The Drum Beat 397 - Media Reform: Is it a Free-Standing Social Movement?

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This Drum Beat is one of a series of commentary and analysis pieces. Here, Philip M. Napoli, Associate Professor of the Graduate School of Business and Director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center at Fordham University, presents some of his conclusions based on his "Public Interest Media Activism and Advocacy as a Social Movement: A Review of the Literature", recently prepared for the Media, Arts and Culture Unit of the Ford Foundation [click here for a summary]. In this piece, he suggests that media reform should not be seen as part of or dependent on other social movements, but instead should be considered and treated as a free-standing social movement in its own right. He asserts several reasons for this position and advocates for the cultivation and support of media reform.

We continue to feature a range of critical analysis commentaries of the communication for change field. These appear regularly on the first Monday of most months and are meant to inspire dialogue throughout the month. Though we cannot guarantee to feature your commentary, as we have a limited number of issues to be published each year, if you wish to contribute please contact Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com Many thanks!

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Media Reform: Is it a Free-Standing Social Movement? Should it be?

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in citizen awareness of - and concern for - issues in the media and communications policy arena. Issues ranging from ownership regulation to access to communications technologies to the development of community media now resonate far beyond the policymaking sector and are reverberating globally, as information and communication technologies become increasingly central to political participation, cultural expression, and economic opportunity. Many observers have associated this phenomenon with the growth of public interest organisation activism in these areas - growth that has taken place to such an extent and that has had such influence that the field increasingly is being characterised as a legitimate social movement (see Napoli, 2007).

It is a movement that operates under many labels: media democracy, communication rights, media justice, and, perhaps most commonly, media reform (the term to be used throughout the remainder of this article). These different labels illustrate one key characteristic of the movement: it is very diverse, with a range of participants who often have somewhat different outcome priorities (e.g., reforming commercial media versus establishing alternative media) and who often emphasise different strategic approaches (e.g., engaging with policymakers and/or the courts versus engaging with media organisations, or engaging and mobilising the citizenry). Nonetheless, all of these sectors of the movement share the broad overarching goal of creating a media system that better serves the informational and expressive needs of the citizenry.

The media reform movement has had an uneven history, particularly in the United States, where the movement traditionally has been considered to have peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it was tightly intertwined with the civil rights movement's efforts to combat racist television programming and provide minority groups with greater opportunities to own media outlets, before entering a period of decline in the 1980s and much of the 1990s. Recent years, however, have seen a dramatic reinvigoration of the movement, around issues such as concentration of ownership of the mass media, the establishment of low-power FM radio and other forms of community media, and, internationally, around issues of communication rights related to the United Nation's two World Summits on the Information Society.

Another key characteristic that sets media reform apart from other social movements is its relationship to the media. Media coverage generally has been seen as essential to the success of any social movement. Social movement scholars have contended that mainstream media coverage is necessary for any social movement to: a) attract public attention and support; b) achieve a measure of validation and legitimisation within public discourse and, by association, the general public and policymakers; and c) broaden the scope of the conflict to sympathetic third parties (Gamson & Wolfsfield, 1993). Thus, whether we are talking about environmentalism, civil rights, or war opposition, obtaining media coverage has been seen as essential for any social movement to be able to inform and mobilise the citizenry. In these social movement contexts, the media are, therefore, the means to broader ends.

In the case of media reform, arriving at these broader ends involves the creation of a media environment that would (among other things) facilitate more effective communication for social movements. That is, most media reformers believe that their efforts to diversify control of media outlets, to diminish the overwhelmingly commercial orientation of our media system, and to develop a variety of alternative media options are all efforts that would serve the communication needs of other social movements. As one study of the media reform movement has noted, "If media activist groups are successful in their efforts to open up mainstream media to a diversity of voices and to create effective alternative media...the political beneficiaries will be none other than other progressive movements" (Carroll and Hackett, 2006, p. 91).

This theoretical centrality of media reform to other social movements, combined with media reform's historical apex as a component of the civil rights movement, has led many observers to argue that media reform is best thought of not as a free-standing social movement in its own right, but, rather, as a subordinate component of other social movements. Arguments in this vein often further note that the issues associated with media reform, and their broader socio-political implications, typically are too complex or too opaque to meaningfully resonate with a sufficiently large proportion of the citizenry. According to this argument, can the average citizen truly appreciate, or be mobilised by, the dangers of, for example, increased concentration of media ownership? And can these dangers really compete with more tangible dangers such as environmental destruction or institutional racism? For this reason too, then, it has been argued that media reform might better be thought of as subservient to broader, more widely resonant, social movements.

I would disagree with the notion that media reform should be thought of as an extension or component of other social movements on a number of counts:

1) The increased prominence of media and communications technologies to all aspects of political, cultural, and economic life merits a dedicated, free-standing social movement that addresses the relevant policy issues. The contemporary global political-economic environment is one in which issues pertaining to media and communications policy are becoming increasingly - and recognisably - central to the economic, political, and cultural life of the citizenry - more so than was the case in years past.

The contemporary Information Society represents an environment in which media reform should be more capable (and, as the movement's success over the past 5-10 years would suggest, is more capable) of standing independently as a social movement worthy of the attention, support, and commitment of the citizenry. Younger generations, in particular, are highly cognisant of the vital role that media and communications technologies play in all aspects of their life, and are likely to recognise the broader implications of the policy decisions related to these industries. For these reasons, media reform's potential as a free-standing social movement is growing.

2) If media reform is conceptualised as an integral subcomponent of, and thus primarily subordinate to, other social movements, then its success depends in large part upon developing successful linkages with these movements. Unfortunately, with the exception of the movement's apex in the 1960s and 1970s, this has generally not happened to a sufficient extent. Recent studies of the media reform movement have concluded that the strong linking of media reform with other social movements has not, for the most part, been accomplished effectively (e.g., Mason, 2006; Thomas, 2006). One recent study found, for instance, that none of the non-media activists interviewed by the researchers named media activist groups as important constituents of a potential coalition (Hackett and Carroll, 2006). Another recent article contends that prominent civil rights organisations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Rainbow Coalition, and the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights have been "conspicuously silent on media policy and law" (Gangadharan, 2007, p. 1).

A recent study of the relationship between media and the environmental movement offered a wide range of strategies for environmentalists to deal with the contemporary mainstream media - none of which involved advocating for, or participating in, media reform (Plater, 2006). It may simply be the case that foregrounding media reform as a mechanism for facilitating the development of other social movements may lack appeal to these movements due to the fact that such a strategy may be perceived as too long-term or indirect in its orientation at a time when most organisations involved in social movements lack the luxury of adopting such strategic approaches.

3) Dependence upon the ebb and flow of the energies, issues, and resources of other social movements puts media reform in a position of dependence and subservience that makes it unlikely to be able to respond effectively to the largely independent ebb and flow of policy issues and citizen attention in the media and communications arena. There are, for instance, a wide range of media policy issues that may have dramatic implications for the public good, but that may not have implications that necessarily resonate with broader umbrella social movements. Under a model in which media reform is largely subservient to these broader social movements, it seems unlikely that such media policy issues will receive the attention and resources they deserve. Net neutrality, for instance, is a policy issue with far-reaching socio-political implications, but it is not an issue that is likely to resonate at the core of many other social movements. Only a free-standing media reform movement is likely to identify, and to effectively and aggressively engage, with such policy issues.

The globalisation of the media reform movements appears to be particularly hampered by a focus on intertwining media reform with other social movements, given the diversity of social conditions and variations in the strength, intensity, and resonance of different social movements around the globe. This would seem to be a highly complex and challenging environment for the media reform movement to effectively navigate.

4) A mainstream media environment more conducive to the coverage of social movements may not be as important to social movements today as in years past. The continued development and effectiveness of alternative communication channels such as the internet undermines the extent to which other social movements are likely to see media reform as central to their needs. At the same time, these alternative communication channels enhance the extent to which media reform can cultivate the necessary constituency to function as a free-standing social movement without significant mainstream media coverage. The co-dependence between media coverage and other social movements thus may be weakening as the communications environment continues to change.

In sum, media reform can and should try to operate as a free-standing social movement. Reliance on linkages and support from broader social movements seems a less promising strategy today than cultivating the growing importance of communications and media in their own right to appeal to and mobilise a citizenry that is becoming increasingly reliant on a wide range of communications technologies and, therefore, increasingly sensitive to the broader political, cultural, and economic implications of contemporary communications policy decisions.

Philip M. Napoli
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business
Director, Donald McGannon Communication Research Center
Fordham University
pnapoli@fordham.edu

REFERENCES

• Carroll, W. K. & Hackett, R. A. (2006). Democratic media activism through the lens of social movement theory. Media, Culture & Society, 28(1), 83-104.
• Gamson, W.A., & Wolfsfeld, G. (1993). Movements and media as interacting systems. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 526, 114-127.
• Gangadharan, S.P. (2007, April 3). Why are civil rights groups neglecting media policy? AlterNet (last accessed April 3 2007).
• Hackett, R. A. & Carroll, W. K. (2006). Remaking media: The struggle to democratize public communication. New York: Routledge.
• Mason, R. (2006). The struggle for free time: Media reform in the United States during the 1990s. Media History, 12(3), 313-328.
• Napoli, P.M. (2007). Public interest media activism and advocacy as a social movement: A review of the literature. Report prepared for the Ford Foundation (retrieved May 22 2007).
• Plater, Z.J.B. (2006). Law, media, and environmental policy: A fundamental linkage in sustainable democratic governance. Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 33, 511-549.
• Thomas, P. (2006). The communication rights in the information society (CRIS) campaign. The International Communication Gazette, 68(4), 291-312.

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POLL

Please participate in an Opinion Poll related to the above commentary.

Media reform is a free-standing social movement.

Do you agree or disagree?

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This issue of The Drum Beat is meant to inspire dialogue and conversation among the Drum Beat network.

Please engage in dialogue, beginning June 7th, through the DrumBeatChat forum.

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RESULTS of past Pulse Poll

Government agencies, international organisations, and donor agencies have lost sight of the power and relevance of traditional and folk media.

[For context, please click here].

Agree: 68.42%

Disagree: 18.42%

Unsure: 13.16%

Total number of participants = 38

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This issue of The Drum Beat is an opinion piece and has been written and signed by the individual writer. The views expressed herein are the perspective of the writer and are not necessarily reflective of the views or opinions of The Communication Initiative or any of The Communication Initiative Partners.

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DISCUSSION

"Non-Material" Resources in Health and Development Communication

The Health e Communication website is hosting a discussion with Dr. Benjamin Lozare (Associate Director, Center for Communication Programs, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University) beginning June 4 2007.

Nobel Prize winner Robert Fogel argues that inequality in the distribution of "non-material" resources such as vision of opportunity and work ethic is more severe and profound than the inequality of "material" resources. Drawing on these insights, Dr. Lozare asks whether health and development communication should focus more on the development of "non-material" and "spiritual" resources.

Join this Health e Communication discussion, as we explore the importance of "non-material" resources for development, ask why this is a neglected area, and exchange ideas about how health communicators can

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The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.


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