatively sustains a market-based authoritarianism that serves to divide and exclude as much as it “incorporates”. If this is to suggest that reality TV contributes to formations of democracy that contribute to the production of decidedly anti-democratic relations, however, such a diagnosis must be qualified. As this chapter has argued, reading television’s governmentalities as amenable to a singular, totalising and ultimately pessimistic trajectory not only represents a political dead end, but is analytically myopic. Only ever partially successful, and habitually failing, reality TV’s technologies of government produce unforeseen (and possibly undesired) outcomes, or are rejected outright— unsurprisingly, given that their contestants and audiences are both historically and simultaneously subject to a multiplicity of (often contradictory) governmental practices. For these reasons, they remain subject to, as well as potentially productive of, alternative values that potentially provide a foundation for democratic relations that seek to question, and instate modes of organisation that limit and counter, modes of “democracy” that naturalise and deepen inequality.

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Bibliography Andrejevic, Mark. 2004. Reality TV: The Work Of Being Watched. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. BBC. 2013. Dragons’ Den. http://bbc.co.uk/programmes/ b006vq92. Born, Georgina. 2004. Uncertain Vision. London: Secker and Warburg. Bratich, Jack. 2007. “Programming Reality: Control Societies, New Subjects, Powers Of Transformation.” In Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled, edited by D. Heller, pp. 6–22. London: I.B. Taurus. Bruzzi, Stella. 2006. New Documentary, 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Burchell, Graham. 1996. “Liberal Government And Techniques Of The Self.” In Foucault And Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism And Rationalities Of Government, edited by A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose, pp. 19–36. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Collier, Stephen. 2009. “Topologies Of Power: Foucault’s Analysis Of Political Government Beyond ‘Governmentality’.” Theory, Culture And Society 26 (6): 78–108. Corner, John. 2002. “Performing The Real: Documentary Diversions.” Television And New Media 3 (3): 255–269. Couldry, Nick. 2008. “Reality TV, Or The Secret Theater Of Neoliberalism.” The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies 30: 3–13. Couldry, Nick and Jo Littler. 2011. “Work, Power And Performance: Analysing The ‘Reality’ Game Of The Apprentice.” Cultural Sociology 5 (2): 263–279. Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power And Rule In Modern Society. London: Sage. Foucault, Michel. 1994. “The Subject And Power.” In Power: Essential Works Of Foucault Volume 3, edited by J. D. Faubion, pp. 326–348. London: Penguin. —. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures At The College de France 1978–79, edited by Michel Senellart, translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. —. 2008. The Birth Of Biopolitics: Lectures At The College de France 1978–79, edited by Michel Senellart, translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fridman, Daniel. 2010. “A New Mentality For A New Economy: Performing The Homo Economicus In Argentina (1976–83).” Economy and Society 39 (2): 271–302.

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Greenfield, Cathy and Peter Williams. 2007. “Financialisation, Finance Journalism And The Role Of Media In Australia.” Media, Culture and Society 29 (3): 415–433. Hay, James. 2011. “‘Popular Culture’ In A Critique Of The New Political Reason.” Cultural Studies 25 (4–5): 659–684. Heelas, Paul. 2002. “Work Ethics, Soft Capitalism And The ‘Turn to Life’.” In Cultural Economy, edited by P. du Gay and M. Pryke, pp. 78–96. London: Sage. Hill, Annette. 2008. Restyling Factual TV: Audiences And News, Documentary and Reality Genres. London: Routledge. Lewis, Tania. 2008. Smart Living: Lifestyle Media And Popular Expertise. London: Peter Lang. Mathiesen, Thomas. 1997. “The Viewer Society: Michel Foucault’s ‘Panopticon’ Revisited.” Theoretical Criminology 1 (2): 215–234. Metham, Wesley. 2006. “Games Of Sociality And Their Soft Seduction.” In How Real is Reality TV? edited by D. S. Escoffery, pp. 231–246. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co. Miller, Peter and Nikolas Rose. 1990. “Governing Economic Life.” Economy and Society 19 (1): 1–31. Ouellette, Laurie and James Hay. 2008. Better Living Through Reality TV: Television And Post-welfare Citizenship. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Palmer, Gareth. 2003. Discipline And Liberty: Television And Governance. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers Of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Skeggs, Beverley and Helen Wood. 2012. Reacting To Reality TV: Performance, Audience And Value. London; New York: Routledge. Trottier, Daniel. 2006. “Watching Yourself, Watching Others: Popular Representations Of Panoptic Surveillance In Reality TV Programs.” In How Real is Reality TV? edited by D. S. Escoffery, pp. 259–276. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co. Turner, Graeme. 2010. Ordinary People And The Media: The Demotic Turn. London: Sage. Weber, Brenda. 2009. Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship And Celebrity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER EIGHT CITIZEN JOURNALISM AND CHANGING PRACTICES OF CITIZENSHIP: THE CASE OF SINGAPORE’S STOMP PORTAL LUCY MORIESON

Introduction The business of news and the practice of journalism are presently facing a range of challenges, encompassing a dramatically altered financial environment, rapidly changing technological tools and capacities, changing audience practices, and a steep decline in public trust. But amidst this array of challenges comes enthusiasm for journalism’s possible renewal through the democratisation of its production processes in the digital environment, as well as for its ability to reinvigorate engagement with democratic processes themselves. The possibility for digital communication technologies to enhance opportunities for citizen engagement is of particular pertinence for Singapore—nominally a liberal democracy, but with a history of indirect state control of the media and restricted avenues for political participation. Against this background, the development of STOMP (Straits Times Online Mobile Print)—the digital portal provided by Singapore’s leading newspaper, the Straits Times, for audience-generated news offerings and interaction—provides a unique occasion to consider the opportunities for online participation in an “illiberal democracy” such as Singapore. While STOMP is indirectly owned by the long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), and is subject to the legislative restrictions under which all media operate in Singapore, it nonetheless offers a hitherto unavailable space for online audiences to participate in news-making processes. This chapter uses STOMP as a case study to examine the way in which complex and at times conflicting governmental aims are mediated and addressed in Singapore. I will outline and provide evidence to discuss that while the site

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often adopts a pedagogical mode of address in order to govern practices of citizenship within the traditional political and cultural bounds upheld by the government, even within this carefully governed space there are options for new modes of citizenship. Indeed, STOMP makes available forms of citizenship that may at first appear “silly” but which take advantage of Internet affordances to enable new practices of monitoring to address issues central to the everyday life of Singaporeans.

The Singapore Media Landscape The cause of journalism’s current “crisis”—as it is often dubbed—is contested and much debated. Gitlin (2009) outlines what he posits are the five elements that constitute this crisis: the precipitous decline in the circulation of newspapers; the decline in advertising revenue, which combines with the first to badly damage the profitability of newspapers; the diffusion of audience attention across a range of new media; journalism’s crisis in professional authority; and lastly, “journalism’s inability or unwillingness to penetrate the veil of obfuscation behind which power conducts its risky business”. But amidst this array of challenges comes enthusiasm for journalism’s possible renewal through the democratisation of its production processes in the digital environment, as well as for its ability to reinvigorate engagement with democratic processes themselves (see for example Beckett 2008; Benkler 2006; Gillmor 2004; Glaser 2006; Lasica 2003; Rosen 2006). This is facilitated in part by the reduced barriers of entry to participation in the production process online and with it the break down of what has traditionally been a clear division between journalists and audiences, or content producers and content consumers, making this relationship itself more democratic. Bruns (2007) has coined the term prosumer to signify the more active work of the consumer in digital environments, and recognise its significance in the continual and open chain of production and meaning around digital media content. But these rhetorics about journalism’s decline and the Internet’s potential for democractic renewal cannot easily be imported to the Asian context, where the story surrounding journalism is a different one. As a whole, Asia is not facing a declining newspaper industry but a growing one. Manfred Werfel, of the World Association of Newspapers, argues that, “we consider the worldwide newspaper market as being currently divided into a stagnating market (in the west) and a fast growing market in Asia” (Newswatch.in 2006). Asia is home to some of the most popular newspapers in the world—Japan’s two largest dailies, Asahi Shimbun and

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Nikkei, are the two most popular newspapers in the world (Tabuchi 2010), while the Times of India is the world’s number one English newspaper across all its formats, both print and online (Times of India 2009). In Singapore, where the media has historically been tightly controlled and ownership consolidated in few hands, print readership remains relatively high—with 68.5 per cent of the adult population reading a hardcopy daily newspaper (Nielsen Press Release 2012). This figure is higher when digital newspapers are added to the picture—combined readership of print and online newspapers reached “almost three quarters of the population” in 2012, with an average of 72.1 per cent of the population reading a daily newspaper. However, print news in Singapore does not escape the woes shared by many other media landscapes, with newspapers reporting a gradual, but nonetheless significant decrease (of 2.3 per cent) in print readership compared to a similar increase (of 1.6 per cent) in digital readership between 2011–2012 (Heng 2012). The longerterm figures reflect a more substantial shift in media habits in Singapore— the circulation of newspapers has been steadily declining, with English language newspapers seeing a dramatic circulation drop of 24.5 per cent in the years 2002 to 2007 (Tan 2008). Nonetheless, Singapore’s news media reports that “print newspapers remain the staple source of news for most readers” (Heng 2012), and the English-language broadsheet the Straits Times dominates, reaching around 34.3 per cent of the population daily, or around 1.39 million people. This can be partly attributed to the Singaporean media environment, where “there are only a few locally-based sources that cover the news thoroughly” (Chay 2009, p. 12), so those local sources are able to hold on to their market share even in economically turbulent times. According to Mark Cenite of the Wee Kim School of Communication and Information at the Nanyang Technological University, the alternative for the audience is “not knowing what’s happening” (Chua 2009, p. 3). However, this grip on power is dependent on the virtual media monopoly that operates in Singapore, and Cenite argues that, “if the mainstream sources get more competition, particularly free or cheaper competition that is trustworthy, audiences may choose those alternatives” (Chua 2009, p. 3). So, what potential does the Internet offer for Singapore, where media is concentrated into the hands of a few, whether print, broadcast or digital? Singapore’s media landscape is dominated by two major players: Singapore Press Holdings, which has close links to the ruling party, and a virtual monopoly of the newspaper industry; and MediaCorp, owned by the Singapore Government’s sovereign wealth fund, which operates TV and radio stations. The government uses a number of legal strategies to

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maintain control of political coverage, such as defamation and sedition, as well as censorship and licensing control. Alongside broader attempts to control the flow of information online, Singapore has sought to comprehensively restrict the use of the Internet for electoral purposes. The government has barred the publication of all survey and poll data, as well as election surveys and exit polls. However, political web sites can publish party posters and manifestos, candidate profiles, party events and positions on issues, and some moderated chats and discussion forums. In this environment, the Internet poses a curious challenge to Singapore (Johal 2004). In 1992, Singapore launched IT2000, a policy to connect all houses to broadband, which resulted in a steady uptake across the island nation. But this opened up a pandora’s box for Singapore, as the Internet represented a new way to trade with Western countries, which would frown on heavy censorship online. As a compromise, Singapore symbolically blocks 100 websites but otherwise does not censor. Instead, other forms of legislation are used to control the Internet and encourage self-regulation, including The Broadcasting Act, The Media Development Authority of Singapore Act, and its supplementary legislation, The Internet Code of Practice. The latter most clearly articulates some of the limits placed upon Singapore Internet users, prohibiting material that is “objectionable on the grounds of public interest, public morality, public order, public security, national harmony, or is otherwise prohibited by applicable Singapore laws” (Internet Code of Practice 1997). Of course, what is declared against public order or good taste is open for interpretation and can be contentious. In the well-known case of Singaporean blogger Lee Kin Mun who blogs under the pseudonym mrbrown (see http://www.mrbrown.com/ blog/), a 2006 column for Today newspaper criticising the government saw him dismissed from his journalistic post and generated an outcry within the local blogosphere. The column was titled “Singaporeans are fed, up with progress!” and criticised the rising cost of living in Singapore, as well as the delay of key price increases until after an election. The article attracted an official response from the Ministry of Information and the Arts (MICA) in the pages of the same newspaper, in which the column was derided for “distorting the truth” and misleading Singaporeans by writing from a political position: “if a columnist presents himself as a nonpolitical observer, while exploiting his access to the mass media to undermine the Government's standing with the electorate, then he is no longer a constructive critic, but a partisan player in politics” (Letter from MICA: Distorting the truth, mr brown? 2006). mrbrown’s column was

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suspended indefinitely following publication of the controversial article, but fellow bloggers were outraged and republished the column online and this, along with the public support garnered for mrbrown, led the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to defend the actions of MICA and to maintain that Singapore was an open society.

Singapore: Illiberal Democracy or Neoliberal Exception? While Singapore is often characterised as a “soft” authoritarian state, it is more carefully described by a number of scholars as an illiberal democracy. Chua Beng Huat (2004), for instance, argues that Singapore is an illiberal democracy operating under the labels of “pragmatic” and “communitarian” government, in which strategic interventions into the electoral process and parliamentary systems, as well as anti-democratic legal restraints (such as the ownership limits of the Newspaper and Printing Act [1974] and the broad spectrum Internal Security Act) have been made to shore up the ruling PAP’s power. Audrey Yue argues that this illiberal pragmatism manifests itself selectively, depending on the context, so that Singapore is politically illiberal but culturally liberal. Writing in the context of queer politics in Singapore, she argues that illiberal pragmatism is characterised by the ambivalence between nonliberalism and neoliberalism, rationalism and irrationalism…it has enabled the cultural liberalisation of the creative economy so much so that Singapore is more renowned globally as a gay than a creative city (Yue 2012, p. 2).

Mutalib (2000) argues that while, based on the four practical principles of democracy—popular representation, popular selection, political equality and majority rule—Singapore is a democracy (albeit one at sharp variance with that of Western liberal democracy), it lacks many other features characteristic of a democratic state. There is no substantial opposition, and existing opposition parties are tactically marginalised; the press cannot be characterised as free, nor is there a robust civil society, and opposing political views are not tolerated. Like Chua and Yue, Mutalib outlines the way in which the PAP masks its illiberal practices under the guise of communitarian democracy. But moreover, he ascribes the widespread acceptance of the illiberal conditions within Singapore to what he calls the ‘PAP factor’: “the belief that Singapore moves ahead only by adhering to the government’s values and ways of managing the state, and that such governing paradigms are not only to be maintained and buttressed, but doggedly pursued” (2000, p. 314).

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Aihwa Ong (2006) moves beyond discussions about the conditions of Singapore’s democracy to look more precisely at the broad conditions of the government of populations in Southeast Asia. She argues that particular Asian countries or regions can be considered as neoliberal “exceptions” to the otherwise dominant illiberal, undemocratic, or authoritarian political arrangements. Drawing on Foucault, Ong adopts a definition of governing that takes as its object individuals and populations, and positions governmentality as a “mode of modern power that is concerned with the right disposition of people and things” (2008, p. 118). This approach makes possible a consideration of politics that is not tied to a narrow model of juridical or electoral politics, but rather “allows us to explore how flexible strategies respond to turbulent environments” (Ong 2008, p. 118). Working from this conception of government, Ong considers neoliberalism not as a doctrine, but as a “technology of governing for optimal outcome at the level of individuals and populations” (2008, p. 121). In her study of Southeast Asia she discusses examples of the adoption of neoliberal policies as an economic exception—to “promote a self-enterprising ethos and entrepreneurialism…while these very same enterprising norms are discouraged in the political realm” (2008, p. 121). In Singapore, this has involved a particular emphasis on technology and the rhetoric of global connectedness. Singapore has actively promoted itself as a global hub, “linked in” to places like Tokyo, Hong Kong, London and New York, but providing a cheaper location to do business than these global capitals. However, this global, outwardly looking disposition has also generated political complexity for Singapore’s leading PAP and its people. Due to its historically low birth rate, the government has developed a strategy of importing foreign workers to help achieve this goal. Ong argues that overall, the Singapore government has “demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to mobilize local opinion in favour of expatriate populations as a permanent feature on tiny Singapore” (2006, p. 187). This international labour force is divided into two groups colloquially known as “foreign talent” and “foreign workers”. Those dubbed “foreign talent” are the highly skilled workers who make up approximately one fifth of the half a million foreign workers in Singapore (population 5.1 million). The other half consists of low-skilled “foreign workers”, many of whom work in low-paid construction or domestic services. The Singapore government does not publish data on the number of foreign workers or their countries of origin, as it considers the information sensitive. However, using data gleaned from media sources, official speeches and parliamentary proceedings, Chia (2011) has compiled a report on Singapore’s international workforce, which suggests that

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Singapore’s skilled workforce is drawn largely from neighbouring Malaysia, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as developed countries in Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Increasingly, skilled workers are being drawn from China, due to their shared cultural heritage and possession of the Mandarin dialect that is one of the official languages of Singapore. The source of Singapore’s unskilled or semi-skilled workforce has historically been Malaysia, due to “geographic proximity, and shared history, culture, and common values” (Chia 2011, p. 8), but as the country has enjoyed its own success, Singapore has accepted more workers from developing countries in Southeast Asia (particularly the Philippines), South Asia (particularly the Indian state of Tamil Nadu), and North Asia. The privileging of foreign talent in the jobs market, and the value to Singapore of Western rather than Chinese values are constant sources of public debate in Singapore. This mix of cultures presents challenges for Singapore, where the “Asian values” that have worked to consolidate the country’s identity are often at odds with the flexible subjectivities required by workplaces within a global techno-hub. As Ong (2006) outlines, there is a concern that the traditional Asian values of old Singaporean corporate culture could stifle the risk-taking mentality that is required if Singapore is to achieve its status as a major economic and technological player. The result is a version of neoliberalism that exists alongside cultural values that are often at odds with “contemporary” business logic, presenting an example of the “neoliberalism as exception” that Ong describes. In Singapore, traditional cultural values are not viewed as existing at odds with neoliberal business cultures, but rather as coexisting alongside them: “there is a pervasive belief that the cultural ethics can be protected from the risk-taking, cut-throat attitude and behaviour being foisted on the young in the new economy” (Ong 2006, p. 190). In this complex political economic environment, in which neoliberal business practices and subjectivities brush up against traditional culture and illiberal politics, I want to consider the way in which STOMP attempts to inoculate against the cultural influence of neoliberalism, ensuring it remains an exception, kept within the realm of business and carefully quarantined from political and cultural life. But at the same time, STOMP offers hope for new forms of citizen engagement, which may appear “silly”, but which also opens up options for new practices of monitorial citizenship online.

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STOMP: User-Generated Cultural Classroom Established in 2006 with the aim to attract a younger audience to the digital version of the newspaper, STOMP (www.stomp.com.sg) stands for ‘Straits Times Online Mobile Print’ (The Singapore STOMP 2007). It is quite distinct from the online version of its parent publication The Straits Times (at http://www.straitstimes.com/), which duplicates and extends the content of the print paper online. STOMP aims to do something quite different. It is largely populated with user-generated content that is filtered, categorised and presented in a visual-heavy style that borrows as much from the format of gossip site Perez Hilton or meme-sharing platform 9gag as it does the tabloid sensibilities of an online newspaper. Visitors to STOMP are greeted by what appears to be an endless array of options. Splashed across the centre of the site’s front page is a rotating slideshow of “STOMP’s Top 8” stories of the day. Along the top bar are links to various sections of the site; in the two sidebars, aside from advertisements and links leading readers back to news stories on the Straits Times website, feature stories take readers to these same sections. Among these sections are links to splinter sites, such as: Lollipop.sg, the celebrity gossip site that sits under the ST-umbrella, with a focus on regional content; a youth portal, called Youthophoria; and Club STOMP, a dating page for locals. There are also sections that, to outsiders, might appear to be local quirks. For example, Singapore Love Stories is a page where Singaporean couples can submit their own “real life” love stories and accompanying photos. Getai A-Go-Go celebrates getai—a performance featuring boisterous singing and dancing, and over-the-top costumes; the form is enjoyed nostalgically by older citizens and has recently been more widely celebrated by a younger audience for its kitsch appeal—by promoting performances around the city-state, videos of latest performances and encouraging voting for the STOMP’s people’s choice award. There are also links to no less than three pages dedicated to video, although the difference between them is at times marginal—one page, RazorTV, is dedicated to ST-produced video content, another hosts DIY video submitted by users, while RealLife.sg provides video content of “real life” Singapore stories—such as the piece about a woman who saved $20,000 in the process of planning her wedding (much to the outrage of STOMP readers who pitied her decision not to splurge on her “once in a lifetime” event). The bulk of STOMP’s top content, though, is drawn from a number of sections that are largely furnished by user-generated content that is filtered and presented by STOMP editorial staff. What draws these sections

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together (apart from the user-driven content), is an overtly pedagogical tone established by the presentation and discussion of material. The largest of these sections is “Singapore Seen”, where readers send in images and stories of events taking place around Singapore. These vary from the mundane to the dramatic, including updates on local traffic accidents, complaints about incidents on public transport, and stories drawn from Facebook. For instance, on February 22, 2013, a top story was based on a screen shot of a member of the Singapore Police Force boasting that he was the first member to have a tattoo that remained visible even when he was in uniform. The user who submitted the photo complained that the police force member’s appearance was unprofessional and reflected badly on the police force. At the end of each story, readers can vote according to the various categories: lol, cute, shiok (a Singlish word conveying pleasure and satisfaction), fail, omg, bochup (a Singlish term meaning nonchalant, or don’t care), ewww!, so sad, and enraged. In this case they voted 59% “enraged” and 31% “bochup” (“don’t care”). More specific than Singapore Seen is a page called Facebook Goondus (goondus is a Singlish term meaning idiot) that compiles examples of shocking behaviour and poor judgement on Facebook. Its aim is to “educate and alert members of the public to exercise restraint and common sense when posting photos, text and videos on Facebook” and to “discourage the abuse of social media, whether accidental or deliberate”. Similarly, Hey Goondus! Is dubbed “a wall of misbehavior by commuters and motorists”, and like Facebook Goondus, its aim is social improvement—it targets anti-social acts such as sitting in priority seating for the elderly on the MRT train system, as well as a range of traffic offences. Similarly pedagogical in tone, Ask Libby is a collaboration between STOMP and Public Libraries Singapore, where people can submit a question on topics frivolous, practical or relating to current events, and receive an informed answer sourced by representatives from the library. English As It Is Broken is a page dedicated to the correct use of the English language, couched in the following terms: “Singaporeans, your interest in speaking and writing English well and your passion for the language have been phenomenal. Here our English language panel answers your questions”. Finally, STOMP also hosts a link to My Paper, Singapore’s bilingual newspaper that began as a free Chinese language publication but now features segments in both Mandarin and English, and contains “help boxes” in its pages to assist with translation of key phrases. In the various sections of STOMP, Singapore citizens are coached on the acceptable modes of behaviour for a range of contexts, from public

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transport to Facebook and correct English use. They are also encouraged to speak two of the official languages—English and Mandarin—and given platforms and assistance to do so via My Paper. Through its pedagogical tone, STOMP and the various pages that are nested within the website demonstrate the form of government that Ong describes, government that is concerned with individuals and populations—in this case, educating them in modes of behaviour, ways of being, and the acceptable languages for being a citizen of Singapore. These pedagogical governing efforts demonstrate and produce for STOMP users modes of citizenship that are carved out as acceptable within the complex and often contradictory political economic landscape of Singapore. However I want to suggest that alongside these forms of carefully regulated citizenship, there also exist options at STOMP for the exercise of other modes of citizenship, which are at times both “silly” but also seriously important in their demonstration of the practices of monitorial democracy.

Silly Citizenship at STOMP? John Hartley (2010) argues that contemporary mediated citizenship is getting sillier, in large part due to the shift in producer-consumer relationships enabled by digital technologies that has spawned an array of web-based user-generated content. This, he argues, goes hand in hand with a shift in the understanding of citizenship as something that encompasses both public and private identities and practices. Hartley argues that citizenship is too often thought of as a static and universal condition, when in fact it is better understood as a “relational identity, inconstant, dynamic and evolving” (2010, p. 234, italics in original). Thus, citizenship needs to be formed and produced, a process that Hartley argues children are central to: “citizenship-formation is ‘carried’ by children who—individually, collectively and differentially—produce citizenship in their actions, forms of association and thence identities” (2010, p. 233, italics in original). Hartley argues that citizenship is a discursive practice “at the heart of which is the continually challenging problem of how to reconcile self and stranger in modern associated life” (2010, p. 234). Hartley outlines the way in which definitions of citizenship have changed historically over time, alongside notions of what counts as citizenship and what it means to be a good citizen. He draws on the work of T.H. Marshall (1963) to map successive stages in the development of contemporary citizenship: beginning with civic citizenship, premised on an understanding of the rights of man and personal liberty; political citizenship, which extends existing rights to include the right for elected

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representation and the vote; and social citizenship, whereby citizenship comes with social rights, such as education, employment and welfare benefits. To this list Hartley adds two of his own phases of citizenship: cultural, that is, identity-based rights and media citizenship; and DIY/DWO (do-it-yourself/do-it-with-others), which he defines as the sort of productive consumer practices that give way to what he defines as silly citizenship. Silly citizenship, according to Hartley, is typified by the use of popular media by audiences for identity-formation and associative relations, but it is also extended by the potential or affordances of digital media to enable forms of participatory culture online. Hartley argues that while DIY/DIWO forms of citizenship may seem “more individuated and privatised than previous types…at the same time [they have] an activist and communitarian ethic, where ‘knowledge shared is knowledge gained’” (2010, p. 240). While the Internet has challenged the representative status of popular media as a tool of citizenship, revealing the fragmented status of “the public”, it has also made way for a form of media citizenship that is less representative but in which audiences are more productive. Importantly, this sort of citizenship is performative and playful. It is also often the preserve of teenagers, who are by definition on the cusp of citizenship, and whose practices are thus central to its changing formation. Hartley provides examples of the way that media intersects with and enables this sort of citizenship. He cites the rise of satirical television news programs like The Daily Show With John Stewart and The Colbert Report, which have “propelled comedy, send-ups and spoofs to the centre of the political process” (2010, p. 241). He also discusses one of the top videos from 2009, JK Wedding Entrance Dance, in which a wedding party enters a church in an elaborate dance routine. The video became a viral hit—it was viewed more than 3.5 million times in the 48 hours after its upload, and by October 2012 had been viewed over 77 million times—spawning professional and amateur imitations around the world, including on the US television series The Office. Hartley claims that this sort of media engagement connects with civil concerns, not only in its presentation of material—in this case, centring on marriage—but also through the video’s ability to use its captive audience to raise funds for the prevention of domestic violence (after the recording artist providing the video’s soundtrack, Chris Brown, faced allegations of domestic abuse against his pop-star partner, Rihanna). It is through these kinds of political entanglements that Hartley argues, “this kind of silly citizenship has become part of the mediated political landscape, with both professional

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and amateur creativity expended in the cause of political agency” (2010, p. 241). Does silly citizenship happen at STOMP? Yes, in that its contents can be considered deeply silly. However, much in the same way as the wedding entrance video described by Hartley intersects with matters central to citizenship, so do the items posted at STOMP. For instance, a story posted in Singapore Seen on August 22, 2011, titled “Which one is the girl?” was based around photos submitted by users of Singapore couples in matching outfits, and in which the male partner—rather than the female—was carrying the handbag. The trend of boyfriends carrying their partner’s handbag is reported as a growing trend in Singapore, and one that troubles users a great deal—clearly enough to submit photos of it. As the user who submitted the photo comments, “come on, guys, there are better, more dignified ways to show your affection, than to be bossed around and have your outfits decided by your GF”. However the majority of users do not seem to agree, with 70% rating the article as “bochup”, meaning “don’t care”. This sort of story typifies the content on STOMP, and while it is quite silly, and easily dismissed as unimportant, it does, like Hartley’s example, connect with important matters of citizenship—in this case gender identities, roles and relationships within culturally diverse Singapore, where gender practices are already multiple, plural and often contradictory. In another story, from April 14, 2011, titled, “China hawker couple attacked 3 patrons for taking extra ikan bilis” a user reported being verbally and physically abused by staff at a hawker food stall for taking extra anchovies with their meal. Pivotally, the hawker stall workers are identified as “a China hawker couple” who object to the user taking extra anchovies on the basis of nationality, reportedly saying “you Singaporeans who are paying so little money want to have so much of everything”. The story garnered a strong response with 80% of readers giving it the rating “enraged”. Through these sorts of examples, silly citizenship of the sort Hartley describes plays out at STOMP on a daily basis. But it is limited and regulated, a symptom of the exceptional nature of Singapore’s neoliberalism, where clear zones of exclusion are marked between business, politics and culture. However I want to end by suggesting another way that STOMP can usefully be considered to open up avenues for new forms of citizenship through practices of monitoring.

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Monitorial Practices of Citizenship In his discussion of silly citizenship, Hartley references the concept of monitorial citizenship, in which citizens are seen to harness the networked potential of the Internet for democratic monitoring. This is an idea articulated in more detail by John Keane, who argues that the current media landscape provides the necessary conditions for what he describes as a post-Westminster form of politics—monitory democracy—which is characterised by the proliferation of extra-parliamentary monitory bodies and power-scrutinising mechanisms, so that: All fields of social and political life come to be scrutinised, not just by the standard machinery of representative democracy, but by a whole host of non-party, extra-parliamentary and often unelected bodies operating within and underneath and beyond the boundaries of territorial states. (2009, p. 5)

These monitory bodies come in a multitude of forms and on a range of levels, from local to global, and their concerns range across elected governments, workplaces, businesses, the individual and so on, prompting Keane to comment that “the vertical ‘depth’ and horizontal ‘reach’ of monitory institutions is striking” (2009, p. 6). Some examples of monitory bodies include international criminal courts, experts’ councils, local community consultation schemes, consumer councils, websites that monitor the abuse of workplace power and self-selected opinion polls (Keane 2009, pp. 4–5). The formation of monitory democracy is linked firstly to the defence of democracy and human rights that arose in a post-World War II environment, and secondly to the growth of “multimedia-saturated societies”: “societies whose structures of power are continuously ‘bitten’ by monitory institutions operating within a new galaxy of media defined by the ethos of communicative abundance” (Keane 2009, p. 15). Communicative abundance describes the media environment in which access to the production and consumption of media has proliferated and infiltrated multiple and increasing areas of life. Keane argues that this media environment is best symbolised by the Internet, but extends beyond it. Communicative abundance cuts across the liberal divisions of public and private. The contemporary media is at once increasingly interested in the private lives of public figures and in catapulting to publicity the private lives of previously private figures. Keane acknowledges that some problems arise from this state of communicative abundance. Pelted with information, citizens are not always engaged but also respond with cynicism, disaffection and

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inattention, or actively turn away from “information overload”, and there is an increasing trend towards sensationalism that has arisen in an environment driven by web hits. But on balance, Keane argues that communicative abundance has positive consequences because it “nudges and broadens people’s horizons…tutors their sense of pluralism and prods them into taking greater responsibility for how, when and why they communicate” (2009, p. 21). In light of this argument it is clear that the pages of STOMP are populated largely with the monitorial work of citizens, who watch, document, and comment on the acts of their fellow citizens. STOMP users monitor everyday life in the city-state, drawing attention to issues related to public transport, roads, new forms of social practices online, national identity and cultural practices. These monitorial contributions range from the silly to the serious, but always engage with what it means to be and live in Singapore. In this way, STOMP not only governs the everyday practices of its users, but STOMP users govern themselves and the lives of their fellow citizens through their monitoring and reporting practices.

Conclusion Having taught in Singapore at a local institution for a number of years, I have followed the progress of STOMP with interest. Whenever I raise the topic with my students I am met with a combination of embarrassment and derision. Local Singaporeans—those who are studying media no less!—cannot understand why an outsider would be interested in a publication that is seen as something of a local embarrassment; its contents are seen as too trivial to matter. The suggestion that STOMP could provide a minor, but nonetheless positive political force is too ridiculous to take seriously. Certainly, the limits placed around the practices of citizenship available to STOMP users must be noted. While the citizen monitoring on STOMP is sometimes concerned with institutions (such as the police force) and infrastructure (such as roads and public transport), the focus remains on the individual. Criticism is not levelled at the police force or the roads per se, but at the individuals that belong to or use these institutions, and their affront to the unspoken rules of society. In this way, STOMP demonstrates the success of the Singapore government’s neoliberal project. Singaporean citizens have taken up the task of policing their cultural standards and values as their own. However, STOMP does engage with issues central to citizenship that are not always resolved so comfortably. Ongoing questions about the role in society of particular

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cultural groups (particularly Westerners and the mainland Chinese) as well as the treatment of domestic workers, reveal more clearly the complexities that the government has produced for itself, in its particular version of economic liberalism. Through discussion of these issues, STOMPers make visible the negotiations of power that underlie Singapore society, which in itself is an important and consequential act of citizenship.

Bibliography Beckett, Charlie. 2008. SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks.pdf. Bruns, Axel. 2007. Produsage: A Working Definition. Produsage.org, December 31. http://produsage.org/node/9. Chay, Felda. 2009. “Newspaper readership holds firm in Singapore.” Business Times, October 23, p. 12. Chia Siow Yue. 2011. Foreign Labor in Singapore: Trends, Policies, Impacts, and Challenges. Philippine Institute for Development Studies Discussion Paper, Series No. 2011–24. Chua Beng Huat. 2004. Communitarian Politics in Asia. London: Routledge. Chua Hian Hou. 2009. “The Straits Times maintains its Lead.” Straits Times, October 23, p. 3. Gillmor, Dan. 2004. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. http://oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/index.csp Gitlin, Todd. 2009. “A Surfeit of Crises: Circulation, Revenue, Attention, Authority, and Deference.” Westminster News Online, May 19. http://www.westminsternewsonline.com/wordpress/?p=1951. Glaser, Mark. 2006. “Your Guide to Citizen Journalism.” MediaShift, September 27. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/your-guide-tocitizen-journalism270.html. Hartley, John. 2010. “Silly Citizenship.” Critical Discourse Studies 7 (4): 233–248. Heng, Janice. 2012. “ST still Singapore's most-read newspaper: Survey.” Straits Times, November 3. http://www.straitstimes.com/breakingnews/singapore/story/st-still-singapores-most-read-newspaper-survey20121103.

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Internet Code of Practice. 1997. Media Development Authority. Singapore. http://www.mda.gov.sg/Documents/PDF/licences/mobj.981.Internet_C ode_of_Practice.pdf. Johal, Terry. 2004. “Controlling the Internet: The Use of Legislation and its Effectiveness in Singapore.” 15th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, June 29–July 2, 2004: Asia Examined. Canberra: Asian Studies Association of Australia. Keane, John. 2009. “Monitory Democracy and Media-saturated Societies.” Griffith Review 24: Participation Society, 1–23. Lasica, J. D. 2003. “What is Participatory Journalism?” jdlasica.com, August 7, 2003. http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1060217106.php. Letter from MICA: Distorting the truth, mr brown? 2006. mrbrown, July 3. http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2006/07/letter_from_mic.html. Marshall, T.H. 1963. Sociology at the Crossroads and Other Essays. London: Heinemann. Mutalib, Hussin. 2000. “Illiberal Democracy and the Future of Opposition in Singapore.” Third World Quarterly 21 (2): 313–342. Newswatch.in. 2006. “Asian newspaper industry to grow for another 5–10 yrs.” June 21. http://www.newswatch.in/newsblog/763. Nielsen Press Release. 2012. “SG’s Digital Diet Eats Into Newspapers, TV Numbers.” Press release, November 6, in asiamediajournal.com. http://asiamediajournal.com/pressrelease.php?id=4263. Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —. 2008. “Scales of Exception: Experiments with Knowledge and Sheer Life in Tropical Southeast Asia.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 29: 117–129. Rosen, Jay. 2006. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl _frmr.html#more. Tabuchi, Hiroko. 2010. “Nikkei Restricts Links to Its New Web Site.” The New York Times, April 8. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/technology/09paper.html. Tan, Les. 2008. “Newspapers and television decline while Internet use goes up.” Red Sport, October 19. http://www.redsports.sg/2008/10/19/newspapers-circulation-decline/. The Singapore STOMP. 2007. The Media Report. ABC Radio National, October 4. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/mediareport1999/the-singapore-stomp/3218810.

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The Times of India. 2009. “TOI Online is world's No.1 newspaper website.” July 12. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS-IndiaTOI-Online-is-worlds-No1-newspaperwebsite/articleshow/4769920.cms. Yue, Audrey. 2012. “Queer Singapore: A Critical Introduction.” In Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures, edited by Audrey Yue and Yun Zubillaga-Pow. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

CHAPTER NINE READING CYBER-SAFETY: CO-REGULATORY PARTNERSHIPS, EMPOWERED CITIZENS AND MARKETS FOR EDUCATION PHILIP DEARMAN

Introduction How should we read the proliferation of cyber-safety1 education and awareness programs in relation to wider questions about media, politics and governing in liberal democracies? Should we register them in relation to moral panics about child abuse, child abduction and pornography? Should we, instead, take them at face value, as a sincere attempt to empower “a nation-state of citizens online and off, keen to know their worlds, choose their paths consciously, and actively look after themselves and others” (Slocombe 2013)? What are we to make, in particular, of the co-regulatory scheme that supports the production of these programs? Should we treat it as evidence of a neoliberal state’s abrogation of responsibility to regulate in the public interest, or as an expression of the new political and economic freedoms enabled by the Internet? This chapter navigates a pathway through these conventional markers. First, I note the shift from the social responsibility paternalism of the broadcast era to the co-regulatory framework of public-private partnership used to govern online content since 2000. Second, I table conceptual tools that bypass the two dimensional sense of power often brought to bear in making sense of that shift. Third, I offer a summary of cyber-safety education programs as a socio-technical network. Finally, I pose questions about relationships between key actors involved in this field, which suggest a way of reading cyber-safety in relation to wider political and economic transformations of education.

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In summary, rather than address questions about the efficacy of these programs—which might lead me to ask whether co-regulation offers nothing more than a sop to the sincerity of civics campaigners—I propose instead to ask what challenges are posed in these arrangements, what opportunities are produced, and what responsibilities undertaken.

What is cyber-safety? Cyber-safety has been defined as the “precautionary policies, practices and actions taken by individuals, schools and communities to prevent harm to users…and promote safe and responsible behaviour” (Alannah and Madeline 2009, p. 6). Governments around the world have, since the 1990s, been concerned to formulate programs to address concerns about the safety of children using online media. In 2009 the ALP federal government allocated $125.8 million, to be spent over four years, to support the Australian Federal Police in investigating online child sex abuse, to develop and implement ISP-level filtering, to fund the production of education and awareness programs, and to publish a new cyber-safety website with an improved helpline to provide a quick and easy way for children to “report online incidents that cause them concern” (Commonwealth of Australia 2011, pp. 384–385). Filtering has been the most contentious aspect of this policy. The ALP had been critical of the home filtering system initiated by the previous government (Conroy 2007, p. 4), and proposed to filter at the level of the ISP, only to fall on their sword in late 2012 in the face of overwhelming criticism (Stilgherrian 2012). In September 2013 the Liberal-National coalition performed a minor back flip just 48 hours prior to the election, appearing at first to release a policy proposing that ISPs would provide “home network filters for all new home broadband services, which will be switched on as the default unless the customer specifies otherwise”, only to retract this just hours later, claiming an editorial error, and proposing instead that ISPs would be asked “to make available software which parents can choose to install on their own devices to protect their children from inappropriate material”, which fits more or less precisely with the arrangements currently in place (Liberal Party of Australia 2013). Educational programs are, then, complementary to systems of investigation, enforcement and home filtering. 2 But as has been noted, “Australia’s response to cyber-safety issues has been largely educational” (Commonwealth of Australia 2011, p. 377), and it is reasonable to argue that this has been an outcome of the widespread opposition to the implementation of a national mandatory filtering system. I will return to

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the politics of filtering shortly, after sketching out elements of the regulatory framework.

From paternalism to public-private partnership The federal parliament’s Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety was set up in 2010 in response to a drip feed of news reports about signal crimes involving children and new technology (Conroy 2007, p. 1), media generated moral panics about new and unpredictable forms of popular culture, 3 and an endless stream of cautionary research by psychologists and educationalists about “today’s wired children” (Carr-Gregg 2007, p. xiv). The Committee invited submissions on, among other things, “the nature, prevalence, implications of and level of risk associated with cybersafety threats”, including cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking and sexual grooming, exposure to illicit content, technology addiction, identity theft and breaches of privacy (Commonwealth of Australia 2011, p. xxii). The result was a qualified confirmation that the co-regulatory system put in place at the end of the 1990s (Grainger 1999) is still a sufficient response to those threats. While it recommended extending the educational programs already available, strengthening privacy laws, and engaging more closely with children and young people, 4 High-Wire Act: CyberSafety and the Young argued that the “facilitation of safer online environments requires government, industry and the broader community to work together to realise the benefits…while also protecting Australians from dangers and enabling them to use existing and emerging tools to mitigate risks” (Commonwealth of Australia 2011, p. xvii). Governments, it says, should lead by commissioning the development of resources; industry should exercise their corporate social responsibility by developing new technological solutions to ensure the “safety of consumers”; schools should “encourage” young people to “improve their own safety and online ethics”, and parents should support their children when they “face cybersafety risks and dangers”, keeping lines of communication open and assisting with making sense of educational messages provided by others (Commonwealth of Australia 2011, p. xvii). These partnership arrangements are a component part of political economic changes that have a relatively recent history. Many scholars have noted the wider transformations that occurred late in the 20th century: the undermining of “old certainties” about universal social welfare, the privatisation and corporatisation of public services, an emphasis on re-minted standards of personal and community commitment. Miller and Rose, for example, argue this period saw “a new emphasis on

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the personal responsibilities of individuals, their families and their communities for their own future well-being and upon their own obligation to take active steps to secure this” (2008, p. 84). The duty to protect the rights of citizens had previously been located within what Miller and Rose call a “domain of collective security”, but today that duty has been transferred to “the community”: we are now duly engaged by an “individualized ethos of neoliberal politics: choice, personal responsibility, control over one’s own fate, self-promotion and self-government” (2008, p. 92). In this context, the parameters of media regulation have been redrawn in the face of largely bipartisan arguments for new forms of self-regulation (Schejter and Han 2011). During the broadcast era, when the key medium of influence was based on a scarce and limited resource, it was commonplace for governments to adopt a public interest position on media regulation, to distinguish between what audiences want and what they need. 5 Today, in a complex converged media and communications landscape, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) states that its role is informing the community about communications matters and delivering effective consumer protection…[and providing]…information to facilitate informed decisions about communications products and services. Industrydeveloped codes of practice set out the requirements to meet service and information provision obligations. (ACMA 2012, p. 116)

While this is not the place to relive the political contests by which the current systems of self- and co-regulation came about it is pertinent to remind ourselves of the arguments that could be made in the late 1970s about public versus private responsibility for protecting children. The recommendations of the Senate’s Inquiry into the Impact of Television on the Development and Learning Behaviour of Children (Commonwealth of Australia 1978, hereafter “Children and Television”), exemplify the paternalism of that period’s approach to regulation. The problem of children and television was framed very much in terms of a public distrust of the commercial prerogative of media proprietors. The Senators who wrote “Children and Television” accepted that social scientists were unlikely to ever establish a causal relationship between exposure to televised violence and subsequent behaviours of children, but nevertheless they concluded—specifically in relation to violent content—that “we should not allow children to continue to be at risk…merely because such a link has not been scientifically and irrefutably established” (1978, p. 36).

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“Children and Television” was written at a time when discussions about the possibility of industry self-regulation were intensifying. An earlier ABT internal report titled “Self-regulation for Broadcasters?” (1977) had argued that full self-regulation was still not tenable, and “Children and Television” summarised the situation in this way: In short, the majority of the Tribunal do not believe that the broadcasting industry has shown itself, either through its past performances, or in its current submissions to us, capable of grasping the whole nettle of selfregulation at once. We do not believe they have convinced the public that they are yet willing to put the public interest above their self-interest at all times. In other words, we are not persuaded that the broadcasters will always act in accordance with the concept of the ‘public good’, if, by so doing, they cut across their own interests and diminish their profits. (Commonwealth of Australia 1978, p. 97)

Fast forward to the 1990s, when legislative reforms engineered by both sides of politics sought—according to Terry Flew—“to promote globalisation, microeconomic reform, and national competition policy” (2006, p. 292). Politicians on both sides argued for the adoption of new technologies and services, which would spread the benefits of a growing information economy, in a way that reframed “public interest”. For example, the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 entrenched commercial viability and technological innovation as key policy considerations by specifying that broadcast media should be regulated in a manner that, in the opinion of the regulator, enables public interest considerations to be addressed in a way that does not impose unnecessary financial and administrative burdens on providers of broadcasting services and will readily accommodate technological change. (Section 4 (2))6

So, whereas in 1978 policy makers were keen to put moral pressure on proprietors about their responsibility to protect children from televised violence, in the 2010s it is now de rigueur to argue (a) there is a necessary synergy between national economic development and children using the Internet, and (b) industry stakeholders have an interest in jointly developing measures to mitigate any possible risks. The arguments for change were multiple and complex and so a short summary is necessarily general, but it is useful to note the distinctions between those for and against deregulation. The push to remove regulatory constraint sought to turn the idea of public interest around, to declare there was no single moral standard by which media should abide. There were,

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instead, things that interested the public, and media were just one element of a wider suite of new and growing forms of valid cultural consumption. This was, in part, an anti-elitist argument, one which—as Rhonda Jolly (2007) puts it—asserted that “news and entertainment that has broad, mainstream appeal, which attracts and retains advertisers and sells products is valuable. Everything else is narrow and highbrow, the prerogative of elites who seek to impose their preferences on unwilling citizens”. It was also an argument explicitly against the role of government as a regulator of markets, and it was famously expressed in the US by Mark Fowler, who had been appointed Chair of the Federal Communications Commission by Ronald Reagan in 1981, and who suggested that television was essentially like a toaster. Instead of making public service obligations concrete and real, he [Fowler] sought in effect to eliminate them. As he said: ‘the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants…the public’s interest, then, defines the public interest’. Putting his point more colorfully, Mark said the TV is just a ‘toaster with pictures’. (Hundt 1975)

While self-regulation was embraced by politicians it was not welcomed by everyone. Activists on the Left, in particular, argued against abandoning a sense of public interest entailing state resistance to commercial interests. Robert McChesney, again in a US context, argued that deregulation was an outcome of pressure from capital. The real motor force has been the incessant pursuit for profit that marks capitalism, which has applied pressure for a shift to neoliberal deregulation…There is nothing inherent in the technology that required neoliberalism; new digital communication could have been used, for example, to simply enhance public service media had a society elected to do so. (2001)

Two-dimensional power, technological determinism, actor networks Terry Flew usefully distinguishes between lapsarian and libertarian accounts of regulation. The lapsarian account contrasts a prior era, “in which a pluralistic and civic-minded approach to public policy prevailed”, to the current day, “which is presented as one of ascendant and rampant neoliberalism” (2012, p. 8). Flew notes how this view sees contemporary media regulation as “increasingly narrow and an instrumental commitment

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to market forces”, where the concept of “citizens’ interest” is seen as “a sop, an afterthought or…a measure to appease noisy morals campaigners and religious lobbyists” (2012, p. 8). The libertarian account, on the other hand, is an argument against state regulation, sometimes in the form of anti-censorship campaigns but also in the name of enabling national economic interests by freeing up enterprise from unnecessary “red tape”. In recent debates about children and Internet media, this distinction plays out as an argument between those who urge governments to implement a national filtering system, and those who declare filtering to be either an authoritarian impost on freedom of expression, or unduly expensive to establish and manage. An example of the former is this claim registered in a submission to the Joint Committee on Cyber-Safety by Family Voice Australia, which argued that: All the participants in the cyber-world are human beings and therefore capable of using the new technologies for good—or for evil. The cyberworld therefore cannot be exempt from the kinds of measures necessary in all areas of human communities to protect members of the community— and most especially the weak and vulnerable, including children—from the evil that others may do. (2010, p. 2)

Specifically in relation to the then ALP government’s proposal for a national filtering scheme, they added: Special interest groups are likely to engage in special pleading that the cyber-world is so different than [sic] the rest of the world that different rules should apply. This special pleading should be rejected…Law is designed to restrain evil actions. It must apply to the cyber-world on the same basis as it does in other spheres of human interaction. (2010, pp. 7–8)

An example of the latter view—that is, of filtering as an impost on freedom—can be seen in a submission lodged by Civil Liberties Australia, which argued that concerns about risks to children using Internet media are an outcome of “parents putting extremely powerful technology into their hands before they have the wisdom and maturity to understand the responsibility that brings” (2010, p. 1). Their view is that while such concerns are real, The power this technology brings is hugely important for Australia’s industry, business and innovative future. Government should not be trying to limit this power: even best-intentioned limitations will have unintended consequences, and could make Australia less competitive. (2010, p.2)

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Flew notes the momentum that the libertarian argument about media regulation has at this point in time (2012, p. 8). Policy makers attempting to chart their way through different interests are often confronted with situations in which there are “uneven levels of participation” (Flew 2012, p. 6), and loud voices seem to matter more in the sense that they can drown out alternative positions. This is certainly the case in debates about filtering, where loud voices—which often become abusive and inflammatory—frame filtering as anti-democratic in order to crowd other contributions out. In the comments section of a ZDNet posting on the 2009 announcement by Stephen Conroy that the ALP would establish a national mandatory filtering system by mid-2011, one reader responded: “Funny thing was we all complained when China did this, yet we allow it here in our own free (well I thought we were) country. Communism is alive and well after all” (Tung 2009). Even well after the 2012 announcement that the policy had been shelved, another writer found good reason—a set of media ownership reform Bills presented to Parliament in March 2013—to protest that Conroy’s attempts to impose an Internet filter were evidence of a “misguided authoritarianism”, indeed of a “moronic paternalism” (Kampmark 2013).7 To sum up, a key assumption of traditional arguments about technology is that humans and technological artefacts are independent variables, which can, independently of each other, transform society. Tensions between them lead to contests over freedom, which is either constrained or empowered. The problem here is that these debates work with disabling notions of sovereign power and technological determinism, which only lead backwards and forwards between what we might call “different amounts of power”. On the one hand, governments either have responsibility and choose to use it, or they abrogate it. On the other hand, online worlds can be seen as essentially separable from the life of the child or their parent, and the interests of an ISP can somehow be disentangled from those of the regulator. In each case these actors are then seen as embroiled in contests over relative amounts of freedom. As Flew points out, the difficulty for policy makers in the face of this kind of debate is that “we tend to work with a quantitative model of regulation”, with “more market/less state, or more state/less market (or less freedom from a libertarian perspective)”, and the outcome is a two-dimensional model of power, in which the world is seen to be divided “between the forces of hegemony and the spirits of subversion” (Flew 2012, p. 9). Interestingly, Flew notes that academic literature on regulation does not get caught up in a state versus markets dichotomy, either in the form of “a motivated shift away from public-collective values to private-

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individualistic values”, as suggested in critiques of neoliberalism, or in terms of the rise of a “nanny state” so feared by libertarians (Flew 2012, p. 9). Instead, state as well as non-state actors are examined in terms of a series of interdependencies between them. Markets are considered in terms of actual strategies and practices by which a variety of stakeholders attempt to govern their input, the input of others, decisions and actions, and outcomes. Markets are seen as inherently regulated—or at least “regulatable”—spaces within what John Braithwaite calls “regulatory capitalism”: Markets...have tended to become more vigorous, as has investment in the regulation of market externalities. Not only have markets, states, and state regulation become more formidable, so has non-state regulation by civil society, business, business associations, professions and international organisations. Separation of powers within polities have [sic] also become more varied, with more public-private hybridity. (Braithwaite, in Flew 2012, p. 9)

Michel Foucault’s contributions on politics and governing are pertinent here, in making sense of the relationship between states and markets. Famously, he defines power not as a substance possessed or a general sovereign right but as a relationship, as a mode of acting indirectly on the actual and potential capacities and actions of others: “it acts upon their actions: an action upon an action, on existing actions or on those which may arise in the present or the future” (Foucault, in Barnett 2003, p. 81). Foucault, and many others working in the same vein, argue that liberal forms of rule are characterised by a “will to empower” (Cruikshank 1999), or what Clive Barnett calls a “proliferation of programs and policies aimed at assembling populations into capable, self-governing democratic subjects” (2003, p. 84). Foucault sought to describe the historical conditions of knowledge and power through which it became thinkable for “people to be constituted as subjects of self-knowledge, as moral subjects, and as possible subjects of freedom” (Barnett 2003, p. 83). Barnett elaborates further: to claim that a person’s capacities are not innate does not mean they are automatically an effect of some ideology—like Marxism, or neoliberalism—considered as an overriding world view or historical force. Instead, our focus can shift “towards the contingent working up of these capacities…[and to] analysing their conditions of possibility in a historical-genealogical register rather than a foundational one” (2003, p.83). Foucault’s descriptions of contingently formed and dispersed relations of power have been applied by actor network studies to what Muniesa,

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Millo and Callon call the “empirical intricacies of agency” (2007, p. 1) and the “distributed character of action” (2007, p. 2) within socio-technical networks. Such networks “mix humans and non-humans, inscriptions of all sorts, and money in all its forms. Their dynamics can only be understood by way of the translation operation which inscribes the mutual definition of the actors in the intermediaries which are put into circulation” (Callon 1992, p. 96). In sum, actor network studies have called for a rethink of the very idea of “society as a domain distinct from nature and from technical artefacts, and as a way of bypassing the distinction between social structure and agency” (Barry and Slater 2002, p. 178). Knowing the network, then, involves reading inscriptions and making sense of how different actors describe and define others. It entails an understanding of the processes by which networks are formed, or configured, through problematisation, persuasion, enrolment and mobilisation, or—in other words—all the stages of translation which Barry and Slater describe as “the negotiations, intrigues, calculations, acts of persuasion and violence thanks to which an actor or force takes, or causes to be conferred on itself, authority to speak on behalf of another actor or force” (2002, p. 178). Callon (1992) has been particularly helpful in pointing out the political economic dimensions of socio-technical arrangements. He describes a “techno-economic network” as a set of coordinated relations between a diversity of actors “who participate collectively in the conception, development, production and distribution or diffusion of procedures for producing goods and services, some of which give rise to market transactions” (1992, p. 73). He suggests these networks are organised around different poles: the scientific pole, which produces empirical knowledge, e.g. universities, research centres, industrial centres; the technical pole, which “conceives of, develops or transforms artefacts destined to serve specific purposes” (1992, p. 74), and includes all the modelling, prototyping, testing and trialling of technical systems and applications; and the market pole, at which users and producers express and/or produce a demand or need and try to satisfy it. All the forms of production and exchange we see in a techno-economic network involve a “series of activities of intermediation between these poles” (Callon 1992, p. 74), and here we can see four types of intermediaries—texts, artefacts, people, and money (or forms of currency/exchange, more broadly)—each one of which “describes (in the literary sense) and composes (in the sense of giving form to) a network” (Callon 1992, p. 75). Might it be possible, then, to consider cyber-safety not simply as a list of dangers, presented as objective facts and logically corresponding

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solutions, but as a socio-technical network in which a diversity of actors are engaged in formulating a range of problems, developing persuasive solutions, and forming and mobilising relationships around the constitution of both subjects and markets? If this is the case, what does it look like?

Reading cyber-safety as network The problem of safety is routinely framed in terms of something audiences lack in the face of new technological and social forces— popularly portrayed as unstoppable, almost agent-less—such as technical skills or a contextual understanding of risk. In the same way that a health condition such as diabetes is routinely attributed to a lack of dietary knowledge, and where the solutions arrived at emphasise the need to inform the eater rather than interdict in food production and marketing, the approach to questions about safety is framed around the task of modifying children's behaviour through information. The solution is then developed as many persuasive texts—including quizzes, games, videos, stories etcetera—which form the basis of education and awareness campaigns, in which the “moral” is supposed to be hard to miss. Their authors and producers work overwhelmingly on the assumption that audiences are rational, will duly take note of warnings about danger, and will see the sense of adjusting their behaviour accordingly (Lupton 1999, p.21). Sometimes this is made explicit in an organisation’s public framing of itself: for example Life Education asserts that its programs assist children and young people to “acquire age appropriate knowledge to support informed health choices, [d]evelop and practice skills and strategies to act upon individual decisions [and] [r]ecognise the values and attitudes that may influence lifestyle choice and behaviour” (Life Education). Information-heavy public campaigns are grounded in an understanding of meaning as the transmission of communication, and therefore of communication as a straight line between sender, message and receiver.8 This “information deficit” model of communication has often been discredited in contemporary accounts of culture and communication (Potter and Oster 2008, pp. 118–120), which have sought to make sense of meaning as an outcome of an active reading, by diverse audiences, often in quite resistant ways, of complex texts that have been constructed according to available symbols and codes. Nevertheless, it still forms the cornerstone of many public/political communication campaigns.

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This line of critique gets us some of the way to understanding what is at stake here, however it begs the question: “well, if that doesn’t work, what will?” It presumes, in other words, that there is a “best” way to achieve the desired outcome. My intention, however, is not to trump existing programs with a better solution but rather to consider what they are part of, politically and economically. I want to suggest that we turn our attention to the relationship between cyber-safety education, the partnership model of co-regulation, and the programmatic production of new kinds of subjects who are amenable to the needs of a digital economy. In order to do that I offer a brief taxonomy of key elements of cybersafety programs. The following is not a comprehensive empirical summary. I am not trying to evaluate programs, in terms of—for example—the extent to which audiences are successfully mobilised. I leave that up to the growing number of research programs clustered around questions about children and online media. I offer instead a short outline, in terms derived from Callon’s (1992) summary of intermediaries, which can in turn offer grounds for coming to a conclusion about the relationship between cyber-safety as a governmental concern and the political and economic contexts in which various corresponding solutions are composed, distributed and rehearsed. Specifically, I describe the network in terms of different text types and their respective audiences, key messages, their occasions of use, and the partnership relations between producers.

Texts and audiences Program materials are produced for specific but sometimes overlapping audiences. Lesson plans and learning modules are tailored to the needs of time-poor teachers, struggling to find a place for new content in an already crowded curriculum calendar. Information and advice pages, which are both publicly and privately produced,9 speak to parents about building relations of trust with children, and offer tips and tricks for policing their access to the Internet. Both teachers and parents are addressed by sites published by state and federal officials, which either publish or link to text heavy summaries of policies and resources (such as, for example, the Australian government’s Easy Guide to Socialising Online). Internet media corporations such as Facebook and Google have responded to government and community pressure by publishing similarly dense “Family Safety Centers”, offering tips on “how to protect your family online”. These audiences are also the target for campaign pages established by coordinators of national and international days and weeks

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of action, such as the National Child Protection Week (managed by the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect), and Safer Internet Day (coordinated in Australia by the ACMA). A range of sites target age-specific child audiences with a mix of information and “fun”, offering quizzes, games and animations for young children, as well as short films and Facebook pages for teenagers. There are numerous social learning networks—which are reminiscent of earlier newspaper “kids clubs”, premised on the idea of a safe zone of fun and games—including Skooville and Club Penguin. The ACMA’s Cybersmart page links to public and private resources for parents, but also offers games and quizzes for different child audiences, as well as a Facebook page for teenagers. These various outlets use a mix of audio visual material: we see promotional videos of campaign launches, or stories about particular projects, often with celebrity endorsement; we see footage of children working with computers in schools, often in new learning spaces, which are well equipped (for example with digital whiteboards, laptops, tablets), presenting as promotions for the “digital education revolution” as much as offering solutions to any concerns about safety; we see stock images of individual children looking at computer screens suggesting “danger!”, but also of children accompanied by parents, indeed sometimes of the whole family, suggesting the computer, alternatively, as the centre of an ideal family life in the same way that the television or the pianola once were. Finally, we can note the proliferation of news stories about bullying, about the uses and consequences of social media, about teaching solutions and so on, in mainstream newspapers and on broadcast TV/radio channels, in professional journals (for example in the AFP’s Platypus, the DEECD’s Inspire, or Educational Technology Solutions) 10 as well as blogsites, ezines, discussion/email lists etcetera—where journalists, experts, parents, teachers, activists are engaged in circulating arguments, evidence, opinions, tips and tricks.

Key messages There is a seemingly endless repetition of a limited number of key messages. Principal among them, and one which is borrowed from a long history of “stranger danger” awareness programs, is the claim that “the Internet is a dangerous place”, and that the risks attached to entry are uncertain and unpredictable. Consider, as an example, this claim published on the Raising Children Network website:

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Chapter Nine Ensure that your child understands that people she meets and chats to online need to be treated with serious caution. These people could be pretending to be someone they’re not to gain your child’s trust. Some even pretend to be another child so they can exploit and befriend children. (Raising Children Network)

A second set of key messages addresses the need for parents, teachers and children all to develop new skills, including basic technical skills for using computers and the Internet, as well as more sophisticated skills for managing their presence within social media sites. The latter are sometimes embedded in programs focused on ethical decision making, which seek to develop the capacity for what one author calls a “conscious and informed decision making…[as well as] healthy appetites for finding out more about the world” (Slocombe 2013). This speaks to the reader as a democratic citizen capable of making their way through complex situations, asking questions, contributing to decision making, able to use online sites “in a safe, creative way, and inspiring others to do the same” (NSW Department of Education and Communities). A related stock of messages seek to mobilise supportive peer and family relationships. These are embedded in social skills programs addressed to children in classrooms, for example in the Australian Human Rights Commission’s “Back Me Up” project, which offers prizes to young teenagers in return for producing and submitting videos on the theme of “don’t be a bystander”, and in programs like Bullying No Way! (managed by the Safe and Supportive School Communities (SSSC) Working Group) which uses the logo “Take a Stand Together”. Parents are also urged to build trusting relationships with their children, on the understanding that “most cyberbullying happens outside of school” (Body & Soul Mums). In practice there are overlaps between these categories: in learning how to manage a digital reputation, for example, a child requires a technical knowledge of “privacy settings”, a social sense of the limits of friendships, and an ethical understanding of the very concept of “reputation”.

Occasions of use Children, teachers and parents use the various programs and information pages in a variety of contexts: teachers offer children time in the classroom, either in all-class computer lessons, or in timeslots where they can allocate them individually to a computer, perhaps as part of a literacy project, and especially where they can make use of self-directed online “modules” or “packages”; parents can use them as ready reckoners, almost like fridge magnets with bullet point summaries and contacts;

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children use social learning network sites like Penguin Club and Skooville, or game sites like Webonauts (pbskids.org/webonauts) outside of school hours to explore online sites and communication practices, with a degree of parent support.

Producers Materials are commissioned, produced, distributed and evaluated by a mix of public and private players, mostly in partnership. Governments, private entrepreneurs, not-for-profit charities and activist associations, media corporations, law enforcement agencies, university researchers and marketing companies all make significant contributions to the overall effort. The federal government was responsible for developing the Help Button, a browser plug-in which functions as a virtual information and referral service. The site was developed in consultation with the Australian Government's Consultative Working Group on Cybersafety, which includes representation from industry, community and not for profit organisations including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!7, Facebook, the Internet Industry Association, the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, Bravehearts and the Australian Federal Police. New media companies have established themselves as both promoters of children’s Internet use, and also producers of safety solutions, for example Intuitive Media, which runs the social learning network Skooville (formerly called SuperClubsPlus), and which is now a partner with the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre, started life in the UK with a site called GridClub, which was established “with the aim of extending children’s learning opportunities beyond the school day as part of the national drive to raise standards’ (Somekh 2007, p. 49). Not for profit community organisations such as Life Education, which has been providing healthy lifestyle education programs to Australian schools for over 30 years, was recently commissioned to offer a module on cyber-safety (called bCyberWise) in partnership with the digital security corporation McAfee. Life Education has a patchwork funding model that depends on a mix of direct government support, fee-for-service, money raised through service clubs, and sponsorship from large corporations, like McAfee. We can also note the many different forms of expertise brought to bear in producing and circulating program material: media workers editing text, scripting and filming content, coding quizzes; site administrators working

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for corporations like Facebook and Google, or managing the intranet for a local school; strategists working for marketing companies partnering with program principals; ISPs, and their peak body the Internet Industry Australia, publishing information on websites for parents about how to filter their home Internet service. There are a range of disciplines, to boot, divining what impact those media might have on children’s lives, in harnessing the enthusiasm of audiences, in making outcomes visible, in persuading significant decision makers about options for spending money on equipment, software, teaching programs and the like. Here we can note the circulation of statistical studies of different patterns of use, such as the recent Pew Internet study of young teenagers understanding and use of privacy settings on social media (Lenhart et al. 2013). Or we can mention the proliferation of psychological studies of the impact of media use on cognitive function, which are shared between mental health researchers as well as digital marketing companies, both interested in tracing the limits of media influence. There are also legal considerations of the impact of Internet media use on relationships between children and the various institutions whose governance they are subject to, including schools as well as advertising: in, for example, discussions about the need for new legal powers to protect children from predatory marketing (Kermond 2012), or to protect the state from the possibilities of litigation regarding individual cases of bullying (ABC 2010). Finally, we can note sociological studies of the impact of media on family relationships, ethnographic studies of actual patterns of use (Buckingham 2006), interdisciplinary studies of the impact of new media on language learning (Bittman et al. 2012), and cultural studies of the content and meaning of particular media forms and modes of production/reception (as considered, for example by the Child Media Conference, held annually in the UK, at http://www.thechildrens mediaconference.com/).

Discussion These descriptions beg many questions, more than I can answer here. We can at least note that in a co-regulatory system—a set of arrangements in which Internet industries have an active role in regulating themselves, in contributing to the prevention of problems that might occur thanks to their own activities—there are many different community organisations, corporate partners, research centres, and government agencies collaborating as well as competing with each other in a market for limited program funds, bringing

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to bear a range of expertise in producing tailored information packages to promote responsible choice. 11 These various actors are responsible for a proliferation of programs, many of which address questions about citizen formation, while others enable what we might call a commercial flooding of the educational commons. The public spaces of learning, which are increasingly digitally extended from school to home, are now routinely crowded out by ads, by product placements and other commercial framings that can be productive of markets for new media consumption. Teachers, parents and children are, indeed, caught between overlapping markets: between the revolutionary possibilities of a digital education in their schools, and new entertainment and work opportunities through fast broadband at home. In this overlap we see the development of new kinds of education services and media markets: libraries buying e-books, schools buying modular furniture, governments building and wiring flexible eready classrooms, teachers learning how to blog and use iPads and smartboards, principals and policy makers forming new accountability matrices based on resulting information grids; and households subject to new flows of advertising, urged and persuaded to purchase new media platforms and devices, allowing them to bring the school, the cinema, the sporting ground and the workplace into the home. We can also note—drawing on actor network studies—that in this mixed educational economy there are likely to be multiple problems, framed in sometimes contradictory ways, and competing arguments. While the civic-minded focus on harnessing the enthusiasm and constituting the literacies of new digital citizens, entrepreneurial actors can see a lack of knowledge as a “gap in the market”. While concerns about child safety circulate through the mainstream media and through the capillaries of educative and domestic relations, so too—but generally in a less noisy manner—do arguments about making teachers accountable to a national curriculum, pushing for their pay to be attached to performance assessments in redefinitions of accountable, efficient, quality (digital) education. Regulatory frameworks which encourage partnership between multiple actors overlap, here, with arguments about partnerships between parents, schools and businesses, in which a diversity of stakeholders are encouraged to “partner up” in new kinds of “learning communities”—such as in the current Victorian government’s education policy (Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development 2011). In this context, then, we can say that educational “modules”, or “packages”, are tailored, as “plug and play” resources addressing the presumed needs of busy working parents and time-poor teachers, who puzzle over where to fit cyber-safety in to an already crowded life-work

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balancing act and curriculum map respectively, and as various kinds of commercial and civic incitements to the enthusiasm of young audiences. There is a commercial logic of packaging, as well as a democratic purpose of supporting and commissioning citizens on display here. An interesting example will help tie these threads together. On a DEECD site, in a compilation of resources for teachers, lies a video titled “Developing a Cybersafety Program in Your School” (Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development 2013). In this video, a “digital education specialist” (another new form of expertise) speaks about how giving students a voice in cyber-safety curriculum planning provides a solution for teachers who sometimes struggle to find the best way to teach the topic. She urges the teacher viewer to dispense with a didactic summary of information and instead to adopt an inquiry method, in which students are asked to work independently to come up with answers to questions about what sites they use, how they use them and what enjoyment they derive, as well as what dangers they see, what they do to stay safe, and what they think adults need to know about what their children are doing online. The narrator explains that some schools have even collated and published the material their students have produced, as a webpage for parents, which have been well received. In summary, this points to the possibility that cyber-safety is both a site for the development of new markets for educational services, for new forms of “edutainment” and for digital media production as well as a programmatic mobilisation of digitally literate citizens. It is a site at which various actors register strategies for teaching children useful protective behaviours in relation to clear and present dangers, but at the same time it cannot be divorced from the need to ask questions about how the responsibility for education is to be distributed between public and private interests. This is to suggest a reading of cyber-safety as part of a wider game of actors, strategies, technologies, confusions, controversies and contingencies, all relating to the development of digitalised forms of capitalism. Does that mean I am suggesting this is all about the reproduction of capital? No. I have instead been pointing to an ensemble of diverse factors, to what Miller and Rose call “revised ways of representing, problematising and intervening in a whole number of different arenas” (2008, p. 89), in order to suggest that in this particular field we call “cyber-safety”—around which the formulation and contest of political interests will continue apace—there are several problems, multiple options and uncertain outcomes. These include, but are not limited to: reframing libraries as portals through which one can now dive into new kinds of e-learning materials (a window into a digitally

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refashioned commercial publishing industry); the application of private industry performance management practices to teacher workforces, for example where pay rises are traded, at least in part, for new performance management standards; and the incitements continually extended, although not always enacted with grace, to parents to act as “partners” in their children's education. To conclude, there is no single causal force involved in making children safe or unsafe, in determining or taking responsibility. Cybersafety is at once an index of a wider shift from “the social” to “the community”, a component part of the promotion of digital economic production and of a suitably equipped self-managing digital labour force, and a reminder of the growth of globalised, marketised and privatising education policies and practices (Ball 2009, 2012; Burch 2009).

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Imperialism.” Monthly Review 52 (10). http://monthlyreview.org/2001/03/01/global-media-neoliberalism-andimperialism. Miller, Peter and Nikolas Rose. 2008. Governing the Present. Cambridge: Polity. Muniesa, Fabian, Yuval Millo and Michel Callon. 2007. “An Introduction to Market Devices.” The Sociological Review 55 (supplementary issue): 1–12. New South Wales Department of Education and Communities. “Raising Good Digital Citizens.” http://www.schoolatoz.nsw.edu.au/technology/usingtechnology/raising-good-digital-citizens. Potter, Emily and Candice Oster. 2008. “Communicating Climate Change: Public Responsiveness and Matters of Concern.” Media Information Australia 127: 116–126. Raising Children Network. “Internet Safety”. http://raising children.net.au/articles/Internet_safety.html/context/480. Schejter, Amit M. and Sangyong Han. 2011. “Regulating the Media: Four Perspectives.” In Handbook on the Politics of Regulation, edited by David Levi-Faur, pp. 243–253. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Slocombe, Judith. 2013. “Safety First, but Citizenship the Goal.” ACMA Cybersmart Blog, August 6. http://engage.acma.gov.au/cybersmart/2013/08/safety-first-butcitizenship-the-goal/. Somekh, Bridget. 2007. Pedagogy and Learning with ICT: Research the Art of Innovation. London and New York: Routledge. Stilgherrian. 2012. “Net filter backdown shows power in the hands of the smart.” Crikey, November 9. http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/11/09/net-filter-backdown-showspower-in-the-hands-of-the-smart/. Tung, Liam. 2009. “Mandatory ISP filter due mid-2011.” ZDNet. http://www.zdnet.com/mandatory-isp-filter-due-mid-2011339300060/. Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. 2011. “Victoria as a Learning Community.” Speech by the Hon. Martin Dixon, M.P. and Minister for Education, University of Melbourne, November 29. http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/department/learnin gcommuity29nov.pdf.

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—. 2013. “Developing a Cybersafety Program in Your School.” Learning Resource ID 8F47P4. https://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/pages/View.aspx?pin=8F47P4.

Notes 1 The term “cyber-safety” is used in Australia—sometimes without the hyphen— in preference to “e-safety”, “online safety” and “Internet safety”. 2 They add also to loose systems of accreditation—in which schools and teachers are asked to benchmark themselves against guidelines and standards specified in the National Safe Schools Framework and the recently established Australian Professional Standards for Teachers—and to government endorsed systems of contracting in which students (or their parents) are asked to sign and adhere to Acceptable Use Agreements specifying conditions of access to school intranet systems. 3 This segment of ABC Radio National’s Life Matters program was introduced thus: “Are you the parent who always says no when everyone else says yes?...Popular culture and marketing is so pervasive that many parents fear they’ve lost the battle” (ABC 2008). 4 One of the Report’s final conclusions was about the importance of valuing the contributions of young people. “They have a wonderful capacity to adapt, learn and inform their peers, and this capacity should be harnessed in initiatives that government, industry and non-profit organisations develop” (Commonwealth of Australia 2011, p. 488). 5 Some writers have argued that this was merely a matter of public pretence. “On the other hand, a number of media critics argue the idea of a public interest has played no role in media policy making in Australia. In reflecting on the Hawke Labor Government’s reshaping of the media industry in 1986, it is Julianne Schultz's view, for example, that the public interest was not considered. According to Schultz, there was talk of takeovers, share price movements and accusations of deals for mates, but no discussion of why the ownership of the media is important in a liberal democracy” (Jolly 2007). See also Flew’s (2006) history of Australian broadcasting regulation from the 1950s to the 2000s. 6 This clause was extended to online services when the regulation of telecommunications was folded into the BSA through the Broadcasting Services (Online Amendment) Act 1999. 7 These sentiments have substantial currency, and they have had for some time: they did not just pop up at the sight of the ALP’s proposal. They are, instead, evidence of a view about parental as opposed to governmental responsibility. On a Whirlpool discussion forum in 2006, on a thread about options for home computer filtering, an apparently ex-computer technician complained about parents who thought filters were a substitute for active parenting: “My real gripe with Internet filtering software is the number of computers I used to have to fix where parents would come in and say ‘but I've got net nanny. They couldn’t have gotten a porn dialer on the computer’ etc. It’s an absolute false sense of security. Teaching

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children about the aspects of the Internet that can be dangerous, rather than just blocking it off is the real answer. A child learns from making mistakes, and being punished in some way. Wrapping your child in bubble wrap, and only feeding them mushy foods, while locking them in a room will not prepare them in any way for the world outside” (RichardM, Whirlpool Discussion Forum “Family Friendly initiative”, 22 August 2006, Whirlpool reference whrl.pl/RXL9O). Another contributor to the same discussion emphasised the same point: “I can’t for the life of me understand why parents take this sort of attitude. They’re paranoid about what their children might be exposed to on the Internet, yet they don’t take the time or effort to supervise their children themselves. Then beyond that, they don’t believe that they should have to take the initiative to ‘protect’ their children from whatever content it is that they find objectionable. It seems simple to me. If YOU provide your children with access to the Internet and YOU don’t supervise what they are exposed to yourself and YOU don’t want them exposed to particular types of content, then it should be upon YOU to put in place some sort of filtering system to block your unsupervised children from the content you find objectionable. You can’t expect the government, or your ISP, to do everything for you. Take some responsibility for your own children” (, Whirlpool Discussion Forum “Family Friendly initiative”, 22 August 2006, Whirlpool reference whrl.pl/RXMcW). 8 This is grounded in histories of communication as transportation—from shipping, to railways, to telegraphy and postal services, to airplanes, and to contemporary digitalised telecommunications—where communication is generally taken to mean “facts”, “information”, or “packages” sent from one location to another. 9 For example, Raising Children Network (www.raisingchildren.net.au) is published by a consortium of state-based and charitable organisations. It publishes a comprehensive compilation of information about child development, which speaks to parents about children in different age groups and on a range of topics. Here, cyber-safety is just one of many “safety” information categories, including water safety, household poisons, and so on. KidSpot (www.kidspot.com.au), on the other hand, is an infotainment website produced by News Limited, addressed to parent audiences, which mixes stories, tips and tricks, and advertising. Regular stories promote responsible parenting, offering suggestions about ways to manage access and to effectively activate home Internet filters. 10 Platypus is a newsletter produced by the Corporate Communications Unit of the Australian Federal Police. Inspire (previously Shine) is a promotional journal, produced by the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development’s public affairs unit. “Cyber Chat” is a regular column in Education Technology Solutions, which describes itself as a journal that “inspires and encourages the use of technology in education. Through its content, Education Technology Solutions seeks to showcase cutting edge products and practices with a view to expanding the boundaries and raising the standards of education curricula. It introduces teachers and IT staff to the latest products, services and developments in education technology with a view to providing practical how-to guidance

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designed to facilitate the integration of those products and services into the school environment in the most productive and beneficial manner possible”, http://education technologysolutions.com.au/2013/09/12/ welcome-to-educationtechnology-solutions/. 11 This logic of competition operating especially between those located in the notfor-profit sector who are constantly looking out for new funding opportunities to survive, is signaled by the oft-repeated pledge that “this program offers a unique learning opportunity”.

CHAPTER TEN MEDIA, POPULISM AND DEMOCRACY: THE CASE OF THE RESOURCE SUPER-PROFITS TAX IN AUSTRALIA CATHY GREENFIELD AND PETER WILLIAMS

Introduction In May 2010, Australian citizens and media audiences had a front-row seat at a spectacular battle over a public policy decision. The policy was the taxation of mining—something with long historical significance in Australian economics and politics.1 During what turned into a seven-week media story, Australians were not simply spectators but were themselves caught up in the battle; exhorted, persuaded, lectured to and repeatedly polled, as well as, for some, engaged to contribute their own voices to public debate. These events had an international dimension through the transnational companies involved and the possible precedent for other national governments considering mining taxation, but most keenly they played out for Australians a contest about who could exercise power and on what grounds and in what relation to them as a citizenry. During this episode, Australians were witness to a vivid tableau of the different yet closely overlapping claims and rhetorical manoeuvres of democracy and populism. They watched and played their part in a contest fought over the legitimacy of a government elected according to the conditions of representative democracy to make decisions in the national interest, and over the possibility of powerful corporations making other persuasive claims to representativeness in ways that could fatally weaken that legitimacy. The contest in question was between the Rudd Federal Labor Government and an historically powerful mining lobby over a proposed Resource Super-Profits Tax (RSPT). The aim of the tax was to ensure that the financial benefits of a substantial resources boom were returned to the

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Commonwealth of Australia, rather than flowing offshore as extraordinary profits to transnational companies. The mining lobby, led by the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), mounted a $22 million advertising campaign against the RSPT, an outlay that ensured blanket coverage for a sustained period through broadcast, print and online media. A feature of the advertising was the use of populist tropes anchored in established Australian political and cultural rhetoric (such as the authenticity of the outback spoken by a man “of” the land), and describing exactly what is at stake in such populist rhetoric is a key driver of this chapter. The campaign was spectacularly successful. A first-term prime minister was removed from office, at least partly in consequence. The proposed tax arrangements were dumped by the incoming prime minister as her first order of business and quickly renegotiated in terms more favourable to the mining lobby, resulting in a compromise Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT). 2 A significant realignment of the fortunes and prospects of political forces in the country—between Government, Opposition, and corporations—was effected. It was an occasion on which many seriously pondered the clichéd question, “who’s running the country?” (McKnight 2010). The significance of the anti-RSPT campaign for Australian democracy was quizzed even as it unfolded. Clive Hamilton, former head of the independent progressive Australia Institute, called the dispute over the super profits tax “a defining moment in Australia’s democratic history, because here we see in its starkest form a conflict between the raw power of capital and the public interest” (2010). By contrast, Chris Berg from the free-market Institute of Public Affairs saw “Big business in full flight [as] the clarion cry of democracy”, reviewing the campaign a year later as revealing “nothing more than the weakness of the Rudd government” (2011). Our consideration of this campaign about a mining tax proceeds from the understanding that democracy and populism, while contingently intersecting, can be distinguished; that democracy is more than a doctrine of popular sovereignty. Conceived in terms of how power is exercised rather than in terms of sovereignty or right, democracy is the practical arrangements which enable those individuals and groups involved in particular activities to participate in decision-making concerning those activities. Amongst other things, it entails the institutions and practices of problem-solving communication—listening, speaking, voting—amongst socially different groups and individuals (Schudson 1997). This is a view of democracy as a mechanism or technology for decision-making (Hirst 1990, p. 23). In such a technology, individuals and groups are multiply

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and complexly qualified, marked by multiple social differences of class, education, generation, ethnicity, gender, region and so on, and how these bear on their acquired capacities for formulating their interests and making decisions. Populism, by contrast, obscures such differences in the attempts by particular actors to form and mobilise populations as “the people”, as— in this case—the “ordinary” Australian, and thereby garner and claim support for those actors’ arguments and agendas. As Hindess and Sawer (2004) have indicated in relation to recent incarnations of populism in Australia, this political form has a long history. For us, this adds to rather than detracts from the need to attend to populist rhetoric’s ongoing successful employment—especially in a case such as the 2010 anti-mining tax campaign where its direct appeal was so clearly consequential for the procedures and institutions of Australian representative democracy. While the initial campaign lasted for seven weeks, it produced a continuing legacy. As a new style of lobbying in Australia,3 it provided a blueprint for subsequent sustained and concerted populist campaigning against Labor policy initiatives including the Gillard Government’s carbon tax, its worldfirst mandatory plain packaging of tobacco products, and gambling reforms. Also extending from the immediate anti-RSPT campaign was a well-publicised questioning by business leaders of the authority of “a heavy touch government” (Maxsted in Hewett 2011): “There is a whiff of illegitimacy about some of the key events in the life of this and the previous government” (Zwitkowski in Kitney 2011).4 A further legacy of the anti-RSPT campaign, confirmed only in February 2013, was a large fiscal hole in the Gillard Labor Government’s budget, with expected billions in mining tax revenue failing to eventuate.5 The anti-RSPT campaign, therefore, stands out amongst the regular run of politicking, lobbying and corporate public relations exercises in Australia by scale and sheer dint of the political and economic outcomes to which it contributed. Our interest here is in its demonstration of a governing rhetoric of market populism which has persuasively shaped the dispositions and interests of Australian populations and recruited electoral allies to particular political parties and economic interests. It is with this focus we next describe the unfolding campaign, before concluding with discussion of the media conditions within which this rhetoric has been used, and the implications it has for democratic forms of governing, in Australia, and perhaps more widely in a time of “media democracy” (Meyer 2002).

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A Populist Campaign The media cycle began on a Sunday afternoon, 2 May, when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan announced the RSPT as part of their “Stronger, Fairer, Simpler: A Tax Plan for Our Future” policy statement. The tax was one of many recommendations in Australia’s Future Tax System Review, a 2010 report on tax reform routinely referred to as the Henry Tax Review after its chair. The RSPT was the centrepiece of fiscal measures aimed at increasing social equity and benefiting Australia’s “working families” and small businesses—Rudd’s favored form of address to the electorate. These measures included an increase in the compulsory superannuation rate, concessions to help older workers with low superannuation balances, and reduction of the company tax rate. The RSPT was designed to deliver “all Australians…a more consistent share in the returns from our non-renewable resources”; and it would also set “a new benchmark for resource taxation” (Commonwealth of Australia 2010, p. v) through its taxation of profit rather than production and its progressive nature (the more profit made, the higher the tax paid). This would redress existing tax arrangements for mining companies which had led to the situation in 2008–09 of mining companies paying 14 per cent in tax, a rate which had “more than halved from an average of around 34 per cent over the first half of th[e] decade” in a period when “[r]esource profits were over $80 billion higher” (Commonwealth of Australia 2010, p. 10).6 A shift to a profits-based tax was something the MCA, along with other stakeholder organisations, was involved with through their submissions to the Henry Tax Review. However, the Government’s setting of the tax at 40 per cent and use of the long-term government bond rate of 6 per cent as the level of profits at which the tax would cut in, outraged the large mining companies BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and the Swiss-based Xstrata, as well as smaller Australian mining houses such as Fortescue Metals, Hancock Prospecting and Mineralogy. The RSPT was immediately rejected by the MCA, which, with the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) and the CEOs of various companies, quickly went on the offensive. Australia was “a capitalist country turning communist” according to Fortescue Metal’s Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest (in Hudson 2010), with the RSPT “a 40 per cent nationalisation [of the mining industry], not a tax of super-profits” (in Stevens 2010). 7 Rio Tinto denounced what it said was Government misrepresentation of the recent history of mining tax and counter-claimed on the mining industry’s virtuous contribution to Australia and Australians:

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Chapter Ten All Australians benefit from a strong mining sector. In the same way all Australians are affected by measures that hurt the mining sector. Australia was saved from the worst of the GFC by the strength of the resources sector, but the same industry is now being portrayed by the Government as not paying its way. (Rio Tinto 2010)

The RSPT was presented as being out of all proportion with taxes elsewhere in the world, 8 as constituting a sovereign risk to the mining companies,9 and as “the biggest threat the mining industry has faced on a global scale” (BHP Billiton CEO Kloppers in Hewett 2010). Queenslandbased mining magnate Clive Palmer, of Mineralogy, drew the following exuberant picture for TV viewers: The perception overseas is that it is a 70 per cent tax on mining in Australia, so avoid Australia…there won’t be any further investment… Mums and dads all over Australia will become unemployed. They won’t have the money to buy their Christmas presents for their kids. They will be out on the street. (Palmer 2010)

These exorbitant claims and others like them were widely reported, invoked by the Opposition in Parliament and further relayed in media grabs as showing a Government under huge pressure. They were also used to establish the Opposition’s policy position—“oppos[ing] Mr Rudd’s great big new tax on the mining sector. We believe Mr Rudd’s latest tax grab is economic vandalism” (Liberal Party TV 2010). “Axe the Tax” quickly became the Opposition’s ubiquitous slogan. The claims cascaded through opinion pieces and interviews across broadcast, print and online media as well as in letters to mining company shareholders. Print opinion journalism was amplified through radio talkback, as in this example of commercial radio 2GB’s Alan Jones, 10 reading from The Australian’s economics commentator, Terry McCrann, to set the agenda for Jones’ morning talkback segment: Terry McCrann argues today that this is not about complex theory, it’s just about trust and the Prime Minister, he says, has lost any claim to it from ordinary Australians. Quote: lost it completely, utterly and deservedly writes McCrann. Elsewhere McCrann writes, if Rudd and Wayne Swann actually believe anything over 6 per cent is a super profit they are totally and dangerously incompetent, and Terry McCrann says of the tax, what makes it recklessly unacceptable is that it threatens real and serious damage to Australia and to every Australian. (Jones 2010)

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The news and current affairs cycle was dominated throughout May and June with stories of grim-faced lobbying, reports of resource companies pulling out of projects,11 and repeated statements from the prime minister that he wouldn’t bow to companies’ threats.12 Daily news coverage of the share prices of major mining companies was framed as, in effect, an opinion poll by investors on the tax. In the nation’s newspapers, a succession of full-page colour advertisements placed by the MCA and the major mining companies spoke loudly for “the national interest” and “all Australians”: “There is far too much at stake for all Australians. We have to get this right” (BHP Billiton 2010); “decisions affecting the mining industry—and all Australians—have been taken in secret, and launched without warning” (MCA 2010a); “It’s time for the Government to sit down and act on the legitimate concerns of business, industry, economic experts and the Australian community. Tell the Government they must get this right” (MCA 2010b). To facilitate this injunction to “tell the Government”, the MCA set up a website (keepminingstrong.com.au) with a blog and twitter feed, for people to “watch the mining community’s message to Canberra now” and to themselves take action. Matching the scale of the print advertisements, radio and television advertisements played on close rotation: the eleven television commercials commissioned by the MCA alone played “1011 times across free-to-air TV an average of 33 times a day” in the first month of the campaign (Lee 2010).13 As well as omnipresent, the anti-RSPT campaign was marked by an element of spectacle: highly theatrical performances by Australia’s richest woman (Hancock Prospecting Executive Chair, Gina Rinehart) and Australia’s then fourth richest man (Fortescue Metal’s “Twiggy” Forrest), both in hard hats, at an “Axe the Tax” rally; daily media inspections of personalities for strain under pressure, mainly Prime Minister Rudd and Treasurer Swann; public statements from highly placed individuals providing fodder for on-going quotation and speculation, such as a senior Labor figure’s opinion column assessment—“I regret to say Kevin Rudd has to go. He is doing terminal damage to brand Australia” (De Lacy 2010). The spectacle was part of a wider media atmosphere of affective engagement with the issue: anxiety, outrage, mocking humour, and furious disputation from high profile players and citizen prosumers alike were all on show. The community advocacy organisation GetUp! tried to inoculate readers against the mining lobby’s offensive with its advertisements in the Australian Financial Review, quoting a former head of the MCA—“The Minerals Council scare campaign against a super profits tax: ‘hysterical’ ‘self-serving’ ‘apoplectic’”; and in the Australian, answering GetUp!’s own question, “Who gains the most from a scare campaign against a tax

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on the super profits of the mining industry?—Mining CEOs”. 14 The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union’s “It’s Going to Ruin Us” video advertisement (CFMEU 2010)—online, but also gaining some television airplay—satirised a procession of “bosses” predicting ruination flowing from a series of landmark historical reforms such as the 8-hour day and sick pay. In effect, the video humorously contested who gets to invoke a community of address (the use of “we” and “us”); a contestation, that is, of whether it is bosses who can credibly talk of “us”, or the Union producers of the video in concert with its viewers, as in the final caption, “We have heard it all before”. All in all, the period was an excellent example of media having become “the prime scene of politics” (Dahlgren 2009, p. 53)—politics being played out in highly visible fashion and as media spectacle. If the Union’s satire mentioned above employed a familiar left populism—targeted against “bosses” as morally bereft, and addressing its viewers as able to recognise that bosses can’t be trusted—it was neither these nor similar advertisements, nor anti-mining lobby user-generatedcontent that predominated. As mentioned above, the saturation television advertising was commissioned by the MCA and AMEC. What most media audiences were repeatedly hailed by were advertisements with, for example, the MCA’s economical and persuasive re-scripting of an icon of Australian television and culture: a working man literally “of” the land, a down-to-earth straight-talking bloke, visually established as part of the purported heart and truth of Australia, the outback, telling them (in direct address) about “our” country, telling them what’s threatening it, gathering the viewer up as a worker, a shareholder, as someone with superannuation, someone who’s part of a community, in the towns and cities just as much as the outback, gathering “us” up in our individual situations as part of “everyone”: “Australian mining is a world leader. It saw our country through the GFC. Weaken mining, you weaken the country. But that’s exactly what the government’s new super tax is doing. Billions of dollars of investment are already on hold. If it goes ahead it will affect jobs, projects, superannuation funds, communities all over Australia. So, who’ll be hurt by this tax?...everyone”. (MCA 2010c)

In response the Government’s “information campaign” advertisement —a man in a lecture theatre armed with PowerPoint and telling an attentive audience, “I think everyone agrees that mining plays a key role in Australia's economic prosperity. I think we can also agree that we need to improve the way mining is taxed…”—was guaranteed by contrast to

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almost prove the populist anti-mining tax campaign’s argument of an elitist government lecturing to the people instead of speaking as part of them.15 Similarly trumping the Government’s reliance on expertise rather than “common sense” was AMEC’s “Oh you’re gonna get whacked, by the mining tax!” advertisement (2010). This, too, enacted the unity in diversity of ordinary (or as 21st-century parlance has it, “everyday”) Australians as a series of individuals from all walks of life are shown, in aestheticising slow motion, being, so to speak, stopped in their tracks or “whacked” by “an extra mining tax”, as the voice-over spells out. The various individuals’ occupations are mostly in non-mining sectors and it is the insistent jingle (“oh, you’re gonna get whacked”) which poetically joins viewers up into a great vernacular “you”—the aggregate of ordinary Australians—up against the tax. The tax, issuing from a never explicitlynamed government, is—the voice-over tells viewers—leaving us all uncertain except for the common sense certainty that “somehow, some way there’s a price to pay”. These examples indicate the major lineaments of the campaign, conducted very much along the lines of an election and political party advertising, but with only one player a political party and the political economic power of big corporations made starkly clear as they established their claim to speak in the national interest and for the Australian people.16 Successfully inscribing the mining tax as isolated from any purpose save the “socialist-redistributionist” inclinations of an over-reaching government, and thus as an irrational punishment of “the ordinary person”, the mining lobby’s position was consolidated by the Opposition’s mantra of “a great big new tax”—a “GBNT”—similarly rhetorically quarantined from any hint of the rationale for the tax. The social equity aspect of that rationale and rationality, spelt out in the Labor Government’s “Simpler, Fairer, Stronger” policy statement, was overwhelmed by its emphasis on the RSPT as an efficient tax. The neo-classical economic talisman of efficiency put the debate in the terms most advantageous to the mining lobby which was able to persuasively argue its superior, common sense, practical understanding of the market (i.e. the market place for risk of capital investment, for mineral commodities, for the government’s longterm bonds which would set the profit rate of the RSPT) in contrast to the government’s theoretical grasp of efficiency.17 Not that the RSPT lacked supporters: experts in favour of the tax, in fact, were forthcoming in interviews, blogging, and most notably and widely reported, in an open letter from 22 prominent economists and academics. One of these, Professor John Freebairn, appeared on ABC

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TV’s 7.30 Report (ABC 2010a) providing comment on the much-reported share market perception of sovereign risk to the value of the mining companies, saying in dismissal of BHP’s and Rio Tinto’s threat of a capital strike, “After all, the government and the people own those mining resources”. But this reference to an alliance of “the government and the people”—the two in harmony—was a notable exception in the framing of the issue. Here, and with the reliance on Freebairn’s economic expertise to debunk the hyperbole of the anti-mining tax forces,18 the twinning of “the government and the people” arguably only secured a further distance from the other, more vernacular sense of “the people” which was being performed in television advertisements at least 33 times a day. This vernacular sense of “the people” was of their being at odds with, in fact under sure and certain harm from, “the government”. We have spent some time describing these communicative details because of the political importance of their recognizable populist grammar or way of making sense. The RSPT and the campaign against it has been the subject of some attention (ABC 2010b; Correy 2011; Gilding et al. 2012; Greenfield 2013; Mitchell 2012) but our particular concern is with the formative media communication of populist relations of power and knowledge, easily overlooked because of their mundane character. These populist relations of power drove decisive calculations affecting democratic arrangements and the possibility of public policy implementation. To identify the populism of the anti-RSPT campaign is to focus on how rhetoric, or the work of political talk and imagery (Latour 2003), is deeply integral to the operation of politics, forming and articulating political identities and relations. This view of populism differs from a characteristic political science understanding of populism as the expression of a deeper ideology (e.g., Abts and Rummens 2007; Di Tella 2007), economic structure, or socio-economic stage of development, and is closer to Canovan’s later work on populism as “an appeal…[a] legitimating framework, political style and mood” (1999, p. 3). It follows Latour (2003) and Mercer (1986) to argue that the existence of groups, of social actors, constituencies, the political figures of “the people” or “the public” or “everyone” for example, does not precede, guarantee and legitimise or determine the exercise of power and political discourse, but is historically and materially constituted by and through that talk or discourse. Talking politics in Latour’s sense, which means “doing” politics, is not about the expression of identities, but the shaping of agency and the making of affiliations. Talking politics using a populist grammar (which can be inflected in various ways), both affiliates members of populations as “everyone” as it installs and exploits major divisions in the conduct of

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politics. In the case of the anti-RSPT campaign, this was a projected divide between “the people” and “the government”—hardly novel, but significant in the space it opened up at this moment in a representative democracy for groups other than elected personnel to claim proper representation of “all Australians” and their interests. The populist grammar of the anti-RSPT campaign was, to a significant degree, established and mobilised by the mining lobby’s advertisements. Advertisements are telling because they are an inscribing technology (Odih 2010, p. 9), which persuasively offers their audiences a position from which to make sense not just of an explicit message but of situations and relations and matters stretching beyond it. It is the relay of their message, but much more importantly, of their sense-making position that makes advertisements potent, for those they do persuade. We should make it clear that we do not assume persuasion of all audiences by the mining lobby’s advertisements and wider arguments; we argue, rather, that they circulated propositions which all their audiences had to negotiate, and which had consequences in the formation of at least some elements of elite opinion (about which more below). The sense-making position of the MCA and AMEC advertising—that of “everyday Australians” being victimised by the mining tax—was also relayed through the mundane assumptions made by journalists and editors in producing news stories about the dispute, for example, stories about mining companies like Xstrata pulling out of projects and jeopardising livelihoods in country towns, where the use of vox pops served typically to visualise the ordinariness of townspeople, their difference each as an individual, and their unity as threatened by the tax.19 Our point is that in news items, as well as in more calculated advertisements, the populist grammar of the vox pop operated to affiliate those members of Australian populations being interviewed and those watching, joining them as “the people” in an antagonistic stance towards “the government” and its tax proposal. The outcome was to crowd out other ways of making sense of the policy. Such alternative—and generally absent—ways of making sense of the RSPT were identified by Laura Tingle, senior political correspondent for the Australian Financial Review: “I think [journalists] didn't serve the public well because they allowed themselves to be too much engaged in what others have called 'He said', 'She said', journalism, largely because it was such a complicated issue they couldn't form an independent view, if you like, or a sceptical view of the issue because they just didn't understand it. So they would just repeat the claims, or report the claims, unverified, if you like, of both sides, or at worst, simply just report the fight at the political level, about the mining

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Chapter Ten tax without actually trying to write enough about 'Well, what's the idea behind this tax? What are the various ways it could go about it? What are the various issues here that can be resolved? Why has the Henry Tax Panel gone for such a complicated model? Why is it that they think that this is the best thing that they can do?' I think it was in that area where I know a lot of people would say to me, 'Look, I just want to understand what the issue is here', and that information just wasn't readily available to them”. (in Correy 2011)

Representing the People The anti-RSPT advertisements are part of a long run of populist television advertising in Australia (King and Rowse 1983; Rowse and Moran 1984), not least for multinational resource companies building themselves a national presence, but also in the 1980s for government campaigns promoting a multicultural Australia. For Australian audiences, “the people” has long been imagined in liberal individualist terms as an aggregate of ordinary Aussies rather than a more organic, unified, or corporate body. This particular liberal individualist mode of imagining or inventing “the people” is also presented relentlessly in current media through the commissioning, publishing and narrating of opinion polls. The cultural technology of opinion polls works precisely on the liberal individualist assumption that everyone and their opinion—which they automatically have inside them, as an individual, to be expressed—is equal, and therefore able to be aggregated into a unity, the statistical, that is, majoritarian unity of “the public” with its opinion (Bourdieu 1979). Opinion polling, its assumptions and how the polls were made sense of across various media, ran through the campaign. During the first month, a marked fall in initial support for the RSPT and increasing numbers of “don’t knows” (Possum Comitatus 2010; Franklin 2010) enabled those campaigning against the tax to claim to represent Australians’ views on the matter, as did News Corporation’s Wall Street Journal (2010): Does Australia, a developed nation that has embraced liberal economic policies for three decades, want to philosophically go the way of freemarket Hong Kong or socialist France?…Mr Rudd's Labor government is pushing ideas that have long been discredited by even his own party. Ordinary Australians know this, which is why Mr Rudd's popularity ratings have plunged in recent weeks. On Friday, the government announced a big advertising campaign to convince Australians to support the tax. And guess who's going to pay for it: taxpayers. Welcome to L'Australia.

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The polls, we are suggesting, mattered less for their accuracy in establishing the preferences of Australian citizens than for the “credible ally” (Latour 1990) they provided for those claiming to represent “the people” while they addressed an actually diverse citizenry. As in an election campaign, and as we have sought to describe above, a host of disparate voices claimed to speak for the Australian people. It is unsurprising for political players to use the national-popular: popular sovereignty is a doctrinal truth in liberal representative democracies as in populism, and therefore something of an inevitable background for the conduct of electoral politics. Nevertheless, populism takes varied forms. Hindess and Sawer (2004) have documented the normalisation of a rightwing populist anti-elitism, in Australia and elsewhere, over the last decade-and-a-half. One element of its recent incarnation, “‘insider’ antielitism” or the deployment of populist rhetoric by powerful business, media or political figures (Hindess and Sawer 2004, p. 1), was on full show with the near daily performances of mining CEOs such as “Twiggy” Forrest, Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer, and Mitch Hooke, secretary of the MCA. This populist anti-elitism also meshes with Frank’s description of market populism: [t]he market and the people—both of them understood as grand principles of social life rather than particulars…essentially one and the same. By its very nature the market [is] democratic, perfectly expressing the popular will through the machinery of supply and demand, poll and focus group, superstore and internet. In fact, the market [is] more democratic than any of the formal institutions of democracy—elections, legislatures, government. (Frank 2001, p. 29)

With this sense of “the market” endlessly rehearsed over the last 30 years (du Gay 2008), the mining lobby’s simultaneous invocation of “the global market” from whence their investment capital was drawn, of “the Australian people” and of “the national interest” took up an already established way of making sense of how things did and should operate, and rammed it home in spectacular and repetitive fashion. Such rhetorical claims to represent the people, knowing by definition what matters to them by being at one with their interests, replays an older and more conservative, less technical and liberal-individualist discourse than opinion polling’s statistical claims for representation. The mining lobby and its allies had no difficulty in presenting the effect that public opinion was firmly on their side, despite the evidence of the various polls being less clear cut (e.g., Keane 2010).

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The state of public opinion mattered greatly for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) political operatives in coming to a decision about deposing Prime Minister Rudd around his repeated public refusal to cede ground on the rate of the tax. While the declining popularity of the Rudd Government was traceable from after the Copenhagen Climate Change conference,20 when Rudd backed off a legislatively defeated Emissions Trading Scheme, it was the characterisation of Rudd and the government as a danger to the Australian economy, apparently lent credence by the polling around the RSPT, that mobilised Labor operatives. Beyond its effect on the specific opinion of the ALP political operatives, what was the reason for the magnitude of the success of the anti-RSPT campaign? The answer to this question is not to be found by pondering whether it better represented the position or attitudes of the Australian public, or ordinary people, than did the Government—or, in particular, than did Rudd (a prime minister understood in terms of the heavily pressed media narrative of the out-of-touch, over-intellectual policy wonk, the not-to-be-trusted, inauthentic Kevin Rudd, “Kevin” whom “we need to have a talk about”, his earlier breakfast-television unity with ordinary folk revealed as a sham). This was not a story of representing “ordinary Australians”—only of mining CEOs, talkback hosts, opinion columnists, pollsters, journalists, politicians, and sundry affiliated groups offering to do so. It is better seen as a concerted episode of storying a population—“storying” it as Mercer (1986) puts it, with the habits and dispositions of what it meant to be “Australian” in 2010. First, storying the members of a population as “ordinary Australians”, a flattening fantasy identity whose main purpose and effect is to direct attention away from the socially organised differences and diverse affiliations which characterise a national population (Rowse 1985); and, as “ordinary Australians”, given to understanding themselves as essentially distanced and alienated from “the government” in Canberra and its associated forms of expertise. Second, storying them with a deep antipathy towards taxation. The “tax” inscription, taken up most vividly in the Opposition’s “GBNT” and “axe the tax” offensive, has operated to make taxation, by definition, a blow to individual freedom and “the economy”. Evidence of the growing antipathy towards taxation is provided in successive surveys by the think tank, Per Capita. In 2013 “[t]he proportion of Australians who believe they pay too much tax passed 50 per cent for the first time”, 21 up from 44 per cent in 2011, while, at the same time support for increased government spending on social security fell from 70 per cent to 40 per cent, and support for increased spending on education slipped from 96 per cent to 75 per cent (Martin 2013a). If the anti-RSPT

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campaign marked the beginning of “axe the tax” as a rallying cry, it has been cascaded—through advertising, talkback, news reporting—from the anti-mining tax rallies, through the Parliament by the Opposition, throughout the 2010 federal election, and thereafter carried across to target the Gillard Government’s Carbon Tax, bolstered by extensive Australian coverage of the 2012 US Presidential election where populist Tea Party anti-tax rhetoric proliferated. (The importation of strategies from other Anglophone liberal democracies is part of the history of Australian electoral politics since World War II.) The resulting formation of a populist, anti-tax constituency, weaned increasing numbers of Australian citizens away from (relatively) public-interest oriented dispositions. This is highly significant for future avenues of representative democracy in Australia, with the difficulty it poses for all political parties and governments faced with having to negotiate competing models of capitalism (carbon-based, high-consumption, high-growth versus an alternative, sustainable green capitalism), without a stable revenue base to enable the required public policy solutions (Frankel 2012).

Conclusions: Media Conditions and Democratic Procedures The conditions within which the anti-RSPT campaign operated are those of the intensified media-cycle of an increasingly digital news environment, with the techniques and professional calculations of communication strategists of various kinds (Dahlgren 2009), the colonisation of politics by mass media and the “uncompromising presentism” produced by its dual filters of news values and aestheticising rules of presentation (Meyer 2002, p. 44), and the concomitant effect of this “media democracy” (Meyer 2002) saturating the political arena with affective technologies aimed at governing voters through “generating engagement” (Thrift 2008, p. 248). The techniques of populist rhetoric, geared towards fear and emotive response, are bolstered in these conditions: “if you want to be heard in a ceaseless clamour of blogs, tweets and talking heads, you need a huge billboard. If emoting is the imperative, then advertising is the obvious recourse” (Murphy 2011). Certainly, Mitch Hooke, the high-profile secretary of the MCA, has described the anti-RSPT campaign as a new paradigm for public policy formation in Australia, one of public contest through the popular media for sentiment favourable to one’s policy position (Hooke in Priest 2011). While the mining lobby’s advertising campaign was costly, the return on investment was outstanding: “The value of the two biggest mining

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companies, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, rose by $600 million and $1.2 billion, respectively, on news of the breakthrough on talks [ditching the RSPT]…after an outlay of $250,000 a day” (Lee 2010). The success of the campaign has thus contributed to the intensification of the use of populist, rather than more deliberative, political and media tactics, and to the expansion of the financial resources employed. A growing list of the success of these tactics includes the derailing of the Gillard Labor Government’s legislative agenda for progressive superannuation reform, for reforming the gaming industry, and for cutting mining and transport industry rebates for diesel fuel. The newly elected Abbott Coalition Government’s draft legislation to repeal the mining tax (that is, the compromise MRRT) will mean repealing measures funded “by Labor’s ‘spreading the benefits of the boom’ package”—a Schoolkids Bonus, a Low Income Superannuation Contribution, an Income Support Bonus, and so on (Martin 2013b). We began by mentioning the opposed views of Hamilton and Berg concerning what the anti-mining tax campaign signified for democracy in Australia. The burden of our argument is that establishing what contributes to democracy and what does not requires distinguishing populism and democracy, and grasping that the (populist) doctrine of popular sovereignty is only one and not the most important element of democracy as a technology for public decision-making (especially in an Australia yoked to a constitutional monarchy). While populist rhetoric affiliates members of populations in ways which may be allied to democratic projects of decision-making, the market populism of the anti-mining tax campaign is resolutely not of this kind. In terms of lessons for media and communication practitioners, media work which contributes to the problem-solving communication integral to democracy as institution and technology is media work which attends to social differences rather than reduces them to a single oppositional divide between “the people” and their other. Journalists and media workers able to recognise and negotiate the easy allures of market populism and its many proponents, and manage the kind of policy focus Tingle called for above, are crucial in this. For all of us who work in educating journalists, media and communication professionals this is an important consideration. Alongside the focus on technological literacy which new media environments have made central to communication degrees, the social and political economic literacy of graduates is essential if the media–politics nexus is to be made more congenial for democracy. As for the long shadow of the defeated RSPT, struggles around the negotiations of a democratic tax base and distributional apparatus will be on-going, no doubt.

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Bibliography Abts, Koen and Stefan Rummens. 2007. “Populism versus Democracy.” Political Studies 55 (2): 405–424. ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). 2010. 7.30 Report, May 12. —. 2010b. “What’s Yours Is Mine.” Four Corners, June 7. http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20100607/mining/. AMEC (Association of Mining and Exploration Companies). 2010. ‘Oh You’re Gonna Get Whacked.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CREUOpaVYJQ. Berg, Chris. 2011. “Big business in full flight is the clarion cry of democracy.” Sydney Morning Herald, May 1. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/big-business-in-full-flight-isthe-clarion-cry-of-democracy-20110430-1e22d.html. BHP Billiton. 2010. Advertisement. Age, June 25, p. 4. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. “Public Opinion Does Not Exist.” In Communication and Class Struggle, Volume 1: Capitalism, Imperialism, edited by Armand Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub, pp.124–30. New York: International General. Bryan, Dick. 2011. “Twiggy’s sticking to his MRRT story, so it’s time for a miner story.” The Conversation, June 16. http://theconversation.edu.au/twiggys-sticking-to-his-mrrt-story-so-itstime-for-a-miner-history-lesson-230. Canovan, Margaret. 1999. “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy.” Political Studies XLVII: 2–16. CFMEU (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union). 2010. “It’s Going to Ruin Us.” June 3, Manic Studios. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4PcQfz0MfU. Chambers, Matt and Sarah-Jane Tasker. 2010. “Mining tax uncertainty hit Australian dollar, says Albanese.” Australian, May 24. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/mining-taxuncertainty-hit-australian-dollar-says-albanese/story-e6frg9df1225870612050. Commonwealth of Australia. 2010. The Resource Super Profits Tax: A Fair Return to the Nation. http://www.deewr.gov.au/Department/Documents/Files/Announcemen t%20document.pdf. Correy, Stan. 2011. “Taxing Mines.” Background Briefing, ABC RN, March 27. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/taxi ng-mines/2995626.

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Dahlgren, Peter. 2009. Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication, and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Lacy, Keith. 2010. “Buck stops with Rudd and the bill is due.” Australian, June 12. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/buck-stops-with-rudd-andthe-bill-is-due/story-e6frg6zo-1225878627928. Di Tella, Torcuato. 2007. “Populism into the Twenty-first Century.” Government and Opposition 32 (2): 187–200. Du Gay, Paul. 2008. “Keyser Süze Elites: Market Populism and the Politics of Institutional Change.” Sociological Review 56 (Special Issue Supplement) 1: 80–102. Frank, Thomas. 2001. One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy. New York: Anchor Books. Frankel, Boris. 2012. “It’s the tax base stupid.” Age, October 9. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/its-the-tax-base-stupid20121008-2798v.html. Franklin, Matthew. 2010. “Support for super profits tax is minimal.” Australian, 11 June. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/support-for-superprofits-tax-is-minimal/story-e6frg6nf-1225878165584. Gilding, Michael, Elizabeth Merlot, Shirley Leitch, Vikki Bunton and Lee Glezos. 2012. “Media Framing of the Resources Super Profits Tax.” Australian Journal of Communication 39 (3): 23–40. Greenfield, Cathy. 2007. “Anti-Elitism and Shifting Realism: Putting Communication and Politics into Accounts of ‘the People’.” Communication, Politics & Culture 40 (2): 74–99. —. 2013. “Building Political Economic Literary in an Unexpected Place: Some Curriculum Suggestions for Communication Students.” Journal of Cultural Economy. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17530350.2013.781532#. Um9FIJQY250. Hamilton, Clive. 2010. “We stand by meekly as the rich greedily assert their power.” Age, June 14. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/we-stand-by-meekly-asthe-rich-greedily-assert-their-power-20100613-y5ut.html. Hewett, Jennifer. 2010. “Tax biggest danger to mining: BHP Billiton CEO Marius Kloppers.” Australian, June 7. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/tax-biggest-danger-tomining-marius-kloppers/story-e6frg8zx-1225876203592.

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—. 2011. “Company chiefs express grave anxiety over Canberra’s policies.” Australian, July 23. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/business/company-chiefsexpress-grave-anxiety-over-canberras-policies/story-fn6q7nm81226100084167. Hindess, Barry and Marian Sawer. 2004. “Introduction.” In Us and Them: Anti-Elitism in Australia, edited by Barry Hindess and Marian Sawer, pp. 1–7. Perth: API Network. Hirst, Paul. Q. 1990. Representative Democracy and its Limits. Cambridge: Polity. Hudson, Phillip. 2010. “Andrew Forrest attacks mining tax consultation as charade as defiant Kevin Rudd declares he will not abandon his RSPT.” Herald Sun, June 10. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/defiant-kevin-rudd-declares-hewill-not-abandon-his-mining-tax/story-e6frf7jo-1225877670159. Jones, Alan. 2010. “The Alan Jones Breakfast Show.” 2GB, May 25, radio broadcast. Keane, Bernard 2010. “Labor arrest decline, says Morgan, but we’re divided on the RSPT.” Crikey, May 28. http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/05/28/labor-arrests-decline-saysmorgan-but-were-divided-on-the-rspt/. King, Noel and Tim Rowse. 1983. “‘Typical Aussies’: Television and Populism in Australia.” Framework 22/23: 37–42. Kitney, Damon. 2011. “Business turns up the heat on ALP, criticize ‘thought bubble’ politics.” Australian, July 23, p. 1. KPMG. 2010. Potential Financial Impacts of the Resource Super Profits Tax on New Mining Projects in Australia. http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/reports/MCA__Supplementary_Report.pdf. Latour, Bruno. 1990. “Drawing Things Together.” In Representation in Scientific Practice, edited by Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar, pp.19–68. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —. 2003. “What If We Talked Politics a Little?” Contemporary Political Theory 2 (2): 143–64. Lee, Julian. 2010. “How a $7m advertising campaign saved a fortune.” Sydney Morning Herald, July 2. http://www.smh.com.au/business/how-a-7m-advertising-campaignsaved-a-fortune-20100701-zqtq.html. Liberal Party TV. 2010. “Tony Abbott—we will oppose Mr Rudd’s big new tax.” May 6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku7yNAjP8u4&feature=

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McKnight, David. 2010. “Nothing new in government caving in to demands of miners.” Sydney Morning Herald, July 6. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/nothing-new-in-governmentcaving-in-to-demands-of-miners-20100705-zxhu.html. Martin, Peter. 2013a. “Australians opposed to more tax.” Age, 25 March, p. 2. —. 2013b. “Coalition to save stash of cash in abolishing tax.” Sydney Morning Herald, October 25. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/coalition-tosave-stash-of-cash-in-abolishing-tax-20131024-2w4dq.html. Mercer, Colin. 1986. “That’s Entertainment: The Resilience of Popular Forms.” In Popular Culture and Social Relations, edited by Tony Bennett, Colin Mercer and Janet Woollacott, pp. 177–195. Milton Keynes: Oxford University Press. Meyer, Thomas. 2002. Media Democracy: How the Media Colonize Politics. Oxford: Blackwell. MCA (Minerals Council of Australia). 2010a. Advertisement. Weekend Australian, June 5–6, p. 16. —. 2010b. Newspaper advertisement. Australian, June 9, p. 7. —. 2010c. TV advertisement. Replayed in Gruen Transfer, Season 3, Episode 1. Mitchell, Alex. 2012. “Lobbying for the Dark Side.” Meanjin 71 (2): 39– 54. Murphy, Katharine. 2011. “Public defenceless against influence-peddling arms race.” Saturday Age, April 16, p. 24. Nolan, David. 2008. “Tabloidisation Revisited: the Regeneration of Journalism in Conditions of ‘Advanced Liberalism’.” Communication, Politics & Culture 41 (2): 100–118. Odih, Pamela. 2010. Advertising and Cultural Politics in Global Times. Surrey: Ashgate. Palmer, Clive. 2010. “Clive Palmer Joins the Panel: Mining magnate Clive Palmer joins the panel to discuss the Resource Super Profits Tax.” Meet The Press, Channel Ten, May 30. http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/documentSumma ry;dn=TEX20102105922;res=TVNEWS. Possum Comitatus. 2010. “RSPT polling and low hanging fruit.” Pollytics, June 2. http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2010/06/02/rspt-pollingand-low-hanging-fruit/. Priest, Marcus. 2011. “Miners dig deep to battle carbon tax.” Australian Financial Review, August 16, p. 1. Rio Tinto. 2010. “Rio Tinto concerned about new resources tax.” May 2.

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http://www.riotinto.com/media/media-releases-237_1439.aspx. Rowse, Tim. 1985. “Doing Away with ‘Ordinary People’.” Meanjin 44 (2): 161–169. Rowse, Tim and Albert Moran. 1984. “‘Peculiarly Australian’—The Political Construction of Cultural Identity.” In Australian Society, 4th edition, edited by Sol Encel and Lois Bryson, pp. 229–77. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Schudson, Michael. 1997. “Why Conversation is Not the Soul of Democracy.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14: 297–309. Stevens, Matthew. 2010. “Resources super-profits tax cost the PM a friend.” Australian, May 7. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/resources-super-profits-taxcosts-the-pm-a-friend/story-e6frg8zx-1225863312271. Thrift, Nigel. 2008. Non-Representational Theory: Space/Politics/Affect. Abingdon: Routledge. Wall Street Journal. 2010. “Australian Tipping Point.” May 31. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870370370457527747 3827983454.html.

Notes 1 Including the federal implications of State Government-based provisions for the charging of royalties on mining exploration licences as distinct from profits (see Bryan 2011). 2 The Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) was negotiated with Australia’s three largest mining companies. It applies to coal and iron ore projects, is set at 22.5% (effective), with new investments given an immediate write-off. 3 See Mitchell (2012) on its antecedents in US practice. 4 While the fact of a minority government may have contributed to this perception, more important have been the concerted attacks. 5 The MRRT commenced on 1 July 2012; contrary to the May 2013 budget forecast of $3 billion revenue, it raised only $126 million in its first six months. 6 For more detail about the economic rationale of the RSPT see Greenfield (2013). 7 A nationalisation surmised from the government, under the proposed RSPT, sharing responsibility for risk with mining companies. 8 Despite, for example, Norway’s taxation regime. 9 “[M]y number one sovereign risk on a global basis”—Tom Albanese, chairman of Rio Tinto, in Chambers and Tasker (2010). 10 Alan Jones, a talk-back radio host with a history of adverse findings from media regulators. 11 For example, Xstrata, 3 June 2010. 12 “A defiant Kevin Rudd has stared down two of Australia's richest people and declared he will not abandon his new mining tax” (Hudson 2010).

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13 Compared to 413 times in the same period for Government television commercials. 14 Archived at https://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/campaigns-archive? page=3 15 Government advertisement, in ABC TV’s Four Corners “What’s Yours Is Mine” (2010a), at 32 minutes. http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/ 20100607/mining/. 16 As Gilding et al. note the Australian mining industry has a lengthy history of adopting “an enduring frame of equating the interests of mining with national interests” (2012, p. 27). 17 The key finding of the MCA-commissioned KPMG report was that implementation issues and “other risk factors” meant that “the ‘no economic inefficiency’ assumption supported by economic theory, will not hold up in practice” (2010, p. 6). This is the message the MCA took to the Australian population, presenting the tax as risking the goose that laid the golden egg of the mining boom, and fundamentally misunderstanding the workings of capital markets and debt markets. 18 As with the case of the Government advertising campaign, where reliance is on the image of expertise; on the problematised status of expertise in a neoliberal technology of journalism, see Nolan 2008, pp. 114–15). 19 A different telling of the story might have identified their unity in terms of their selection and specific connection to the political economic outcomes of mining development in the area. 20 And needs to be seen as relative to Rudd’s earlier high popularity, and with ample historical precedents of Australian governments going on to electoral success after such polling at equivalent stages of the electoral cycle. 21 And running contrary to OECD data on Australia’s relative taxation levels.

CHAPTER ELEVEN TENDER INTIMACIES: POWER, PROXIMITY, PERSONALITY IN AUSTRALIAN TRANSNATIONAL BROADCASTING1 JOHN TEBBUTT

Introduction Public diplomacy is increasingly a matter for populations. What was once a condition for the end of secret treaties that contributed to war early in the 20th century (Cull 2006), now joins popular cultural institutions— schools, museums, galleries, public broadcasting and other media—in a nation’s attempts “to influence in a positive way the public or elite opinion of another country in order to promote its own interests” (SCFADT 2007 p. 8). This chapter addresses recent events concerning the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) international television service, Australia Network, in terms of the discourse of public diplomacy and what Sarah Ahmed describes as “how emotions become attributes of collectivities” (2004, p. 2). Public diplomacy attempts to address the attributes of transnational collectivities through what has been described as soft power: the promotion of attractive qualities to shape the preferences of target populations. In international relations these strategies have been crucial in foregrounding national values and in Asia, with the economic ascendancy of China, there has been a significant increase in activities associated with soft power and public diplomacy. Ahmed cogently explored in her introduction to The Cultural Politics of Emotion how Britain, as a gendered “soft touch” on immigration, was positioned as a nation that should instead be “less open, less easily moved, one that is ‘hard’ or ‘tough’” (2004, p. 2). In dealing with the case of

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Australia Network I will link other kinds of softness—soft power and soft capitalism—to an externalised transnational “openness” that is critical for integrating populations in public diplomacy discourse—recognising however that intimacy is always haunted by its “potential failure to stabilize closeness” (Berlant 1998, p. 282). As well as the contingency attending any governmental project, the Australia Network will also be considered in terms of the emotionalisation of public policy processes, particularly as this term may be used to describe the political rivalries in the then Labor government. From 2010 until 2013 Australia as a nation experienced an emotionally turbulent and politically charged time. This period marked the first minority government in Australia in seventy years. It was led by Australia’s first woman prime minister, Julia Gillard. Her party, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was deeply divided, and Kevin Rudd—the former leader, and prime minister until June 2010—maintained leadership ambitions. The parliamentary opposition exploited the resulting instability effectively and in 2013 was returned to the government benches after only six years in opposition. Australia’s key public diplomacy broadcaster, Australia Network, was one of the sites of contestation during this period.

Australia, television and public diplomacy In Australia the ABC’s International section is arguably that nation’s premier soft power agency. 2 ABC International covers broadcasting (through Radio Australia and Australia Network) and international development as well as the ABC’s relationships with public broadcasters and multilateral agencies including the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD), Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA). The Australia Network is however the primary vehicle for promoting Australian interests in Asia. The Network broadcasts drama, sport and news programs as well as popular English language learning services that are supplemented with online support. In March 2013 the government changed the public broadcaster’s legislative parameters to ensure that the ABC alone could deliver public diplomacy services. This ended years of experimentation with potential commercial operators, facilitated by contractual-based policy that aimed to promote enterprise. While the ABC has had small-scale non-broadcast enterprise activities since 1985 (Inglis 2006, p. 211), Australia Television and its antecedents were the first attempt to commercialise programming.3 Earlier, in December 2011, the ABC had been awarded management of the Australia Network television

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service after a controversial tender process. Subsequently the ABC was allocated funds to create an Integrated Multiplatform International Media Service, a combined broadcast and online media service that aims to facilitate “delivery of a comprehensive service to diverse regional audiences using the media platforms of their choice, effectively extending Australia's public diplomacy reach” (Australia Network News 2012). These developments came after the abandonment of a competitive tender process, amidst accusations of political interference and targeted leaks. The bitter affair, which pitted the ABC against News Ltd (the Australian arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation) and Labor politicians against each other, eventually triggered an inquiry by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). The fraught tender process raises questions about the management strategies adopted by Australian governments to promote enterprise—practices such as competitive tendering and differentiated decision making and often referred to as “new public management”—and their impact on the working of Australia’s democratic institutions. Australia’s international television broadcasting service was launched in 1993. While initially various “private groups” were considered for the international service (Inglis 2006, p. 287), in the end the Labor government favoured a sponsorship-based ABC operation. Known then as Australia Television International (ATI), the hybridised commercial/public media marked a significant departure from earlier international programming by the ABC, which had broadcast radio to Asia since the 1940s. Despite this there was no provision within the ABC’s legislation for international broadcasting until 1983. Legislation passed at that time also recognised international television broadcasting but the lack of state funding held back the introduction of any new services. At the time that the ATI service was being discussed, the government passed legislation amending the 1983 Act and exempted the international public television and associated audio services from the domestic restrictions against advertising (Inglis 2006, p. 288). Consequently ATI was set up as a new form of contractualisation in the public service. As du Gay has argued such arrangements do not “imitate the conduct of actually existing small business or model entrepreneurs” (2004, p. 39). Rather they affirm an entrepreneurial character for administrative units that pushes government agencies to take on a larger role in being responsible for their own economic performance. At the same time, the contractual arrangements put in place more closely tied the broadcaster to the policy agenda of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), a process that had been historically resisted by the radio broadcaster, Radio Australia (Hodge 1995). This experimentation in Australian public policy accords with du

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Gay’s observation of the process in Britain where agencies are made responsible for “securing their own future” (p. 40) while being managed by techniques and restrictions outside of their control. Australia Network was to become a vehicle for ongoing policy experimentation. The introduction of an international television service at this time (a decade after legislation permitted and without full budgetary support) is an indication of the changes being wrought in international media. By the early 1990s an Australian diplomatic presence in television was becoming an imperative, coinciding with the consolidation of the discourse of public diplomacy (as I describe in a following section). The strategic deployment of media in diplomacy was itself coincident with the significant increase of trade in cultural products in Asia, including internationally broadcast television. The United Nation Development Program’s Human Development Report identified that “the number of television sets per 1000 people worldwide almost doubled between 1980 and 1995” (UNDP 1999, p. 33) with the most significant increases occurring in East Asia followed by Southeast Asia and the Pacific (p. 26, fig. 1.1). In addition the world trade in goods with cultural content almost tripled from 1980 to 1991 (from $67 billion to $200 billion) (p. 33).4 Satellite technology (and later the Internet) was crucial in distributing cultural content, however it was satellite broadcasting that became a crucial vehicle for “declaratory diplomacy” because of its combined potential to create proximities amongst geographically dispersed state entities and to produce global markets for media consumption (Curtin 2000). The Australian service was broadcast to Asia from an Indonesian satellite. The programming combined commercial network comedy and drama and sports events. The international trade in cultural products also led to worldwide expansion of media markets. These commercial operations included services in transnational knowledge transfer—business programs, educational services, creative production—that became crucial components for what Nigel Thrift (2005) has dubbed “soft capitalism”, the combining of business and knowledge production. The all-news format established by CNN in the 1980s demonstrated the importance of transnational information flows and how real time news programming via satellite could influence political decision-making cycles. The BBC became the first international public service television broadcaster to beam satellite programs to Asia when their service began in 1991 (Richardson 1991). They were followed by Singapore Broadcasting Company, Germany’s Deutche Welle, NHK from Japan and more recently Central China Television and Al Jazeera. By the 1990s entertainment companies including Entertainment Sports Program Network (ESPN) and News

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Corporation had begun to increase their stakes in international television and broaden program offerings beyond news. Following the acquisition of the 20th Century-Fox film library in the mid-1980s News Corporation established satellite services in Europe (Sky TV) and the United States (Fox). In 1993 News bought into Hong Kong based Star-TV, taking it over completely in 1995 and establishing a Fox International Channel specifically for Japanese programming that year as well. While the Australia Television International/Australia Network combined commercial and public programming eventually the lucrative market, particularly for Chinese consumers, would highlight differences between public service, private operations and policy options. While the Keating Labor government was content to allow the ABC to contract delivery of international television, with a change of government in 1996 came a new policy and the privatisation of the international service. In 1997 an inquiry by John Howard’s Liberal-National Coalition recommended the deinstitutionalisation of the ABC’s international broadcasting. Radio Australia’s international transmission facilities were leased to commercial operators (a Christian organisation took over broadcasting international radio into Asia from Darwin). Regarding the international television service Rod Tiffen (2011) has written that “without any warning, and without preparatory work of any kind by the bureaucracy” the government announced the privatisation of ATI, a decision that came as “a complete shock to the ABC and to the head of ATI”. This led to the ill-fated private running of the international service, from 1998 to 2001, by Kerry Stokes’ Seven Network. From the beginning this iteration of Australia’s international television service faced problems. The Asian currency crisis of 1998 prompted by hedge funds selling Southeast Asian currencies, lead to significant devaluation in local finance markets and the commercial venture was difficult to sell in the region. The fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, Australia’s closest Asian neighbour, and the culmination of the East Timorese’ long struggle for independence emphasised for the Australian government the importance of having a vehicle in the region for expressing national opinions and observations on events of the day, and the influence of Radio Australia’s news and analysis was sorely missed at that time (Tiffen 2011). By 2001 Network Seven had decided not to renew its contract with DFAT to run Australia Television International. The service was actually closed down for a time. The Department meanwhile decided to continue the privatisation process and put the service out to public tender. While the ABC did not submit for the tender process, in the face of the failure of suitable commercial interest in the call the Foreign

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Minister, Alexander Downer, “privately asked the ABC to apply” (Tiffen 2011). The ABC undertook, for extra government funding, to operate the broadcaster as a mix of commercial and public funded programming. The mix included a Sky News service from the Australian News Channel because the ABC did not at that stage have a dedicated international television service (ABC TV News comprises largely local state-based services). The contract was renewed in 2005 but in 2011 the then Foreign Affairs Minister in the Labor government, Kevin Rudd, decided the contract would once again be put out to tender. This middle period of international broadcasting was characterised by an intensification and consolidation of the discourse of public diplomacy in Australian politics. In 1997 the government’s first ever white paper on the conduct of Australia’s foreign affairs noted that “an important area where government, business and the community can work closer together is in so-called ‘public diplomacy’” (Commonwealth of Australia 1997 p.78) while a 2003 report included two chapters dedicated to “projecting Australia” (Commonwealth of Australia 2003). In 2006 the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade initiated an inquiry into Australia’s public diplomacy (SCFADT 2007). In 2011 the Gillard government initiated a white paper inquiry into “Australia in the Asian century” that articulated a core role for public diplomacy in regional relations. The consolidation of public diplomacy discourse in Australia has also involved non-government institutions. The Lowy Institute has played an active role supporting governance and policies for broadcasting to foreign publics. It produced a Blue Ribbon Panel report titled “Australia’s Diplomatic Deficit” in 2009, and then in 2010 issued a working paper, “International broadcasting’s contribution to public diplomacy”, and a policy brief, “A Digital DFAT: Joining the 21st Century”. A major report titled “The New Public Diplomacy” was published in April 2011. While this intense effort has been a response to an increased presence of international television broadcasters in the Asian region (Hall and Smith 2013) it is also a result of the diffused nature of public diplomacy itself.

Public Diplomacy: Soft Power and Societies of Control The phrase “public diplomacy” had been used from the early 20th century to refer to “open covenants” (as opposed to secret treaties) established from diplomatic negotiations (Cull 2006). Such openness required staged performances, a kind of declaratory, confidence-building diplomacy that meshed with media and information strategies, which emerged after World War II. Elsewhere I have described how the

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Australian government developed a sophisticated post-war approach to promoting the nation internationally by drawing from earlier commodity promotion campaigns (Tebbutt 2007). The Cold War period saw an intense ideological competition, mediated by propaganda, and a strategy of deterrence that led to escalated armaments development. While at times propaganda has been referred to as a kind of public diplomacy (Nye 2008; Lowe 2013), generally state-initiated information campaigns have been separated from public diplomacy.5 By the 1990s the term public diplomacy was in regular use. By then, the openness of public diplomacy coincided with the demise of deterrence as a viable diplomatic posture, the expanding international trade in cultural products and a more complex, differentiated international polity than the post-World War II period. With the end of deterrence, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, mediated diplomacy began to be integrated into the management of populations more generally and public diplomacy became bound to the concept of soft power. The discourse of public diplomacy has been constructed around its lack of definition. Discussions of what constitutes public diplomacy and its history are varied and voluminous (see for examples Cowan and Cull 2008; Gunaratne 2005) and largely inconclusive. The extent of the task is emphasised by Gilboa’s suggestion that “only a systematic multidisciplinary effort and close collaboration between researchers and practitioners can lead to a coherent theory of public diplomacy” (2008, p. 55). The Standing Committee that reviewed Australian public diplomacy in 2007 spelled out the issue in policy terms: Although public diplomacy is clearly tied to the notion of shaping public perceptions, its application to the day-to-day activities of government agencies creates difficulties in determining whether an activity or program should be specifically designated as public diplomacy. In many cases, the primary purpose of an activity may not be public diplomacy even though it contributes significantly to public diplomacy. (SCFADT 2007, p. 12)

As the Committee description indicates the important aspect of the discourse is that it can be modulated to allow all sorts of activities to be brought within the public diplomacy ambit, so that they contribute to public diplomacy. This process is distinct from propaganda, for example. Here the nation-state may co-opt any available activity for its own purpose, post hoc. In this sense the discourse of public diplomacy coincides with what Deleuze (1992 p. 4) has described as post-disciplinary “societies of control”. Rather than the discrete spaces of enclosure theorised in disciplinary societies that bounded specific variable contexts

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(family, school, factory), societies of control dissolve boundaries in favour of degrees of emphasis that can be modulated and subject to ongoing reform. Societies of control are characterised by “openness” or an openendedness. The concept of populations shifts from discrete demographics to be characterised as more a generalised form of “human capital” (cf. Foucault 2008, pp. 223–30) where the deployment of potential and activities can be indexed against the notion of nation. Soft power as a phenomenon is indicative of the shift to societies of control. The term became popular after Joseph Nye’s book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power was published in 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Nye refined the concept in Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (2004) by which time it had become a by-word for integrating populations within international diplomacy. While it may appear innocuous, as Nye himself has pointed out: “It is not necessarily better to twist minds than to twist arms” (2012, p. 151). Unlike the specifically gendered “soft touch” discussed by Ahmed, soft power invokes an “attractive strength” that co-opts rather than coerces: A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, and/or aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness…Soft power is more than just persuasion…It is also the ability to entice and attract. (Nye 2008, pp. 94–95)

In this context, bordered populations become the focus of the regulation of conduct through aspiration and emulation. Soft power is not directed to a singular outcome, as a form of international assistance, but rather a diffused yet specifically affective engagement. Public diplomacy, then, does not address a specific goal or clear a space for a particular program. Its aims are directed towards a future: the “positive” orientations with which transnational populations will relate to as yet unspecified interests of the nation exercising this diplomacy. Seen within the context of a “control society” it is pertinent that the Australian government’s recent policy document, Australia in the Asian Century White Paper (Commonwealth of Australia 2012), does not formalise plans for regional confidence building. As a policy posture it favours a generalised regional proximity, downplaying specific nationalised spaces while favouring mechanisms that promote flows of affect, information, and trade. Rather than a mutual regional architecture it recognises that “complex interdependencies and growing bilateral engagement are strong stabilising forces” (Commonwealth of Australia 2012, p. 7). Public

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diplomacy has a “core role” in advancing Australia’s interests (Commonwealth of Australia 2012, p. 258), yet it is assumed that “[p]ublic diplomacy and people-to-people connections are mutually reinforcing” (2012, p. 262). If, in relation to public diplomacy, the goal of media such as Australian Television is “to influence in a positive way the public or elite opinion of another country in order to promote its own interests” (SCFADT 2007) the corollary is managing negative affect, danger and risk. As Brian Massumi has suggested “[t]he value of an act of government is in the future tense…The outcome is read in the indicators” (2005). The integrated media system of public diplomacy participates in this process through what Richard Grusin (2004, 2010) has termed “premediation”: 6 Australia Network plays out domestic (i.e. Australian) drama, sport and news as if the audience in Asia were already Australian. In this sense, the service does not exist to entertain a particular audience, and Australia Network measures are not demographics but rather how many “homes” receive the service. While this is an index of the impossibility of traditional demographics in a transnational context, it also becomes an indicator of the broadcaster’s success because the important thing is that the service has a presence in transnational domestic space so that other countries’ “publics and elites” can engage with television and other media as if they are already one with Australian national interests. Within the discourse of public diplomacy it is the affective engagement that is important; it is not the import of the message but that the message can be trusted to represent “Australianness”.

Intimate Values, Transnational Difference and Deliberative Democracy As one of Australia’s premier public diplomacy agencies, ABC International (ABCI) publicises its mission in intimate terms: “ABC International promotes the ABC’s values of honesty, fairness, independence and respect by facilitating cross-cultural communication, encouraging awareness of Australia and building regional partnerships” (ABCI). The ABCI is engaged with various multi-lateral agencies in regionalist governance projects including supporting public media institutions in Cambodia and promoting communications as a “development tool” in that country as well as Laos, Burma and Vietnam and training television professionals in Vietnam (ABC 2012, p. 14). Affective declarations, such as that in the ABCI mission statement, indicate that regional proximity and relations of power require a more intimate diplomacy for Australian governments. In their submission to the Australia In the Asian Century

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White Paper, the ABC argued that given Australia’s geographic circumstances Australian government requirements for effective public diplomacy were “unlike most nations with a western political tradition”, in that its primary foreign policy and economic focus was toward countries with different cultural and political backgrounds (ABC 2012, p. 11). In this context of transnational difference the primary work of establishing relations based on “honesty, fairness…and respect” is conducted in 7 relation to “Asia”, particularly Northeast, Southeast and South Asia. It is here that Australian governments, both state and federal, have most at stake in transnational governance. Economic forums, including the TransPacific Partnership Agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and various bilateral agreements tie Australian governments to regional economic development (see DPMC, p. 187) despite the vagaries that develop from Australian political shifts themselves (Cotton 2008). If the nature of Australia’s diplomatic and development encounters can be characterised by an exceptionalism that requires the sensitive management of intimacy, such care finds its correlative within the western political traditions that underpin the ABC’s own operations. Berlant (1998) has suggested that modes of public and private intimacy are integral to theories of deliberative democracy. These theories establish a “civic migration” of intimacy from private to public realms. A concept of a democratic “critical publicness”, Berlant argues, was formed through class-mixed semi-formal institutions (salons and cafès), print media, and industrialised workplaces so that “the notion of the democratic public sphere made collective intimacy a public and social ideal, one of fundamental political interest” (Berlant 1998, p. 283). Elsewhere, in cinema and other entertainment forms, publics were collectively engaged in “the nonrational and noninstitutionally indexed aspects of the intimate [that] had been (theoretically) banished from legitimate democratic publicness” (Berlant 1998, p. 284). Populist, electronic mass mediated forms of intimacy established affect and emotions as non-rational influences over populations that, it was argued by Berlant, required political management. Public broadcasting was one response to constraining excessive entertainment based media. As Nolan points out, while “the public” is not a unitary concept, within normative political critiques mass media (especially public broadcasting but news media generally) is burdened with being an embodiment of this civic ideal while also having responsibility for practical citizen formation (2006, p. 228). While the ABC’s concept of an Australian exceptionalism in regional diplomacy may draw from this western political tradition it is more than

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simply a self-serving notion. Asian regionalism, it has been argued, is “principally declaratory in orientation”, and lacks regulatory mechanisms to establish legal and binding compliance (Capannelli and Tan 2012, p. 8 n. 5; see also Gyngell 2007). Institutions that are declaratory rather than legalistic require more trust and intimate cultural understanding which become necessities in negotiations. Public diplomacy takes on a more critical cast in this context. The values expressed by the ABC in its mission statement—“honesty, fairness, independence and respect”— establish the discourse of public diplomacy as a cognitive, emotionalised encounter that underpins the complex, culturally diverse world traversed by diplomatic media relations. Such an encounter is, all the same, haunted by the unruliness of affect (Crociani-Windlanda and Hoggett 2012, p. 169) and the politics of reservation: “what if something goes wrong?” So if on the one hand the argument for exceptionalism is understandable in Australian postcolonial diplomatic engagements, on the other it references a banal concern to “keep relationships on track”. The attachment of deliberative democracy to theories of the public sphere has lessened as the contemporary mediatisation of politics has promoted increased populism (Higgins 2008; Jacka 2003; Waisbord 2011). Other challenges to the idea of unitary civic societies have come from what Berlant describes as “the expansion of minoritised publics that resist or are denied universalist collective intimacy expectations” (1998, p. 284). These changes, along with neoliberal approaches to governing populations that have challenged public broadcasting on grounds of valuefor-money, have undermined traditional forms of media management and regulation; the Australia Network, as an innovative hybrid of commercial and public media, is an example of this shift. The idealised political rationality of the public sphere has also foundered on intensified nationalist resurgences in Eastern Europe and insurgencies in Africa as much as on the anti-politician populism of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. The problem for modern political sociality is identified in the question Habermas (1974) set himself: “Can complex societies form a rational identity?”, which he answers in the affirmative on the condition that “every position can come to agreement with the other positions it is confronted with in the present precisely in its partisanship for a universality to be realised in the future” (p. 103, emphasis in the original). In this context Markell (2000) has argued political theorists have engaged a discourse of “civic nationalism” that is marked out against ethnic or premodern nationalism, as a way to distinguish “safe” affects for liberal democracy: “This strategy claims to render affect safe for liberal democracies by redirecting our attachment and sentiment from one subset

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of objects (the ‘ethnic’) to another...(the ‘civic’)” (p. 39). The values the ABC has identified to perform its regional engagement echo such a view of a civic Australia at the limit of a “western political tradition”, turned to regions of cultural and political (ethnic) diversity as public diplomacy attempts to establish a future common polity. Ironically, it would not be unruly external relations but the internal political instability of personalities and political intimates that would cause the most problems for the ABC’s premier public diplomacy vehicle, Australia Network. More generally, personalities and proximity may not provide stable relationships. Personalisation of public processes in government can undermine policy outcomes. Australia Television, for example, has been mired in policy confusion as well as struggles over funding models and political control.

The Private Life of Public Diplomacy Television: An Australian History While trustworthiness, honesty and other affects are critical to the messages that public diplomacy reflects in its diverse and varied programming, as du Gay points out, “‘Entrepreneurial governance’ is after all a state-sponsored rationality of rule” (2004, p. 46). The market mechanisms that it promotes are “political-administrative” and therefore the markets themselves are manipulable and operate within specific political contexts rather than as pure economic activities. This next section attempts to identify some of the ways that market-based mechanisms directed at facilitating Australian public diplomacy became one with the personal political stakes that accompanied the policy and commercial decisions made. In doing so it looks to provide an example of yet another aspect of how affect has influenced relations of power in the field of public diplomacy. On December 8, 2008 then Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, launched a new media venture at Parliament House in Canberra. The Australian Subscription Public Affairs Network (A-SPAN) was a “free” television service bundled into subscription packages for Foxtel, which is 50% owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the major Australian telephone network, Telstra. Rudd was in an avuncular mood. His Minister for Communications, Stephen Conroy, who attended the launch was, he said, “in trouble” for not telling Rudd that A-SPAN would provide “live coverage as it happens of the internal machinations of government” (DPMC 2008). Indeed the accompanying Foxtel release declared: “A key overarching role of A-SPAN will be to provide news and

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information on how government and public institutions operate, with a particular emphasis on Parliament, including educational content aimed at demystifying the workings of the political process” (Foxtel 2008). Further, it argued that A-SPAN (since renamed A-PAC, Australian Public Affairs Channel) was “the only service of its kind in Australia and a breakthrough innovation in independent public affairs provision to Australians” (Foxtel 2008). Rudd agreed, saying the service was “a good thing for our democracy. It's a superb initiative, it's 100 per cent industry funded” (DPMC 2008). The A-SPAN initiative was, however, more than simply a service; it was part of a commercial and political struggle to deliver Australia’s public diplomacy services, a struggle that became increasingly bitter in the next few years. With A-SPAN/A-PAC, Foxtel’s Australian News Channel (ANC, which is 39% owned by News Corporation) moved into the field of public broadcasting: ANC was providing a “free” information-based service. Such a service, which included the coverage of the Australian parliament’s proceedings, gave them important leverage in discussions of any new contract for broadcasting international diplomacy television. The ABC had mooted a 24-hour television news service earlier in the year (ABC 2008; Simons 2009) but as it had been unable to shift from its state-based services to a more fully national service, broadcasting Parliament was the main national information service that the ABC provided. The ANC service has to be seen in the context of News Corporation’s claims that public broadcasting should only undertake activities that cannot be addressed by commercial providers. The ABC announced it was moving to a 24-hour news service in 2009, and finally launched a service in July 2010. Soon after the announcement however, in August 2009, Sky News approached the federal government with plans to expand Australia's international diplomatic television broadcasting service into a global network. This sparked a war of words between Sky News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos and ABC managing director Mark Scott. Frangopoulos argued that private operators should have a right to challenge the ABC for government funding and an “open contest is the best way to ensure the government and taxpayers get the best service for the nation" (Callaghan 2009). The bid coincided with an aggressive speech from James Murdoch to the Edinburgh International Television Festival, principally aimed at the BBC, where he argued that public broadcasters and regulators were “unaccountable institutions” (Murdoch 2009). For his part the ABC’s Mark Scott declared that no one should have to pay to access media and information that was crucial to democratic civic engagement. In November 2010, now Foreign Minister in the minority

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government that he had previously led, Kevin Rudd undertook to put the Australia Network service to public tender (Rudd 2010). ANC’s Sky News and the ABC were the only organisations to make submissions. It is not my intention to couch the following analysis in terms of “what is best broadcast practice, private or public?” as there is more at stake than simply who are the best entrepreneurs to run a television service. In any case Frangopoulos’s arguments for open contests for government services draw on neoliberal arguments about the disaggregation of government operations that have been significantly accepted by large parts of both major governing parties in Australia. In addition, the general tenets of what has become known as “new public management” (NPM)—competitive tendering, disaggregated or decentralised decision making, services that have outcome accountability without budgetary input—have filtered into Australian public service practice. In this way NPM works as an administrative process for societies of control where “the future is one of self-realisation and constant becoming” (Duffield 2001, p. 313; Rose 1999, p. 234). What is at stake in this context is the effect of NPM’s promotion of such decision-making structures as forms of openness and modernisation despite the resultant politicisation of market and policy processes. The supposedly objective structures—where such managerial strategies champion public service departments as “quasi-autonomous, multidivisional” organisations—tend to disguise the impact of splitting policy from management, which they facilitate (du Gay 2004, p. 49). While the tender instituted through the Department of Foreign Affairs for the new international diplomacy media service ostensibly reflected an open market mechanism, a number of constraints—which du Gay (2004, p. 46) notes in his discussion of Enterprise as a “rationality of rule”—were evident. Early reports soon after the announcement indicated that the Foreign Affairs Minister “plans to be very hands on as a programmer” (Colless 2011) raised questions about the independence of the service. DFAT control would be particularly difficult for the ABC, given it is governed by a charter that guarantees independent programming. However two aspects of the tender demonstrate the issue of constraints imposed as market considerations: first, that the confidentiality clauses within the tender documents prevented any discussion of the contents of the tender processes; secondly, how the description of services to China would determine the successful tender submission. The confidentiality clause made it particularly difficult to have an open process, even within considerations of commercial sensitivities, while the service’s relation to Chinese specific programming appeared to close off the process for the

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ABC as it involved reciprocal broadcast arrangements to allow Chinese access to Australian audiences, ever a difficult matter for the ABC. As the major player in the region, in terms of audience numbers, market potential and political influence, China was always going to be an important influence on the tender outcome. Despite significant efforts, the ABC-run Australia Network had been unable to secure what are called ‘landing rights’ in China—a permanently based service to broadcast to the Chinese population. It has been reported that the ABC has stopped short at conditions that agreed to reciprocal rights for Chinese broadcasts to be delivered to Australia over concerns about propaganda (Flitton 2011). In the meantime Sky News had already negotiated access to China. In April 2010 (six months before DFAT opted to go to a competitive tender process) Sky News announced that it had agreed to sign reciprocal rights with the state television broadcaster, China Central Television, with live and breaking news stories from Sky News broadcast in China and CCTV’s English-language current affairs program “Dialogue” broadcast on Sky News’s A-PAC channel into Australia (Elliot 2010). While this was not the permanent “landing rights” deal that Australian media sought, it did provide crucial access to broadcasting direct to Chinese audiences. At the time some commentators argued that Sky News’ coup was the end game in the process of establishing an effective regional public diplomacy television (Flitton 2011), giving them a distinct advantage as Australia’s international service. Given the political sensitivities in the Gillard government there was concern that the tender process was not open, but rather favoured the Sky News bid. To ensure oversight the prime minister asked that the full Cabinet sanction the final Tender Evaluation Board (TEB) decision on the successful submission. However when the decision was made by the TEB it was clear that the tender process had established the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs as the final decision-maker who would sign off on the tender award. This process reflected the quasi-contractual arrangement between the service manager, DFAT and the service itself. Under new public management procedures that split policy from management, there was no place for Cabinet in scrutinising decisions made by the TEB. This market-type mechanism worked against the convention of ministerial responsibility and, in the context of political tensions, facilitated a crisis in the public policy process. Following the revelation that the Department Secretary, not the Cabinet, would sign off on the final tender decision, the Minister for Communications, Stephen Conroy (a staunch Gillard supporter) intervened and took over the tender process from the Department of Foreign Affairs,

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despite the fact that they were the funding agency. This unprecedented action was necessary, Conroy suggested, because changed international circumstances, in particular in the Middle East with the downfall of the Mubarek regime in Egypt, required a revised tender document. When the TEB again agreed that the ANC bid was successful, newspaper stories began to appear revealing the stand-off despite the confidentiality restrictions in place (Day 2011). Subsequently, on advice from the Solicitor-General, Conroy terminated the tender process and initiated a Federal Police inquiry into the leaked TEB deliberations saying the leaks and related newspaper reports had compromised the process. Finally, in late November 2011, the tender process was cancelled and the service was awarded to the ABC. As I noted earlier, in 2013 the public broadcaster’s legislation was amended to permanently situate it as Australia’s public diplomacy broadcaster. While the innovation of the public/private funding of programming will continue, the experimentation with policy to support a fully commercialised international broadcaster appears to have passed for now. In the wake of the tender cancellation there was open discussion about political influence in the process. The Australian Financial Review’s Tony Walker (2011) reported “the abrupt termination of the tender cannot be divorced from Labor leadership tensions between Prime Minister Julia Gillard and [Foreign Minister Kevin] Rudd”. The debacle of the tender round for Australia Network prompted a forensic examination of the process by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). The ANAO report detailed the extent that personal rivalries between government politicians were played out in the process.

Conclusion Lauren Berlant has reflected on the conflicted power of how “intimacy builds worlds; it creates spaces and usurps places meant for other kinds of relation. Its potential failure to stabilise closeness always haunts its persistent activity” (1998, p. 282). I have argued that public diplomacy, as a feature of societies of control that work to modulate and change the behaviour of transnational populations, produces intimacies to “build a world” that is never a solid physical presence but works as a future aspiration to influence attitudes. At the same time, intimacy works across multiple domains destabilising and securing personal and political relationships at the same time. In the heightened tension of the Labor minority government of 2010–2013, Berlant’s observation of “how hard it is to adjudicate the norms of a public world when it is also an intimate one,

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especially where the mixed-up instrumental and affective relations of collegiality are concerned” (1998, p. 282) is particularly apposite. Berlant’s observations provide insight and perspective on the breadth of intimacy’s impact on the social world and allow us to see what is at stake in the political management of affect. Public diplomacy intimates that foreign affairs are now ubiquitous. These relationships are not just the work of the state—they are everyone’s work. As the recent Australia in the Asian Century White Paper puts it: “Success in the Asian century requires a whole-of-Australia effort…in a transformation as profound as any that have defined Australia throughout our history” (Commonwealth of Australia 2012, p. 3). The contention that “people-to-people” connections will build trust speaks to an attenuated concept of intimacy—the promotion of safe affects—in the discourse of public diplomacy, and averts previous exclusions that characterised “the relationship”. Such an attenuation of the breadth of intimacy and affect require effective strategies of management. These are being developed with the shift to a neoliberal focus on human capital that looks to emulate an “entrepreneurial character”. As Foucault has observed: “In neo-liberalism… homo œconomicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur for himself [sic] being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself his own source of [his] earnings…” (2008, p. 226). As we have seen in this chapter such a self-focused entrepreneurship as a bureaucratic rationality of rule has been extended to organisational forms so that organisations—such as Australia Network—embed an ethic of the personhood “which stresses autonomy, responsibility and the freedom/ obligation of individuals to actively make choices for themselves” (du Gay 2004, p. 41). Perhaps the contemporary confusions of intimacy with regard to the Australia Network are echoed in the ambivalent etymology of the word “tender”, which means “soft, easily injured” but is also used in the specific sense of “money that may be legally offered as payment”. Australia Network has certainly emerged bruised and battered in the latest battles over how Australian soft power can be extended through television programming in Asia.

Bibliography Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge. Australia Network News. 2012. “Government confirms funding for newlook Australia Network.” August 31.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-31/an-bob-carr-confirms-ausnetwork-contract/4236870. ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). 2008. “The ABC in the Digital Age—Towards 2020.” http://about.abc.net.au/reports-publications/the-abc-in-the-digital-agetowards-2020/. —. 2012. Submission to Australia in the Asian Century White Paper. http://about.abc.net.au/reports-publications/australia-in-the-asiancentury-taskforce-australia-in-the-asian-century-issues-paper-march2012/. ABCI (Australian Broadcasting Corporation International). Homepage. http://www.abc.net.au/international/. ANAO (Australian National Audit Office). 2012. “Administration of the Australia Network Tender Process.” Audit Report No. 29, 2011–12. The Auditor–General, Commonwealth of Australia: Canberra. Berlant, Lauren. 1998. “Intimacy: a special issue.” Critical Inquiry 24 (2): 281–288. Broadbent, Jillian and Allan Gyngell. 2009. “Australia's Diplomatic Deficit: Reinvesting in our Instruments of International Policy. Blue Ribbon Panel Report.” Lowy Institute for International Policy. http://www.lowyinstitute.org/files/pubfiles/BlueRibbonPanelReport_W EB.pdf. Brown, John. 2008. “The Anti-Propaganda Tradition in the United States.” Public Diplomacy Alumni Association. http://www.publicdiplomacy. org/19.htm. Callaghan, Greg. 2009. “Global plan for diplomatic TV service.” Australian, August 1. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/globalplan-for-diplomatic-tv-service/story-e6frg6n6-1225756946310. Capannelli, Giovanni and See Seng Tan. 2012. “Institutions for Asian Integration: Innovation and Reform.” ADBI Working Paper 375. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. http://www.adbi.org/working-paper/2012/08/20/5217.asian.integration. innovation.reform/. Colless, Malcolm. 2011. “Department of Foreign Affairs to control foreign TV bid.” Australian, February 14. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/department-of-foreign-affairsto-control-foreign-tv-bid/story-e6frg996-1226005339187. Commonwealth of Australia. 1997. In the National Interest: Australia's Foreign and Trade Policy White Paper. Canberra: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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Notes 1 This chapter arises from research that was partly funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, DP040313 “The ABC in Asia and its role in cultural exchange, 1956–2006”. I would like to thank Aicha Marhfour for research assistance on the Australia Network. 2 While public diplomacy is largely focussed on education, ABC International has activities and relationships in a range of fields including education, creative industries and international development. The actual government machinery in place in Australia to manage public diplomacy includes an Interdepartmental Committee on Public Diplomacy, the Australian International Cultural Council,

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nine bilateral foundations, councils and institutes and a Public Diplomacy & Information Branch within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). 3 Before being named Australia Network in 2006, the service was called Australian Television International (1993–1997), Australia Television (1998– 2002), ABC Asia Pacific (2002–2006). 4 Based on data from World Bank, World Development Indicators CD-ROM, 1998. 5 In this sense it is telling that an “originary” moment for public diplomacy is often identified with Edmund Gullion, who in 1965 launched a university centre for public diplomacy making the argument that public diplomacy could be distinguished from propaganda (Cull 2006, Brown 2008). 6 Richard Grusin’s concept of premediation is developed from the experience of post 9/11 media where “the media has seen itself as working in conjunction with other government entities to help manage the public’s collective moods and perceptions” (2010, p. 43). The crisis generated by 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York brought to the fore long established premediation practices. Premediation is not simply that media provide channels for government messages but that by “the widespread proliferation of pre-mediated futures” (Grusin 2010, p. 47)—by canvassing all possible competing and contradictory scenarios—media play out future events in the present and so “prevent the experience of a traumatic future” (2010, p. 46). I have adopted the concept to address the aspirational context of public diplomacy. 7 In the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper the geographic definitions of regional entities, including Asia and Europe, vary according to data constraints, that is, what is measured by whom. See various entries in the “Glossary” (DPMC, pp. 289–96).

CONTRIBUTORS

Philip Dearman teaches in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. He is currently the General Editor of Communication, Politics & Culture. His research interests include the organisation and regulation of professional labour, education policy, histories of the use of media and communication technologies in schools, and the political economies and cultures of public and private transport. Recent publications include “The rhetoric of ‘community’: ABC Radio’s coverage of the 2009 Victorian bushfires” (Media International Australia, with Louise North), and “Testing times in Australian schools: the new A–E student report card” (Southern Review: Communication, Politics & Culture). Andreas Elter has published several articles concerning matters of political communication, including Bierzelt oder Blog? (HIS-Verlag, 2010), which deals with the German state elections of 2009 and the usage of social media. Currently he is working on a project that examines the role of social media channels for candidates (Direktkandidaten) during the German state elections of 2013. From 2007–2013 he was chair of the journalism department at MHMK. He is currently manager of the TV division within the ARD-ZDF-Medienakademie. Terry Flew is Professor of Media and Communication in the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He is the author of six books, including Creative Industries, Culture and Policy (Sage, 2012), Global Creative Industries (Polity, 2013) and New Media: An Introduction (Oxford, 4th edition to be published in 2014). In 2011–12 he headed the National Classification Scheme Review for the Australian Law Reform Commission. He is a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts for Humanities and Creative Arts, and was a member of the ARC Research Evaluation Committee (REC) for the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) evaluation round in 2012. From 2010–13, he was Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI). He has also worked with industry, government and community research partners including Cisco Systems, Special Broadcasting Service, Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Kids Help Line, Fairfax Digital, Sensis, the Organisation for Economic

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Co-operation and Development, National Academies Forum, and the Productivity Commission. Des Freedman teaches media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. His publications include The Politics of Media Policy (Polity, 2008), Misunderstanding the Internet (written with James Curran and Natalie Fenton, Routledge, 2012), Media and Terrorism: Global Perspectives (co-edited with Daya Thussu, Sage, 2012) and The Assault on Universities (co-edited with Michael Bailey, Pluto Press, 2011). He is an editor of the Sage journal Global Media and Communication, a member of the national council of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and the chair of the Media Reform Coalition, which campaigns for media pluralism and accountability in the UK. He is currently writing a book for Bloomsbury on The Contradictions of Media Power and has written extensively on the phone hacking crisis and the Leveson Inquiry. Cathy Greenfield is Associate Professor of Communication at RMIT University. The continuing focus of her scholarship is the role of media in the government of populations, and the formation and maintenance of populist rationalities and the challenges these present for democracy. Her most recent published work deals with the political-economic literacy of communication students (Journal of Cultural Economy) and includes a range of articles with Peter Williams on media rhetoric and neoliberalism (Australian Journal of Political Science), the role of media in financialisation (Media, Culture & Society; Australian Journal of Communication), the relations between communication and sustainability (Communication, Politics & Culture), and a chapter on ethical investment. Mary Griffiths is Associate Professor in Media, University of Adelaide. Her research interests include media and democratic practices (egovernance, e-participation and journalism), theories and practices of collaboration, citizen consultation, media regulation, visual and literary culture, and distributed learning. Recent publications include “Real-time political news”, “Empowering citizens: A constructivist assessment of the impact of contextual factors and design on the concept of shared governance” and the guest-edited issue “China” (Communication, Politics and Culture, 45.2). She is an associate of China-Australia Transcultural Studies, a research centre launched jointly by the Beijing Foreign Studies University and University of Adelaide in 2013.

230

Contributors

Brian McNair is Professor of Journalism, Media & Communication at Queensland University of Technology. He is the author of many books and essays on politics and the media, including An Introduction To Political Communication (5th edition, Routledge, 2011), Journalism and Democracy (Routledge, 2000) and Mediated Access (with Philip Schlesinger and Matthew Hibberd, University of Luton Press, 2003). He is currently engaged with Professor Terry Flew and Dr Stephen Harrington of QUT in a qualitative evaluation of the political media in Australia (ARC Discovery project DP130100705, Politics, Media and Democracy In Australia: public and producer perceptions of the political public sphere). Lucy Morieson worked as a journalist at Australian online news publication Crikey before returning to study to complete her PhD in the political development of online journalism in Australia. Her current research combines this professional background with an interest in the changing political and economic conditions of contemporary western liberal democracies. For the past seven years she has also taught into RMIT’s media and communication offerings at the Singapore Institution of Management (SIM), where she has developed a keen interest in the complexities of that unique political, economic and cultural environment. She currently works as a researcher on the Belonging Project, a longitudinal learning and teaching study that seeks to better understand and improve the student experience in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. David Nolan is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne. His work theoretically and empirically investigates the shifting role played by media texts, institutions and practices in contributing to social politics. His work has been widely published in international journals, including Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Social Semiotics, Global Media and Communication, Journalism Studies and Media International Australia. He is a longstanding member of the editorial board of the international journal Communication, Politics and Culture. John Tebbutt is a Research Associate at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University, Melbourne. He is on the editorial boards of a number of journals including Media International Australia and Communication, Politics & Culture, and is an Associate Editor for The Radio Journal: international studies in broadcast and audio media. He was the chief investigator on a recently completed Australian Research

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Council funded Discovery Project “The ABC in Asia and its role in cultural exchange, 1956–2006” (DP040313). Peter Williams is an Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University. He researches relations between culture and power, especially in Australia since the 1930s. His most recent published work is a range of articles with Cathy Greenfield on ethical investment (Lewis & Potter eds, Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction), media rhetoric and neoliberalism (Australian Journal of Political Science), the role of media in financialisation (Media, Culture & Society; Australian Journal of Communication), the relations between communication and sustainability (Communication, Politics & Culture), and the role of mediated sport in the governing of everyday social relations (Media International Australia; Radio in the World: Radio Conference 2005).

INDEX

accountability, 21, 33, 35, 54, 57, 117, 175, 218 actor network studies, 167, 168, 175 advertising, 21, 58, 134, 143, 174, 175, 207 political, 4, 185, 189–91, 193–94, 197 affect, 135, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 221 affective engagement, 189, 212, 213 affective politics, 136 of shame, 135 technologies of, 4, 197 agency, 34, 38, 56, 129, 135, 153, 168, 192 Anderson, Benedict, 39, 48 apartheid, 53–54, 58, 66, 67 Apple, 17, 18, 19, 25 Asian century, 1, 210, 221 Asian Century White Paper, 212, 214 Asian values, 148 audiences, 23, 34, 120, 134, 135, 162, 169, 170 active, 18, 114–15, 152, 162, 169 Australian Communications and Media Authority, 16, 162, 171 Berlusconi, Silvio, 23, 109, 215 Blair, Tony, 37, 40, 63, 70, 112, 113, 116 Bolt, Andrew, 32, 47 broadband, 17, 145, 160, 175 broadcast media, 11, 26, 108, 163 Cameron, David, 37, 53, 58, 62, 64, 66 capitalism, 15, 66, 164, 176 competing models, 197 regulatory capitalism, 167 soft capitalism, 206, 208

capitalist state theories, 10, 13, 14, 26 censorship, 11, 19, 21, 26, 45, 145, 165 citizenship, 143, 148, 151–56 civil society, 39, 43, 61, 75, 125, 127, 146, 167 class, 7, 13, 66, 134–37, 186 political, 36, 37, 54, 64, 110, 118 Classification Review, 11, 16, 17, 23, 26 commons, democratic, 33, 34, 39 commons, educational, 175 communicative abundance, 1, 5, 32, 48, 154–55 Conroy, Stephen, 25, 30, 43, 44, 45, 118, 160, 161, 166, 216, 219, 220 convergence, 1, 10–11, 14, 15–19, 22, 26, 40, 162 Convergence Review, 21–26, 43–45 Deleuze, Giles, 135, 211 democracy, 1, 4 deliberative, 56, 78, 87, 214, 215 digital, 35, 89 liberal, 6, 115, 159, 195, 197, 216 monitory, 32, 34, 39, 49, 109, 154 representative, 5, 31, 49, 154, 184, 186, 193, 197 democratisation, 115, 142, 143 digital economy, 44, 170 elites, 5, 7, 48, 109, 164, 213 media, 36, 37, 43, 48, 66 political, 37, 48, 108, 109, 114, 116 exceptionalism, 214, 215 expertise, 5, 125, 126, 130, 131, 132, 135, 173, 175, 176, 191, 192, 196, 204

How We Are Governed Finkelstein Inquiry, 11, 16, 24, 26, 36, 43, 44, 45, 118 Foucault, Michel, 124, 127, 132, 135, 167, 212, 221 fourth estate, 33, 34, 48 free speech, 19, 65 freedom of speech, 31, 43, 44, 47 Gillard, Julia, 41, 42, 43, 47, 52, 111, 115, 118, 206, 220 Global Financial Crisis, 34, 40, 188, 190 globalisation, 10, 17, 26, 109, 163 Google, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 115, 170, 173, 174 governing populations, 7, 147, 215 governmentality, 124, 125, 127, 134, 136, 137, 138, 147 Habermas, Jurgen, 81, 118, 119, 215 Hayek, Frederick, 128–29 individualism, 6, 15, 128, 136 information age, 6 information and power, 35, 109 information campaigns, 169 information economy, 163 information overload, 155 information society, 34, 88 information, transnational flows of, 208 interactivity, 6, 32, 80 Internet affordances, 143 Internet and democracy, 6, 143, 154 Internet filtering, 44, 46, 160, 161, 165, 166, 181, 182 Internet Protocol TV, 20 Internet, affordances of, 6 Jones, Alan, 42, 120 journalism, 5, 36, 39, 48, 119, 143, 193 celebrity, 4 citizen, 7, 109, 142–56 democracy and, 32 futures, 1, 142 history, 35 public affairs, 34 purpose of, 35

233

Keane, John, 1, 5, 32, 34, 38, 39, 109, 154 liberalism, 124, 128, 129 advanced, 138 economic, 156 local content, 11, 12, 20, 21, 22, 30 media commercial, 20, 21, 22, 25, 134, 209, 215 concentration, 19, 20, 23 democracy, 4, 186, 197 influence, 23, 26, 174 online, 24, 44, 160, 170, 185, 188, 207 ownership, 19, 23, 64, 68, 166 policy, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 20, 23, 26, 181 power, 23, 38, 58, 63, 64, 66, 67 reform, 15, 34, 40, 42, 45, 46, 48, 52, 64, 66, 70, 118 Microsoft, 17, 19, 173 Murdoch, Rupert, 37, 38, 49, 58, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70, 207, 216 neo-classical economics, 13, 124, 191 neo-liberal subjectivity, 125, 134, 138, 148 neoliberalism, 5, 13–14, 15, 26, 33, 124–25, 127–29, 131, 134, 136, 139, 146, 147, 148, 153, 162, 164, 167, 215, 218, 221 new media, 7, 10, 15, 18, 22, 75, 111, 143, 174, 175, 198 News International, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 49, 52, 58, 63, 68, 69 News Limited, 24, 25, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 52, 182 opinion polling, 40, 42, 194, 195 participation, 52, 61, 78, 79, 81, 82, 89, 109, 111, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 142, 143, 166 people, the, 6, 78, 115, 117, 186, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 198 pluralism, 11, 13, 155

234 political communication, 2, 76, 78, 88, 89, 108, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 169 political culture, 3, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 40, 41, 43, 108, 113, 114, 115, 117 political journalism, 112, 114 politics, democratic, 3, 5, 6, 113, 115 politics, electoral, 2, 6, 7, 147, 195, 197 popular sovereignty, 6, 185, 195, 198 populism, 1, 5, 6, 33, 37, 40, 41, 42, 184, 185, 186, 190, 192, 195, 198, 215 power, 7, 13, 14, 34, 38, 64, 66, 70, 71, 132, 135, 139, 147, 159 and democracy, 32, 56, 185 and knowledge, 109, 167 as relational, 23, 127, 132, 138, 167 delegated, 34 soft, 205, 206, 210 privatisation, 161, 177, 209 propaganda, 66, 211, 219 public interest, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 23, 26, 33, 35, 58, 145, 159, 162, 163, 164, 181, 185 Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA), 25, 44, 45 public media, 11–12, 208 public opinion, 63, 195, 196 public policy, 7, 26, 164, 192, 197, 206, 207, 219

Index public relations, 4, 113, 186 public service, 131, 134, 135, 164, 207, 209 public sphere, 2, 75, 78, 108–9, 114–16, 118–21, 214, 215 publicness, 214 racism, 44, 115, 116 reality television, 114, 115–16, 124– 29, 131, 132, 134, 136–37, 136, 137, 138, 139 regulation co-regulation, 159, 160, 161, 162, 170, 174 deregulation, 13, 163, regulatory failure, 12 self-regulation, 25, 32, 34, 35, 43, 59, 145, 162, 163, 164 Rudd, Kevin, 40, 41, 42, 45, 52, 111, 187, 188, 189, 194, 196, 203, 204, 206, 210, 216, 217, 218, 220 social media, 4, 6, 10, 40, 52, 75, 79, 108, 150, 171, 172, 174 social networking, 48, 77 surveillance, 35, 39, 66, 127, 133 talkback radio, 109, 114, 115, 119, 120, 188 technological determinism, 6, 166 Thrift, Nigel, 4, 208 user-generated content, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 47, 77, 82, 85, 86, 88, 109, 149, 150, 151, 153, 190 WikiLeaks, 1, 23, 109 YouTube, 10, 17, 19, 20