{"id":110,"date":"2008-05-29T13:31:12","date_gmt":"2008-05-29T18:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/2008\/05\/29\/media-and-governance\/"},"modified":"2008-05-29T13:31:12","modified_gmt":"2008-05-29T18:31:12","slug":"media-and-governance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/2008\/05\/29\/media-and-governance\/","title":{"rendered":"Media and Governance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/files\/2008\/05\/factorsdiagram1.jpg\" align=\"left\" height=\"330\" width=\"332\" \/>The World Bank and the Shorenstein Center have gathered a terrific international group here at the Kennedy School to discuss &#8220;The Role of the News Media in the Governance Reform Agenda.&#8221; [Warning &#8211; semi-live blogging ahead, expect inaccuracy and incompleteness. Details in conference papers <a href=\"http:\/\/ksghome.harvard.edu\/~pnorris\/Conference\/Conference.htm\">here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<p>This morning, we discussed a framework put forward by <a href=\"http:\/\/pippanorris.com\/\">Pippa Norris<\/a> (McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University) and <a href=\"http:\/\/publicsphere.worldbank.org\/user\/sina\">Sina Odugbemi<\/a> (Program Head, CommGAP, The World Bank Group). The two most controversial issues were their decision to use a typology that focuses only on three normative roles for a journalist: watch-dog, agenda-setter and gate-keeper and their diagram (at left) mapping the &#8220;factors influencing the roles of journalists.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To grossly simplifiy the ensuing discussion, there was some consensus that even if we limit ourselves to only the <em>desired<\/em> roles of journalism and only in the context of promoting good (or democratic, depending on which jargon-camp you live in) governance:<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; the roles of gatekeeper and agenda-setter are too similar and don&#8217;t include the key roles of media as a <strong>facilitator<\/strong> of democratic deliberation, a <strong>conduit<\/strong> of information and discussion between people and the government, in short a kind of public servant;<\/p>\n<p>Both my role model <a href=\"http:\/\/ellenhume.com\/\">Ellen Hume<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/civic.mit.edu\/\">Center for Future Civic Media<\/a>, MIT) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/p\/io\/unesco\/members\/78235.htm\">Marguerite Sullivan<\/a>  (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ned.org\/cima\/cima.html\">Center from International Media Assistance<\/a>)  jumped up to make the point that the graphic on this page has one thing missing: <strong>the public<\/strong>. Hellooo. This brought up the critical need for media\/news (yet another jargon war) literacy as part of any plan to improve the impact of media on democracy, which is one of Media Re:public&#8217;s conclusions.<\/p>\n<p>Ellen of course also pointed out the need to take into account new forms of media, from new authors to new delivery mechanisms.  This is a flag we&#8217;ll continue to wave for the rest of the conference, as there&#8217;s a very serious tendency in this crowd to forget about new media. (truly live &#8211; A notable exception to new media blindness: in after-lunch session <a href=\"http:\/\/merrill.umd.edu\/directory\/details.cfm?id=54\">Susan Moeller<\/a> (International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, University of Maryland) mentions <a href=\"http:\/\/www.summize.com\">Summize<\/a>, an interesting twitter aggregator &#8211; search for &#8220;china earthquake&#8221; or any other news story).<br \/>\n-30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The World Bank and the Shorenstein Center have gathered a terrific international group here at the Kennedy School to discuss &#8220;The Role of the News Media in the Governance Reform Agenda.&#8221; [Warning &#8211; semi-live blogging ahead, expect inaccuracy and incompleteness. Details in conference papers here.] This morning, we discussed a framework put forward by Pippa [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1659,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cappucino"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1659"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mediarepublic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}