APRENDE A COMUNICARTE DE MANERA MÁS ASERTIVA

As public debate has become competitive rather than cooperative, Habermas’s distinction between communicative and strategic action has broken down (Knight 2010, p. 180). Through textual analysis Fairclough (2003) shows how texts that appear to be communicative action providing knowledge can actually be strategic action aimed at achieving specific results by way, for example, of covert evaluation. Fairclough offers promotion as a concrete example of the way in which what appears to be communicative action can in fact be strategic. Again using textual analysis, he demonstrates Wernick’s understanding of

contemporary “promotional culture” (Wernick 1991 in Fairclough 2003) by showing how traditional sources of information from what Hall et al. (1978) would describe as accredited sources (university publications, company annual reports etc.) often simultaneously promote by representing, advocating and

anticipating the desired outcome in what appear to be factual statements. As Fairclough observes of this blurring of fact and prediction, “We can connect this to what Bourdieu and Wacquant (2001) have identified as one significant feature of the texts of capitalism: their ‘performative power’ in bringing into being what they purport to (merely) describe” (2003, p. 113).

Knight identifies branding as strategic promotional action. In the

promotional public sphere, branding functions as a short-hand, affective way to “re-anchor identity and manage uncertainty while pursuing comparative

advantage and competitive success”, and also provides “a way to associate with an imagined community of like-minded people” (Knight 2010, p. 182). When activists target a brand, they challenge the validity of corporate promotional strategies, exposing hypocrisy as well as the damaging practices at issue, although increasingly they find themselves forced to adopt branding strategies themselves in the contest for the identity-dependent, belief-driven credibility so often necessary to achieve media access (Knight 2010). Many political

cosmopolitans and Habermas share a faith in the ability of the right sort of democratic procedures, constitutions and institutions to ensure freedom. Foucault, by contrast, believes no institutional arrangements can guarantee freedom and it is, therefore, imperative to continually challenge those that exist (Flyvbjerg 2001). For Foucault, “[r]estistance, struggle, and conflict, in contrast to consensus, are…the most solid bases for the practice of freedom” (Flyvbjerg 2001, p. 102).

may not be its only objective or outcome. For example, Knight’s argument in regard to the promotional public sphere (see above) is aligned in part with empirical studies of journalists and sources confirming that governments and corporations enjoy a considerable but not unassailable advantage in the public sphere. In the 1970s, powerful, often institutionalised groups were identified as having a primary role in the definition of issues and representations of social problems in the media, and alternative voices were considered largely ineffective in any attempt they might make to influence debate in a meaningful and lasting way (Hall et al 1978; Molotch and Lester 1974). Hall et al. argued that the media were usually not primary definers of social problems but rather transmitted the definitions of the powerful as a result of their quest for “objective”,

“authoritative” information from “accredited” sources, thereby assuming the role of secondary definers. Although the requirement for journalistic balance often ensured that alternative views were heard, Hall et al. concluded that, having already determined the nature of the issue, primary definers were largely free to set the terms of debate (Hall et al. 1978, p. 58). Empirical studies conducted around the same time by pluralists confirmed that elite sources did indeed enjoy considerable advantage over non-elite sources but argued that accounts of

dominance failed to pay due attention to source negotiations and conflict prior to media access (Schlesinger 1990). Over time researchers increasingly discussed the interaction of powerful sources with the media as strategic political action (Ericson, Baranek and Chan 1989; Schlesinger 1990; Miller 1994), in some cases finding circumstances in which non-institutional sources could

successfully challenge the definitional advantages of elite sources (Anderson 1997; Davis 2002; Lester 2007; Miller 2004; Wolfsfeld 1997). Of particular

interest in terms of this thesis is Gadi Wolfsfeld’s (1997) political contest model, which has also been influential in Lester’s (2007) study of the media and

environmental conflict in Tasmania. Wolfsfeld describes source battles for media access and meaning in news journalism as parts of larger political struggles in which the media fall into categories on a continuum of influence, from those who align themselves closely with the most powerful antagonists in the conflict, to those who champion their opponents (Wolfsfeld, 1997, p. 69). In this model, sources compete for media attention on the basis of their status; control over resources and the flow of information (including the provision of information subsidies); ability to stage events or produce exceptional behaviour; and control over the political environment. Wolfsfeld’s research and the other more recent empirical studies noted above demonstrate a comprehensive and nuanced appreciation of the role of source–media relations in the production of news but have largely neglected issues that arise in soft journalism, where the dominance of elite sources as a result of advertising and “pressures to increase audiences through the creation of populist and apolitical ‘newszak’” (Davis 2002, p. 7; see also comments on the refeudalisation of the public sphere above) seems to be taken for granted. This is surprising, because empirical research has already shown how hallmarks of popular culture such as spectacle and celebrity have been harnessed by non-elite sources to attract news media attention and have also produced media scepticism (Hutchins and Lester 2006; Lester 2006, 2007; Lester and Hutchins 2009). The question of whether source strategies might contribute to what, after all, may sometimes be only ostensibly apolitical

largely unremarked and unexplained. Addressing these silences in scholarly journalism research requires empirical work that attends just as closely as empirical studies of more-serious journalism to the actions of conscious agents and the role of “invisible” public relations (see Davis 2002, p. 13).