Abstract
This paper explores perspectives from which citizen participation in media debates on civic issues can be reconsidered by means of a review of the existing literature on this subject and a qualitative study of how one particular public service media programme facilitated audience engagement and involvement in public discussion leading up to a major political event. The first section provides a general discussion of what media organisations do to engage the public they serve on political and social issues, the challenge of stimulating audience involvement and the ways in which editors and producers attempt to give average citizens a voice on topics normally framed by elites. The second offers a case study based on semi-structured interviews and content analysis of public participation in Morning Call, a weekday British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio Scotland phone-in news and current affairs show (the only programme of its type broadcast in Scotland) during the run-up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Focus has been placed on determining what programmes of this nature can and cannot achieve in terms of civic engagement and which practices implemented by public broadcasting networks best stimulate audience engagement.
Highlights
This paper focuses on the capacity of public media to foster civic involvement and political engagement
It parts from the premise that that citizens become active and critical agents who use technology as an element for political decision making (Blumler and Kavanagh 2000), and that meaningful citizen participation in public debate is only possible in circumstances in which co-production takes place, which is to say in settings that establish a power-sharing relationship between media organisations and the audiences they serve (Carpentier 2014)
This paper provides an overview of the circumstances under which the British and Scottish media covered the 2014 Scottish independence referendum followed by a case study of a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Scotland radio phone-in programme that explores how public media can engage audiences on difficult issues by raising these topics in a non-elitist, accessible atmosphere that fosters interaction
Summary
This paper focuses on the capacity of public media to foster civic involvement and political engagement. On the other hand, the reluctance of mainstream media in Western countries to foster public engagement on topics of political importance is undoubtedly linked to their interest in protecting their privileged role as gatekeepers of information (Witschge 2014). Despite the fact that, in general, online media enable spaces for users to provide content that they themselves have created, they are rarely allowed to participate in the selection and filtering process (Steensen 2011). This concern is shared by political actors, who fear criticism and who wish to control political communication (Macnamara et al 2012).
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