Trends in News and Entertainment

Hamburg.
The second day of the ECREA 2010 conference is about to begin, and I’m starting the morning with a session on media and democracy in the digital age. We begin with James Curran, who begins by noting that there are three standard views of media and entertainment: a diversion from the serious nature of media coverage; a new category unrelated to politics; and crossover between public affairs coverage and entertainment. Each of these are myopic, for various reasons, and fail to understand the democratic functioning of entertainment.

Rather, entertainment allows us to debate the social and moral values that underpin society; to affirm identity; to examine contrasting interpretations of society; and to debate social norms. James names the 24 series as providing a cue to debating the balance between protecting society from terrorist threats and upholding individual liberties.

Indeed, use of torture in the series to extract information from suspects became more frequent after 2005, and in this it was seen as reflecting reality, since the debate about systematic torture by US agencies in third nations also heightened during that time. Portrayal of torture in 24 as a necessary evil has been said to influence courts’ judgments, the actions of young soldiers, and the views of many others in US society; a substantial percentage of US citizens now say that torture of suspects is sometimes justified.

Second, the level of political information of citizens around the world is linked to some extent with the marketisation of news organisations; American viewers are found to be less informed than Scandinavian or British viewers, for example, due to the strong public broadcasting organisations in those latter nations. Knowledge of party political differences is lower in the US than in many European countries, for example.

Finally, the impact of the Internet on journalism and political information needs to be examined and contextualised; in the UK, citizen journalism has failed to make a significant impact, for example, while it has been highly influential in South Korea.