Role Of Democracy Research Articles

How Fiction Makes Amends for Journalism: The Case of When They See Us

The miniseries When They See Us constitutes an example of how a based-on-real-events fiction work can add to its poetic role the ability to participate in shaping democracy. Although journalism is not its central issue, this Netflix series makes a representation of the press in which it shows how the media failed in fulfilling its democratic role and tries to make amends for it. By analyzing 21 scenes dedicated to the media from a narrative perspective, this paper shows how the series represents the press’ failure in acting as watchdog during this case. Moreover, it also shows how this representation of the press turns the series into a watchdog itself.

Understanding the democratic role of perceived online political micro-targeting: longitudinal effects on trust in democracy and political interest

ABSTRACT With the increasing availability of big digital voter data, there are rising concerns that online political micro-targeting (PMT) may be harmful for democratic societies. However, PMT may also be beneficial to democracy because it targets voters with content that matches with their predispositions, potentially increasing political interest. For both, harmful and beneficial outcomes of PMT, we lack empirical evidence on the side of citizens. In a two-wave panel survey study, we tested the reciprocal relationships over time between perceived online PMT, trust in democracy, and political interest. We found that perceived online PMT leads to a decrease of trust in democracy, but also to an increase in political interest. The effect on political interest was independent from age. No reciprocal effects of trust in democracy and political interest on perceived PMT were observed. Overall, the results suggest that the democratic implications of PMT are more nuanced than previously assumed.

Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements by Trevor Ngwane

Reviewed by: Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements by Trevor Ngwane Mueni wa Muiu Ngwane, Trevor. Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements. London: Pluto Press, 2021. Can people who live in shacks teach us about democracy? Trevor Ngwane begins this book with the following question: Ngingalitholaphi ikomiti lalendawo? Where can I find this place's committee? To answer this question, Ngwane sets out to study four informal settlements of South Africa's nine provinces. Organizing among shack communities can be traced back to protests [End Page 222] against forced removals by the apartheid regime. They occupied private land because the state failed to provide adequate housing. Sometimes communities were forced to live in "temporary" housing for forty years. In seeking to answer this question, Ngwane draws back a curtain and reveals a world that few know about. He visited forty-six informal settlements, of which forty-five had committees. He distinguishes between autonomous committees and people's committees. The latter are formed by the state or NGOs. His focus is mainly on the self-organization of the committees, not their physical organizations. These include ten settlements each in Gauteng, North West, and Kwa Zulu Natal, and sixteen in Eastern Cape. The smallest settlement had twenty shacks, and the largest had eight thousand. Most had between one hundred and five hundred shacks, with Alexandria (Johannesburg) having a thousand shacks a month. The number of informal settlements increased between 1990 and 1994 with the elimination of bans on political organizations and apartheid laws. Most of the settlements are named after the pioneers, how the place was occupied, or after major political leaders. Seventy percent of the settlements have electricity, while 65 percent have access to water taps and 39 percent have long-drop toilets. The first committees set up are the people's committees, which are followed by ward committees (state). There were people's committees in thirty-five settlements. Life in shantytowns is difficult. One has to struggle for every single thing that other communities take for granted, from being alive to getting water and toilets. Amakomiti (Zulu for "committee") people learned to depend on themselves from defense and plot allocation to basic services. Most of these committees rely on their experiences in rural areas to govern their communities. Sometimes they work alongside township organizations but on other occasions they don't, depending on the issues at stake. Ngwane calls the discussions and activities of these committees "democracy on the margins." This is the development and practice of local democratic practices and cultures by neglected communities. It gives them agency where they are not victims. This book explores different committees, their history and roles in democracy on the margins. Popular committees in the shacks are an aspect of a democratic practice and ethos that is not fully understood. The ANC had committees in eight of the forty-six settlements. There were community police forums in five settlements. Five settlements had community development forums, which monitor local construction and development. Twenty-five settlements had more than one committee. Whether committees succeeded or failed depended on their accountability and [End Page 223] transparency in meeting expectations. Relationships between committees and the state vary from antagonistic to symbiotic. Most communities are forced to connect their own services, from electricity to water. Most shacks in South Africa are located in close to mines in Rustenburg, where the unemployment rate is 40 percent. It is also the most unequal place in the world. Rustenburg produces 70 percent of the world's platinum. In-migration is 7 percent from neighboring countries. Based on official figures, 17.4 percent of the people live in twenty-four informal settlements, but independent researchers put the number at 40 percent. Fifty percent have no monthly income. There are two views about shack dwellers: shack dwellers as part of workers' movements, and therefore with a lot to gain, and shack dwellers as distinct from workers' movements, with little to gain. Shack dwellers organize settlement, order, and security. Some are better organized than others. For example, the Power Group in Crossroads, an informal settlement near Cape Town, was organized by women who led protests for services for four months...

Conservative advocacy journalism: Explored with a model of journalists’ influence on democracy

The democratic role of news media in Western society is usually analysed through the lens of the dominant liberal model of media. This model assumes that journalists play a positive part in democracy by monitoring those with power and facilitating a diverse marketplace of ideas. Within this model, journalistic professionalism emphasises objectivity, neutrality, pluralism, balance and independence. There are, however, two types of advocacy journalism which, despite receiving less attention, nonetheless are present in Western media and exhibit characteristics contrary to these liberal values: radical journalism and collaboration between journalists and the state. Through a case study comparing Australian Murdoch media coverage of an industrial dispute to that of non-Murdoch media, this paper proposes a third type of advocacy journalism: conservative advocacy. Through the development of a model of journalistic influence on democracy, conservative advocacy is proposed as the least democratic form of journalism due to its suppression of voices that challenge power.

The Psychological Empowerment Potential of Solutions Journalism: Perspectives from Pandemic News Users in the UK

ABSTRACT Traditional problem-focussed news often cast audiences in passive and reactive ways, which can disempower them from participating in civic life. With influences from positive psychology, solutions journalism (SOJO) is proposed as a way to improve audiences’ mental wellbeing and engagement with the news. However, research seldom systematically examines how SOJO psychologically empowers audiences, leaving a gap for a more thorough understanding of the potential of SOJO in fulfilling the democratic role of journalism. Drawing on the theory of psychological empowerment (PE) and through 59 in-depth interviews with members of the public in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine UK audience responses to the concept of SOJO. Normatively promising findings emerged from our study. SOJO was considered to be useful in intrapersonal empowerment (i.e., increasing perceived control and self-efficacy), interactional empowerment (i.e., enhancing critical awareness), and behavioural empowerment (i.e., motivating community involvement and coping behaviours). Theoretically, this study establishes a firm connection between SOJO and PE which, we argue, has important implications for journalism’s often troubled relationship with civic engagement. As such, we call for a rethinking of the often taken-for-granted problem-focussed news practices.

Kirkelig demokrati under korona-pandemien

Church democracy during the corona pandemic: A study of elected church leaders' participation in decisions about measures in the Church of Norway The article examines the conditions of democracy in the Church of Norway during the corona pandemic in 2020-2021.The focus is on the decision-making process with the church's own infection control supervisor, especially regarding the participation of elected leaders. The article is based on interviews and surveys among church leaders, as well as selected documents. The material is analyzed from three perspectives, which have also been trends in the church in recent years: democratization, corporatization, and professionalization. The analysis shows that there has been good coordination between employed leaders at all levels in the church, during the pandemic. The collaboration mainly seems to have worked well. Decision-making processes have emphasized consensus. Some of the employees have also been given a clearer role of responsibility. However, democracy has played a withdrawn role during the pandemic, where most decisions are made by employed leaders. Most elected local leaders seem to be satisfied with this withdrawn role. Among regional and central elected leaders, there is a clearer wish that this should have been discussed, and that the elected leader should have had a more prominent role. This delimitation of the scope of democracy can partly be understood in terms of the pandemic's distinctiveness, with the need for quick decisions and action. At the same time, there is reason to believe that this limitation of democracy relates to traditions and understanding of the church's democracy in general. In part, church democracy has been seen as a "meeting democracy", with emphasis on the decision itself, while implementation is left to the employees. At the same time, a lack of time or an institutionalized role of representative has pulled in the same direction. This article contributes to further reflection on the role of democracy in the Church of Norway.

THE EXISTENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE PRINCIPLES OF PURPOSEFULNESS

In this article, the National idea and democracy are reflected in the existence of consciousness and the appearance of purposefulness in the development of civil society, dialectical ties, the fact that all citizens of the Republic of Uzbekistan have the same rights and freedoms, the role of democracy and the cultural phenomenon.

Economic resilience in developing countries: The role of democracy in the face of external shocks

Economic resilience in developing countries: The role of democracy in the face of external shocks

European standards for ensuring the principle of the prosecutor's office

The article discusses the basic European standards for ensuring the principle of independence of the prosecutor's office. It has been established that increased attention to existing international standards in the field of human rights, which accumulate the most advanced legal concepts that determine the legal status of a person, is a natural reflection of the modern trend in the direction of strengthening guarantees of the independence of prosecutor's office workers. After all, the mechanism of building procedural legal relations depends on the attitude of the state towards the official, his dignity, interests, and rights. Based on the provisions of international legislation, in many countries, there is a surge of reform activity, which is based both on the accounting of international law and on the desire to create something new instead of international legal regulation. It is substantiated that the integration of the Ukrainian prosecutor's office into the judicial system will be a fundamental fundamental step on the way to its reform, which will make it possible to ensure the impartiality, independence, and depoliticization of its activities and will correspond to the established modern trends of the prosecutor's office in the democratic role of the state. Not only such European democracies as Belgium, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, France, and Finland, but also Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Romania. The author concludes that an essential task for our country is not only the implementation of the main European standards and principles but also the development of specific mechanisms necessary for reforming the prosecutor's office of Ukraine. It is necessary to determine at the constitutional level that the prosecutor's office is an independent body in the judicial system, to optimize its function, to improve the guarantees of ensuring the independence of prosecutors, the procedure for their appointment, the grounds and procedure for the dismissal of the Prosecutor General, to change the requirements for the person who can hold the specified position.

“We Have to act Like our Devices are Already Infected”: Investigative Journalists and Internet Surveillance

ABSTRACT Internet surveillance has become a crucial issue for journalism. The “Snowden moment” has shed light on the risks that journalists and their sources face while communicating online and has shown how journalists themselves can be targets of surveillance operations or other forms of malicious digital attacks from different actors. More recent revelations, such as those coming from the “Pegasus Project”, have underlined even more dangerous threats posed to the safety of journalists, increasingly targeted with spyware technology. Due to the sensitivity of their work and sources and given their strong “watchdog” role in democracies, investigative reporters are in a particularly dangerous position when it comes to the potential chilling effects of surveillance on their work of journalists. This paper analyzes investigative journalists’ views and self-reflections on the impacts of Internet surveillance on their work by means of in-depth qualitative interviews with reporters affiliated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and working in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. The paper touches on different angles of the Internet surveillance issue by analyzing journalists’ concerns about national and international surveillance players and the overall impact of surveillance on news work.

Question design and the construction of populist stances in political news interviews

This paper focuses on the relationship between journalism and right wing populist discourses in the context of broadcast news interviews. We analyse a specific feature of question design in which the public is invoked as a source of opinionated positions in adversarial interviewing. Analysing data from a range of socio-political contexts, we identify a shift in adversarial questioning along a scale of ‘soft’ populism, that is the attribution of views and concerns to a generic public ‘in crisis’, to ‘hard’ populism, where interviewers construct hypothetical scenarios in which populist positions are attributed to ‘some people’. We argue that the democratic role of journalists as public watchdogs, holding politicians and public figures accountable on behalf of the public, is challenged by this normalisation of populist moral order discourses in a routine journalistic practice, both drawing on and contributing to the propagation of populist agendas and anti-democratic populist rhetoric.

Post Post-Broadcast Democracy? News Exposure in the Age of Online Intermediaries

Online intermediaries such as social network sites or search engines are playing an increasingly central role in democracy by acting as mediators between information producers and citizens. Academic and public commentators have raised persistent concerns that algorithmic recommender systems would negatively affect the provision of political information by tailoring content to the predispositions and entertainment preferences of users. At the same time, recent research indicates that intermediaries foster exposure to news that people would not use as part of their regular media diets. This study investigates these unresolved questions by combining the web browsing histories and survey responses of more than 7,000 participants from six major democracies. The analysis shows that despite generally low levels of news use, using online intermediaries fosters exposure to nonpolitical and political news across countries and personal characteristics. The findings have implications for scholarly and public debates on the challenges that high-choice digital media environments pose to democracy

Opposition fragmentation facilitates electoral accountability: Evidence from a survey experiment

Which is better for electoral accountability: a fragmented opposition that gives plenty of alternatives or an opposition with fewer stronger parties? While oppositions play a key role in democracies, the effect of opposition fragmentation on accountability remains unclear. On the one hand, fragmentation may enhance accountability by providing voters with ideologically close alternatives. On the other hand, increased fragmentation could make coordination over strong viable alternatives more difficult. In this study, I present an original survey experiment designed to test whether fragmentation of the opposition enhances accountability. Moreover, to assess the specific conditions under which fragmentation may enhance accountability, I distinguish between ideologues and pragmatic voters, and differentiate between ideological and valence issues. Results show that opposition fragmentation enhances accountability, particularly for ideologues. Lastly, I present a direct test of the mechanisms that demonstrates that fragmentation improves accountability because marginal gains in ideological proximity outweigh losses in viability.

Theatre as Intervention: Responsibility/Irresponsibility or Literature’s Classical Role in Democracy and Miller’s The Crucible

ABSTRACT As Ernesto Laclau explains, the metaphorical comparison by means of allegory implies an attempt to bring different histories under the heading of one power. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is an upfront political confrontation with the McCarthy Trials in the US during the1950s, claiming its own powers of control. At the same time, however, the two periods are not simply different just as two separate worlds can be different. The periods are also bordering on one another in space and time because of the culture that connects them. Culturally speaking, especially in relation to its fascination with Manichaeism, the opposition of good and evil, the two histories relate in terms of contiguity. Here metonymy is at stake, which Laclau considers in terms of hegemony. In this light, the play is both a confrontation in a battle for power, but it also suggests that there may be another way of organising culture. Or, in other words, that there might conceivably be another organisation of the world.

Disseminator, Watchdog and Neighbor?: Positioning Local Journalism in the 2018 #FreePress Editorials Campaign

ABSTRACT On August 15, 2018, hundreds of newspapers around the United States published editorials defending journalism against attacks by President Trump. This study examines how these editorials rhetorically represented the press’s role in democracy, as well as journalists’ relationships with local communities. Grounded in recent frameworks examining how journalists’ role conceptions can evolve or be reinforced through metajournalistic discourse, we find through content analysis that the editorials emphasized traditional journalistic roles of objective “information disseminator” and “watchdog”, while some also articulated a “good neighbor” role.

Economic Beat Journalists: Which Audience Perceptions, What Conception of Democracy?

ABSTRACT Economic coverage often takes the perspective of the audience rather than financial insiders by applying news values such as domestication and identification, especially in democratic-corporatist countries and since the Great Recession. While research has looked into how this mainstreaming of economic news materializes in news content (role performance), less is known about the democratic motives and audience perceptions which drive this coverage (role conception). This paper argues that insight into democratic role conceptions and in particular economic journalists’ perceptions of their audience will help better understand the mainstreaming of economic news and its democratic consequences. The paper addresses the question: how do economic journalists perceive their journalistic role, and which view of the audience do these conceptions reflect? Conceptually, a distinction is made between the audience as citizen, consumer, and participant. This research question is addressed through a representative survey among the population of Danish journalists, including 50 economic journalists. Their views are compared to 52 political beat journalists, 40 health beat journalists, and 804 generalists. The results suggest that economic journalists primarily see their journalistic role in the light of the competitive model of democracy, informing and advising, but not empowering citizens by fostering participation or facilitating deliberation.

Teaching democracy: The role of public institutions in promoting civic learning

AbstractDemocracy requires an informed populous that is engaged, politically, and otherwise, and concerned for the safety and wellbeing of its communities. Public institutions of higher education play a pivotal role in democracy, and a direct pathway to this result is civic learning and democratic engagement (CLDE). Now more than ever, a sharper focus on the ways in which equity and inclusion – dimensions of civic courage – intersect with education for democracy is of paramount importance. To underscore the role of public institutions in promoting civic learning, this chapter explores the historic roots of education for democracy, student affairs and co‐curricular approaches to CLDE, and the role of professional organizations in encouraging CLDE. Challenges and opportunities related to increasing institutional attention to civic learning are discussed.

The role of democracy in economic growth : A (brief) literature review

Abstract: This article presents a brief review of recent work by economists studying the effects of democracy on economic growth. These studies are divided into three groups: the first one supports the general view that democracy has a positive effect on economic growth; democratic regimes increase the level of GDP by creating the climate of trust, guaranteeing the protection of property rights, as well as reducing transaction costs, while dictatorship regimes strongly hinder economic growth. The second group of researchers stipulated that non-democratic regimes would be more favorable to increasing economic growth. For the third research group, there is no significant relationship between the two variables. The common point of these studies, despite the absence of a consensus, is their insistence that the political regime matters for economic growth and development. Keywords: Economic growth - Democracy - Institutions

The role of democracy in economic growth : A (brief) literature review

The role of democracy in economic growth : A (brief) literature review

Correlates of Crisis Induced Credit Market Discipline: The Roles of Democracy, Veto Players, and Government Turnover

Correlates of Crisis Induced Credit Market Discipline: The Roles of Democracy, Veto Players, and Government Turnover