Abstract
The emergence of digital media in the 21st the century has attracted various descriptions from journalists, scholars, media practitioners, and ordinary citizens alike—such as “transformation of news,” “transformation of media landscape,” “information revolution,” “information equality,” “media pluralism”—and even the buzzword “citizen journalism.” From a political communication perspective, it was envisaged that digital media would pave the way for a more politically engaged society, bridging the knowledge gap in politics and public affairs. However, in Journalism and Political Exclusion, Debra M. Clarke, an associate professor of sociology at Trent University, Canada, uses comprehensive data from studies on reception research to strongly demonstrate that in spite of the hype and optimism associated with digital media, the new phenomenon is no departure from the traditional media, as it continues to perpetuate “information poverty,” resulting in political disengagement.
Basically, the point that Clarke is driving home is that journalism practice—whether traditional or digital—creates political alienation, mostly among the working class and women. These are the population segments that particularly experience information poverty, despite the proliferation of news sources in the “information age.” She argues that these groups are reduced to “non-publics” and excluded from the “public sphere.”
Similarly, Clarke terms the predictions that digital media would contribute to citizen journalism and thus to information equality as nothing more than “misperceptions,” “illusions,” or “sweeping claims” without empirical evidence. She backs her statements using two reasons advanced by James Curran: (a) the predictions underestimated the wider influence of society and (b) the predictions didn’t anticipate that the world would influence the Internet more than the other way around. In addition, she cites Stephen Coleman who noted that it would be a “bitter irony” if the “information revolution” would exacerbate existing inequalities or what Clarke calls “social inequalities” that are at the heart of digital divide today.
To support the central theme, Clarke uses comprehensive and compelling evidence from studies in North America and Europe. For example, less than 30% of the world’s population is connected to the World Wide Web, whereas in Canada, more than one in five households didn’t have Internet access in 2012. Generally, she points out that data indicate that the majority of online time is consumed by email and leisure activities, not news consumption or information-seeking.
Clarke’s line of argument is further buttressed when traditional media is compared with digital media. For example, despite the growth in digital media, Canadian news-seekers still rely on traditional sources, according to a 2012 survey. Clarke cites conclusions of Aalberg et al. that there is little evidence suggesting that the Internet has become the primary source of news, either in Europe or in the United States. In similar vein, research from European societies supports the idea that the Internet is used often as a supplement to traditional news media. Importantly, a majority of Canadians believe that professional journalism is better at performing critical democratic functions than citizen journalism. Internationally, a majority of Internet users in 12 countries believe that online information is not reliable.
The 354-page volume carries six chapters and the conclusion. Chapter 1 establishes the theoretical parameters of Clarke’s work with a critical reassessment of literature on political communication—specifically “hegemony” and “public sphere”—two concepts advanced by Antonio Gramsci and Jurgen Habermas—respectively. Chapter 2 reviews international literature on the process of news production and characteristics of journalists. Exploration of the epistemological complexities associated with qualitative reception research is presented in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 focuses on critical commonalities found across news publics such as the nature and extent of awareness of ownership convergence, and dissatisfaction with cross-media content duplication. Disparities between journalistic representations of the social order and the class-based realities of everyday viewer experiences are captured in Chapter 5. Results of Canadian reception studies are reported in Chapter 6. The chapter highlights the findings that are the most consequential to the understanding of how the social conditions of news production contribute to information poverty and political disempowerment.
Overall, this is a competently and creatively written book that provides useful insights regarding the topic under examination. The book will contribute to the scarce research on diverse and unequal situations underlying the actual social conditions of media reception—traditional and digital. Relatedly, researchers who study media reception in relation to political communication will find Clarke’s book a great resource.
The book’s main flaw is in Chapter 6, which is meant to provide seven-year-period data from longitudinal reception research in Canada. The chapter, however, is dominated by literature and data from other studies, something that undermine the visibility of the Canadian data which are expected to shed more light in the current topic. Suffice it to say that the Canadian data haven’t been given enough space so as to provide the much-needed insights on how social conditions in news production create information poverty and political isolation. In conclusion, to provide a worldwide comprehensive picture whether new media creates political exclusion, this type of research should be extended to the so-called “information poor” nations. The volume’s title could also read as Journalism and Information Poverty or Journalism Practice and Political Exclusion.