Media Democracy - Key Principles

Key Principles

Media democracy advocates that corporate ownership and commercial pressures influence media content, sharply limiting the range of news, opinions, and entertainment citizens receive. Consequently, they call for a more equal distribution of economic, social, cultural, and information capital, which would lead to a more informed citizenry, as well as a more enlightened, representative political discourse

Despite the difficulties in defining the term, the concept broadly encompasses the following notions:

  1. The press Media democracy remains an under-defined concept because of deliberate structural pressures that prevent individuals from questioning the connection between the press and democracy.
  2. The ability to comprehend and scrutinize the connection between press and democracy is important because media has the power to tell a society’s stories and thereby influence thinking, beliefs and behaviour.;
  3. The concept of “democratizing the media” has no real meaning within the terms of political discourse in Western society. In fact, the phrase has a paradoxical or even vaguely subversive ring to it. Citizen participation would be considered an infringement on freedom of the press, a blow struck against the independence of the media that would distort the mission they have undertaken to inform the public without fear or favor, this is because the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and frightened away from the arena of political debate and action.

Read more about this topic:  Media Democracy

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