Media Freedom and Stricture, Vol. 29 - 2022, No. 1
Guest Edited by Annette Hill and Simon Dawes
Voice Capabilities and the Public Sphere: Assessing the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Media Freedom(s)
Following previous work in applying the capabilities approach to the study of media, communications and culture, this article will consider the merits of applying a capabilities-supplemented account of cultural citizenship for evaluating the legitimacy and efficacy of the public sphere. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser on the public sphere and Nick Couldry on voice, the article will focus on the extent to which “voice” can be understood as a “fundamental capability.” For Couldry, “voice” can also be articulated as a “connecting term” alongside other normative frameworks, such as citizenship or the public sphere. Such a supplementary approach is necessary to avoid the universalism and paternalism to which normative and prescriptive accounts of citizenship and the public sphere are prone, as well as the absolutist libertarianism of free speech fetishists that often serves the benefit of those with rather than without voice. It also serves the function of grounding such abstract concepts in more concrete and measurable practices and social processes, while politicising the depoliticised accounts of rights and freedoms the capabilities approach tends to produce. Ultimately, it also enables a recasting of media freedom in terms of a focus on the public rather than the media.
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"Install Freedom Now!" Choosing not to Communicate with Digital Media at Work and Home
The emphasis in this article is on the freedom to communicate, which differs from both the right to communicate and communication rights. Instead of focussing directly on the freedom to communicate, the path taken instead is an emphasis on (digital) “non-communication.” This is subsequently expanded to a freedom not to communicate. The article begins with a cursory theoretical definition of communicative freedom, based on the notions of communicative action, social justice and reciprocal recognition. It then turns to a range of examples of “non-communication.” These stretch from corporate environments and their attempts to introduce “non-communication” top-down (mostly via time-based restrictions of the use of company-related communication tools) via the experience of a “digital diet” workshop at the university to instances of “digital detox,” which are offered on the life-improvement markets today. Through these examples, the question of the freedom not to communicate will be explored. Most of the examples underline the many current limitations of this freedom to communicate. The tentative alternative suggested is a new version of distant proximity, enacted through temporary dis-connectivity. This, so the claim, is needed to resist the growing framework of constant connectivity that we are constantly confronted within both private and working lives.
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Afrokology and the Right to Communicate in Africa
This article argues for a reconstruction of communication rights theories from an African episteme and experience. It reviews the impact of key national, continental and international legal instruments as they pertain to communication rights in Africa, with a specific focus on South Africa and Zimbabwe. Using an Afrokological heuristic tool, it critically evaluates how the key legal instruments underpinning the right to communicate are developed and encountered in lived experience in decolonising Southern African contexts. We argue that an Afrokological orientation built on epistemological interconnectedness and conviviality may lead to insights otherwise not accessible. It can help awaken a new relational accountability that promotes respectful representation, reciprocity, and rights in communication policy processes in line with the lived experiences of those it is meant to benefit.
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The Empire Strikes Back? Media Freedom Public Interest and Neoliberalism in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Economic Crisis
The article explores articulations between capital, the state, and the media by taking Angola and Portugal as the empirical context to examine specific relations between neoliberal and state influence against media democracy normativity in the aftermath of the Eurozone economic crisis. This includes questioning the neoliberal narrative of capital both as a hegemonic force that disempowers nation states and homogenises national media configurations. In order to do it, the “Angolanisation” of the Portuguese economy will be addressed to, then, look at the role of the Portuguese media in consolidating Angola's position within Portuguese society. It is argued that Portuguese media defined their basic commitment as promoters of Angolan interests and together with other institutions they were part of a larger system that worked as internal colonisation agents. The article contends a more differentiated perspective on neoliberalism and offers arguments to move media democratic theories beyond its normativity in the field of media studies by looking at neoliberalism as a context sensitive concept and at the media as an expression of specific relations between neoliberal and state influence in articulation with other logics. In the case in point, Portugal's peripheral condition and colonial heritage.
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The Dislocation of the Empty Signifier Freedom as a Tool in Global Political Struggles: A Case Study on RT’s Mini-Series How to Watch the News
Freedom is approached in this article as an empty signifier and as an object of discursive struggle, from a discourse-theoretical perspective. The hegemonic centrality of freedom in Western discourse and identity construction is acknowledged, but at the same time the article argues that hegemony is never total and all-encompassing. In other words, hegemonic constructions are seen as always particular, with their universal claims displaying cracks and gaps. Especially when different discursive communities (e.g. the West and Russia) engage in global discursive struggles, these cracks become visible through dislocatory strategies. The second part of the article then addresses a case study about how this discursive struggle is organised in practice, focussing on the RT mini-series How to Watch the News, which prominently features Slavoj Žižek. The discourse-theoretical analysis demonstrates how the mini-series deconstructs the Western articulation of freedom, in three ways, namely by showing the failures of Western liberal democracies, and the divided nature of Western societies, and by critiquing the individualistic articulation of freedom. The article concludes by pointing to the ambiguities related to the centrality of freedom, the role of RT and the role of Žižek as public intellectual.
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The Rupaul Paradox: Freedom and Stricture in a Competition Reality TV Show
Drag culture in the 1990s seemed to signify emancipation and liberation of enduring and stifling definitions of gender and sexuality. The uptake of drag and camp in mainstream culture were felt to usher in an era of gender freedom coinciding with new appreciation for popular cultural forms. A quarter century on, popular culture no longer connotes bad taste. The realignment of taste and cultural capital has not coincided with decreased social inequality however, and popular media culture appears to have remained the training ground for what Miller (1993. The Well-Tempered Self. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) called “the daily organisation of fealty to the cultural-capitalist state.” This paper will inquire into how today’s neo-liberal governmentality and its defining form of offering freedom and stricture at the same time is exemplified by the show hosted by drag queen, singer and television presenter RuPaul (RuPaul’s Drag Race Logo, VH1 2009-today and available on Netflix). Taking as our point of departure our own double-edged sentiments about the show and its host, and the ways queens are divided into role models versus underperformers, we will discuss how race, gender and English proficiency are policed.
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Roamers: Audiences on the Move Across Entertainment Platforms In Southeast Asia
Media industries recognise the extent to which the potential audiences for their products are now made up significantly of “roamers,” people finding diverse routes through the options available and combining them in different ways. The main research question in this article is: what sort of precise movements, combinations and connections become possible for roaming audiences in rapidly expanding commercial entertainment platforms? The article draws on emergent findings of a qualitative audience study in Malaysia and Indonesia, analysing patterns of movement across streaming services, e.g. Netflix, entertainment platforms, e.g. YouTube, and national cable and public television channels. Through empirical and theoretical research, we critically examine how the virtual and material are intertwined in audience mobility and motility. Through the use of visualisations of the media landscape by roamers, the trope of the “Netflix Park” signifies how motility is closely tied to media freedom and power. In our study, audiences adapt to life in a commodified culture; roamers combine global entertainment platforms and other piracy services, becoming enmeshed in the commercial foreclosure of new media spheres.
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