Javnost - The Public, Vol. 25 - 2018, No. 3
Towards a Critical Theory of Communication with Georg Lukács and Lucien Goldmann
This work contributes to the foundations of a post-Habermasian critical theory of communication. It uncovers and makes visible undiscovered, forgotten, repressed and hidden elements of Marxian theories that can contribute to grounding foundations of a critical theory of communication. What elements for a critical theory of communication can we find in Lukács’ major aesthetic work Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen (The Specificity of the Aesthetic) and Lucien Goldmann’s works? Lukács and Goldmann are two representatives of Hegelian humanist Marxism. Their stress on the importance of the human being and social production in society makes their theories particularly interesting for an analysis of the role of communication in society and capitalism. Lukács and Goldmann provide perspectives on foundational questions of a critical theory of communication. These include the dialectical relationship of subject and object, communication as production, the dialectic of communicative production and the production of communication, communication as dialectic of thought and language and dialectic of nature and society mediated by three sign systems, ideology as the reduction of humans and society to the first sign system, ideology as contradiction of actual and potential consciousness, capitalist media as creators of reified consciousness, and the struggle for alternative communications.
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Social Pluralism in Public and Private Television Broadcasting
This paper measures social pluralism in the most popular free-to-air TV groups in Italy (Rai, a state-controlled company, and Mediaset, owned by Berlusconi’s family) between 2008 and 2014. Media social pluralism is the ability of the mass media to describe and take into account the different categories of citizens in a society. The Italian Authority for Telecommunications regularly collects data on the airtime devoted to 22 “social actors” during newscasts. Our findings show that the public TV broadcaster shows a wider internal social pluralism than Mediaset. The data also reveal significant inter-group differences (external pluralism). The degree of internal and external pluralism decreased when Silvio Berlusconi served as Prime Minister.
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Fake News as a Floating Signifier: Hegemony, Antagonism and the Politics of Falsehood
“Fake news” has emerged as a global buzzword. While prominent media outlets, such as The New York Times, CNN, and Buzzfeed News, have used the term to designate misleading information spread online, President Donald Trump has used the term as a negative designation of these very “mainstream media.” In this article, we argue that the concept of “fake news” has become an important component in contemporary political struggles. We showcase how the term is utilised by different positions within the social space as means of discrediting, attacking and delegitimising political opponents. Excavating three central moments within the construction of “fake news,” we argue that the term has increasingly become a “floating signifier”: a signifier lodged in-between different hegemonic projects seeking to provide an image of how society is and ought to be structured. By approaching “fake news” from the viewpoint of discourse theory, the paper reframes the current stakes of the debate and contributes with new insights into the function and consequences of “fake news” as a novel political category.
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“Yes We Vote”: Civic Mobilisation and Impulsive Engagement on Instagram
Social media have become increasingly central to civic mobilisation and protest movements around the world. Emotions, symbols, self-presentation and visual communication are emerging as key components of networked individualism and connective action by affective publics challenging established political norms. These emerging repertoires have the potential to reignite civic engagement, although their coherence and sustainability have been questioned. We explore these phenomena through an examination of Instagram use during the 2014 Romanian presidential election. Voting irregularities during the 1st round, particularly affecting the diaspora, gave rise to an impulsive civic movement utilising social media to express solidarity and drive turnout in the 2nd round. Using an original coding framework, we look at how narratives of identity, community and engagement were visually constructed by users on Instagram; the activities, settings, spaces, objects and emotions that comprised this multi-authored story. Our analysis reveals the creation of a loose “me too” collective: an emotionally charged hybrid of self-presentation and participation in a shared moment of historic significance, which otherwise lacked particular norms, political agendas or hierarchies. The civic movement on Instagram materialised primarily through photos documenting the act of voting; an imagined community that combined co-presence in physical space with virtual solidarity through photos of ballots, flags and landmarks. The platform appears to favour impulsive, symbolic and affective expression rather than rational or critical dialogue. As in other cases of post-systemic grassroots engagement, individuals came together for a short period of time and expressed the need for change, although this remained largely an abstract signifier.
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