Trevor Cook has a fascinating snippet in a post today from an interview with Dr Sally Young, a researcher at Melbourne University, about the tiny size of the engaged audience for the discussion of public affairs in this country:
SALLY YOUNG: I’ve got some figures in the book where I try to map this quite specifically because I don’t think it’s been done in Australia before, that we talk about who are these people? Who is the political news audience? And I’ve got quite a few chapters devoted to this and in one of them I chart it and I say, basically the people who are really political news tragics – people who watch Parliament Question Time or subscribe to Crikey, for example, or watch Sky News press conferences and so on live – that’s about 0.5 per cent of the Australian population. So they’re your real political tragics and it’s a very small percentage.
MARK COLVIN: And so politicians have a real dilemma there. I mean, they’re speaking on two levels and if they engage too much with the Twitterarti etc, then they’re in danger of ignoring the vast majority of the population.
SALLY YOUNG: Mm, that’s right and I mean, even just broadening it out. When I looked at the percentage of people who buy a broadsheet in Australia, it’s about 2 per cent of the adult population. So, you know, it broadens out to things like, if you count people who watch ABC or SBS news and current affairs that’s about 10 per cent, or 12 per cent might listen to ABC Local Radio. So it’s somewhere between 0.5 to 12 per cent. That’s the core audience you think are interested in detailed information about politics, that sort of public affairs.
MARK COLVIN: So you’re left with 80 to 90 per cent who get everything they know about politics from the first couple of minutes of one of the commercial channels’ news bulletins.
Cook also discusses the ABC’s much touted new media strategy. I think it’s a fair inference to draw from his post that he sees some of the rage from other media quarters at the ABC deriving from its efforts to win market share in this small niche audience, or perhaps leverage its existing levels of public trust (see Crikey today). The fact that the ABC now has a full time Social Media Reporter is probably just another way of adding to the inner dynamic of the Twitterverse. [Note also recent data on Twitter usage, or rather, non-usage, and its Justin Bieber-isation.] It’s unlikely to lead to any broadening out of the audience for the discussion of public affairs, because absolutely no one has figured out how to do that.
Part, of course, of the devaluation of political debate derives from advances in polling and audience research from the 1950s onwards, which showed politicians that virtually nobody was reading long excerpts from parliamentary debates in broadsheet newspapers, and so on. The ‘public sphere’, as envisioned by folks like John Stuart Mill, proved something of a myth (or if you want to follow Jürgen Habermas, it had disappeared along with the bourgeois publics relatively independent of state and commercial interests). All this, of course, is one of those vicious cycles.
Cook notes:
Money is money and like water it finds its course. Just like in some grief cycle, big media first ignored, then scoffed, later attacked and then took over social media. Social media is no longer a challenge to big business, it is now part of big business. Social media is cheap content. But is a blog, really a blog in the same sense as the early adopters envisioned if it is hosted at News Ltd or the ABC? Or is it just another product offering? When social media got taken over, big media hyped it. Hence the Mark Scott speeches. It is all wonderful now that it is indoors and toilet-trained.
Among other things, what we’re seeing here is the true worth of claims about the liberatory potential of wider access to information and the internets’ purported transformational effects.
This is soooo true. I hate the “blogs” hosted on the Grauniad, in which the opinionator gets to rant a pile of specious bullshit, but then never ever turns up in comments to engage with criticism. That’s not a blog – it’s bread and circusses. Polly Toynbee, possibly the most pathetic labour party hack in existence, never ever ever turns up to defend her ridiculous statements to the baying public. Simon Jenkins will post some anti-public health rant, someone pops up at comment 3 to point out that he’s also an HIV denialist, and he never ever tries to defend himself. I once read a nasty article in which Zoe Williams slagged off her partner of the time in national media, because he wasn’t as engaged in her pregnancy as much as she thought he should be (he probably wasn’t, but wtf? On a national newspaper!?) and never once appeared in comments to defend her decision to publicly traduce her partner.
What’s the point? To pretend that we have a voice, not to actually give us one. We are then presented with the unedifying spectacle of the public fighting over scraps beneath the table.
Similarly with their new “blog-style” news format where you have to scroll down through reams of useless crap to get to the key news item. Great for over-by-over coverage of the cricket, but for the rest of the news? Shit.
This whole format serves to further entrench news reading in the minds of only the most extremely committed of political tragics. Brilliant move, Grauniad, et al, brilliant.
I doubt if one in ten Victorian voters could have explained what the Green-Liberal-Labor preference drama was about or had given it any thought. What is worrying is the extent to which political ignorance assists the right as in the US.
“What is worrying is the extent to which political ignorance assists the right as in the US.”
Word.
Ignorance leaves room for simplistic bullshit.
I tend to favour your latter idea that the debasement of political debate in the media is itself a commercial product.
It’s true that the public aren’t generally engaged with the mass marketed political products, but I think you have to be careful with language:
The “discussion of public affairs” is not by any means the same thing as reading newspapers and watching TV. I hardly ever buy a newspaper and virtually never watch TV news (or any live TV for that matter). But I can still get a fair bit of political discussion in – here I am now in fact!
“Political discussion” is also not the same thing as discussion about what politicians are doing and saying. Both because a lot of political discussion takes place outside the narrow scope of official political discourse (it’s this discourse which is disengaged from the public!), and also because a lot of what politicians do, especially during election campaigns, is either empty marketing hype (baby kissing and equivalents) or obfuscation and misdirection. Personally I couldn’t give a fuck what kind of swimmers Tony Abbot wears or whether Julia Gillard is married, or anything of that nature. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in politics.
The ABC will crush the smaller, truly independent outlets, such as Crikey and New Matilda. Once they’re eliminated nothing will stand between the public and the obnoxious right wing bias of the commercials & ABC. Democracy will be suffer with the dearth of media diversity and vigour.
Why does anyone in this century still think that journalism quality varies with page size? That myth should have been put to bed even before Fairfax’s sorry decline. Now I just feel embarrassed for anyone that repeats it.
I’m with Con – you don’t have to buy newspapers or watch question time to absorb political debate. Isn’t the point of new media that people don’t watch every tedious minute of question time themselves, they filter it through their favourite journos & bloggers?
That’s what a site like LP does after all.
20% of the (fully engaged) readers make for 80% of readership/ratings. And some of them blog! Why not chase the ever-vanishing fringe and piss off your core? Works for Fairfax.
I must know them all personally then. Something for Labor tragics.
Well, if I wasn’t a regular commenter on LP, didn’t belong to Socialist Alliance, or know people in the ALP, the Greens and the Libs/Nats, I wouldn’t know any political tragics. Does this mean, If in some way I didn’t sort of go out of my way to meet said tragics I’d never know any or would be a lone one? What might this, going from the particular to the general, mean about political tragics. Might we not be in danger of being people in grave danger of being socially isolated and therefore a threat to the well-being of society.
(yeah, I knbow, I shouldn’t go on line late at night when my thought processes are in danger of malfunctioning for one reason or another.)
newsbrooke: Bail is granted to #assange. With conditions. He’s out. Next hearing jan 11th.
about 2 minutes ago
A very interesting post.
Just a snapshot. My invalid father has a Filipino wife and the other day my brother and I went to visit them for my brother’s birthday. Jo (dad’s wife) sometimes asks me things about what is going on politically as a lot of it she doesn’t understand and my father not being able to compute and explain things like he used to be able to do.
She asked me what I thought about the whole Inverbrackie boat people thing going on here in SA at the moment and how it’s not right as these people could be terrorists etc. I explained to her the whole basis of those locals Hills peoples reaction & protests is because they’re racist. I said basically if they were white people it would be fine but because they’ve got dark skin they’re kicking up a fuss about the value of their house prices going down etc.
She had unknowingly regurgitated a few of their lines about these evil refugees (she’s been here less than a decade herself) and when I had explained the real background to the whole thing she had tears in her eyes.
With regard to the ABC’s direction on so-called new media can be interpreted as exerting control via its large reserves of public cash and picking suitable voices to project appropriate Australian messages as determined by a small “l” liberal management clique.
Kim, the liberating change factor you refer to has been subverted long ago. Institutionalised media simply needed some time to come to terms with the new technology. The threat posed to the status quo by unregulated information in the public domain is very real hence the various processes that in total function to manufacturing consent or at the very least minimise dissent.
I don’t live in Victoria but I followed the election and was quite disturbed to see that, aside from preference deals, the Greens could garner 11.21% of first preferences and get no seats yet the Nationals with 6.75% gained 10 seats. It reminded me of the old Queensland Gerrymander which, with imbalances in electorates, gave a bias in favour of the Qld Nationals. I expected to see far more comment within the electorate and the media but saw very little. Why is this?
But is a blog, really a blog in the same sense as the early adopters envisioned if it is hosted at News Ltd or the ABC?
Sure it is. A blog is just a medium of expression, you don’t have to share a code of ethics or anything else with other bloggers.
Blogs have more potential than twitter in this sense – they’re not controlled by any one company; competing services (like Vox, Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger) have sprung up to host them. Twitter seems to be a one-company phenomenon.
Carbon will kill us all is pretty simplistic too. I’m all for more light and shade in the political debate – I just have no idea how to achieve it. And I haven’t seen any proposed solutions to this problem on here. But kudos for calling it to light, because we simply don’t get enough focus on process stories at the moment.
And because politicians then tailor their message to the vast majority of voters who are unengaged and uninformed (or at least underinformed), the tragics fulminate about dumbing down the political debate, and accuse politicians of being all about image over substance etc.
This idea then feeds through to the unengaged confirming their worst suspicions and reinforcing their view that they should mostly ignore politics.
I despair about it, but I have to admit I don’t have any good ideas to combat it.
Why use the term ‘tragics’?
Not a peep of protest about this description from the small group of people interested in politics.
Then again maybe the assumption that a lot of interest in political processes will yield a hoped for result is the error being constantly pursued.
Maybe the small group of people interested in politics need assistance to aid them to get back to the usual way people live – unconcerned about political power in the state defined apparatus and focussed on everything else life has to offer.
I think it’s by analogy with “cricket tragic”.
Yerrrbut…the idea that you are a “tragic” for actively engaging in and following matters of civic importance is, well…tragic.
Miss Piggy starring as civic importance all dressed up in pink for the latest global ‘political’ show.
What then Mercurious, do you call followers of an event that has revealed nothing of real political relevance, which have gushed over several postings and thousands of comment lines on something or another that will be at best commented in a few years time as the wikileak episode and noone will remember what it was all about.
I am with Con on @4, however sometimes even on a blog the noise to relevance ratio can reach hype levels.
Apologies for misspelling your name Mercurius and I think the latest installments on the 500+ thread are adequately illustrating my point.
I think that only 2% of people buying a broadsheet is really quite healthy.
I think everyone at a certain level is interested in societal affairs, for example our environment, poverty, discrimination, &c, it’s just that most people see the futility of trying to pursue solutions to problems in these areas in a political realm where both major parties and business are already willfully pursuing the wrong path.
Most people I know think that things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get any better.
Not really suprising. Just adds weight to the reasoning in support of voluntary attendance at Polling Booths. In fact I think the voter should have to pass a 5 minute multiple choice economics and politics test to validate their vote with an 80% pass mark.
Tazor, when you haz voluntary voting, which they did once here on 1923 (think that’s the date) the turn out was so low they had to reintroduce compulsory voting.
@23 Why do you say “had”?
Razor: If the Howard citizen test is an example of the test you are suggesting……
I think of an “informed voter” as someone who will change their vote if their analysis of the facts supports this change.
Some political tragics may be informed voters. However, many of them are rusted on supporters who are more interested in collecting information that will strengthen the case for supporting their team than helping to decide who they will vote for.
Nothing about Bradman.
0.5% of the population is about 100,000 people … that’s actually a lot of people. Sure, it’s not going to give 2 and Half Men any worries but it’s still a very significant number of people who are likely to be highly engaged and act as opinion makers within their own families and communities.
So there are optimistic ways to read this data too
Twitter looks a lot like the idea of a public sphere to me …