Pelevin S.

Armavir Pedagogical Academy

Political socialisation of the young people via news media: a critical approach

Growing number of the debates about young people’s relationship with politics have often reached pessimistic conclusions. Evidence about declining levels of political knowledge and participation typically lead to a view of young people as merely ignorant, apathetic and cynical. Such assertions are frequently part of a broader lament for the apparent decline of democracy, “civic virtue” and “social capital”, which has become increasingly prominent in Western societies in recent years.

The place of the mass media in these debates is somewhat double-edged. On the one hand, the media-and 'commercialised' youth culture more broadly are often seen to be primarily to blame for this perceived decline in political awareness. These opinions are perhaps most familiar on the political Right, although they also form a significant theme in the 'communitarian' rhetoric which currently appears to inspire left-liberal policy-makers in Britain. Traditional notions of citizenship are, it is argued, no longer relevant, as viewers zap distractedly between commercial messages and superficial entertainment, substituting vicarious experience for authentic social interaction and community life.

On the other hand, there is growing concern about young people's declining interest in news media. A research in the UK suggests that young people's use of, and interest in, news media are minimal. Only 6% of young people's viewing of television comes into this category, while their reading of newspapers focuses largely on entertainment, features and sports pages. Research repeatedly finds that young people express a low level of interest in media coverage of political affairs.

Meanwhile, some critics have attempted to turn this argument around, suggesting that young people are actively excluded from the domain of politics, and from dominant forms of political discourse. From this perspective, young people's apparent lack of interest in politics is merely a rational response to their own powerlessness. Why should they bother to learn about something when they have no power to influence it, and when it makes no effort to address itself to them? Young people are seen here, not as apathetic or irresponsible, but as positively disenfranchise.

Similarly, it has been argued that mainstream news journalism has failed to keep pace with the changing cultural competencies of young people. Katz (1993), for example, suggests that young people have a very different orientation to information from that of older generations, and that they prefer the more 'informal' and 'ironic' style of new media to the 'monotonously reassuring voice' of conventional news journalism. According to this account, it is the failure of the established news media to connect with the forms of 'everyday politics’, which are most important for this generation that accounts for their declining audience. Journalists, it would seem, have only themselves to blame.

Despite these claims, the news media clearly represent a significant means of 'informal' political education, both for young people and for adults. However indifferent they may appear to be, young people often have little option but to watch the news; and they may absorb a great deal of political information from the media accidentally, or in the course of other activities-albeit often in a fragmented form. In so far as young people are being informed about politics and about current events, it seems reasonable to conclude that the news media are likely to constitute one of their most significant sources.

Research in this field thus points to a fundamental conundrum. Viewers themselves appear to look to television news as a significant source of information about the world, and frequently claim that they trust it above any other source. Yet research consistently suggests that it is comparatively ineffective in actually communicating. So why, one might ask, do people continue to watch it? Broadly speaking, the political socialisation research suggests that television has an important and for some researchers, pre-eminent role in the development of young people's political understanding. Yet on the other hand, the research on learning from television suggests that even adults have difficulty in remembering and making sense of what they watch. So how can viewers be informed or influenced by something they do not even appear to understand?

One answer to both questions might be that news creates a kind of illusion of being informed. Graber (1988), for example, implies that viewers tune in to the news because it enables them to feel that they have discharged their responsibilities as citizens, albeit in a fairly disengaged and painless manner. In terms of influence, this would imply that news induces a generalised feeling of belonging and stability, and thereby reinforces the status quo-and that it can do so without us having to consciously assent to any particular position, or to make the effort to ingest complex factual information. News reassures us that the world is pretty much as it was yesterday, and that our place within it remains the same. From this perspective, news might be seen as a kind of social palliative not a guarantee of active citizenship, but a substitute for it. However warranted this conclusion may be, it does raise the possibility that the 'effects' of news are not simply a matter of its status as information. As Robinson & Levy (1986) point out, much of the research in this field adopts a 'transportation theory' of communication, which defines news as simply a means of 'information transfer'. By contrast, they argue for a wider view of news as a generic cultural form, and of news reception as a kind of ritual. Likewise, Dahlgren (1986) offers an important critique of 'rationalistic' arguments about the reception of news, suggesting that this may leave 'central elements of the TV news process lingering in the shadows'. The key questions here, Dahlgren suggests, are to do with how news establishes its own credibility and coherence, and thereby creates 'forms of consciousness' and 'structures of feeling', rather than how accurately it communicates particular items of information. Rather than regarding the rhetorical elements of news as a distraction from its main purpose, we should be analysing the ways in which it uses 'fictional' tropes such as narrative and characterisation, and the often stylised and symbolic features of its discourse. This more 'culturalist' approach to television news does help to explain some of the motivations of viewing, and the pleasures it involves. It also suggests a rather different approach to questions about the nature of citizenship. Rather than attempting to measure the effectiveness of news in communicating political information, we should be asking how it enables viewers to construct and define their relationship with the public sphere. How do news programmes 'position' viewers in relation to the social order for example, in relation to the sources of power in society, or in relation to particular social groupings? How do they enable viewers to conceive of the relations between the 'personal' and the 'political'? How do they invite viewers to make sense of the wider national and international arena, and to make connections with their own direct experience? How, ultimately, do they establish what it means to be a 'citizen'?

The media are central to the political process in modern societies; and media education-teaching about the media-could become a highly significant site in defining future possibilities for citizenship. If, as Rob Gilbert (1992) implies, the struggle for citizenship is partly a struggle over the 'means and substance of cultural expression'- and particularly over those which are made available by the electronic media it is essential that the school curriculum should enable young people to become actively involved in the media culture that surrounds them. From this perspective, media education is not confined to analysing the media much less to some mechanistic notion of 'critical viewing skills'. On the contrary, it aims to encourage young people's critical participation as cultural producers in their own right.

Such developments may be emerging in any case as a result of the growing impact of digital media. Yet the new forms of cultural expression envisaged by some advocates of the new digital age will not simply arise of their own accord, or as a guaranteed consequence of technological change: there is a need to devise imaginative forms of cultural policy which will foster and support them. Against the surfeit of postmodern enthusiasm, there is a need to insist on relatively traditional questions about who has the right to speak, whose voices are heard and who has control over the means of production. As Gilbert argues, the political and the cultural are not synonymous; and if rights of access to cultural expression are to be realised, more traditional forms of civil and political rights must also inevitably be at stake not least for young people themselves.

REFERENCES

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