New Media, Governance and Democracy

Ruud F.M. Lubbers and Jolanda Koorevaar

The magic of the new media

This annual conference is about the theme New Media, Governance and Democracy. These are important issues with have attached to them important questions. New media are interactive, decentral, loosely integrated systems of information and communication technologies via which very many messages in vision, sound, movement and touch can be transported very fast across vast distances. They can be powerful instruments of societal change for better or worse.

Democracy is about the power of the people. The classical idea of democracy as a model in which the people can send home their government is too minimal. Its successor, the trias politica, in which a chosen Parliament is also instrumental in legislation and checks on governmental action, was an important improvement. Unfortunately this model has gotten some worn spots.

That is why we have come to speak of participative democracy in which people are more closely connected to their government via public hearings, referenda and the like. More important: participative democracy is a political model in which empowered people associate and organize in such a way that they can gain influence on and responsibility themselves.

The question now becomes, if the use of the new media will revitalize the power of the people.

Usually the positive effects new media will have are mentioned. And indeed one can point to the following:

1) New media have proved to be able to crush oppressive regimes. They have played and can play a role in empowering people in overcoming dictatorship and repression.

2) New media fulfill a role in spreading globally universal values and they fuel NGO's organizing transboundary social action.

3) New media can add to open society and to cultural diversity which is about practicing a positive interest in other cultures and civilizations.

4) New media can add to transparency, diminishing the risk of manipulation.

5) New media add to the capacity to educate and train people.

6) New media can be instrumental in new organization of the labor market; teleworking and decoupling production and consumption of services (by storing information)

7) New media add to the capacity to end hierarchy; they empower people to function in small autonomous teams.

8) New media add to global economic integration and in doing so they add to the capacity to include people.

9) New media add to the capacity, for elderly people to overcome isolation and loneliness.

The new media in an economized world

This all sounds optimistic. Will it prove to be too optimistic, or shall the new media indeed revitalize the power of the people?

To be able to answer this question we need to make a diagnosis of our time. For the trias politica, and even more so for a participative democracy, to work the people must be interested and moderately active in politics. They will need true and meaningful information about a broad range of subjects. Politicians will have to be truly committed to the ones they are representing. In our time there are at least four processes visible which endanger these preconditions.

First of all there is emerging a more and more encompassing consumerist ethic. Benjamin Barber once said that the recent revolutions in Eastern Europe were not so much inspired by the wish for freedom and the right to vote, but by well paid jobs and the right to shop. This of course is an overstatement. Vaclav Havel did speak about freedom, truth and dignity. It was only after the revolutions were completed that the original motivations were exchanged for less honorable economic ones. Still, the trend towards consumerism can not be neglected.

In a consumerist society power depends on the amount of money one can bring into the market. Status is defined by the brands and products one uses. Shopping, buying and consuming is the main way of expressing oneself and ones identity. Brand symbolism, newness, appearance, fun and enjoyment are the norms with which to value commodities, people and interactions.

This ethic does not go well with the serious business of politics. Reflexivity, the will to inform oneself and to think over information critically, value oriented action, it all is diametrically opposed to the consumerist ethic.

I can see two main causes to the growth of consumerism. One is that market forces stimulate people to act and think in a consumerist way. In the form of advertisement the invitation to enter the market and buy is everywhere. Even more important: Westerners are required and expected to act like consumers in almost every social relationship. A second explanation for the growth of consumerism can be that due to processes of globalization and intensification of economic competition laborers have to make more hours and they have to work harder. When they come home they are tired. If one can relax in front of the television watching soaps or sports, if one can have fun at a shopping mall or get rid of ones tensions by playing aggressive computer games, why get involved into politics? The a-critical, a-reflexive consumerist ethic can be seen as the ethic of a tired and energyless people.

This brings us to the second threat to democracy: the commodification and economization of society. Market relations are becoming more widespread. Privatization, deregulation and reorganization of public are one cause. The power of economic actors, a consequence of globalization, is another. The minimalization of the welfare state for example results in the marketization of relations within healthcare and education institutions. In every corner of society relationships are modeled according to the economic laws. In the market relations are freed from personal, familial and communal ties. They become anonymous, rationalized, impersonal and abstract. Individuals who are embedded in society in such a minimal way are unlikely to be politically active, engaged and socially responsible.

Economization of politics itself is anti-democratic in two ways. Huge sums of money are offered and accepted to support political campaigns in exchange for political influence: the one million, one vote system. Besides, the mere strength of economic pressure sometimes forces politicians to neglect the voice and the wishes of the people. The world economy seems to dictate more and more what politicians should and should not do.

A third social process threatening democracy is the degeneration of the press. Within democracies the free press is an important institution via which the freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed and the pre-condition availability of meaningful information is met. Information is available in vast quantities, but its very abundance is confusing and quality lacking. The economization process has penetrated the media. As a consequence a lot of media-products no longer function as information carriers, but serve rather as constituencies of the right umfeld for advertisement or as mass-products, easy to swallow, but with little nutritional value. The informative function is further undermined by the fact that emotions seem to sell. This can be called the Diana-syndrome. Media are able to dramatize and enlarge happenings in such a way that emotions of compassion, of sadness and joy become massified. It is worth mentioning that within a society penetrated by the success of the market coupled with rational application of technology the need to feel, to experience, to be overwhelmed by emotions is so big and can be so easily exploited.

The mentioned processes cause a lot of media to contain non-information. In former days the free press was often used to release propaganda, as described by Noam Chomsky. Today, especially with the new media, the power of the state to control flows of information has declined. It is not propaganda, but economization coupled to the Diana-syndrome that threatens the proper functioning of the free press within democratic societies.

The fourth and last inherently anti-democratic social process is the mediazation of politics. Politicians are confronted with the consumerist ethic, economization and a press hungry for superficial, but selling shots. Because politicians are partly dependent on votes they will have to adapt to media and consumerist rules. Form supersedes content. Messages must be easy to apprehend and superficial. The politician must look good, he has to be entertaining and he needs to be able to steer emotions, he has got to be moving. Meaningful questioning of government actions by parliament members, a serious debate on differences in political programs, boring but truthful accounts of ongoing political processes do not fit into this scheme. Politics becomes drama, with good-looking main figures. Politics is fun to look at, it is a soap series acted out passionately, consumed passively. This is not what we think of, when we say the words democratic politics.

New media as defenders of enemies of the four freedoms

In the foregoing four processes threatening democracy in modern societies have been discussed. All these were connected with the enormous power related to the market.

After World War 2 in reaction to totalitarian regimes we became very enthusiastic about open society and we formulated four freedoms to defend openness. These are: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God, freedom from need and freedom from want.

Now, after the demise of the Cold War we are threatened by another form of totalitarianism; that of the dollar. This, as we have seen, deforms our culture, penetrates all of society, transforms and marginalizes politics and rules the media. The time may have come to extend Roosevelts four freedoms. Of course what we call these days human rights are still relevant and applicable in modern societies. There are still many people who can only wish to enjoy those freedoms: in China, Indonesia, Parts of Africa and Latin America. Both these parts of the world and the West however are also facing new threats to democracy. Instead of freedoms of and for the people over and against political entities, we now need to formulate those freedoms in opposition to the power of the economy.

Lets look at the freedom of speech and expression and the freedom to worship God. The latter we interpret in a broader sense, including the freedom to be reflexive, to give autonomously and independently meaning to ones life. Both freedoms were formulated to prevent the state from determining how people would think, act and feel. Now both freedoms are threatened to be annihilated by the economization of the free press. To be able to form an opinion, to chose what God to worship and what meaning to attach to life one needs meaningful information. Freedom of speech presupposes that one is not forced to express oneself in any prescribed way. As we have seen the economized media-rules do determine ways of expression.

In our days, to guarantee these two of the basic freedoms it seems necessary not only to have free, but also to have a public press, subsidized, but not attached to political or economic interests. This press, radio, television and space in cyberspace will have to be cheap, easily accessible, professional, reliable and its function will be to generate informative press products. However, from experience we know that public media are often politically controlled. It remains the question how a press can be called into life that is neither economized, nor politicized.

We also have the freedom from want. This is referring to basic material wants like food, water and a roof above ones head. Still many people (both within poor and rich countries) lack this. Those who are free from want, face another restraint: that of the constantly yelling, absorbing and omnipresent market-economy. People work to produce for it and spent their leisure on it. If not, they have to face up to advertisements insistently inviting to come along and buy. Shops are open from seven till eleven and beyond. In this situation there is hardly time to pause and think. Therefore a new freedom becomes relevant: the freedom to be left alone by the market.

For a long time in the Netherlands all shops were closed on Sundays and after five o clock. Since two years these regulations are abolished and a true 24-hour economy was created. Sunday closure seemed old-fashioned, but was it? Is it not a good thing to force people to be free from market pressure every now and then?

Last but not least we have the fourth freedom: the freedom of fear. In totalitarian political regimes there is a lot of fear of the state: fear of execution, arbitrary conviction and torture. Within economic totalitarian society there is another form of fear. In such a system money is important in all sectors of life. In education, healthcare and even to constitute and express ones own self-identity money is a necessary prerequisite. For people to get this money, a job is needed. Jobs, due to globalization become less secure and less well-paid. Existential security, the assurance that one now and in the future will have access to the most basic services (care, education) and commodities (food, water) is no longer, or at least far less, guaranteed by the state.

To live in a economized society therefore is quite anxious. Existential fear is realistic. With the minimalization of the welfare state, the deregulation of the labor market and the abolishment of the job for a lifetime freedom from fear has again become a utopian notion. One can only be free from fear if there is minimal security for laborers, unemployed and disabled in that they can at the very least sustain themselves at a socially acceptable minimum.

Roosevelts four freedoms are threatened once more, but in a different way, requiring a different defense. In the West we face an economic totalitarian society. That is I admit an overly pessimistic picture. It counterbalances the conventional positive list of the nine points given above.

The new media as we experience them are a mixed bag. ICT can be used to communicate about politics, but it can also be used for the exchange of gossip and jokes. It can be used to inform people, but also to entertain them and steer their emotions. Cyberspace can be used as a political arena in which everyone engages in serious debate with everyone else, thus bringing closer the ideal of participative democracy. It can also be used as a virtual shoppingmall and parts of it can itself be commodified.

New media will not democratize and revitalize the power of the people automatically. On the opposite: ICT itself will become economized, thus strengthening the described negative social processes, unless we consciously channel the use of it.

Concluding remarks

This session is about new media, governance and democracy. I have listed for you not only the conventional positive aspects of ICT, but also the risks brought about by the combined forces of mediazation and economization of society and politics. The question on which our debate should focus now becomes how new media can be used to really achieve democracy, how it can be instrumental in the process of empowering people.

New media and a globalizing world are inevitably linked to each other. The ultimate aim however, has to be quality of life and the global sovereignty of the people.

Ruud Lubbers, Washington D.C., October 1997