AR; Against Deliberation

…so is the title of an essay by Lynn M. Sanders, originally published in 1997 in Political Theory. (No link this time.) What is this about?

Well, deliberation, says Sanders, is perhaps too often regarded as some kind of panacea for the problems of democracies. An overly enthusiastic belief in the powers of deliberation overlooks its perceived problems: most importantly, that its prerequisites might easily exclude the disenfranchised from taking part – which is all the more dangerous since it is claimed that deliberation will eliminate such problems of political discussion.

Sanders illustrates the problem through the example of US juries: for example, how those of higher socio-economic status tend to be perceived as having better arguments than others.

So, on the one hand, deliberation, in theory, might not be so open as it is claimed; and on the other hand, in practice, as it is empirically shown, doesn’t produce the results that it is expected to produce.

What, then, should be the solution? Well, according to the radical view of Sanders, alternative forms of political participation should be sought; and one candidate of that would be the form of “testimony“: a personal, experiential, not-necessarily-rational account of things as they are and as they should be.

There are five points I’d like to make about this argument.

Discussion catalysts

Combining the theoretical background provided by the Katz-Lazarsfeld two-step flow of communication theory (and its subsequent criticism and revisions) with a social roles perspective, a recent JCMC article looked at Usenet discussions to find out whether there is something special about those contributors who create popular threads – and if so, then what is it.

The article, by Itai Himelboim, Eric Gleave and Marc Smith, termed successful conversation starters “discussion catalysts” (DC) – not surprisingly, a small minority among conversants.

Interestingly, 95% of DC thread starting posts contained content imported elsewhere from the web, and about two thirds of this content came from “traditional news organizations,” especially AP, The Washington Post and The New York Times in particular.

So it seems that the two-step flow hypothesis still have some relevance: it is through a small number of participants (DCs, at Katz and Lazarsfeld: opinion leaders) that the larger community is “agitated,” and delivered information originally coming from the mainstream media.

The authors consider the heavy reliance on established media “less encouraging;” they claim that the heavier use of alternative sources of information would be desirable. For reasons cited many times, I don’t fully agree, but the most important point is that to an important extent this is not a question of agreement or disagreement, insofar as the dominant position of the established media is an practical an economic reality.

And as a final remark, I just cannot believe that the JCMC still writes about the “Internet”, with capital I. With the words of Lorelai Gilmore: I don’t even know how to respond to this! It’s 2009 now!

Himelboim, Itai, Eric Gleave and Marc Smith (2009): “Discussion catalysts in online political discussion: Content importers and conversation starters” in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14, 771-789.