Liquid subjects: news media and public political pedagogy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between news media and political education within consumer society. We argue that political education today needs to be understood as part of consumerism and media culture, in which individuals selectively expose themselves to and scrutinize various media representations not only of political issues, but also of political subjectivity and action. Individuals learn about how they might become political and act politically through their engagements with the news, in the context of the characteristics of liquid modernity, namely consumer culture, individualization, and choice. When examined through a lens of public pedagogy, political education becomes intertwined with consumer culture and the role of media in the education and socialization of political subjectivity. In this paper, we look at one example of the relationship between news and the education of political subjectivity by drawing from a larger research study, which examined the role of mainstream and alternative media in citizens’ political mobilization on climate change. We argue that news consumption is part of a public political pedagogy through which individuals negotiate becoming liquid subjects, that is, citizens who take a critical, monitorial, and individualistic consumer approach to becoming political and taking part in social change.