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< | The Demise of American Civil Society and The Institutionalization of Press: A Necessary Evil? | >
> | The Demise of Traditional Media and Fragmentation of the Press: Some Ill Organized Thoughts
-- By ZenongWang - Original 11 Mar 2024. V.2 uploaded 5/10/2024
The Two-Tier System And Its Challenges
The traditional media have been in decline for a long time. It was once widely observed that U.S. media markets featured a two-tier structure where national newspapers and TV networks undertook the weighty tasks of investigative journalism and content generation, while their local counterparts disseminated the content with an added local flavor. (See, e.g., Associated Press v. United States, 326 U.S. 1 (1945).) The relative independence of these two tiers in this structure was once carefully guarded against corporate control. (See id.; Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622 (1994) (antitrust cases/legislation aimed at protecting the division of work mentioned).) However, this two-tier structure is under attack on both fronts. National media giants have seen a gradual decline in both revenue and profit margins derived from advertising as more capital is directed to new media platforms like Instagram, TikTok? , and YouTube? . (See, e.g., Pew Research Ctr., Fact Sheet: Newspapers, Pew Research Ctr. (May 9, 2023); U.S. Dep't of Justice, Transcript of Proceedings at the Public Workshop: Competition in Television and Digital Advertising, U.S. Dep't of Justice, Antitrust Division, 6 (May 2-3, 2019); Steven L. Burgess, The TikTok? Ban: Unpacking the Battle for Advertising Dollars, Fair Observer (Feb. 4, 2021).)
Meanwhile, similar developments have worsened the situation for local media, with many local TV networks and newspapers filing for bankruptcy. (See, e.g., Valerie Strauss, The Decline of Newspapers and the Effects on Local Government Coverage, Univ. of Tex. at Austin, Moody Coll. of Commc'n (Nov. 2019); David Ardia et al., Addressing the Decline of Local News, Rise of Platforms, and Spread of Mis- and Disinformation Online: A Summary of Current Research and Policy Proposals, UNC Ctr. for Media L. & Pol’y, Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill (2021).) Adding to the fierce competition from new platforms is the onslaught of AI paywall circumvention. (See Karen Weise, New York Times Sues OpenAI? and Microsoft over Copyright Claims, N.Y. Times (Dec. 27, 2023).)
Result: Fragmentation of the Media Outlets
The dismantling of the two-tier system has resulted in the diversification and proliferation of individual media outlets. Podcasters, personal channels, and influencers, driven by platform algorithms pushing for greater time efficiency, compete for their audience with increasingly shorter snippets of news narratives. (See, e.g., Kjersti A. Ihlebæk et al., Understanding Alternative News Media and Its Contribution to Diversity, 10 Digital Journalism 1267 (2022); Jingjing Jiang, How Teens and Parents Navigate Screen Time and Device Distractions, Pew Research Ctr. (Aug. 22, 2018).) Fragmentation is the theme, as this fragmentation of the news market and attention span is paralleled by fragmentation in the social fabric. As de-industrialization takes its toll, the old social fabric, where civil conversation and collaboration were facilitated through factory co-working and community gathering, has collapsed. (See Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (2018); Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (1999).) Smaller social circles and atomized community units have formed as common life experiences are lost. The resultant sense of disorientation and loss of group identity has fueled a search for the reorganization of civil society, focusing more on triggering in-group/out-group responses and providing sentimental assurances of belonging. Alt-media, now abundantly available in an equally fragmented media market and guided by platform algorithms eliciting ever more intense human sentiments and behaviors, eagerly fills this sentimental vacuum with increasingly individualized and provocative media content. Indeed, now everyone has become a king, the overlord of infinite cycles of stimulation and response within a media bubble.
Free Speech, Free Press, But For Whom
The trend of atomization and fragmentation may have developed without conscious facilitation, but it has unfortunately become a reality and abundant opportunities exist for conscious exploitations. Combined with societal atomization, the abundance of media outlets does provide freedom of choice, but likely more so for corporate interests. Corporations can now speak directly through campaign funding or handpick their favorite media spokesperson, shaping the version of the truth and style of language they prefer for the electorate. (Of course, if wealthy enough, they may acquire or build the platform themselves, as masterfully demonstrated by Elon Musk and Mr. Trump; see, e.g., Eugene Daniels, The Right-Wing Media Machine Is on the Rise, Politico (Nov. 2, 2022).) The familiar story of powerful barons exploiting an unorganized mass, pitting them against each other, has effectively gutted the constitutional functions assigned to the press’s “unique role as a check on government abuse.” (See Leathers v. Medlock, 499 U.S. 439, 447 (1991).) What is lost in the process, as previously mentioned, is a common language for civic discussions and the experience of trusting the forum as a non-deceptive and non-hostile venue for expressing different views based on a relatively uniform understanding of reality. If this tilted playground is ever to be rectified and the public’s constitutional right to self-governance through civil conversation and collective action restored, the freedom of the press needs to be reinterpreted as more than a negative protection from governmental encroachment. In other words, the situation calls for a new recognition of the right to a free press as something “more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government.” (See Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74-75 (1964).)
Proposals For An Interpretation of The Freedom of Press As An Affirmative Right | | | | |
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< | -- By ZenongWang - 11 Mar 2024 | >
> | There are many proposals on how to convert the freedom of the press into an affirmative right to specific forms of the media market. Since the goal is to foster a common language for discussions, either a concentrated source or mandatory exposure to a host of more diverse sources is required. The former requires addressing the traditional media’s gradual market loss to new platforms: perhaps more robust public funding is necessary for certain national channels like the BBC and its U.S. counterparts, but its antitrust implications, as covered earlier, are problematic; indeed, who would have known that antitrust cases decided to protect the independence of media might one day hinder its survival. (For more on this model, see, e.g., Elaica Zayas, The Wonderful World of BBC vs. American Public Broadcasting, Centre for Media and Information Literacy.) Another way to tackle the issue without fighting market mechanisms is to ensure exposure to diverse opinions from various sources, thus rendering the common language a set of numerous narratives. Solutions along this line have been proposed, including fact-checking citations on certain tweets. However, such flagging and citations should be blind to the original tweet’s political stance; otherwise, the same in-group/out-group trigger might be involved, diminishing exposure to more diverse points of view.
Some End Notes and Rambling
This has been a disastrous pick of a topic. Whom do I think I am to be able to cover such a grandiose topic in 1000 words? I tried to trim it down by focusing, per your suggestions, on the change in ads revenue and market mechanisms that belies the shift from traditional mass media to platform economies, but I cannot help but notice, many times during the research, if it is not for the social fragmentation and de-industrialization, the platform economy will not so easily get its way. Or maybe, all of these have been different chapters of the same story of capitalism's atomization of social units? I don't believe in the effectiveness of any proposed solutions I added to the end of the essay. To me, they all seem like little twists to an inanimate structure the support of which has dwindled nearly to non-existence. I have been thinking about the reason why the parasitic network was not there and the reason that its capitalistic/governmental breeder was not that successful in bringing it to life. Might it be because of the heightened governmental penetration of civil society and the resulting check and balance between the state apparatus and the capital in economic lives? Was it the great mistrust between the government and capital seeded by the Great Depression and the wartime economy that prevented collusion between the two? God, I need to read more into this topic.
The Demise of American Civil Society and The Institutionalization of Press: A Necessary Evil? | | | | |
>
> | -- By ZenongWang - 11 Mar 2024. V.2 uploaded 5/10/2024 | | | "Everyone" Can Be The Press
“It is passing strange…,” wrote Justice Scalia in his concurring opinion for the famous, or infamous Citizens United v. FEC, “... to interpret the phrase ‘the freedom of speech, or of the press’ to mean, not everyone’s right to speak or publish, but rather everyone’s right to speak or the institutional press’s right to publish.” This almost anti-press-establishment tone should not come as a surprise for people familiar with Scalia as he was known to repeatedly stray away from the conservative wing of the court on issues related to “fundamental individual rights,” but in this case, the “everyone” referred by the justice, means no other than corporations speaking through campaign funding, now better known as the money speech.
This ironic confluence of 1) languages seemingly showing deep sympathy toward broader protection for the more grass-root “press” under the freedom of press clause and 2) the stone-cold fact that under the veil of honoring individual rights, what is being protected is the alliance between big corporations and elected politicians hideously creating a tilted playground for themselves, I will argue, is not an exception, but something reflecting a more fundamental tendency of bigger corporate/political players taking advantage of fragmentation/atomization of social fabrics and the ensuing faltering of traditional forms of authorities.
I don't understand the idea here as it is supposed to relate to Nino Scalia's thinking. He is saying again that "one man's vulgarity is another man's lyric," as he had done in First Amendment cases throughout his time on the Court. As to whether the "press" referred to in the Amendment is a thing or an institution, I am with him.
The Demise of Civil Organizations
It is not an unfamiliar story for political scientists that the two decades leading to Citizens United mark the gradual but certain death of the community fabric within American civil society. The organic organizations in the forms of suburban churches and factory town bowling alleys, where groups of citizens with shared interests naturally meet and socialize, dwindled, along with citizen interest groups and union participation rates. (see, e.g., Robert G. Putnam, Bowling Alone.) The weakening of these socialization processes inevitably leads to the decline of what many may describe as social capital: heuristics based on affiliation/lifestyle choices that more readily lead to higher trust and lower communication costs. One natural result of such a decline is the greater difficulty for collective actions among the already harder-to-organize working/middle-class voters. (see, e.g, Udéhn, Lars. Twenty-Five Years with “The Logic of Collective Action.”) From this perspective, the emergence of algorithm-driven platforms is both a response to and a great facilitator of this development, as people are further carved into smaller bubbles of social circles with common but more shattered points of view and languages.
I doubt the sociology here. Bowling Alone is not about the last two decades, but about the fifty years before that. A "natural result" so complex surely has more than one "natural" cause. Now to link that causally to "algorithmic platforms" is just too big a step. Why do you need such improbable structures of causation to have something interesting enough to say?
Fragmentation And Identity-Driven Information Source
However, people desire human interactions and a sense of belonging that comes with socialization. While the deficiency of common language and social cues may sentence long-term collective elaboration of interests to death, atomization and resultant social isolation gave rise to alternative media and re-organization of the civil society that focus more on triggering in-group/out-group responses and providing sentimental ascertaining of belonging. (in some way, I think this is part of human beings’ fundamental desire) Indeed, multiple studies have found that people affected by community/economic dislocations are more vulnerable to misinformation, radicalization, and alternative narratives, including conspiracy theories. (for a discussion of some of these studies, see Carol Graham and Emily Dobson, Despair underlies our misinformation crisis: Introducing an interactive tool; see also, Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order.) And the mobile internet provides the perfect platform for searching for such media outlets.
Abundance of Options As A Catalyst For The Worse
In some way, the transition from the old interest-group-based civil society to the current world is a transition from interest/ideology-driven politics to identity/belonging-driven politics. While the collapse of the relatively rigid social order (community/workplace organization/interest group) and the emergence of mobile internet provide a pretense or a true potential for liberty and more choices, many people also experience a sense of loss and disorientation. As people are fragmented into smaller and smaller social circles and their options for information sources multiply, their desire for belonging and certainty translates to a desire for simple sentimental in-group/out-group triggers. (see, e.g., Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment) Unfortunately, this desire and the fragmented civil society are easily exploitable and highly desired political resources for some populist politicians and their funders, as cultural war issues may often be freely and arbitrarily combined with their agendas (Id.).
Institutionalized Press As The Necessary Evil
In other words, when combined with society atomization, the abundance of media outlets does mean freedom of expression, but probably more so for the corporate interests and opportunistic populists, a scenario not unseen before. The age when the institutionalized press under the freedom of press jurisprudence was born was also, coincidentally or determinedly, another age of capital expansion, populist politics, and yellow journalism. As disorientation and radicalization spread and as the state is vulnerable to becoming seized by economic interests under Citizens United, maybe the so-called press’ “unique role as a check on government abuse” is precisely to provide some common ground/language to facilitate civil discourse/organization as we have seen in the interest-group age (Leathers v. Medlock, 499 U.S. 439, 447 (1991)). Maybe a group of the institutionalized elite press is the necessary evil, the consideration in a quid pro quo for “a mighty catalyst in awakening public interest in governmental affairs, exposing corruption among public officers and employees and generally informing the citizenry of public events and occurrence[,]” in a time of uncertainty and disorientation.
Uncertain Balancing of Interests and Rights:
Indeed, this institutionalization comes with many negative implications. As Justice Burger noted, favoring some communicators over others “is reminiscent of the abhorred licensing system of Tudor and Stuart England—a system the First Amendment was intended to ban from this country.” (First Nat'l Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978) (Burger, C.J., concurring).) Moreover, potential collusion between the state and the press may, in effect, deprive interested citizens engaging in their own investigations of the necessary constitutional protections. But the alternative, fragmentation of society and the resulting identity-driven information outlets, as described above, may be an even bigger power vacuum for abusive political power. The results of balancing these conflicting interests may be far from determinate.
A conclusion is that a speculative phenomenon may be far from determinative? Such a non-conclusion suggests a non-argument to which the labored causal structure I noted has been bolted.
It would seem easier to say that the fragmentation of industrial mass media has now indeed occurred, largely through the restructuring of consumer and employment/small business advertising, social processes which grew up with and sustained industrial mass media. Advertising was transformed by the platform model of services funded by surveillance-produced advertising revenue, which—given the Pasrasite's preferred metabolic cycle—is distributed away from press and toward search engines, "influencers," generated content, and other material which occludes rather than increasing the quality of public information. Capital's powers are then mustered to exercise control in that changed environment. Then the ideas in the draft that go beyond the baseline can be shown.
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