Democracy: A New Media Agenda

Democracy and New Media Activism:
Setting a grassroots agenda of resistance

On the front page of the October 21, 2014 issue of the New York Times, a caption reads “On TV, Hong Kong Openly Debates Democracy.” Annexed to the caption is a colored photo of a sea of Chinese citizens, some holding colored umbrellas, others sprawled along the wet pavement where a huge TV screen is erected. All glued to the TV screen are protesters watching Hong Kong student leaders of the pro-democracy movement negotiate the future of Hong Kong with top Chinese official from Beijing. According to the news article, the two-hour debate was civil and scholarly with direct quotations from chapters and verses straight from Hong Kong’s Constitution articulated by both sides of the debaters (Forsythe & Wong, 2014).

When countless images of Hong Kong police using tear gas and pepper sprays on street protesters started appearing in the Internet in mid September via mobile phones, angered Hong Kong citizens spilled into the streets like wildfire transforming the student demonstration into a more unified expression of resistance against impending threats of authoritarianism. Through Facebook, the protest movement gained a global dimension eliciting overseas support and sympathy for Hong Kong’s attempt to preserve its hard-earned democracy (Baldwin & Barria, 2014).

What the televised debate represents is an invitation to an interrogation of how, in contemporary times, the concept of democracy is placed as an agenda within the parameters of opposing political ideologies. Hong Kong’s brush with anti-democratic ideals echoes ongoing debates on democracy and the role that new media plays in staging a platform from which activism can propel the creation of new public spaces where the discourse on democracy gets expanded and re-defined.

Media researchers have claimed democracy as a centralizing narrative within which recent protest movements seen in the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street found its political expression. It is a political expression that not only challenged dominant claims as to the efficacy of one political system over the other. But more importantly, it is a political expression that emphasizes the potential of media as a democratizing institution that, to some extent, renegotiates power relations between the state and its citizens.

For Hong Kong, it is democracy versus communism facilitated on national television and social media. The perceived intent that it took for the two debating parties to come face to face, within a seeming hostile political environment, to renegotiate the process of electing a political leader for Hong Kong in a public space witnessed by millions of people, can be seen as an opening up of new avenues of political communication. It also tests the ground upon which activism and political resistance against state control can assert its agency in effecting social change. But how far can the political energy earned from this experience be sustained by mass media? How is the Hong Kong event reflective of the lessons learned from the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street movements? What seems to unite such social movements in the way they have become symbols of resistance and patterns of political activism and what role did mass media play as an agent of symbolic communication?

It is within this framework that the paper wishes to explore its main argument. This paper will argue that new media plays a significant role in problematizing the political landscape of some societies where democracy has and continues to become a national discourse. The paper sees the potential of democracy as a narrative within which media’s ‘agenda-setting’ function has found a new discursive purpose. As a media agenda that has elicited multiple and complex re-conceptualizations across diverse and historically-specific political contexts, the paper argues that in the new media formation, democracy as a discourse, continues to be shaped by social movements and at the same time continues to shape new political formations.

Democracy in Old Media: A brief recall

In his discussion of the ‘Agenda Setting Theory’ in mass media, DeFleur (2010) states that the prominence given to any media content, either news or entertainment, by media producers sets the tone for what can be perceived as important or newsworthy by media audiences (161; McCombs & Shaw, 1972). The corresponding relationship between the prominence of media content and the way it influences the shaping of public opinion is a crucial framework that asserts the potential of mass media in setting an agenda for audiences. According to DeFleur, the theory goes further in highlighting media’s agenda-setting function as it reaches a kind of audience impact that can influence public policy. In this argument, he stresses media’s function as a watchdog of public interest, and as an agenda-setter working in the interest of public good. Given this scenario, mass media then performs a critical role in challenging the power dynamics in society (165).

DeFleur’s discussion of mass media’s agenda setting potential is focused on traditional media forms such as print, radio and television that, in a traditional setting, place the audience in non-interactive, non-participatory situations. However, such seeming limitations does not prevent media in constructing democratic ideals as a crucial agenda especially as it relates to electing public officials, which to DeFleur, is shaped by public opinion (163). While DeFleur reveals his reluctance about the direct relationship between public opinion and public policy outside of electing public officials, he likewise asserts mass media’s role in setting democracy as a crucial agenda within a democratic system of communication. He then locates the potential of mass media in a political context where democracy as a media agenda or discourse can he explored.

Darling (2014) argues that in El Salvador in the late 1980s, community radio was the voice of the democratic struggle against an oppressive government. It was a medium of communication that was seen as extension of Latin America’s oral tradition reclaimed by community members as an expression of a shared free will and consensus (56). What is even more instructive in Darling’s discussion is her assertion that the practice of community radio allowed for the interrogation of democracy as a concept taken within Latin American history and culture, and democracy as a concept imported from the West (51). Darling proposes a new way of looking at democracy in the interest of reclaiming community good or public good as DeFleur puts it by way of mass media’s potential in setting an agenda for media audiences.

Radio also played a crucial role in the people’s revolution against dictatorship in the Philippines. In 1986, then President Ferdinand Marcos was ousted from a 20-year rule by a people’s movement clamoring for change. As traditional media was shut down during the four days of rebellion, a radio station owned by the Catholic Church, Radio Veritas (Truth Radio), became the voice of dissent and facilitated the people’s revolution in having a common ground for resistance. Even though Radio Veritas was not popular before the people’s revolution, its appeal as an independent media institution that espouses ideas about justice, freedom, truth and unity reverberated in the minds of millions of Filipinos (Templo, 2011). Such reverberation is also influenced by the religious character of the Philippine population who are eighty percent Catholic and comes from a culture that is freedom loving. In this scenario, the role of the media while suffused with faith-based values performed as a watchdog of democracy inspired by resistance against twenty years of media repression and censorship.

According ot Templo, during the repressive years prior to the revolution, democracy has always been at the center of many activist narratives. This has caused many tragic human rights abuses by the Marcos government especially within groups at the forefront of political activism such as the radical Left and the politicized members of the clergy. As Radio Veritas was located in the central capital of Manila, it was spared from military raids unlike other Church-operated radio stations in the provinces which were closed down. Templo asserts that it was through grassroots volunteerism that a single band radio was created which became the lone voice of democratic discourse from various representatives of the activist movement. This communication system was crucial in providing the public citizens of their rights and responsibilities in advocating for peace and democratic participation in changing the political system now challenged by people power.

In the aftermath of the 1986 people’s revolution, the discourse of democracy continues to be interrogated in Philippine politics taking new claims against abuse of power and media censorship and gained new forms of expression with the advent of digital media. However, the lessons of democracy did not translate into the vision of progress and social change that the revolution had envisioned. According to Coronel (2006), there is a deep dissatisfaction with the Philippines’ dysfunctional democracy twenty years after democracy was won (177). Coronel argues that the promise of democratic practice did not translate into economic growth and the rise of political dynasties even worsened political participation. Coronel’s statement on the fragility of democracy as a political system is true and evident in struggles against totalitarian systems of government. But as a discourse in mediated communication, it continues to gain traction across variegated political cultures and contexts.

Within the post-Soviet experience, Schipani-Aduriz (2007) argues that democracy became a catchphrase within the rhetoric of mass media especially those coming from the West. The rhetoric encapsulates democracy as the only alternative to totalitarianism (93). Western journalists and media professionals have enshrined democracy to a position that invalidates any other option. However, Schipani-Aduriz counters that within the post-Soviet scenario, discourse on democracy shaped a growing political narrative that defined democracy as not the ultimate absence of totalitarianism. This became evident especially in the new democratized states where the birth of new political elites compromised the very idea of democracy. Such tendency echoes Coronel’s articulation of the changing discourse on Philippine democracy in the post-people power configuration.

Schipani-Aduriz poses a critical question as to how Western media framed the post-Soviet revolutions. He questions the singularity of an official storyline adopted by media in framing revolutions as expressions of democracy described in a synopsis that says ‘people in the streets and nations breaking free from tyranny to embrace freedom and democracy” (95). According to Schipani-Aduriz, portraying these revolutions as the correct story for democratic ideals suggests a discourse on democracy that is not cognizant of differentiated social realities of struggling societies and the complex histories where such societies come from. This is even complicated when Western media takes the lead in interpreting democracy for every political struggle in the world. Such questioning tone echoes Darling’s assertion that Western conception of democracy is not discursively applicable to Latin America’s history of political struggle, in the same way that it is not in the post-Soviet scenario of the early 1990s.

Democracy and New Media: Current Trends

Democracy as an agenda and discourse in new media formations has grown closer to becoming the central narrative that inspires changes in political structures in certain parts of the world the most celebrated of which were the overthrowing of political leaders in the Arab world also known as the Arab Spring revolutions. The Arab Spring experience challenged normative conventions of authoritarian governments, which to a large extent, echoes the ongoing Hong Kong protest movement in its assertion to have a political voice in shaping a country’s political future.

In the aftermath of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, the discourse on democracy plays an even bigger part in the two countries’ transition to political reform (Khamis & Vaughn, 2013). For politically active citizens, the idea of profound change is rooted in democratic ideals brought about by the possibilities of free speech introduced by Facebook and Twitter. This new media engagement helped create systems and processes of demanding accountability from political leaders which are mechanisms that did not exist prior to social media (81).

On a symbolic dimension, the authors argue that the discursive potential of democracy that inspired the Arab Spring as a social movement phenomenon has transported the movement’s democratizing strategies to other forms of collective action in other countries because of social media. According to Khamis and Vaughn, this symbolic proliferation of collectivity is crucial as it brings the role of women, who are traditionally silent in Arab politics and who are now gaining an active voice through social media. In both revolutions, Arab women played an active role not only in online activism and citizen journalism but also in street protests, shouting slogans against Mubarak and Ali in an act of subverting traditional roles afforded to them by a male-dominant Arab culture. This was made possible because of the absence of hierarchical structures afforded by social media (79).

Bringing traditionally disempowered groups in society such as women into the mediated discourse on democracy, as asserted by Khamis and Vaughn, finds similar pattern in Libya’s political struggle against authoritarianism and patriarchy. It positions reconstructions of identity into the democracy agenda providing new opportunities of individual and collective agency. According to Papaioannou and Olivos (2013), Internet-based information technologies within the Libyan democratic struggle helped the formation of new cultural values that demand for greater participation in defining the goals of Libya’s new found democracy (110). The authors assert that the new space for democratic expression provided by social media such as Facebook reflects a growing commitment to protecting the rights of minorities such as women, children and the elderly, respecting human rights and keeping the military out of the political process especially as it relates to the idea of free elections. Papaioannou and Olivos further argue that through social media, a collective will was established that set aside cultural and religious differences giving a greater push for a more inclusive Libyan society. Through Facebook, Libyan citizens articulate support to a more inclusive discourse in regards to equal representation in the formal political process for all regions across gender, age and religious backgrounds.

In some countries of Southeast Asia, Abbott (2011) articulates that the discourse on democracy is clearly challenging autocratic countries in preserving traditional power structures within the increasing use of new media technologies especially after the overthrow of Mubarak, Ali and Khadaffi. According to Abbott, the use of mobile phones and social media have stirred political conversations about changing political leaders which eventually saw the downfall of General Suharto of Indonesia in 1998 and President Estrada of the Philippines in 2001. Through Facebook, international support was seen during the Buddhist monks uprising of 2007 in Burma, which is claimed to be the most repressive country in Southeast Asia (6).

Abbott also asserts that while media censorship is still prevalent in most countries in the region, there is evidence that the growing trend in social media use have impacted the poor performance of ruling party leaders in recent elections in Malaysia and Singapore. This can be attributed to what Abbott calls a growing public space online that autocratic states have no control over. This new public space then provides social media users a surveillance capability to monitor their government policies and for political activists to organize protest movements in more rapid fashion (26).
Coronel (2002) echoes this rapid speed in organizing political mobilization through new media technologies. According to her, within a hour after Philippine Congress refused to accept a new evidence that would have impeached then President Estrada in 2001, angered Filipinos monitoring the impeachment trial on national television, took to the streets in protest of the government’s decision – the very same site in which the People Power revolt was staged fifteen years ago. But this time around radio played a backseat giving way to text messaging as an organizing media mechanism. According to Coronel, short message service (SMS) through cell phones coordinated the four-day protest movement that eventually led to Estrada’s downfall. She states further that the protest action was a multi-media event with 70 million messages sent during the week of protest, about 200 anti-Estrada websites created and 100 email groups set up (61).

According to Coronel, the new people’s movement facilitated by new media represented a renewal of faith in media freedom as a requirement for a continuing discourse in Philippine democracy. She asserts that the aftermath of the 1986 people’s revolution saw an erosion of faith in media journalism as it became sensationalist in orientation as a response to the market-driven imperatives of mainstream media environment. She goes further to argue that with new media technologies, getting away with gatekeepers of traditional media can provide alternative viewpoints in enriching the discourse on democracy especially in a country like the Philippines where market-driven policies and political-elite media control still reign.

Issues of gatekeeping especially in traditional media settings and market-driven media industries that Coronel articulates find similar strains with DeLuca, Lawson and Yun (2012) in their discussion of Occupy Wall Street particularly in the way it was framed by traditional media. According to DeLuca et al, traditional media’s framing of OWS suggests discursive interpolations on democracy within context of partisan politics. Democracy as a discourse takes a different perspective in the Occupy Wall Street movement in comparison to previous experiences seen in the Arab Spring and Southeast Asia contexts. The difference can be contextualized within the political systems on which these social movements operate especially as it relates to democracy as a counter-discourse to authoritarianism and democracy as a counter-narrative to American corporatism.

As Occupy Wall Street is happening at the very site where democracy reigns as a political system, a discourse on democracy takes on a different path implicating capitalism within the discursive framing of OWS as social movement mediated through media. As an expression of protest, DeLuca, Lawson and Yun assert that OWS has been framed in different ways both negative and positive by traditional media and social media formations. That the framing by mainstream media such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal tends to be negative and submissive is no surprise and one that relates to market-driven imperatives (491. But in the authors’ discussion of how social media framed OWS, it brings out a clear partisan divide not only within the Democrat versus Republican dichotomies but largely between ideologies of capitalism and socialism (496). The fact that the more noble issues that OWS was proposing such as income equality and resistance against corporate greed were drowned out by the more noisy attacks on the protest movement as leaderless and socialist in its claims on class warfare, elevates democracy as a discourse in more complex dimensions.

Democracy as Discourse in Mass Media

I argue that democracy as an agenda has grown to become a recurring discourse in mass media as seen in people’s movements of the late 1980s up to the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street protest movements of the digital era. Expanding on DeFleur’s explanation on mass media’s agenda-setting function, social media in particular has expanded the horizon upon which dominant themes in media content by virtue of its dialogic and participatory potentials have broadened the possibilities of discourse. Such expansion reflects an interpenetration of relationship between media technology and society in general and how both technology and society are shaping each other in the construction of social realities in a heavily mediated world. DeFleur’s assertion that media’s agenda-setting potential can influence public opinion and public policy found new interpretations in new media’s role in transforming political structures as seen in the Arab Spring and Southeast Asian experiences and in challenging traditional media and corporatism as seen in Occupy Wall Street movement. What unites these movements is a recurring interrogation of democracy not only as an agenda of individual and collective expression but democracy as discourse in critique of traditional power relations.

In his discussion of discourse as defined by Foucault, Mangion (2011) articulates that discourse is the general domain of statements that is produced within institutions operating with its own rules of inclusion or exclusion. He argues that such statements are regulated according to historical contexts that shape how people think and communicate (62). From this perspective, the process of inclusion or exclusion gives power to certain statements or discourses and the level of prominence given to such discourses by institutions governing the process of inclusion reflect the gatekeeping tradition in media that is now being challenged or subverted by new media.

The suppression of democratic expression in the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world has excluded the very discourse of democracy in the everyday lives of Arab citizens. The exclusion of such discourse can be historically linked to cultural traditions and political systems where the continuing silencing and marginalization of groups such as women and minorities are the norm (Khamis & Vaughn, 2013: Papaioannou & Olivos, 2013). In these scenarios, the discourse on democracy facilitated by new media opened up newer discourses on identity construction as an assertive strategy in confronting the patriarchal tradition and inter-ethnic bias in most Arab societies.

In some parts of Southeast Asia, the discourse on democracy in new media formations still reveal an interrogation of power relations between state autocracies and their citizens. The growing awareness of social media and of the potential it can provide in affecting election of political leaders opens newer discourses on political participation which limits certain options for autocratic regimes (Abbott, 2011). Abbott goes further in expanding the discourse on democracy within the Southeast Asian experience by saying that although new media is not the cause of democratization, the technology by design is ‘democratizing’ and ‘globalizing’ because of its connectivity and networked potential. It is within this networked potential that Abbott brings into critical focus the diasporic potential that new media employs in shaping dissent across national and international borders (24). This is also reflected in the way support for the Arab Spring movements gained an international momentum as result of connectivity between dissents in Egypt and Tunisia and Arab expatriates in the West (Khamis & Vaughn, 2013).

In her discussion of the second people’s revolution in the Philippines in 2001, Coronel (2002) reveals a discourse on democracy within new media formations that alters the dynamics and market philosophies of traditional media. As stories about Estrada’s level of corruption coming from more independent media through the Internet established him as an unpopular President and a threat to the promise of the 1986 democratic struggle, traditional media along with their political elites quickly switched sides. According to Coronel, the price of supporting an unpopular President is too big an economic gamble. Such pressure can force market-driven ideologies within media organizations to be more responsive to the demands of democratic citizenship (62).

Stalder (2006), in his discussion of Network Society by Manuel Castells reveals that within the current relationship between technology and society, new motivations and values have emerged within a complex set of human desires. He asserts further that within the emerging relationship between technology and society, new social contexts emerge not defined exclusively by capitalist logic. It is within this new social contexts that he brings up new values and motivations that relate to ‘political utopias’ that on its own are driven by non-commercial goals (23). It is within this utopian context that democracy as a discourse continues to gain potential as a counter-narrative that challenges the power dynamics within the networked and mediated societies in the contemporary world as seen in the Arab Spring’s moments of political awakening.

However, Stalder quotes Castells’ argument that as long as media content remains in the hands of those who own the technologies that produce and distribute content, technology’s relevance in social transformation is still limited (24). But in the age of digital media, the Internet expands the possibilities of content production and distribution which can inspire the political utopias that Stalder asserts without being hostage to the demands of capitalism. Boler (2008) argues that content production and distribution through the Internet is changing the face of democracy in people’s minds. In her interview with Amy Goldman of Democracy Now!, an independent online news program, Boler reveals the extent to which the grassroots globalizing force of the Internet has emboldened various activist movements in America across complex political agendas such as anti-war, environmental, LGBT, gaining active voices within the political arena (199).

When Shirky (2011) asks the question ‘do digital tools enhance democracy?’ he brings in a very real dilemma and warns of making determinist conclusions about digital media’s potential especially as it relates to protest and social movements. The question also brings democracy as a new media discourse in a vulnerable position as the ongoing pro-democracy movements should be analyzed with an informed contextualization of a nation’s or a social movement’s history of political struggle. This may account for why the protest movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, the Philippines and Indonesia resulted in changes in their political structures and why Occupy Wall Street did not.

But regardless of their outcome, these expressions of protest became social movements because they were united by a common discourse on democracy. The changing face and meaning of democracy, as Boler points it out, will re-emerge as media users and activists continue to define democracy according to their own contexts and conditions. In Boler’s interview, Goodman reinforces that grassroots globalization is a place where power is shaped in response to corporate globalization (197) which then places new media as a discursive site in the continuous interrogation of the meaning and essence of democracy.

In his discussion of Foucault’s discourse theory, Fourie (2004) explains that to understand the meaning of any statement one must take into account the conditions upon which such statement is expressed and how its expression inspire other forms of conversation around it. (165). According to Fourie, identifying the conditions where the meaning is created produces discursive practices from which interrogation of power relations can evolve. The political conditions where the democratic struggles reside in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements may be different but the rhetoric of resistance against dominant ideologies expressed through new media are discursive practices that provided opportunities of participatory dialogue in questioning and eventually in changing traditional power dynamics.

In defense of the criticism of Occupy Wall Street’s failed attempt in creating change because it is without a leader and without clear demands, Manuel Castells (2012) asserts that OWS as an expression of protest has a deeper meaning beyond the excesses of the 2008 financial fiasco, especially in a society such as the United States. As a social movement, Castells argue that OWS represents a symbolic act of searching for new forms of political engagement that could ‘prefigure new forms of democracy’ within the larger society (184). Such new forms, he adds, reaches out to a community-based democracy that inspired the American Revolution. As a major exporter of democracy to the rest of the world, Castells’ defense of OWS brings a discourse on American democracy that questions the very foundation upon which democracy is founded and how it is transforming into something else.

The pre-figuring of new forms of democracy as asserted by Castells echoes the current negotiation of democracy in Hong Kong. In current scenario, the two sides within the negotiating table come from two opposing ideologies. One can only assume that the willingness on the part of Beijing to sit down and negotiate with the student leaders of the pro-democracy movement on national television is a sign of diplomacy in order to dispel the tragic memories of the Tiananmen Square massacre. As history would have it, democracy was also on top of the list of demands from the student demonstrators along with press freedom, economic openness and respect for human rights (Kim, 2000.23). The massacre happened in 1989 but the symbolic impact it had in modern Chinese culture still holds fire from the perspective of freedom loving Chinese.

International support is gaining momentum for the pro-democracy demonstrators. According to Wall Street Journal, a group called Hong Kong Overseas Alliance has organized gatherings around the world to provide support for the activists and show solidarity for the pro-democracy cause. The face of democracy continues to emerge through images and symbols in new media echoing a globalized grassroots expression of dissent and diasporic connectivity (Abbott, 2011; Boler, 2008). According to South China Morning Post, the pro-democracy movement has named itself Occupy Central – a title given to a civil disobedience movement that clamors of democratic participation in Hong Kong politics (Kang-chung, 2014), and one that rekindles the activism that Occupy Wall Street engendered.

The protest movement has yet to reveal how it will evolve in the days or months to come. But as a social movement, the discourse on democracy that it posits lies at the center of a protest narrative inspired by recent legacies of democratic expression seen in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements. It is particularly of great interest to explore how Hong Kong and China will manage this political conflict as the two countries though united by racial identity is also divided by political ideology.

To what extent will China bow to the demands of a group of students representing a different ideology from its own? An ideology that can pose as a threat to long legacies of communist tradition that makes China the economic powerhouse that it has become. In the same vein, how far can this form of civil disobedience in Hong Kong hold its ground in defense of its democratic foundation without bloodshed and human casualty? Further studies on how this mediated debate can inspire new dialogues, discourses and agendas on the democratizing potential of new media will surely enrich the body of knowledge about new media’s impact – a research topic that Shirky argues is lacking in greater depth.

However, Shirky’s less than optimistic position on the democratizing potential of new media in inspiring activism may seem to be more than enough reason to investigate a new messaging app called FireChat, a relatively new invention of the digital age that does not require Internet connection to communicate (Cook, 2014). Now being utilized by the Hong Kong pro-Democracy activists, the new app is developed by a San Francisco-based company, Open Garden, using Bluetooth for connection among mobile phone chatters and is designed to facilitate more open, decentralized connectivity. This may sound like a promising media invention that can further enrich the interpenetrating dynamic of society and technology which hopefully can inspire a political utopia critical of hegemonic ideologies (Stalder, 2006). How this new invention will facilitate more grassroots-inspired participation of resistance against threats to democratic expression and action (Boler, 2008), such as the one occurring in Hong Kong at the moment, would be another interesting topic of research for future media scholars.

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