The public sphere as a machine

The onion-style model put forward by Koopmans et al (2003) puts the public sphere at the centre of a series of concentric circles, with each layer representing layers of influence or

governance. The public sphere here is envisaged as a national sphere, served by mass media and positioned to influence national government. The model also allows for the possibility of

interspheric flow of communication between the intraspheres, and this is a crucial element for understanding the way information flows within the democratic system. This model can be extended to take account of the interaction of geographical public spheres on a local and regional level.

If, as Koopmans et al describe, layers of the sphere exist outside the national sphere, I contend that it is useful to peel back more layers of the onion to find smaller intraspheres nested within the “national” (ibid, p. 8).They are in a hierarchical relationship relating with the different levels of governance (and consensus or common cause) at national, regional, local and hyperlocal levels. It is also possible there are further divisions based on neighbourhoods, parishes, communities, streets, apartment buildings and so on, and which are likely to overlap with each other.

For example, local communities, local democratic institutions and local media

institutions engage in an active public sphere at the local level, which is not concerned with the interests or authority of a wider group of people and forms its own discrete local intrasphere.

However, the concerns of this sphere may impact on wider geographical areas, and this is where intersphere communication would occur. So, for example, the people who live in Wales, while being interested in decisions taken by the Welsh Government (regional decisions) and

government in Westminster which may affect them (national decisions), may not necessarily be interested in most of the decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament (regional decisions) which may not have much bearing on their day to day lives. Further down the hierarchy, at the local level, for example, the people of the town of Port Talbot may find that they are interested in

53 regional and national spheres, but are not particularly interested in or affected by the (local) decisions taken by, for example, Wrexham Council, 140 miles away – unless of course, those decisions have ramifications for their local policy or spending, set precedents or show good practice that could affect the wider public sphere, and in which case the information may flow up the hierarchy³ into spheres where cross-communication of such information may occur. To aid our understanding of the news black hole in Port Talbot, we can therefore break the public sphere down into multiple publics, as Fraser, Hauser and others have done, but keep the primary focus of the divisions on geographical delineations to correspond with levels of state governance, i.e. local, regional and national, which also mirror the traditional boundaries of newsmaking.

As Table 3.1 sets out, these geo-spheres are each linked to a layer of society (equating to a collection of members of the private sphere), government (equating to the public authority sphere) and media. It may also be convenient to include a hyper-local layer to take emerging trends into account (Fenton, 2009; Fenton et al., 2010). Each of these geo-spheres is served by media at the appropriate level – local, such as local newspapers and radio stations; regional, such as the Welsh press and broadcast media; and national, such as the national press and broadcast media.

3 Habermas makes clear the private, public and public authority sphere are hierarchical, and I suggest that geographical spheres are similarly hierarchical within the public sphere

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Public sphere Private sphere Public authority sphere News media

Hyperlocal public

Local public sphere Members of local society or community,

Table 3.1: Geographical divisions of the public sphere

In this model there are overlapping geo-spheres that concern different publics. These function separately but are also part of a larger public sphere that mirrors the authority of democratic institutions that operate locally, regionally or nationally, and which are served by their own local, regional or national media. For example, there might be a sphere for Taibach, a ward of Port Talbot which identifies itself as a community or enclave of the town; this would exist alongside many other hyper-local or community geo-spheres inside the Port Talbot geo-sphere, which in turn would operate within the Wales geo-sphere, which would operate within the UK geo-sphere. Because of this inter-connectedness and the way information flows between the spheres in the manner of a network, these local spheres are perhaps most like Hauser’s description of the “reticulated public sphere”. There are likely to be many more nuanced and subtle divisions of geo-spheres than this suggests, but the model is useful for illustrative purposes.

An important point is that these small, geographically determined public spheres do not operate outside the main public sphere; they are part of it, and though each one can operate independently these geo-spheres are inherently inter-dependent. Each one is an essential element of a well-oiled democracy. They are the guts of the machine, each one helping with the

55 flow of information, opinion and influence. This brings us to a useful visualisation for geo-spheres in the public sphere as gears or cogs working within a larger machine.

In a machine, crucially, when one cog is missing or broken – when its organ of

communication is shut down or the number of journalists cut back – the machine will falter. If we accept the public sphere as a kind of machine, in which each part must be working well in order for the whole sphere to remain healthy and effective, we arrive at a model that may account for the weakening of the public sphere in Port Talbot.

Figure 3.1 shows this model in more detail, with each sphere represented as a cog. The cogs turn, with the workings of the public sphere transmitting information, consensus and influence to the sphere of public authority, while information is transmitted back to the private sphere. Though the model shows just one regional geo-sphere, and three local geo-spheres, it is envisaged that thousands of these would co-exist within the public sphere, forming a complex machine. Just as in the intricate workings of a pocket watch, these cogs must be precisely

calibrated and running smoothly to ensure the watch keeps time, and even the smallest fault can cause the clockwork to grind to a halt.

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Figure 3.1: Geo-spheres inside the machine model of the public sphere

In this model it is possible for an individual to participate in more than one public sphere at the same time (as in Port Talbot) – both above and below the local layer – and if one sphere were weakened by the removal of an essential component (e.g. the newspaper), these individuals would simply rely more on the wider public spheres for discussion and debate. Furthermore, in this model each public sphere has direct and indirect influence on its other spheres. For

example, if public opinion is formed at a local level, it directly affects the local political sphere, but it can also filter upwards into the national public sphere and then to the national state sphere. For example, a local protest campaign about a wind farm would form at a local level and be led by local people, but any outcomes of the protest (for example the blocking of a trunk road for a public demonstration) would make the protest of interest to the regional public sphere in Wales, while policing of such a demonstration would make it of interest to the national public sphere. The protest might also be of interest to campaigners in other locations, meaning the information could flow back down from regional or national spheres to local spheres in other

57 areas. This would make these spheres hierarchical, and also inter-related – information could flow both up and down the layers of publics, from local to national or vice versa. When one geo-sphere goes awry, therefore, as is possibly the case in Port Talbot, the inference is that there is a knock-on effect for the health of the entire public sphere – the machine breaks down, because information that might be of interest for debate in the wider public sphere does not reach it.

Perhaps what is most interesting in this model is that though it seems the larger public sphere can continue to work after one cog has been damaged (at least for a time), and people continue to get news from somewhere and form opinions about issues that affect them, the poorer quality of this news and information has implications for the quality of the product coming out of the machine. As a result of a weakening media, the information used by the machine is malformed, and equally, the information, consensus and influence coming out of the machine is misshapen, malformed, or of poor quality. This is where news gaps have wider ramifications for the public sphere, as news that is unreported in a local area also fails to flow up the hierarchy into regional and national media, and so issues that may affect the entire public sphere do not become part of the debate in wider geo-spheres.

This model underpins the design of this study, but as I set out at the beginning of this chapter, there are also other theoretical frameworks that have informed the research, and I now turn to the second of these.