Legitimität in der Medienpolitik

Zusammenfassung

Der Beitrag entwickelt eine theoretische Perspektive auf Medienpolitik und stellt Legitimität in den Mittelpunkt. Ausgangspunkt ist die Überlegung, dass zu medienpolitischen Auseinandersetzungen immer auch Kämpfe um Legitimität gehören und Akteure die Wirkung von Legitimität nutzen wollen, um Einfluss auf medienpolitische Regelungen zu nehmen. Gestützt auf den Neo-Institutionalismus und die Strukturationstheorie von Anthony Giddens wird ein analytisches und dynamisches Legitimitätsverständnis entwickelt, das öffentliche Debatten in den Mittelpunkt stellt und die mit Aufbau, Erhalt und Aberkennung von Legitimität verbundenen Prozesse als Zusammenspiel von Akteuren und Strukturen modelliert. Dieses Zusammenspiel wird als strategische Bezugnahme auf und zugleich Wirkung von Erwartungsstrukturen verstanden. Es wird von der „Legitimationsgrammatik“, der Verteilung von Ressourcen und den Regeln der Medien strukturiert. Geltungsansprüche können vor allem dann wirksam werden, wenn sie in der medialen Öffentlichkeit sichtbar werden. Die Perspektive erlaubt es, Legitimitätsepisoden zu identifizieren, die Struktur von Legitimitätsaussagen zu untersuchen, nach den Gründen für den Erfolg von Legitimitätsstrategien zu fragen sowie den Eigeninteressen von Medienorganisationen nachzugehen.

Abstract

This study develops a theoretical perspective on legitimacy in media policy that can be used to study debates taking place in the media. This perspective assumes that contentions about legitimacy are inscribed in media policy debates; in debates about which media content, business models and forms of media usage are legitimate. The aim of this perspective is to stimulate research questions and guide research. It contributes to understand why some regulation is successful and another is not. This article first discusses the state of research in communication studies. According to it, legitimacy can influence decisions in media policy. Legitimacy is a precondition for the effectiveness of regulation and regulatory procedures and for the stability of the media order. The media may operate as self-interested actors and deprive regulatory attempts of legitimacy. Most studies use a normative concept of legitimacy.

Based on new institutionalism and the theory of structuration by Anthony Giddens, in the first step, an analytical (not normatively determined) and dynamic concept of legitimacy is developed. Legitimacy is with Suchman understood as a “generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions”. Drawing on both strategic and institutional approaches, legitimacy is conceptualized both as strategic reference to and as effect of normative structures. Media policy actors try to strategically employ legitimacy in order to assert or defy collectively binding rules. They cannot do this, however, without referring to expectation structures (normative structures) that at the same time constrain and enable them. Because legitimacy has these two sides, is part of action and structures, it can be defined as institution.

New institutionalism differentiates between attributing, depriving of, repairing and maintaining legitimacy. The structuration theory is used to define these processes as a recursive interaction of actors and structures that takes place in public debates (structuration of legitimacy). The structuration theory provides a framework that integrates the strategic aspect of legitimacy related action and the institutional aspect of legitimacy. Furthermore, it includes the distribution of resources, political capabilities and authority in media policy and allows studying the influence of these factors on gaining, depriving of and repairing legitimacy. The following sections elaborate this framework and for this purpose, use the terms legitimacy episodes, structuration of legitimacy, grammar of legitimation, media communication.

Due to legitimacy episodes, legitimacy becomes an issue in media policy. Arguing with Giddens, episodes are processes of social change that reorganize institutions. They occur with transgressions. Transgressions related to the media system can be expected when new media proliferate because new forms of media production, distribution and media usage develop, new actors enter media markets and public communication changes. Old issues of media regulations are raised from new perspectives, new regulatory problems emerge. Emerging debates and conflicts also concern legitimacy: the threats of certain new services, the acceptability of new business practices or the lawfulness of certain user behaviour.

The structuration of legitimacy encompasses attributing, depriving of, repairing of and maintaining legitimacy and can be studied through the “grammar of legitimation”, resource distribution and the rules of the media. The abovementioned processes related to legitimacy take place in recursive interactions of actors and structures: within communication, sanction and power. These forms of interaction are closely related to each other. Language is a regulative force and reflects structures of domination. Three propositions can be derived from Giddens regarding the structuration of legitimacy: First, media policy conflicts can be understood through debates. Second, these debates are not only about exchanging arguments but about validity and influence. Third, public debates influence collectively binding decision-making processes because they construct legitimate definitions of an actor, a procedure, of existing rules or of other problems and discursively restrict available options. The structuration of legitimacy can be analysed by studying the grammar of legitimation, the resource distribution among actors and media related rules. The grammar of legitimation, resource distribution and media related rules are both enabling and constraining actors. The grammar of legitimation demands actors to include an interpretation of the legitimation object, a norm, an evaluation and arguments in their statements. It furthermore, demands actors to consider the structure of expectation and signification: prevailing norms, values, and patterns of interpretation. Resource distribution, more specifically the extent to which actors can invest allocative and authoritative resources structures debates about legitimacy. Legitimacy claims can be raised most effectively via mass media. The mass media are self-interested actors in media policy debates. They provide therefore not only a forum for but are actors in legitimacy debates. The rules of the media that affect legitimacy debates and their outcome are threefold: selection, interpretation and depiction of a media policy debate, the media’s own interests, and to what extent leading media cover a media policy issue. The present perspective allows identifying episodes of legitimacy, studying the structure of legitimacy statements, investigating the reasons of successful legitimacy strategies and media organizations’ self-interests.