Miniplenary: The Good Life and the Good Citizen

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Abundance is an important part of a conception of the good life and that notion importantly includes an abundance and diversity of communication. This is particularly true in the domain of political communication and the public sphere. But research is raising new questions about communication and abundance. Sometimes too much of a good thing is too much. For much of the broadcast era, a few television networks and a few newspapers provided a political commons and a shared space for deliberation and advocacy. But with the dramatic proliferation of digital channels we confront a set of new challenges. One is the notion of post-broadcast democracy which gives the less politically inclined the increased capacity to avoid political content altogether. Another is the interaction of polarization and fragmentation as political conversation becomes isolated in hermetically sealed gated communities mutually ignorant of the views and perspectives of others. A third challenge is the marginalization of professional and presumably valid and unbiased sources, i.e. professional journalism, in the flood of channels. And finally the fundamental question of information overload itself – in seeking political information it is no longer adequate to describe it as finding a needle in a haystack, it is finding a needle in a stack of needles. What role can evolving journalistic institutions play in responding to these challenges?

Sub Unit

• Sponsored Sessions

Chairs

• Wolfgang Donsbach, Technical U - Dresden

• WR Neuman, NYU

Participants

• Matthew Scott Hindman, George Washington University

• Thomas E. Patterson, Harvard U

• Katrin Voltmer, U of Leeds

• Magdalena E. Wojcieszak, U of Amsterdam