Media, capabilities, and justification

Abstract

In this article, I evaluate the use of the ‘capability approach’ developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum as a normative perspective for critical media research. The concept of capabilities provides a valuable way of assessing media and captures important aspects of the relationship between media and equality. However, following Rainer Forst’s critique of outcome-oriented approaches to justice, I argue that the concept is less well placed to address important questions of power and process. In particular, when it comes to deciding which capabilities media should promote and what media structures and practices should promote them, the capability approach must accept the priority of deliberative and democratic processes of justification. Once we do this, we are urged to situate the concept of capabilities within a more process-oriented view of justice, focused not on capabilities as such but on outlining the conditions required to support such justificatory processes. After discussing the capability approach, I will outline the process-oriented theory of justice Forst has developed around the idea of the ‘right to justification’. While Forst does not discuss media in depth, I argue his theory of justice can provide a valuable alternative normative standpoint for critical media research.