Abstract
Public Access Television in the United States has undergone a serious decline. This chapter introduces the conflict between two ways of explaining the decline of public access: that of technological utopians who believe that technology itself promotes democracy and that of social constructionism and critical theorists who look first to the social shaping of technologies as embedded in relations of power and domination. The first view is important because it is often appealed to by policymakers and municipal leaders. I criticize the technological utopian view for its inherent determinism, its explanatory insufficiency and its political naivety. Technologies alone do not determine the course of social change. I briefly outline the alternative view, and later outline the plan of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
Douglas Kellner, Television and the Crisis of Democracy, Boulder: Westview Press 1990.
- 2.
Laura Linder, Public Access Television: America’s Electronic Soapbox, New York Prager 1999.
- 3.
Patricia Aufderheide, The Daily Planet: A Critic on the Capitalist Culture Beat, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2000.
- 4.
Linda Fuller, Community Television in the United States: A Sourcebook on Public Educational and Governmental Access, Westport: Greenwood Press 1994.
- 5.
Bill Kirkpatrick, “Rethinking ‘Access’ Cultural Barriers to Public Access Television,” Community Media Review vol 25 no 2 2002: 20–23.
- 6.
The Buske Group, Analysis of Recent Peg Access Center Closures, Funding Cutbacks and Related Threats, Prepared for Alliance for Communications Democracy April 8, 2011.
- 7.
Lindsey Sanders. “Cracking the Case of Disappearing Public Access Channels,” the save the news blog http://www.savethenews.org/blog/11/05/11/cracking-case-disappearing-public-access-channels.
- 8.
For example, see Timothy Kirkhope. “How the Internet Is Changing Democracy,” The Independent December 12, 2012 https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/how-the-internet-is-transforming-democracy-8411474.html. A view of the Internet as an example of critical theorists’ conception of the public sphere is Antje Gimmler. “Deliberative Democracy, the Public Sphere and the Internet.” Philosophy and Social Criticism vol 27 no 4 2001: 21–39.
- 9.
See, for example, Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume I 2nd Edition, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 as the articles by John Keane and Jodi Dean discussed later.
- 10.
Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2006, introduction.
- 11.
Robert McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet against Democracy, New York: The New Press 2013. For a brief discussion of Samuel Morse’s view of the public uses of the telegraph (he wanted it to be owned by the government to avoid commercialization) in the nineteenth century, see Ralph Engelman, Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History, Thousand Oaks: Sage 1996: 12–13.
- 12.
Ben Aggerm Oversharing: Presentations of the Self in the Internet Age Routledge 2012: xi.
- 13.
Benjamin Barber “Pangloss, Pandora or Jefferson? Three Scenarios for the Future of Technology and Strong Democracy,” in Robert Hassan and Julien Thomas eds., The New Media Theory Reader Berkshire: Open University Press 2006: 188–202.
- 14.
See Christopher Lasch, Forward to David Noble, America by Design: Science Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism, New York: Oxford University Press 1977.
- 15.
David Noble, America by Design: Science Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism, New York: Oxford University Press 1977.
- 16.
Louis Coser, “Social Conflict and the Theory of Social Change,” The British Journal of Sociology vol 8 no 3 September 1957: 197–207. Also see Coser The Functions of Social Conflict New York: Free Press 1956.
- 17.
See, for example, Raymond Williams’ discussion of technological determinism and the social conditions of technology in Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Routledge 203, chapter 1.
- 18.
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form.
- 19.
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Anchor 1966.
- 20.
Wiebe E. Bijker Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1987.
- 21.
Andrew Feenberg, “Democratic Rationalization: Technology Power and Freedom,” in David M. Kaplan ed. Readings in the Philosophy of Technology, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield 2004: 209–222.
- 22.
Feenberg, “Democratic Rationalization”.
- 23.
While the FCC under Obama upheld a version of net neutrality, which guarantees equal access and equal speeds to all users, the new FCC commissioner appointed by Trump, Ajit Pai, rescinded that order effectively killing net neutrality for now.
- 24.
The notion of weak institutions has been used by Latin American scholars like Guillermo O’Donnell to describe the weakness in democracies in the region; I adapt it here. See Steven Levitsky and María Victoria Murillo, “Building Institutions on Weak Foundations: Lessons from Latin America,” http://www.isp.org.pl/uploads/filemanager/BuildingInstitutionsonWeakFoundationLessonsfromLatinAmericaLevitskyMurillo.pdf.
- 25.
Jeff Delong, “Support, Funding Dry up for Community Access TV” USA Today November 4, 2010 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-04-accesstv04_ST_N.htm.
- 26.
Colin Leys, “The Public Sphere and the Media: Market Supremacy versus Democracy”, Socialist Register 1999: 314–335. John Keane, The Media and Democracy, Cambridge: Polity 1991. Michael Tracy, Decline and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998.
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Turner, Fred. 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Caterino, B. (2020). Public Access in Decline. In: The Decline of Public Access and Neo-Liberal Media Regimes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39403-5_1
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