I

A defining characteristic of the Greek pólis, a type of settlement that began to dominate the entire Mediterranean region for more than a millennium from about 750 B.C., is that there is political decision-making by majority vote after a debate in an assembly. In this assembly (called ekklesía), to which all adult, free men of the city-state belonged, the authoritative institution was free speech (parrhesía). In so far as this speech was free in the sense that any member of the assembly could stand up and express his view of a problem in question, it manifested the diversity of these views, which were in competition with each other. In his still authoritative book on “Violence and Harmony,”Footnote 1 Massimo Cacciari pointed out that this (literally “political”) competition can only be valuable “as a search for the forms and modes in which harmony is created and revealed. The purpose of agón is to aletheúein, to produce and reveal harmony.”Footnote 2 Cacciari continues: “And this ‘harmony’, this connection between pólemos and stásis, between external war and ‘internal war’, is the pólis—a structure that the Orient never knew and will never know.”Footnote 3 The inner opposition of all members of the assembly (stásis thus) is revealed precisely through free speech, and at the same time it is dynamically stabilized and framed. Cacciari: “It is precisely by asserting my difference from the Other, my uniqueness, that I am with him—or rather, I stand and thus inevitably confront the one who in turn is facing me (stásis), and recognize myself in the confrontation as being with him.”Footnote 4 (Incidentally, we recognize an existentialist figure of thought here.) Speech is admittedly subject to its own set of rules. Syntax and semantics correspond to each other, never losing sight of the desired harmony (we would say today: the metastable balance). If the rules are not observed (literally also the rules of grammar), parrhesía turns into hubris: The expression of this is stásis, and this is contrary to nature, and therefore violates the system of the polis and thus contradicts the fundamental principle of Greek ethics, the principle of kátà physín (what is according to nature). There is a revaluation of the terms. Again Cacciari: “In ‘alógistos’ daredevilry is called courage, caution is called sloth, moderation is called cowardice, sectarianism is considered more than the bonds of blood, and the oath is no longer taken in the name of divine law, but to break human laws.”Footnote 5 Here Cacciari refers to the causes of the Peloponnesian War, as so vividly described by Thucydides. But the same applies to less spectacular incidents during this long-running war, such as the strange and mysterious Hermenic crime of the year 415, which Christian Mann has reported on in detail and which, incidentally, is of considerable relevance to the current political situation in Europe.Footnote 6

It is no coincidence that free speech has developed its significance particularly strongly within fields where communication in science (we say today: the discourse of science) is concerned, following a concept of science as it was propagated—at the earliest half a millennium later, namely in 1115 AD—in connection with the founding of the first university in the modern sense, in the commune di Bologna.Footnote 7 Although this early medieval science is essentially authoritarian and derives its material from writings accepted as binding them to its entire method, which is initially called “scholastic,” it is nevertheless based on those critical elements that were taken over from the Greek tradition, which, because of its origin in the late Eastern Roman Empire, is rather a mixture of ancient and Middle Eastern thought, also with North African influences: first of all, dealing with the effort to clarify what it actually is that is being talked about. Thus, it already points to (at least logical) argumentation and not just idle gossip. Thus, lectio, the commentary on reading, remains fundamental, always linked to a formal, grammatical analysis that must precede any reflection. But the comment immediately triggers a discussion. In this respect the text recedes behind the search for truth; the lectio is transformed into the quaestio, whose conclusions lead to the determinatio. And finally, the whole system even detaches itself from lectio and gains its own autonomy in disputatio.Footnote 8 But with that, since about the thirteenth century, long before the beginning of the Enlightenment era, there is no turning back as to its basis: Whoever disputes in a proper way is concerned with grasping what is the case and recognizing the consequences that follow. And as we know from history, in the future the fields of faith and knowledge will become increasingly divergent. And in the end, only scientific authorities are recognized in the field of science, but no longer traditional ones, neither those of the monarchy nor those of the Church. (Of course, we ourselves are only gradually awakening from the nineteenth century in this respect while being within the twenty-first century, as Walter Benjamin already knew, just as the era of the Enlightenment with its specific consequences really only came to its awakening in the nineteenth century). But after an intermezzo of increasing rationality that has now lasted for some two hundred years, this scientific paradigm is under dangerous attack. Representing the sciences, philosophy (understood by Hans Heinz Holz as the science of totality) in particular is today exposed to the attack of two tendencies, which have always been present (at least since Greek antiquity), but which have recently become widespread and considerably stronger in society: On the one hand, its (philosophy’s) concept is inflationarily damaged because many people believe that ordinary thinking is already philosophizing. Not to speak of the space-consuming and annoying habit of speaking of so-called “corporate philosophy” or the “philosophy of a product” that is nothing but a banal “purpose” for the making of profit. This is accompanied not only by an explicit trivialization (in the sense that immersion in the professional depth is avoided at all costs and the easy apparent replaces the difficult actual), but also by an increasing professionalization (in the sense that the opinion prevails more and more that the activity of philosophizing can be carried out by any person without great difficulty, in such a way that a regular income can be drawn from it, because the possibility of a real, concrete and insofar helpful consultation of fellow humans is apparently imminent). This double misunderstanding is not only prevalent in everyday life today, but also affects those who should know better by means of their profession, i.e., numerous scientists as well as artists—and in fact several philosophers themselves. While it is obvious that it is the currently precarious job situation, especially in the academic middle class, that provides the incentive to look for a replacement, this cannot really excuse either the essential trivialization of the activity or its shift to appearances. In the case of a space engineer or a theoretical physicist, it would be difficult to assume that their activity could be carried out by people who have not undergone the usual training for this activity. Incidentally, one would not dare to appear as a cook or baker or carpenter without the appropriate training. (The few who sometimes do so are rightly called impostors.) But the humanities and philosophy in particular have always been increasingly exposed to this arrogance.Footnote 9 Unfortunately, today we are increasingly encountering comments, be they in the form of individual scientific lectures, contributions to conferences, or written publications, in which we feel as Loriot once did in the well-known sketch about the art whistler, who shows up for an interview, but who clearly does not master his profession at all. Then Loriot, in the shape of one of his famous cartoon characters, says: “But, Sir! There’s no art to it!”Footnote 10

On the other hand, the phenomena of targeted fake news and alternative facts, which have only recently been addressed to a large extent, are increasingly relativizing, questioning and damaging the very concept of science itself, which in turn underlies the concept of philosophy, so that orientation in the midst of the concrete world is increasingly lacking, and central criteria of thought that have made possible in the first place the progress of thought over the last three centuries (at least) are in danger of being lost. Obviously, the first tendency is directly related to the second: For political interests in general were already (in the past) such that people did not shy away from misinterpreting facts in their own favor and spreading their opinions under false assumptions or simply denying the existence of facts. It is indeed characteristic of the human exercise of power, or of the striving for this power, that it is mainly about the instrumentalization of fellow human beings: By believing what is communicated to them by the world-readers, people serve the interests of those whom the world-readers serve. Jean-Paul Sartre already knew that everyone pursues their own interests. But because the others are doing the same thing at the same time, these interests overlap and interfere with each other, and what emerges in the end as a result, sometimes later called a “historical event,” is essentially counterfinal, i.e., something that none of the participants really wanted, but which was spontaneously created in the course of the overlapping. In this sense, as Karl Marx once so aptly put it, “[t]he people make their own history, but they do not make it of their own free will, not under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances that are found, given and handed down directly. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an alp on the brains of the living. And when they seem to be busy transforming themselves and the things, creating something unprecedented, it is precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis that they anxiously invoke the spirits of the past at their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, costumes, in order to perform the new world history scene in this time-honored disguise and with this borrowed language.”Footnote 11 It is precisely the history published and later disseminated in schools (as a subject, thus understood as a science of history) that has in the past often made a considerable contribution to interpreting historical events from the point of view of particular interests, namely depending on the specific interests of those who “wrote” this particular history, largely independently of actual events. The recent qualitative difference is basically that this tendency towards pragmatic instrumentalization has long since transcended the realms of immediate “domination” and found its way into the ordinary everyday life of social institutions, where it can be multiplied en masse since the arrival of the “new media”: There have always been people with strange views of the world. But now they can get together with like-minded people and make their ideas known and widely disseminated. People used to say, “X is a weird guy; What he thinks…”; And one would either avoid or ridicule such persons. Today it is said: “X spreads a strange opinion on the Internet and has numerous followers; So there must be something to this.” At the university, they used to say, “X is a crackpot. His methodological approach is not up to standard.” Today, it is often said: “X represents a special view and not the school opinion. And differences of opinion always exist within the framework of diversity.” In the end, it is therefore no longer possible to differentiate sufficiently between the publication of a scientific paper in an established, peer-reviewed journal versus a self-administered online text on the Internet. The latter at least gives the impression of seriousness. However, it has not been adequately verified by specially designated reviewers (referees). Scientifically or generally ideologically, one is reminded of the story going back to Bertrand Russell, in which a practicing tea-ist (sic) claims that between Earth and Mars a teapot is circling in space, but it is so small that it cannot be detected by telescopes. The tea-ist insists on this view as long as no one can prove him wrong. In contrast, the sceptic, the A-tea-ist, points out that it is not his task to refute curious assertions, but that the burden of proof lies solely with those who make these assertions. The instruments for this procedure, namely the propositions of the sufficient ground and of “Ockham’s razor,” seem to be rather forgotten today.Footnote 12

And what is true on a small scale and for everyday life, both scientific and non-scientific, is also true for the larger social perspective: in this way, the constitutionality of human beings, so plausibly described by Marx, determines politics (i.e., daily politics as well as the major geopolitical constellations), but at the same time also the behavior of people in everyday life, which is situated below the political horizon. On the one hand, there is the global outbreak of “overriding” interests, regardless of whether some two and a half thousand years ago a battle for hegemony in the Mediterranean broke out between Athens and Sparta because Sparta feared a reduction in power; a thirty-year war was fought in the seventeenth century because the Bavarian Elector was jealous of the Habsburgs’ claim to power; or whether the nations “sleepwalked” into the First World War because each was concerned about its “place in the sun.” In the first case, the claiming of due respect is put forward in order to enforce claims to hegemony that cannot really be justified. In the second case, the fighting in favor of the true Christian religion is pretended. In the third case, it is allegedly a matter of maintaining a balance that was once constructed at the time of the Congress of Vienna. Nevertheless, in all three cases it is in fact a matter of striving for concrete hegemony as a basic prerequisite for one’s own further growth. On the other hand, however, this state of affairs continues to be reflected in the regional, local, and “microscopic” interests of social groups and individuals: even beyond the politically relevant institutions, the main issue is one’s own “hegemony,” no matter how small the corresponding sphere of rule, no matter how insignificant its object. And it is always the individual discourse that constitutes the conditions of validity. For an appropriate illustration I give an example in the following.

II

For this purpose we use the recently published study by Frank Westerman about a catastrophe during 1986 in the so-called “Valley of Death” in western Cameroon,Footnote 13 which can be used to illustrate the facts mentioned here: On the night of 21 to 22 August, about 2000 people and numerous animals, including birds and insects, died in a very short period of time in the Nyos Valley, about 300 km northwest of the capital Yaoundé. Hundreds of injured were taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Wum. Reported symptoms included “blister-like ulcers” and “suffocation and choking.” According to the current state of research, the disaster was most likely caused by a specific constellation of the water body immediately after the Nyos Lake incident, formerly called Lwi Lake (“The Good Lake”), but since called “The Angry Lake.” This is because western Cameroon belongs to the famous “breaking point” where Africa “broke off” about 100 million years ago in the course of continental drift from South America. The fracture line of instability is also called the “Cameroon Line,” which extends from some offshore islands over Mount Cameroon, an active volcano 4000 m high, further north, where there is a chain of volcanic lakes, which form mostly circular maars, i.e., volcanic craters formed by explosions when groundwater meets liquid lava. In addition to Lake Nyos, there are two other lakes (Lake Monoun, also in Cameroon, and Lake Kivu in the area between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire) in which carbon dioxide is dissolved to saturation point. Because of the thermodynamic conditions of temperature and pressure, deep water can store far more carbon dioxide than surface water. Subterranean magma chambers ensure the permanent supply of further carbon dioxide. A spontaneous perturbation of the system, such as a landslide or small earthquake, can lead to explosive outgassing. Because carbon dioxide is heavier than air, it then flows very quickly (with outflow speed in the range of hundreds of km/h) near the ground into all surrounding lowlands. Carbon dioxide is odorless and invisible and, at concentrations greater than 8% of the air we breathe is almost certainly fatal. A comparable outgassing had already occurred at Lake Monoun in 1984, costing 37 people their lives. In 1986, Lake Nyos suddenly released almost two million tonnes of carbon dioxide. The whole area was declared a military exclusion zone, and even today many victims and their descendants live in camps rather than in newly established settlements elsewhere. Since 2001 a French team has been trying to carry out a degassing project on the lake.

However, Westerman focuses less on the catastrophe itself than on the various discourses on it over the years: One can distinguish between a scientific discourse, a political discourse, a religious discourse, and a mythical discourse. The first, scientific discourse, is essentially determined by the competition between two schools, whose central protagonists are Haroun Tazieff (Paris) on the one hand and Haraldur Sigurdsson (Reykjavik) on the other. There is general agreement that the deaths are a consequence of the effect of carbon dioxide. The exact cause of the volcanic activity is, however, disputed. Sigurdsson understands it as the spontaneous emergence of instability. Both protagonists draw on their earlier experiences. On the event two years prior at Lake Monoun, Sigurdsson had written an essay propagating his theory, which he could not place in either of the leading journals “Science” or “Nature” and which he had therefore submitted to another, less prestigious, journal, but which took a long time to reach publication. This ultimately led to the fact that Sigurdsson, who was on Sumbawa in Indonesia during the Nyos catastrophe, where he was investigating the Tambora volcano, was not able to join the investigation of the more recent case in a timely manner, nor did he have anything in writing regarding the earlier incident. Hence, Tazieff was the first and “loudest” person to advance with his own theory and to announce his result even before leaving Paris. The scientists who subsequently arrived in the disaster area from all over the world were consistently divided between the two camps. But with the arrival of the US team, supporters of Sigurdsson’s view finally gained the upper hand. The scientific competition was also reflected in the media: Reuters and AP stood against the French AFP, “National Geographic” magazine against the French GEO. In their respective announcements the competing view was simply omitted. At the large Nyos Conference held in Yaoundé in 1987, which was attended by 86 experts from 35 countries, 46 of them from Cameroon, the final communiqué was based entirely on the Anglo-Saxon-dominated view of Sigurdsson. This led to an angry and spectacular performance by Tazieff, who did not want to finish his counter speech and was therefore cut off the microphone, whereupon he demonstratively left the conference hall (incidentally, celebrated as a hero by many young participants in the conference, because his public opposition was very positively evaluated by the inhabitants of an extremely rigid dictatorship). Tazieff was also unable to assert himself at the subsequent UNESCO conference in Paris, whereupon he boycotted all further conferences on the subject and declined to participate.

The second, political discourse is closely interwoven with the first, because Paul Biya, President of Cameroon since 1982, often expected to be pushed out of office by the former colonial power France. He also had to endure many years of conflict with Nigeria and internal tensions resulting from the original division of Cameroon into an English-speaking part (which later became Nigeria) and a French-speaking part (Cameroon in the narrower sense). Nevertheless, English-speaking inhabitants had remained in Cameroon. The disaster area in question is one of the predominantly Anglophone regions. The ratio between the French-speaking majority and the English-speaking minority is about 80:20, and it is deemed quite likely (but difficult to prove) that Biya himself was involved in spreading such rumors, which linked the disaster in the Nyos valley to a secret weapons test by a foreign nation. Partly the French were accused of having carried out poison gas experiments, partly the Israelis of having tested a new bomb, perhaps a neutron bomb. But the USA was also accused in one way or another. Should Biya himself have contributed to these rumors, the atmosphere of mistrust was soon to backfire. In 1990, a vaccination program for girls and women between the ages of 14 and 30 was set up in the English-speaking part of Cameroon. The director of the Catholic Augustine College in Nso, Father Fonteh, publicly rebuffed this program, finding it suspicious that only specific groups of women should be vaccinated. Consequently, the vaccination program failed. Father Fonteh took a hypodermic syringe for analysis at a clinic run by nuns in Shisong. Shortly afterwards, he was beaten to death in his own home in a murder that was never solved. It subsequently transpired that the supposed vaccine was in fact a hormone preparation that sterilized women. Hence, in retrospect, the Nyos catastrophe was interpreted as a measure to decimate the remaining English-speaking population.

The third, religious discourse originated from the situation of Christian missions in the area: Westerman impressively describes the arrival of various priests in the disaster area. He describes the actual (yet almost unbelievable) meeting like a symbolic ritual: “Three white men, preachers of a non-African religion, enter the valley of death simultaneously, but independently of each other, as the first to come. One enters from the east. The other one descends from the sky [by helicopter]. The third comes down from the southern hills.”Footnote 14 One of them, Father Jaap, says the first thing: “Isn’t this Satan’s work?”Footnote 15 The mixture of Christian missionary and late colonialism could not be put more succinctly: “They [the missionaries] bring a mythical narrative that is supposed to take the place of all other mythical narratives. It is about the chosen and the damned, about prophets and angels, about God and the devil. What they proclaim is written in a centuries-old book full of guidelines for life, from the cradle to the grave, and a reward for those who submit to them: the promise of eternal life.”Footnote 16 On the other hand, it is also justified to note that the Christian missions are so popular because, especially after the Nyos disaster, they are the only ones to care for the victims in any way, even in a common ecumenical effort that includes Muslim communities. Of course, soon the White US evangelists, who represent a part of the mission, also enter the debate about guilt and are insofar exposed to suspicion. But even these rather mild, though very committed priests, in the end simply retreat to the infinite wisdom of the Lord. In this way, although they spread a mythical narrative that sees itself as a kind of “master narrative” that cancels out all other narratives, they essentially belong to the fourth, the mythical discourse.

The latter is based on the network of legends that goes back to the founding myth of the local tribes. An enlightening overview of the complexity and the overall context of intra-African migrations, especially from the seventeenth century onwards, is provided by the still significant historical work of Joseph Ki-Zerbo from 1978,Footnote 17 in which the volcanic lakes of the southwest, which are often regarded as the abodes of the spirits of the dead—a form of underworld equivalent—play a central role. It is obvious that past catastrophes of the kind mentioned have traditionally been equated with the intervention of those spirits or even gods hidden in the depths, and will certainly continue to be so.

Westerman describes very vividly the effect of the narration that has been handed down. On the one hand, he emphasizes a socialization characteristic that can be regarded as universal: “Narrations can so easily settle into reality that they become part of it. […] Everyone in this world raises his children with food, drink and fairy tales. […] / […] When it comes to questions of life, the majority of the world’s population prefers fiction to fact.”Footnote 18 He sees narrative as a “regrinding of raw reality,” and continues: “We all [always] felt a tendency to recognize connections that perhaps did not exist in reality, but which, by naming them, acquired a certain persuasive power”;Footnote 19 And later says: “Human curiosity is not content with incompleteness, inconsistency or incomprehensibility. If there’s no other way, we’ll add what’s missing.”Footnote 20 In this context it is almost trivial to note that the origins of the myth are essentially based on the fear of death, i.e., the fear of the finiteness of human life.Footnote 21 Westerman quotes Malinowski: “The myth does not explain, [it] justifies.”Footnote 22 In the case of the disaster in Cameroon, however, the logic of the myth did not work: According to the polar view of tradition, the premature death of the victims was something unnatural, i.e., evil. Therefore, it could only be a punishment or revenge of the ancestors. (A figure, by the way, which indirectly also corresponded to the Christian understanding of guilt). On the other hand, the large number of victims was something that was completely disproportionate to any possible guilt and thus did not fit into the traditional understanding of the myth.Footnote 23

From this episode one can see quite clearly the problem we have to deal with today: At that time (i.e., especially in the 1980s) there were different discourses via which one could report on a phenomenon. Basically, everyone chose the discourse that was close enough. There was little overlap, which sometimes served the purpose of interest-based mystification, and sometimes came from a random constellation that contributed significantly to the lack of clarity. But there was no real mixing, because the demarcation between the discourses was largely adhered to and observed. Of course, systematic and methodological mistakes were made from time to time: For example, after the catastrophe in the Nyos valley, the focus was initially on questioning witnesses.

However, only later was it revealed that the survey was not conducted in the specific tribal language but in the pidgin English spoken in southwestern Cameroon (one could say: the lingua franca of the region). However, this is a language that simplifies matters very much, so that the color of the lake after the disaster was described in a rather general way. (The surface of the water was called “red,” but in pidgin English this is equivalent to “yellow” or even “blue.” Westerman has verified these facts on site. Sam Freeth, the British expedition leader was the first to point out this aspect).Footnote 24 Likewise, it was not possible to distinguish precisely between “smell” and “taste.” It goes without saying that both the color of the lake after the event in question and the associated smell and/or taste were or should have been able to provide essential information about the chemical substances involved.

So the important aspect in this context is the diversity of discourses, which I have presented here in a very simplified form. Michel Foucault and his collaborators had already carried out a similar investigation—into the influence of various discourses that overlapped only slightly—when researching in 1973 the case of Jacques Rivière.Footnote 25 Although this was not a collective catastrophe but an individual case of murder in a rural family in 1835, the influence of the tension that existed between the different types of interpretation to which the event in question was subjected under the impact of the juxtaposed discourses were also clearly evident in this example.

But what is different today? The manifold discursive perspectives have always existed. Essentially, however, there are now two differences: First, the implicit weighting of discourses has largely disappeared. Due to exaggerated politeness or even misunderstood “political correctness,” the various discourses are now considered equal and therefore indifferent (in a double sense of the word). On the other hand, all discourses in the media, especially in the new media, are equally widespread and accessible everywhere at any time. This means that rumors spread much faster than in the times of Virgil. This easily leads to confusion and unjustified relativization, and all this adds to the confusion. Strange assertions or just nonsense can easily hold their own from now on. The media presence of nonsense therefore gives the uninformed the impression of justified commitment. However, this tendency had its origin less in philosophy or the sciences, but rather in the structure of public discourse. This structure actually started with the reserved politeness of knowledgeable people who did not want to reveal themselves as knowing in order not to offend their fellow humans and to avoid distinguishing themselves as an alleged “elite.” When in TV talkshows semi-prominent actresses spread their “health-giving stones” on the table, people only nodded amiably with a serious look; no criticism was expressed—on the contrary: criticism was explicitly frowned upon. For the time being, it ended with a levelling of all views, also in the scientific field. By the way, supported by the increasing commercial professionalization, which is mainly subject to the criteria of advertising (i.e., propaganda). For if the number of “clicks” is directly or indirectly rewarded by money, those offers that transport nonsense, up to and including explicit perversion, will always prevail. It is not without reason that media networks such as “Facebook” secretly employ numerous employees who have the task of checking uploaded content and deleting it if necessary.

The final result makes a mockery of the principles of the Enlightenment. My Munich colleague Silke Järvenpää quoted US philosopher Laurie L. Calhoun as an example at a recent conference on the subject in Berlin.Footnote 26 The science journalist Helen Pluckrose refers to Calhoun as follows: “Calhoun […] redefines the building blocks of scientific methodology as a contemporary form of magical thinking. A colleague recalls a discussion: ‘When I had occasion to ask her whether or not it was a fact that giraffes are taller than ants, she replied that it was not a fact, but rather an article of religious faith in our culture.’”Footnote 27

Incidentally, Calhoun is also a research fellow at the Independent Institute, an apparently non-profit educational institution in Oakland, California. As far as can be seen, she does not hold a professorship, as is often rumored. In return, however, for the sake of fairness, it must also be said that Helen Pluckrose in her contribution does indeed make justified criticism of so-called “postmodernism,” although she herself takes a very woodcut-like and simplistic approach.

III

I conclude and summarize: While the public discourse has recently been increasingly burdened by the dissemination of fake news and alternative facts, the academic world is now also threatened by these influences, which aim to contaminate and discredit research and teaching through unscientific claims, esoteric thinking, politically motivated ideologies and misunderstood political correctness. This tendency is supported by a publication industry that takes a pseudo-scientific approach and publishes all kinds of things for a fee yet without verification. Only recently, it has been established that the number of scientists taking advantage of such opportunities is already in the thousands in Germany alone. This must be stopped decisively: Scientific discourse thrives on free speech, which is both the right and duty of serious scientists, and individual imagination is also essential. This does not mean, however, that anything can be disseminated at will: imagination in a scientific context always means exact imagination, i.e., one that must submit to the strict conditions of consistency while remaining connectable to the knowledge acquired so far. The instruments for checking consistency are already in place and basically sufficient, but may need to be rethought in the light of changes in the media landscape.