Comparing Public Spheres

Professor John DowneyLoughborough University

European University InstituteJune 2014

The Idea of the Public Sphere

• Most famously associated with Habermas but also in C20th Arendt and Dewey;

• Roots in an Aristotelian view of active citizenship;• Normative as well as empirical concept – specifying

conditions for democracy – the only force permitted is the force of the better argument;

• The rise of the public sphere;• And its fall?• The public sphere in flux and subject to change.

Modes of ‘Publicness’

• The everyday – from the coffehouse to the public house ;• The occasional – events, protests;• The mass-mediated;• ‘New media’;• The private and the public;• Intimate sphere; the sphere of the state; and that of business;• Colonization of the lifeworld and the public sphere by economic

and political elites;• Ability of journalists to resist pressure from elites;• Ability of resource poor groups to influence agenda;• Mediatization thesis – power of media over politics.

Impact of news impact

• Are media the independent or the dependent variable? Cause or effect? Or both?

• Media effects?• Agenda-setting: media influence what we

think about rather than causing us to think in particular ways;

• Complex causation;• Valence and visibility.

Different models of the public sphere

• Deliberative – civility, internal pluralism, inclusive;• Liberal – elite driven, civility, restricted pluralism;• Republican – inclusive, external pluralism, uncivil;• ‘Multicultural’ public sphere – inclusive, different

modes of discourse;• Which models correspond best to historical and

contemporary manifestations of the public?

Comparison as a method

• Which unit of analysis? The national?• But that may overlook differences (class, ethnic)

differences within the state;• Class-based publics;• And it may overlook transnational publics;• Comparing apples with pommes;• What to count? How to count?• How to explain the results?• Comparisons over time…much less common.

What to measure and how?• Intensity of debate – driven by national elite dissensus;• Political parallelism - varieties;• Economic parallelism – ‘paid news’;• External pluralism – intra-system;• Is greater pluralism always a good thing?• Internal pluralism – intra-institution;• Inclusiveness of debate;• Polarization of debate;• Just the news media or popular cultural forms as well?• Content analysis;• Discourse analysis;• Frame analysis – hard to operationalise for large data sets;• Decline in news consumption.

European versus national public spheres

• European Union is referred to the best example of cosmopolitan citizenship;

• Limits to this ‘imagined community’?• Also recognition of a ‘democratic deficit’ –

distance between citizens and institutions and lack of a European ‘we’;

• Can a European public sphere be created that helps to create this sense of we that is essential to a strong democracy?

Institutional versus culturalist approaches

• Institutional approach stresses importance of pan-European political and media institutions;

• Culturalist approach looks at nationally interlocking ‘national’ public spheres;

• But is there much evidence of a sense of ‘we Europeans’ in the different European public spheres?

Berlusconi

• Why choose Berlusconi? Seemed to be a figure that united non-Italian European elite in condemnation;

• ‘Gaffe’ prone;• Kapo;• How is the conflict framed? Left v Right?

Nation v Nation?

What we found?

• Discourse intensity much higher in Germany and Italy;• Seen in national terms by both left and right in each country;• Newspapers in other countries see this as an opportunity to

use ethno-national stereotypes of both Germans and Italians;• Insult to victims and survivors of the Shoah hardly

mentioned!• Essentially national public spheres;• Predominance of ethno-national stereotypes in analysis of

European problems – Eurocrisis;• Rise of neo-populism.

‘We Europeans’ united against ‘the Other’? Turkish accession

• Islam and Ottoman Empire used historically as a way to define European, Christian identity;

• Identification of frames:• Clash of Civilisations, Christian/ethno-nationalist

version;• Clash of civilisations, liberal version;• Multiculturalist frame;• Liberal individualist frame;• Economic consequences.

What we found

• Intensity much higher in France, Germany, and Turkey than in USA, UK, Slovenia;

• Why? Elite consensus in USA and UK? Distance? Geopolitical reasons? Dominance of multiculturalist frame;

• France – dominated by liberal version of Clash of Civilisation;

• Germany – ethno-nationalist version of Clash of Civilisation thesis;

• Turkey – nationalist frames;

‘We Europeans’ united against ‘the Other’? The USA

• Historical and contemporary reciprocal uses of America and Europe to define identities;

• ‘Old’ and ‘new’ Europe and the invasion of Iraq;

• Old – social democratic, anti-invasion;• New – neo-liberal, pro-invasion;• To what extent are these frames distributed

across Europe?

Sample

• Czech Republic, Germany, France, Slovenia, UK, Switzerland, Slovakia;

• ‘quality’, finnce and regional/’tabloid’ papers;• Using claims-making method and keyword

occurrence;• Network analysis.

What we found

• New Europe – UK, Czech Republic, Slovakia;• Old Europe – France, Germany, Slovenia;• Prominence of national sources in each country;• Leaders and followers – hierarchy of influence;• Old Europe network and a new Europe network;• Explanations: media as dependent and independent

variable;• Models of capitalism and impact on public opinion;• Resonates with reporting of Eurocrisis and responses to

it?

Debating the European Constitution

• Centrality of national elites to debate in each country;• Intensity of debate higher in France and UK: elite dissensus

(but over different issues);• Germany relatively low intensity (because of elite national

consensus);• Advocacy papers of left and right but they report the same

issues and the same people;• Inclusiveness – dependent upon political system –

majoritarian systems tend to be more exclusive;• Big differences between elite and popular papers – class-

based publics. Not true for other issues eg immigration.

Research Agenda

• Uneven rise of neo-populism in EU;• Are ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ media implicated in

this? How?• Complex causation with media reporting and

new media (possible) causal conditions (along with others: unemployment, living standards, immigration, electoral system, …)

• Method: Qualitative Comparative Analysis doing longitudinal analysis.