# Anthropology of Media

## News Media, the Public Sphere, and Nationalism


### Learning Outcomes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Describe the worldview presented in news media.
2. Define the concept of the public sphere.
3. Explain the importance of the public sphere to the study of news media.
4. Distinguish from independent media.
While photography arrests attention with images, the various genres of news media draw people in with narratives about what’s going on in their local communities and the larger world. A person who reads or views the news learns not only about current events but also about what counts as a current event—and, implicitly, what doesn’t count as news (and thus doesn’t matter to other people and shouldn’t really matter to them). People learn to view the world in a certain way and to position their communities and themselves within that worldview. The top stories in national newspapers typically highlight the actions of political and economic leaders as the most important stories of the day. Political news is presented as an unfolding drama within or among nation-states—the United States establishes sanctions against Myanmar, for instance, or China takes action against Hong Kong protesters. Economic news is dominated by the gyrations of capitalist markets, both global and national, emphasizing the perspectives of the investors and business owners who make (or lose) money in those markets. Like the discipline of economics, news media take a market-centered approach to covering the economy, rather than a people-centered approach that might highlight labor conditions or environmental effects.
Some of the first news media were handwritten weekly newssheets that circulated in Venice in the 16th century, relaying information about European politics and wars. In the early 17th century, German and Dutch publishers began using the printing press to mass-produce newspapers for the growing population of literate readers in Europe, mainly merchants and lower-level government officials. Early newspapers reflected forms of discussion and debate emerging from the coffeehouses and salons of Europe, dominated by the concerns of the rising merchant classes that participated in those public arenas of discourse. German scholar Jurgen Habermas (1989) links this process to the emergence of the public sphere. Ideally, the public sphere is a domain of social life where people represent, learn about, and discuss the important issues of the day. It is distinct from both the private economic sphere and the sphere of public authority, including government, the military, and the police. The public sphere provides an important stage for the expression of a wide range of popular opinions with the goal of reaching consensus and influencing government policy. According to Habermas, newspapers were essential to the construction of the public sphere in western Europe and therefore were fundamental tools in the emergence of democratic forms of rule. A summary of Habermas’s foundational argument about the rise and eventual corruption of the public sphere can be viewed on YouTube.
Moreover, newspapers were key to processes of language standardization, uniting audiences from regional communities speaking various, sometimes mutually unintelligible dialects. As mentioned in a previous chapter, newspapers thus laid the foundation for the “imagined community” of the nation-state.
A glance at any national newspaper, whether in print or online, demonstrates how news media continue to serve as tools in the construction of public spheres and imagined communities today. With the invention of new genres of media, news discourse has expanded into radio, television, and the Internet, providing an even stronger force for the consolidation of national identities. Conducting research in Malaysia, media anthropologist John Postill (2006) describes how the Malaysian government strategically used state-sponsored media to consolidate a unified nation-state out of an ethnically diverse collection of former colonies. In one community, that of the Iban people on the island of Borneo, the state replaced local-language media with Malaysian-language media in an effort to bind the Iban more tightly to the state. Rather than completely erasing cultural differences within the nation-state, however, the Malaysian state media promoted a certain version of Iban “cultural heritage” while simultaneously undermining Iban political and cultural autonomy.
State media are media that are entirely or partially owned by the government. In many countries, including most African ones, the state has its own media apparatus, including a news agency, newspapers, and radio and television stations. Independent media are media that are privately owned. But wait, one might ask, isn’t all news media supposed to be independent from government? If a state had its own news media, wouldn’t that just be propaganda? In the United States, news media have traditionally emphasized journalistic independence and even critical opposition to the government. News media are thought to be the “watchdogs of the people,” maintaining critical pressure on government leaders and institutions in order to maintain accountability and prevent corruption and abuse of power. This notion that journalists should be critical of government is a near-universal tenet of professional journalism in capitalist democracies. However, even in the United States, the government is heavily involved in shaping news texts and organizations. Through briefings and press releases, the White House press secretary and other public relations officials exert considerable control over the representation of the positions and activities of government officials. The American government funds the global media organization Voice of America, producing radio, television, and digital content in more than 47 languages all over the world. However, the most prominent American news organizations are independently owned and produced.
But are privately owned news media in capitalist countries completely independent? Rather than being dominated by the government, privately owned media are subject to the forces of the market as well as the demands of owners and investors. That is, their commitment to the truth may be challenged by their desire to sell their media to the largest audiences. If sensationalized conflict and conspiracy theories attract audiences, news media may become dominated by misleading half-truths and divisive fantasies. Another strong force threatening the independence of private media is the desire to sell lucrative advertising space to powerful business interests. If the people who pay for advertising favor a market-centered approach to economic issues, then stories about working conditions and environmentalism are likely to be marginalized by market news.
How do journalists handle the conflict between the pressures of government and commercial interests and their role as watchdogs for the public interest? For a firsthand example, read this account by chapter author, Jennifer Hasty,