Title: Democracy and the Media | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Democracy and the Media
Democracy and the Media
DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA
Moral Obligations of Media Professionals
Social-Scientific Theories of the Media
The Agenda-Setting Effect
The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis
News Diffusion and Information Flow
The Spiral of Silence Theory
Conclusion
Bibliography

Content: As the relationship between democracy and the media has been considered throughout the twentieth century, much attention has been given to the extent of media effects, especially following the experience with government-produced propaganda during two world wars. If media coverage of politics and political campaigns has little influence on public attitudes and behaviors, then presumably people need not be concerned over the quantity and quality of attention that is paid to politics in the media. However, if media coverage of politics and political campaigns has a moderate or strong influence on public attitudes and behaviors, then protecting democratic government requires careful review—and possibly governmental regulation—of media, whether print or electronic, mainstream or alternative. Historically, some scholars have maintained at one time or another that the media have almost no effect or that the media have a strong, direct effect on audiences, but the vast majority of contemporary scholars believe that the media have some, usually moderate, effects on some audiences in some situations. Further complicating the relationship between democracy and the media has been the emergence of computer-based interactive media, including the Internet, and other new technologies, such as facsimile machines. New media forms provide ordinary people with unparalleled opportunities to distribute information quickly and inexpensively to large numbers of their fellow citizens. The democratic potential of such new media is sometimes described as being a way to compensate for the ownership of traditional media forms (e.g., newspapers) by fewer and fewer large corporations, given the concern that this trend to "media monopolies" has or will reduce the diversity of opinions that are expressed in established media. However, the proliferation of Internet sources has meant that the information provided on the Internet often is not accurate or, at the very least, Internet information has not been properly checked for accuracy. Additionally, while some political observers have discussed the potential of Internet voting and campaign material distribution to rejuvenate interest in voting and in political activism, others have argued that the tendency of Internet websites to engage in shallow political humor and parody is more likely to foster cynicism than to combat it. Of course, given the rapid development of the Internet and its steady increase in availability and ease of use, the political implications of emerging electronic media are far from certain, whether in historically democratic societies or in authoritarian nations where governments are struggling, usually with uneven success, to restrain the free flow of information.