Critical social movements and media reform

"Whether defined around gendered, ethnic, national, class, environmental or other interests, social movements have long been the carriers of liberatory social change. Critical social movements (CSMs) - movements committed to empowerment of the marginalised, movements that challenge the hegemonies of dominant groups and institutions - are key to revitalising democracy today."

With this statement, Hackett and Carroll begin their examination of the way in which the mass media - crucially, a democratised one (see below) - shapes public consciousness of various social, political, and economic issues. The authors argue that CSMs need to gain access to, and draw on, the media's powerful communication potential for 3 reasons:

1. CSMs need visibility in the public domain in order to mobilise politically
2. CSMs need to achieve validation within mainstream news discourse in order to have a chance of influencing public awareness
3. CSMs need mainstream media as a vehicle for altering the balance of power by bringing in sympathetic third parties

This paper is organised around the media's function along these 3 axes. First, the authors explain, since the early 1990s CSMs have found new resources and incentives to engage in media democratisation, or "mean media-oriented activism that expands the range of voices accessed through the media, builds an egalitarian and participatory public sphere, promotes the values and practices of sustainable democracy outside the media, and/or within the media, and offsets the political and economic inequalities found elsewhere in the social system." Specifically, CSMs are driven to work toward this media democratisation as means of both getting the message out (improving their own standing while enabling the movement to have its own definition of the situation featured) and of engaging in radically democratic politics (media corporations are part of the system that CSMs are challenging).

Second, Hackett and Carroll discuss how, exactly, CSMs can engage in this "media democratisation activism". They organise their discussion around 4 major types of action, organisation, and sites of intervention:

• influencing content and practices of mainstream media (e.g., finding openings for oppositional voices, media monitoring, or campaigns to change specific aspects of representation);
• advocating for reform of government policy/regulation of media in order to change the structure of media institutions
• building independent, democratic, and participatory media
• changing the relationship between audiences and media, centrally by empowering audiences to be more critical of hegemonic media.

The authors point out that CSMs have often simply accepted the structure of the media as part of their fight. However, they argue that "Democratic media activism raises another possibility - the transformation of media themselves as an alternative to each CSM's lonely struggle to adapt itself to an inherently unfavourable media terrain. To realise this possibility, democratic media reform needs to be recast as an end in itself - a public good..." They identify 3 types of constituency building as central to this new direction: specialised groups working with media technologies and/or within media industries (e.g. journalists), subordinate social groups outside media, and more diffuse social interests that may mobilise around media sporadically (e.g., parents concerned about media's impact on socialisation).

A discussion of media reform constituency follows. The authors state that there are signs that since 1996 the movement for democractic media has been increasing in intensity. For example, in September 2003 in the United States, a grassroots campaign to reverse the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s liberalisation of media ownership ceilings. According to Hackett and Carroll, hundreds of thousands of people from across the political spectrum telephoned, and sent petitions to, the FCC and Congress. Still focussing on the USA context, the authors discuss the national Media Reform conference held in Madison, Wisconsin in November 2003 and organised by Free Press. In addition to discussion about pursuing shared principles and goals (through campaigns and networking) and strategic analysis of means to connect community, national, and international levels of networking (e.g., World Summit on the Information Society - WSIS), several collective-action frames were proposed:

• A mainstream frame, apparently intended to appeal to Americans in general, linking media reform to the foundational American value of freedom
• A progressive frame connecting media reform to progressive social issues such as the "failures of media coverage of the health care crisis...and the collusion of corporate media with Bush administration propaganda about Iraq"
• An alternative frame articulated especially by young media and community activists of colour. For them, media reform is about power, and about cultural and physical survival.

In conclusion, the authors claim that a movement is clearly emerging. To this end, they urge that "the tentative cross-fertilisation between media reform activists and CSMs needs to take root. Their political projects need to be informed by the dual recognition that media democratisation is a requisite for any significant system transformation, but that media corporations are only a part of that system. As carriers of social change, media reform and critical social movements require each other."