Abstract
‘This is a time for manifestos: analyses that identify the faults and fissures of a divided world and declarations that propose strategies to put things right,’ begins The Media Manifesto, a jointly authored book by media and communication scholars Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman, Justin Schlosberg and Lina Dencik (p. 9). Throughout this book, the authors, who are members of the UK’s Media Reform Coalition 1 , have indeed kept their promise and written a manifesto that reveals the severe problems that have crept into media practice, particularly in Western capitalist countries. The Media Manifesto's main contribution to the field of contemporary media and communication studies is the rejection of namesake reforms framed by (neo)liberal scholarship and a proposal for reorganisation of the media following a democratised socialist strategy. Through this book, the authors call for fundamental changes in media regulation and practice as a part of a broader social reform, grounded in emancipatory politics. The four main areas where the authors propose radical changes are: deconstructing media power, reclaiming media and data justice, rearticulating the political structure as well as offering a diverse and plural paradigm for communication.
In Chapter 1, Freedman argues that an effective media manifesto is urgent and indispensable because today’s media are severely challenged by increasingly complicated societal circumstances. Freedman criticises the media for turning away from the promotion of social development and using instead their power to aggravate social conflicts. In his view, the media’s role has gone from ‘watchdog’ to ‘attack dog’ (pp. 19–20). The issue of whom the media should serve has become intractable, while abuses of media power are a key problem in this context. Many outlets use their power to pursue the interests of individuals, shareholders, political groups and ideologies; as a result, the media’s public nature and social responsibility have been tremendously weakened. After providing an elaborate critique of the shortcomings of the media industry, Freedman draws a blueprint for radical change. He argues for a structural reform of the media that includes the disassembling of mainstream media agencies’ hegemonic power. The aim, he says, should be to rebuild public trust in an alternative communication system, which would avoid people sinking into ‘the oppressive relations of surveillance capitalism, data colonialism, digital dominance and widespread misinformation’ (pp. 21–22).
In Chapter 2, Schlosberg addresses the problem of abuse of media power. He argues for the importance of moving beyond existing notions of media justice as a crucial part of media reform. According to Schlosberg, the media reform movement has been stuck in the conceptual quicksands of (neo)liberalism. This situation requires policy-makers to think beyond the fundamental rights approach of media justice and pay more attention to class, gender and racism. Safeguarding a participatory system of cultural production will allow the media to achieve a democratic goal: ‘The protection of competition and privacy, and the pursuit of diversity and freedom’ (p. 27). In particular, Schlosberg suggests that digital disruption and the disinformation order should be incorporated into the new paradigm of media justice. On one hand, the power of digital platforms seems to eclipse the power of the press. However, the former offers a new structural dependency and strengthens the dominant position of the mainstream news media, thus weakening the influence of alternative news agencies. On the other hand, allowing fake news as (business profit) clickbait to shuttle back and forth on platforms results in the demise of trust towards professional journalism. Schlosberg mobilises a media justice outlook to oppose the concentration of media power and the domination of platform monopolies. The aim is to build a more progressive media order that can balance the ideological powers of far-left and far-right, as well as invoke the reliability of information production that is required for the mutual constitution, articulation and restraint of platforms, partisan media and the mainstream press.
In Chapter 3, Dencik draws attention to the issue of data justice by analysing the interaction between algorithms, platforms and big data. She examines the role of data as the media’s ‘currency’ in a digital age. Dencik starts with the crisis of the datafied society, which she illustrates through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018. According to her, this scandal reveals the perniciousness of an increasingly data-centric media economy. Dencik demonstrates how media datafication incorporates a politico-economic logic that facilities the digital economy and a new form of governance, ultimately resulting in surveillance capitalism. This new form of capitalism is no longer based on a profit-driven logic; it is a business strategy that relies heavily on data. This implies that datafication-based media practice stimulates more contradictions between democracy and governance; as a result, social trust is suffering unprecedented challenges. In this context, depoliticising datafication is proposed to avoid excessively controversial engagements with the control and use of data, since individual privacy and the protection of personal data have become the key issues at stake. Although the datafied media ecology requires paying attention to justice as the centre of datafication, doing so does not mean rejecting or rectifying data-driven tools or focusing on more ethical considerations. Instead, she draws attention to the basic premises of datafication development in such a way so that data justice can allow for the possibility of maintaining a private life and autonomy, while simultaneously aiding democratic efforts in governance, ownership and alternative uses of data.
In Chapter 4, Fenton articulates a politics of hope that is crucial to reforming the media. She claims that the communication system has been ineradicably connected to the political and economic system. In her view, the crux of the problem is that the media are an essential part of the capitalist class; they serve capital accumulation and promote dominant ideologies, which create injustice, inequality and social disruption. To break this structural power, the author ambitiously proposes to establish non-market ownership as a new basis to run the media and dismantle everyday oppressions in the (neo)liberal order. Political alternatives beyond capitalism should be considered. Fenton puts forward three criteria to articulate a politics of hope for the media: wholesale egalitarianism, substantively meaningful democracy as well as financial and environmental sustainability. These criteria, according to the author, could help rebuild public value and radically intervene in current media markets, thereby going beyond liberal versions of democracy to establish a ‘more equal, more democratic and more sustainable society’ (p. 75).
In the concluding Chapter 5, the authors collectively develop a practical and radical media manifesto by integrating the arguments developed in the preceding chapters. They craft four potential approaches to reforming the media. First, they develop a framework for media plurality that may prevent digital companies from achieving enormous concentrations of power. Second, they propose a more democratic, diverse and devolved public service broadcasting system, which could lead to democratised platforms and networks and operate autonomous markets. Third, they argue for the establishment of a free, accountable and sustainable press that can protect press freedom; this system should also normalise journalists’ practices under the law and be accountable in order to share freedom rather than abuse power. The fourth approach is to develop digital media policies that can enhance the neutrality of Internet work, secure privacy and data as well as prevent the emergence of platform monopolies.
In a highly polarized socio-political environment, The Media Manifesto is a refreshing text that is not scared of stepping on the toes of powerful media organizations and dominant media theories of our times. It attempts to revitalize the paradigm of building a plural, democratic, just and diverse society, which is mirrored through its media. And although the proposed manifesto may sound utopian, the authors argue that it can help us ‘find resources for hope, spaces for action and prospects for non-capitalist emancipatory media futures’ (p. 75). Although this vision is something that we share with the authors, there is some further work to be done. First, The Media Manifesto casts a wide net in its suggestions for reform. In order for these to become a practical reality, each of the proposed solutions needs to be developed into a holistic roadmap that makes them realizable. For example, in addition to the changes in proposed political structures of media governance, it is also important to flesh out an alternative financial structure that may support such measures. Second, the book largely addresses issues of media hegemonies in Western capitalist countries. It may well be important to engage with the media systems of non-western countries which have now become an indispensable part of the global media community and exert significant geopolitical influence. Having suggested these future engagements, this book will be of immense value to anyone who shares the authors’ vision for an emancipated society that rests on the principles of justice, liberty and democracy.
