Since their inception in the early 1960s, Australian content requirements for commercial television have been subjected to
considerable scrutiny through a series of formal inquiries. Over
the last ten years this process has intensified. In recent years
there have been a number of academic criticisms regarding the
state of debate about the regulation of Australian content on
commercial television and the capacity of the debate to generate
genuine criticism and embrace change.
This thesis examines the dynamics of debate about Australian
content. It focuses on the ABT's Inquiry into Australian Content
on Commercial Television (ACI) which ran from 1983 to 1989.
It takes as its basic point of reference Jurgen Habermas' concept
of the 'public sphere'. This concept refers to a realm of social life,
separate from the state and private spheres, in which 'public
opinion' can be formed. Habermas has argued that, with the
refeudalisation of the public sphere, the state and private
interests have increasingly collaborated to close off the public
sphere. The thesis concludes that in many respects Habermas'
concept of a refeudalised 'public sphere' is a useful explanatory
tool for understanding the dynamics of the ACI and the limited
degree of criticism generated by it. However, Habermas' model
is limited in so far as it fails to accord adequate recognition to the
complexities and significance of the mediation of the 'public
interest' by key participants in the inquiry and the strategic role
of rhetoric for these participants.
Habermas concludes that with the refeudalisation of the public
sphere and the disappearance of the historical conditions which
supported its operation, the public sphere must now be
reconstructed on a case by case basis. Attempts to achieve this,
have tended to focus on the facilitation of citizen participation in
public policy debate. However, as this analysis of the ACI
demonstrates, the dynamics of the debate itself appear to limit
I the degree to which 'public opinion' can be elevated above
'private interest'.
This thesis demonstrates that the mediation of the 'public
interest' assumed a central role in the rhetoric and strategy of
the ACI. Each of the key players represented distinct interests and were largely unaccountable to the 'public' they claimed to
serve. This thesis concludes that in order to gain a more detailed
understanding of how communication works in such a context,
and in order to conceive of alternative participatory forms, we
need to focus on those aspects of public discourse which Habermas neglects: the rhetoric and the strategic nature of public
representation. It suggests that fruitful avenues for further
study may lie with Bantz's notion of communicative structures or
Luhmann's systems approach to communication.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219541 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Radcliffe, Jeanette, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Communication, Media & Tourism |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Jeanette Radcliffe |
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