Media publics and the transnational public sphere

Abstract

The transnational public sphere THE PUBLIC sphere is back. After a long period when it was associated with the liberal democratic ideal of a domain of pure rational discourse to counter the power of the centralised state, the public sphere is now being thought of in different ways. (1) In media and cultural studies as well as in cultural politics, re-invigoration of the public sphere as a site for critical analysis (along with a renewed interest in the citizen) has arisen from a certain loss of faith in oppositional, class-based critique of media and its role in the mediation of society (Mouffe, 1992: 225). This new direction in cultural and media studies has resulted in a concurrent shift away from the social aspects of media effects with its focus on the audience, to a concern for the discursive constitution of the public through media discourse. (2) This concern for the constitution of a media public lies at the heart of debates about the future of democracy, where democratic processes are tempered and indeed controlled by the management of public opinion within the mediated public sphere (Dahlgren, 1995: 2; Goode, 1996: 69-70). These days, it is increasingly difficult to speak of democracy without at the same time speaking about the `public debate', or the `public interest', staged through the media. The public needs to be differentiated from the audience. They are two different things. The audience exists as a social category brought into a certain relationship with the media, while the public is a creation of the media (in and of society itself). Ien Ang (1991: 26-32) argues that in addressing an audience, the media constitute publicness through projecting what they believe the audience to be like. The audience, for its part, becomes part of a media public through recognising itself in the mode of address adopted by the media in their attempts to create a public constituency. It follows then, that the mediated public sphere owes its existence to the media: It is an ephemeral space of mediated public address, debate and discussion in which various identities become apparent to audiences on a large scale. The mediated public sphere is also intimately caught up in the everyday social realities of the audience, whose sense of belonging is based on a public imaginary created through their interaction with the media. The public sphere and the audience are thus enmeshed through media mediation (mediazation), but with the media as its leading dimension. In this paper, I am concerned to address the emergence of a mediated transnational public sphere, its capacity to manage global issues on behalf of a democratic world order, and its affects within local and regional contexts. The possibility of a transnational public sphere has arisen because of the rapid spread of globalised media communication throughout the world. This has led to an acceleration of media circulation, an interlinking of live telecommuni-cation networks which draw disparate areas together in new arrangements. In effect a certain kind of transformation of the public sphere itself has begun. Public opinion has become much more immediately effective in the day-to-day conduct of government and political debate. What happens to political debate and public opinion when we consider the possibility of the emergence of transnational public spheres? National issues circulating within a domestic context are at the same time circulating within broader regional contexts in such a way that they affect responses at the local level. What kind of media publics does this process produce, and how might they be oriented to world issues in a democratic manner? Before pressing on, I would like to clarify what I mean by the term `transnational'. `Transnational' is not the same as `international' (Robertson, 1990: 24). From an international perspective, nations remain integrated wholes, relating to each other as independent entities. …