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2017 | Book

Broadcasting Regulation, History and Theory Read chapter Read first chapter

British Broadcasting and the Public-Private Dichotomy

Neoliberalism, Citizenship and the Public Sphere

Author: Simon Dawes

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" , Springer Professional "Technik"

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About this book

This text offers a theoretical engagement with the ways in which private and public interests - and how those interests have been understood - have framed the changing rationale for broadcasting regulation, using the first century of UK broadcasting as a starting point. Unlike most books on broadcasting, this text adopts an explicitly Foucauldian and genealogical perspective in its account of media history and power, and unpicks how the meanings of terms such as 'public service' and 'public interest', as well as 'competition' and 'choice', have evolved over time. In considering the appropriation by broadcasting scholars of concepts such as neoliberalism, citizenship and the public sphere to a critical account of broadcasting history, the book assesses their appropriateness and efficacy by engaging with interdisciplinary debates on each concept. This work will be of particular significance to academics and students with an interest in media theory, history, policy and regulation, as well as those disposed to understanding as well as critiquing the neoliberalization of public media.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Introduction, Theory and Methodology

Frontmatter
1. Broadcasting Regulation, History and Theory
Abstract
This opening chapter presents contemporary scholarly debates on broadcasting regulation and policy, summarizes the history of broadcasting regulation in the UK and contextualizes the appropriation of key concepts by contemporary scholars in light of earlier approaches to media critique. It then goes on to emphasize the theoretical focus of the book on the public-private dichotomy; that is, the history of the evolving distinctions made between what is public and private in regulatory and policy documents, as well as in scholarly critique.
Simon Dawes
2. Genealogy, Critique and the Public-Private Dichotomy
Abstract
This second introductory chapter presents the distinctive theoretical perspective of the book, and its aim to bridge Marxist and Foucauldian traditions of critiquing power, in more detail. It emphasizes, in particular, the Foucauldian concern with the ways in which the public-private dichotomy has been constructed over time and explains the genealogical approach to history as a series of governmental problematizations that the book adopts.
Simon Dawes

Key Concepts in Broadcasting Regulation

Frontmatter
3. Broadcasting and the Public Sphere
Abstract
In this chapter, the emergence of the public sphere as a concept with which to normatively evaluate the democratic importance of broadcasting is situated in the context of Thatcherite reforms in the 1980s. The dominant approach in British media studies is contrasted with an Australian critique, before more complex debates within political philosophy are engaged with in-depth. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century debates on press freedom and public opinion, which informed Habermas’s initial development of the public sphere concept, are discussed in detail.
Simon Dawes
4. Broadcasting, Citizenship and Consumption
Abstract
The dominant approach that critiques the regulatory desire to rhetorically balance the needs of citizens and consumers (while privileging the latter and undermining the former) is contrasted with an Australian creative industries perspective that is seen, by some, to embrace commercialism and consumerism. The chapter will offer a rapprochement between these two schools by engaging in debates beyond media studies in both citizenship and consumption studies. In particular, a more empirical, historical and processual account of both citizenship and consumption will be elaborated, which deals with active/passive and social/cultural/political forms of each, as well as their imbrication and mutual constitutiveness, without neglecting the role of power.
Simon Dawes
5. Broadcasting and Neoliberalism
Abstract
While the 1980s saw the critique of privatization take precedence, the concept of privatization evolved into a more nuanced account of marketization and/or neoliberalization. The critique of the neoliberalization of broadcasting, however, is often undermined by the lack of engagement with neoliberalism as a concept. Concerned with the need to understand rather than simply dismiss neoliberalism, this chapter outlines various theoretical approaches to neoliberalism, particularly the ‘ideological’ and ‘governmental’ approaches, and engages with the extent to which they can be reconciled and re-applied to broadcasting.
Simon Dawes

Problematizing Broadcasting Regulation in the UK

Frontmatter
6. Problematizing Public Control, Service, Interest and Value
Abstract
This chapter outlines the ways in which the role and rationale of UK broadcasting have been outlined over time. For example, predating the emphasis on British broadcasting as a public service was the debate over the appropriate balance between the need for ‘public’ (i.e. state) control over broadcasting and the need for an element of private enterprise, as well as arguments over the necessity of press freedom. The chapter will go on to demonstrate how the guiding regulatory principle evolved from ‘public service’ to ‘public interest’, whereby the latter has meant a balance between public service and market competition. More recently, ‘public value’ has become an important rationale, whereby that entails yet greater emphasis on market competition, and a more restricted role for public service.
Simon Dawes
7. Problematizing the Public, Citizens and Consumers
Abstract
This chapter analyses the long-term construction of the broadcasting public in UK regulatory discourse. More recent focus on Ofcom’s dual responsibility to citizens and consumers will be discussed in light of much earlier debates on, for instance, the distinction between what the public want, and the what broadcasters believe they (should) want, or between what interests the public and what is in the public interest.
Simon Dawes
8. Problematizing Monopoly, Competition and Choice
Abstract
This chapter deals with the neoliberal critique of the economics of broadcasting in the UK, tracing the slow and complex rise of ‘competition’, in particular, as a key feature, and elaborating the difference between ‘competition for quality content’ and ‘competition for audiences and profits’. The explicit foregrounding of this feature in the Peacock Report (1986) is situated in the context of the longer-term critique of broadcasting from a neoliberal perspective (back to Ronald Coase in the 1940s), and the serious consideration (and rejection) of these critiques in much earlier documents, as well as the arguments for private enterprise within the very first regulatory texts.
Simon Dawes

Confronting the Public-Private Dichotomy

Frontmatter
9. The Social, the Political and the Public Sphere
Abstract
Supporting the defence of PSB in terms of its importance for the public sphere, this chapter nevertheless argues for the need for a more nuanced and less selective reading of public sphere theory. It also engages head-on with the controversial debates around the inclusivity/exclusivity of the public sphere, the distinction between social and political issues, and, consequently, the problems with the idea of PSB for Habermas’s model, as well as with the compatibility of a Habermasian public sphere with Marshallian citizenship, so as to elaborate a more convincing and more efficacious account of PSB’s contribution to the public sphere.
Simon Dawes
10. Individualization, Voice and Citizenship
Abstract
This chapter stresses the need to avoid overly simplistic claims about a linear shift in the construction of the public from citizens to consumers. An account of citizenship and consumption in broadcasting regulation, which acknowledges their respective problems and political potentialities, is proposed to shift debate away from a moralistic versus economistic/relativist debate. Consequently, a processual account of different forms of citizenship, and of different forms of consumption, is considered through Ulrich Beck’s notion of individualization, problematizing the distinction between citizens and consumers, and between the individual and the collective. The concept of ‘voice’, as an alternative to citizenship as a normative value, is also considered.
Simon Dawes
11. Neoliberalization as Discursive Process
Abstract
Avoiding a simplistic dismissal of neoliberalism and supplementing the critique of neoliberal ideology, this penultimate chapter elaborates an account of the neoliberalization of broadcasting in the UK that takes a long-term historical approach, and which emphasizes the various strands of neoliberal thought within regulatory documentation. This includes the neoliberal critique of advertising, and the rise of competition as an internalized principle, predating and distinct from the relatively more recent emphasis on market competition, as well as the fleeting interest in consumer sovereignty. Primarily, the chapter engages with the extent to which ideological and governmental approaches can be combined, and considers hybridized and relational theorizations of ‘neoliberalization’ as a discursive process.
Simon Dawes
12. Why the Public-Private Dichotomy Still Matters
Abstract
The book concludes with a chapter assessing the pertinence of the public-private dichotomy to an understanding of the history of British broadcasting. It will assess the merits of the dominant British approach of media studies scholars, as well as the critiques that have been raised against the various arguments. Ultimately, it will argue for the continued pertinence of the dichotomy, but on the condition that the dichotomy be understood as historical, processual, protean and dialectical, and not in simplistically static or binary terms.
Simon Dawes
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
British Broadcasting and the Public-Private Dichotomy
Author
Simon Dawes
Copyright Year
2017
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-50097-3
Print ISBN
978-3-319-50096-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50097-3