Abstract
Assessing the condition of democratic practice in the United States, John Dewey (1927/1954) wrote that the means of ameliorating citizen disengagement and civic decline lay in communication: “the perfecting of the means and ways of communication of meanings so that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform desire and effort and thereby direct action” (p. 155). If citizens could better understand their implication in the consequences of public affairs, they could better position themselves to act purposefully to direct public affairs. Communication stood as the solution to a public in eclipse because communication served as the foundation of publics: “To learn to be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community” (Dewey, 1927/1954, p. 154). And community, Dewey (1927/1954) explained, represented the heart of democracy, which he identified as “the idea of community life itself” (p. 148). Born in the company of others, we can develop our connections to others only when we make these connections meaningful, and we create and circulate meaning through communication. Invoking a contemporary lexicon, we can understand Dewey’s perspective as articulating the position that communication constitutes publics.
In my own field of rhetoric and in the interdisciplinary research project of public sphere studies, in which I have published extensively, the constitutive power of communication has been understood as a power of speech and human relationships. Rhetorical scholars have long understood that public speech transforms individuals and audiences from discrete beings who have gathered before a speaker into active agents who may reimagine themselves and their connections to one another. The prominent twentieth-century rhetorical scholar Edwin Black referred to this transformation as the speaker’s articulation of a “second persona,” the implied persona of an audience in speech. Speakers do not simply address audiences as they find them, but constitute audiences as bold, thoughtful, dedicated, compassionate, strong, or whatever else a situation may demand. Black (1970, p. 113; see also Charland, 1987) holds that “actual auditors look to the discourse they are attending for cues that tell them how they are to view the world, even beyond the expressed concerns, the overt propositional sense, of the discourse.” To induce people to act, Black implies, speakers need to construct their audiences as agents capable of acting in ways that fit speakers’ purposes. This process occurs even as speakers and audiences may not interact extensively in many speaking situations, but perform distinct, respective roles of advocate and judge.
Scholars studying the public sphere have recognized numerous and varied connections among citizens as they engage one another to address issues of common concern. In these instances, which occur innumerably across the nodes of societal networks, communication serves both as a medium of exchange and as the creator of forums for exchange. The public sphere itself appears as a communicative product. In this spirit, Jürgen Habermas (1992/1996) explains that the public sphere “refers neither to the functions nor to the contents of everyday communication but to the social space generated in communicative action” (p. 360). The significance of communication exceeds its expressed purpose or propositional content to interpellate members of a public and bring them together as a body. Habermas (1992/1996) observes that “persons acting communicatively encounter each other in a situation they at the same time constitute with their cooperatively negotiated interpretations” (p. 361). And this discursively created space is not limited to those immediately present and participating in an exchange. Others may join the conversation, either among those present in a particular exchange or across other nodes in this discursive network. The ephemerality of speech thus assumes a more “permanent” form in larger publics. When we draw back our focus on this larger network, we may, in Seyla Benhabib’s (1996) terms, witness an “anonymous public conversation” that connects people across disparate sites of discourse (p. 74).
Recognizing the constitutive power of communication for publics, scholars have investigated the formation of publics, the activities of publics, and the significance and implications of publics. Studies of public address and the public sphere suggest that public life may be variously initiated and sustained: people may engage one another to establish a sense of who they are and what they want to accomplish; people may negotiate circulating and potentially competing senses of public, and they may find themselves associated, willing or unwillingly, with notions of publics established by others. These possibilities do not unfold disinterestedly. Power, privilege, and resources all inform people’s abilities to join with others to construct publics, to articulate the needs and interests of publics, and to engage and hold accountable other publics and societal institutions, including government institutions. So long as inequality and injustice persist, people’s experiences of public life will differ. Some people will engage others with greater freedom and mobility, reaping unfair advantages and opportunities, while others will struggle with life on the margins, finding their agency frustrated and their needs and interests unmet.
Concern with inequality and injustice have led many scholars to explore how, in unequal societies, individuals and groups nevertheless work against structural disadvantages, marginalization, and disempowerment to assert their own interpretations of their identities, needs, and interests and engage with wider publics to develop more just and inclusive political and social processes and outcomes. Much of this scholarship has proceeded under the banner of “counterpublic,” which, as Daniel Brouwer observes, refers to an oppositional, discursively constituted arena that engages participants internally and other publics externally to overcome exclusions and advance issues. Brouwer (2005) explains that “counterpublics emerge when social actors perceive themselves to be excluded from or marginalized within mainstream or dominant publics and communicate about that marginality or exclusion.” (p. 197) Counterpublics engage in internal and external communication because participants “need to speak among themselves in moments of retreat, regrouping, reflection, or rejuvenation, in preparation for or anticipation of engagements with other publics” (Brouwer, 2005, p. 197). Studying counterpublics, scholars have considered how people have sought to overcome exclusions based on race, gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and other factors (see, for example, Chávez, 2011; Dolber, 2011; Dunn, 2010; Squires, 2001; Stillion Southard, 2015)
Although research on publics and counterpublics stands as a vibrant area of inquiry in communication and other fields, a new journal, especially a journal titled Communication and the Public, may contribute importantly to this research. Indeed, Communication and the Public may be able to draw on some distinct advantages as a venue for public sphere scholarship. First, the name of this journal stakes out a focus on exploring the relationship between communication and the public. My comments thus far have articulated one understanding of this relationship, and others will be articulated, too, by the editors, reviewers, and contributors to this journal. The title, then, signals interest and promises effort. As the reputation of this journal grows, scholars from across the globe may see Communication and the Public as a hospitable venue for investigations of publics and counterpublics. Second, as evidenced by the editors and editorial board, this journal brings together scholars engaged with exploring the relationship between communication and the public from a variety of critical and methodological perspectives. Scanning the names of the editorial board reveals, for example, scholars (like myself) who draw on critical interpretative approaches as well as others who adeptly utilize quantitative and experimental methods. In scholarship on counterpublics especially, these latter approaches have been rare (cf., Toepfl & Piwoni, 2015). The members of the editorial board cast a global presence, and their research interests extend across continents. In this spirit, then, contributors to this journal may explore the public sphere in countries governed by various types of regimes as well as across countries. Further, the scholarship published in this journal may bring together research concerned with theories, analyses, and histories of publics and counterpublics.
How, then, might this journal take advantage of its position to publish significant and distinctive scholarship on the public sphere? Of course, this question ultimately will be answered by the editors in consultations with reviewers of particular manuscripts. However, in the spirit of inspiration, I wish to suggest a few possibilities. One possibility would be to encourage methodological experimentation among prospective contributors. Since the particular shape of any such experimentation will look different for different subfields, I offer my own field of rhetoric as an example. Traditionally, rhetorical studies of public discourse have relied on textual analysis as a primary method. Studying the speech of a US president, for example, would entail obtaining a transcript of the president’s remarks and analyzing this transcript with a wide range of questions in mind. To be sure, these questions have been as diverse as the scholars populating rhetorical studies, but a primary reliance on textual analysis has drawn together different critical orientations. Recently, some rhetorical scholars have considered how other qualitative methods, especially field methods, may complement textual analysis (see, for example, Hess, 2011; Middleton, Senda-Cook, & Endres, 2011).
One factor motivating the use of field methods has been an interest in expanding the type and number of texts available for study. When studying well-known people, organizations, and debates, rhetorical scholars generally have been able rely on existing databases and archives to locate the relevant primary materials. For example, every public statement made by the president of the United States and every hearing held by the committees in the US Congress are available as transcripts. A rhetorical scholar interested in the contributions of national US politicians to the public sphere would have ample materials readily available. In contrast, a rhetorical scholar seeking to analyze public discourse in local communities, for instance, cannot turn to existing transcription and publication services. Utilizing fieldwork as a complement to textual analysis, then, offers an opportunity to access this previously inaccessible discourse. Pioneering this mode of scholarship, rhetorical scholar Phaedra Pezzullo (2003) writes that fieldwork enables scholars to “study public discourse that is not yet recorded, a situation in which textual analysis is impossible” (p. 350). Beyond the instrumental value of access, fieldwork also draws attention to discourses that may have been neglected or dismissed as unimportant. In this sense, fieldwork may “affirm the importance of cultural performances unrecognized by mainstream culture” (Pezzullo, 2003, p. 350). Furthermore, in drawing on fieldwork as a complementary method, rhetorical scholars may learn more about the discourses and contexts they study. Gerard Hauser (2011) advocates this approach to learn about “local knowledge, concerns, meanings, modes of arguments, value schemes, logics, and the like shared among ordinary people” (p. 164). This journal might encourage methodological experimentation by supporting rhetorical studies of the public sphere that employ textual analysis and other complementary methods, like fieldwork.
While my first general suggestion addresses method, my second suggestion concerns topics and themes that may serve as periodic focal points of Communication and the Public. For many communication journals, the relationship between communication and the public constitutes a subfield of interest among the various areas of communication research. Bringing together scholars interested in communication and the public for a special issue, for example, already may function as a specific focus for a general communication journal. By staking a particular claim to this relationship, Communication and the Public may be better positioned than many communication journals to devote particular attention to topics and themes that inform—for better or worse—this relationship. For instance, across a range of nations and cultures, we have witnessed people of different faith traditions drawing significantly on their religious beliefs as guides for public engagement (Butler, Habermas, Taylor, & West, 2011). A special issue focused on religion in the public sphere might ask how religion brings people together and keeps them apart. It may consider questions of how to adjudicate competing religious claims, or claims between religious views and a more secular public life. Addressing a specific nation, a special issue could explore the potential consequences for communication and the public of the substantial degree of economic inequality in the United States (Gordon, 2014). Over the past several decades, a clear trend of increasing inequality has threatened democratic notions of justice and fairness. Further, this trend has disparately affected different US population groups. In 2012, women employed in year-round, full-time jobs received 77% of the income of men in similar positions. African-Americans are three times more likely to live in poverty than their white compatriots (US Census Bureau, 2013, pp. 11, 14). Contributors to a special issue might consider whether these developments threaten the very possibility of communication across members of different publics. Is increasing economic inequality leading the United States to a point where people of different backgrounds and standing may no longer be able engage in perspective-taking? Are life experiences becoming so unequal that people cannot imagine the experiences and appreciate the perspectives of others? Religion and inequality present only two examples of the many possible topics and themes that could serve as periodic focal points for this journal.
The inauguration of Communication and the Public represents an exciting moment in communication scholarship. Bringing together scholars with different conceptual and methodological expertise, whose research extends across the globe, this journal may facilitate important scholarly innovations. In doing so, this journal itself may serve as a critical means of bolstering communication and the public.