The Media in Public Sphere

The Media in Public Sphere
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The Media in Public Sphere
The media remains a primary tool of communication that is structured to make notable impacts in society. The impacts that the media manifest stem from the wide reach that media outlets have mastered. By extension, media can employ their resources and platforms to assess society, explore the needs gaps, and develop solutions to the identified problems. One of the challenges that contemporary society faces is democracy. In the west, most economies are confined in delivering the ultimate democratic outcomes. However, there remain cases of skewed leadership that favor particular population groups with boundaries set on issues such as gender, race, and social class inequalities. The biggest question that arises from all the sociopolitical and economic discrepancies in contemporary society is the role that the media plays through its communication platform to rectify the ills. The conversation is dominated by the changing role of the public sphere in the democratic space, with the media allowed to play its role of disseminating information. This paper employs the social responsibility theory to assess how media can contribute to the discussion in the public sphere and thus strengthen democratic processes. Through the guidance of the social responsibility theory, the media has the internal power and resources to revitalize the democratic processes, something that is not executed effectively due to the external forces, including ownership and advertisements that steer media outlets to stay only mildly effective on its public sphere responsibility space.
The Social Responsibility Theory
The social responsibility theory stays among the most prominent normative theories of the press. The prominence of the social responsibility theory stems from its partial accommodation of other normative theories, including the authoritarian and the libertarian theories (Jebril, Loveless, & Stetka, 2015). Social responsibility theory emphasizes the need for a free press without censorship. The theory insists on the dissemination of information without bias or boundaries set through agenda-setting. The proponents of the theory indicate that the contents of the press should be discussed publicly. That gives social responsibility theory a mass media approach with distinctive relationships with the general population. In that essence, the media should accept professional self-regulation, public interference, or both. On the one hand, social responsibility accords the media total freedom. However, this theory also acknowledges the inputs of external controls on contemporary media inputs. Influence from the government and the increased private ownership of the media accommodate some of the external controls that present-day media must endure marking sustainability.
The social responsibility theory attempts to use its resources to impact behaviors and changes in the desired ways. That is, SRT effectively from emphasis on objectivity or fact in factors such as media reports to more complex interpretive or investigative reporting (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019). In addressing democracy, for instance, the theory seeks the basics of democracy, such as free and fair elections and their applications or violations in real-life democratic processes. Hence, using the tools of social responsibility theory, the media tends to assess concerns beyond the basics of facts to include the relationship of various issues with society, but their real-life applications as well. The public is more concerned about the explanations more than a mere portrayal of facts. The theory was instrumental in the revitalization of media. Due to the increased adoption of social responsibility, media outlets started to set higher levels of accuracy, truth, and information. There are more inputs of the social responsibility theory that further changed the perception and the outcomes that media attracted.
The social responsibility theory is structured around codes that can be mimicked in enhancing democratic processes. The code of conduct is anchored on the need to fuel the right to information and press, explore and promote the usage of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and for the protection of the role of mass media in society. The outcome of standardization would be an exercise of journalism with an emphasis on high professionalism, responsibility, accountability, and decency (Jebril, Loveless, & Stetka, 2015). The code of conduct is subdivided into different sections underpinned by the principles of professional behavior, due care, and professional competence, objectivity, and integrity. By extension, formulating a code of conduct for the press would improve the standards of journalism. In democratic processes, the code of conduct emphasized in SRT can help professionals ground their reporting on accuracy, impartiality, resistance to corruption, avoiding language that promotes violence, and correction of inaccurate factual reporting. Such inclusions of code enhance efficiencies in democratic processes. The other areas of interest that have since emerged with the emphasis on the code of conduct include safeguarding the interests of journalists and society and criticizing or penalizing behaviors that defy the code of conduct for the press.
There are evident outcomes of the extensive implementation of social responsibility theory, especially through the lenses of relationships between the public and the media. Primarily, the theory allows everyone to express their opinion or say something about the media (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019). The performance of the media can only improve when it is subject to public scrutiny. Allowing people to express their opinion only accords the media the necessary feedback to formulate better outcomes. The theory also allows professional ethics, consumer action, and community opinion. The adoption of the social responsibility theory coincided with the need for a symbiotic relationship between the press and the public. Respecting the values of the community while delivering on the mandate of communication effectively became a priority for media outlets. The other important input of the theory of responsibility was the advancements in private ownership of media outlets. To give better public service, it was important to dissociate media from the influence of the government lest there is a need to steer better services by the government (Jebril, Loveless, & Stetka, 2015). Ultimately, the media was accorded the opportunity to take social responsibility. The failure of the media to execute their responsibility would be followed by transferring those responsibilities to other stakeholders. Put simply, the advancements in the theory of social responsibility accorded media outlets the opportunity to advance their roles, especially to the interests of the public, failure of which they would face repercussions.
Application of the Theory
Media Influence on Public Sphere and Democracy
Influencing the political discourse is among the most challenging roles of members of the public. In democracies, members of the public influence the political discourse either by active participation in the choice of leaders or through airing grievances publicly for a change (Pantelis & Yörük, 2016). The public sphere is one of the platforms that members of the public can employ to express their position on matters affecting their society, be they social, political, or economic. Hence, the public sphere can be described as a space in social life where people can come together to identify societal problems and discuss those problems freely. The public sphere outcomes should influence the political action in a nation.
The mass media plays a significant role in the execution of activities in the public sphere. Being a place to all and where people can easily debate ideas freely, the public sphere remains a hotspot for the media to engage with the public by understanding the exact problems that the public faces (Jebril, Loveless, & Stetka, 2015). Presently, the advancements in technology have steered the discussions in public debates to accommodate other platforms such as government policy documents, academic publications, and social media. German philosopher Jurgen Habermas was the first to define the public sphere. In Habermas’ understanding, participation in the activities of the public sphere constitutes private people gathering together as a public and advancing the needs of the public to the government. The media is a link between the public sphere and the government. The principal ideology behind the advancements in the public sphere is that the government should act in the interest of the public sphere. It further states that legitimate governments are those governments that listen to the inputs of the public sphere objectively. It further implies that the tenets of democracy emerge from the basic theoretical structure of the public sphere. Allowing citizens to engage in an enlightened debate steers the pursuance of democratic principles.
In a democratic space, five actors must make their appearance in the establishment of the public sphere. Primary among the actors are the lobbyists who represent the special interest groups. Any ideal society consists of inequalities that lobbyists are motivated to address (Pantelis & Yörük, 2016). Issues of special groups such as children, immigrants, women, refugees, and ethnic minorities have their grievances addressed by lobbyists in the social sphere. The second category of actors is the advocates who represent general interest groups. The advocates explore the needs of marginalized groups that cannot voice their interests effectively. Bearing the inputs of codes in social responsibility, there are experts as actors in the public sphere. The experts are credited with scientific or professional knowledge in specific areas. The media can invite professionals to advise on various topics, including democracy. The fourth categories of actors in the public sphere are the moral entrepreneurs who must guide the debates through the channels of societal moral standards (Moratis, 2018). The moral entrepreneurs collaborate with the media to define what is morally acceptable in the public discourse. The last group of actors is the intellectuals, such as academics or writers, who promote general interests through spontaneous public discourse. Actors in the public sphere must instill both personal and collective efforts in engaging public discourse debates.
Media
The success of the public sphere rests on the roles of the media. That is public sphere requires a means of transmission of information and influencing those who receive that information. The ideals of the media in the public sphere must, hence, match the standards set in the social responsibility theory (Zaenudin & Suwatno, 2018). As noted, the media has guidelines and standards that it must follow to accommodate the necessary publicness. The discussions on the public sphere exist in democracies based on the roles that the media must play. That is, the media constitutes and maintains the inputs in the public sphere.
The media has evolved to accommodate the public sphere in different platforms and topics. YouTube is one of the new platforms that are fast changing the course of debates in the public sphere. YouTube can serve as an influential force to mobilize young people politically. That is because most young people rely on a platform such as YouTube to stay informed and entertained (Zaenudin & Suwatno, 2018). Considering YouTube’s amount of influence on young indiv...