Online Journalism: Theory and Practice

1. Online Journalism: Theory and Practice Week 14 Lecture 1 Summer 2011 G. F Khan, PhD Dept. of Media & Communication, YeungNam University,South Korea gohar.feroz@gmail.com

2. Last lecture • Legal and Ethical issues related to the internet • Protection of Intellectual Property • The Internet and Issues Regarding Defamation • Whose responsibility is ethics on the net?

3. In this Class Online Politics & Democracy

4. What is Democracy? • Literary it means “people’s power” • Defining democracy is a political act (Saward, 1994). • I.e. there is no one universal definition or model of democracy • However, we can say that: Democracy is a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them Politics: the activities and affairs involved in managing a state or a government. and other areas e.g. business, academia, and religious institutes etc

5. History of Politics • Politics and interest in political activities has long history inform of Public Spheres • People use to set in public spheres such as, coffee houses and salons to discuss commerce, politics and their new lifestyles • Later, newspapers became a central aspect of this activity in terms of the political concerns and other important issues • Advent of Electronic media e.g. Radio and TV gave wider access to Political and social activities

6. Types of Public Sphere • According to John Keane (2004) following types of public spheres may exist • Micro public spheres • Meso public spheres and • macro public spheres

7. Types of Public Sphere (1) • Micro: • Micro public spheres tend to be small involving an institution, a community or an association that may be advocating for certain interests. • E.g. political pressure groups or civic organizations that operate at a small-scale level. • Micro public spheres have the potential to transform to be large scale or even be national, depending on the availability of resources • The advent of the Internet has also further enhanced the capacity for expansion even at a global level

8. Types of Public Sphere (2) • Meso: • Meso public spheres are large scale or national and have the capacity to become international. • They tend to be political public spheres and generate a lot of interest and participation from the ordinary citizens who may seek the betterment of their Standard of living and general welfare.

9. Types of Public Sphere (3) • Macro: • The macro public spheres are global in scale and they may deal with issues that affect individual nation-states, but give them global publicity. • Examples include UN, Amnesty International, Green Peace, Human Rights Watch and many others.

10. What will be an ideal public sphere?

11. Ideal Public Sphere (1) • Where everyone has access to regardless of class, income, faith, gender, race and ethnicity • According to (Holub,1991) an ideal public sphere is characterized by: • Participation and non discrimination • Autonomy • Rational or analytical debate

12. Ideal Public Sphere (2) • Participation and non discrimination • This means that the public sphere must be an open forum for all. • If anything, a public sphere must thrive from the plurality and diversity of opinion thus creating a market place of ideas. • No one has advantage over other

13. Ideal Public Sphere (3) • Autonomy • Public sphere has to be autonomous because an autonomous environment is conducive for critical and rational debate, where people can employ full use of their mental faculties without fear and favor.

14. Ideal Public Sphere (4) • Rational or analytical debate: • This is the root and essence of the public sphere. • According to Habermas, people in the coffee houses and salons had loyalty to the authority of better argument against hierarchy and • Fear and favour were seen as an insult to rationality and analysis which are the muscle of a functional public sphere.

15. Thus Ideal Public Sphere has.. • Interactivity or deliberative democracy • Openness and accessibility to all • Unfettered freedom of expression • Freedom of information exercised Given these attributes, to what extent the Internet is able to simulate an ideal public sphere?

16. From the coffee houses to cyber forums: Internet as a public sphere Openness and accessibility to all • Open platform and hyper-interactive medium. • Internet anyone who has access to a wired computer can freely express their views • Diversity and plurality of the voices on the net e.g. the websites of • Political parties, • Christian, Muslims, Buddhist and others • Civil society and government sites • The co-existence , plurality and diversity of these sites makes the Internet the biggest single public sphere

17. Internet as a public sphere (2) • Autonomous and Independent public sphere • Through the usage of email, e-chats and webcasting to create democratic discussions between members, the Internet can also be regarded as a fairly Autonomous and Independent public sphere • Interactivity feature of the internet (using video, audio, and text) basis of ideal public sphere • Internet is a participatory public sphere. • Affordability • Flexibility (e.g. you can edit your opinion) • Worldwide reach • no time and distance constraints

18. Internet as a public sphere (3) • Internet is a participatory public sphere. • What old media were not participatory. • One way communication • We may read newspapers and magazines, listen to radio and recordings, or watch film and television but we cannot input our opinion • Old media a closed media: control by some giants e.g. government, cooperation • Old media does not serve communication, but prevents it • They talk you listen, no opinion, no debate • But now we both talk and listen (two communication) • In Internet communication, senders can be receivers and receivers can be senders of information

19. Internet as a public sphere (4) • Information and information access • critical and analytical resources for interaction in any public sphere • Hypertext and hyperlinks lead Internet users as public sphere participants to more information and related information • Information from the media, civic organizations, government, political parties and some international organizations is freely accessible to all Internet users

20. Internet as a public sphere (5) BUT • To what extent does the free and publicly accessible information is useful? • Are the billed or password-protected sites more informative than the free sites? And • How will it affect the participation in online public sphere?

21. Internet and Social Movements • Politics by unconventional means • Facebook, twitter, cyword, personal blogs • Heterogeneous and Diversity • Age, gender, experience, knowledge • Loosely structured, fluid • Grassroots level • E.g. ordinary citizens run and organizes online public movements • Decentralization • No central control or authority • Informality • Global coordination • Inter-group coordination

22. E-democracy • E-democracy (a combination of the words electronic and democracy) refers to the use of information technologies and communication technologies and strategies in political and governance processes.

23. What are some tools of e-democracy?

24. Tools of e-democracy • E-government • E-voting • Political Blogs • Social media

25. E-government • E-government can be defined as practice of providing public services through ICT e.g. internet, mobile, telephone etc • Benefits of E-govt.: • Transparency: • The posting of contact information, legislation, agendas, and policies makes government more transparent, potentially enabling more informed participation both online and offline • Efficiency-makes government more efficient • Ease for citizens to get services • E.g. ID card, Passport, birth certificate etc • Easy communication with government • Participation in policy making

26. E-voting • Electronic tools for casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes • Desire to increase participation • Easily accessible • Convenience for citizens • Transparency-reduce bogus voting • Problems? • Trust- can you trust machine to cast vote for you? • Identify theft

27. Political blogs • Easy communication with government representatives • Participation in policy making • Election campaign • Visible leaders

28. Problems related to internet as a public sphere • Problems: • Social exclusion due to poverty, • Prohibitive costs of cutting-edge technologies, • Shrinking public and individual access due to corporate profiteering, • Counter surveillance technologies, • Poor connectivity, • Poor technologies, • Lack of relevant content, • Technophobia, • Commercial intrusions like pop-up adverts, and • Virus attacks

29. Critics to the internet as a public sphere • Some scholars disagree with the whole idea that the Internet can be a public • Reduction in physical contact: • Reduce and inhibit the richest and most satisfying of human contact when we use it over short distances to replace meeting each other in real space. • Information integrity: • Testing and reviewing information and knowledge within online communities is still the important challenge to our democratic freedoms (Trevor Haywood, 1998)

30. Conclusion • Tools for engaging mass participation • Tools for coordinating globally dispersed people • Internet as an Ideal public sphere • But challenges exist that need to be addressed • It depend a society’s and culture’s ability to cope and adapt.

31. Thank You Questions & Comments