Deliberation and Mass Media Communication in Election Campaigns

Abstract

Abstract

Theories of deliberative democracy are demanding and set high standards for participants. While these standards are difficult enough to fulfill in a small scale setting, such as a citizen jury, this article will consider what role (if any) the media might play in making elections more deliberative. There are a number of challenges in attempting to apply standards of deliberation to the media coverage of elections. First are the problems of scale. National elections seek to maximize participation and, even with high quality media coverage, not every voter can be expected to act like an ideal deliberator. Secondly, elections tend to be viewed as aggregative processes rather than sites for deliberation. Election coverage will also tend to focus on strategic frames. Thirdly, the mass media are subject to constraints of their own, such as time and the need to attract a large audience. Consequently, there seems to be little realistic prospect of getting the media to meet the full standards of deliberation during an election. It is, however, more realistic to expect the media to meet some more modest and limited standards for deliberation–and these standards can be consistent with aggregative theories of democracy. The insights of deliberative democrats can thereby be used to point to ways of improving the quality of media coverage of elections, which will be considered in later sections of this article.