Commentary

Citizen Ignorance and its Remedies:
Blind Spots in Political Communication Research

Mauro P. Porto, University of California, San Diego

There is a growing concern in political communication research about the relationship between the mass media and classical democratic theory. In particular, scholars are confronted with a major paradox. On one hand, democratic theory expects citizens to be well informed about public affairs, to know the relevant facts, and to make rational choices. On the other hand, surveys conducted in the U.S. and worldwide have shown that the citizenry falls short of this ideal. Most people have low or no interest in politics and show a striking ignorance of basic facts about the worlds of politics and public life. Such a paradox presents several questions to political communication researchers: Is it possible to speak of democracy and citizen participation in a context marked by political ignorance? What has been and/or could be the role of the media in such a context?

Initially, scholars and commentators of public opinion reacted pessimistically to citizens' low levels of information and political interest. Lippmann and Dewey's ideas about the incapacity and the eclipse of the public are path-breaking and elegant statements of this position. Later on, survey and panel data gathered by the new U.S. empirical social science research institutions - especially those housed at the University of Michigan and at Columbia University - offered strong empirical evidence about the ignorance of the mass public. These and other traditions raise deep normative questions about the competence of citizens. Not accidentally, they tended to propose an elitist conception of democracy or a system based on the role of experts.

Pessimistic assessments of public knowledge and citizen competence have been replaced more recently by a "new look in public opinion research" (Sniderman, 1993, p. 219). These new approaches, which draw on cognitive psychology, suggest that citizens can make reasonable and consistent choices even in a context of low levels of information. Scholars have developed concepts such as low-information rationality to suggest that citizens use shortcuts or cues to compensate for the lack of information. According to this view, citizens use a variety of shortcuts, including party identification, media content and frames, or simply friendly advice, to obtain, evaluate, and store information. In this way, even if individuals don't know much about politics, they are able to make reasonable or rational choices and participate effectively in the political process. The media are frequently regarded as major sources of so-called smart cues that, in effect, save classical democratic theory from old anxieties about citizen competence.

The new approaches in public opinion and political communication research represent an important advance, but they have weak spots that are often neglected. In particular, I would like to challenge the normative assumption, often implicit, that the political environment and the media effectively simplify political choices for citizens and allow them to make consistent and rational decisions. There is a surprising lack of attention in most studies to the processes advantaged groups use to shape the political environment in ways that help maintain their privileged position in political and social structures. Political communication scholars tend to ignore the fact that elites and other dominant groups and institutions, such as the media, may constrain the range of frames available in the public sphere to interpret political events and themes. If citizens with low levels of information depend on cues to make sense of the world of politics, but have access only or mostly to the shortcuts put forward by dominant groups, democracy is seriously jeopardized.

My own research about the political role of television in Brazil, which is based on experiments and focus groups with viewers of informational and entertainment programs, supports this general hypothesis. The results of this research indicate that when citizens are exposed to only one point of view - usually the interpretation put forward by official sources - more people make sense of issues and events in terms of this dominant frame. On the other hand, citizens develop more varied understandings when they have access to other ways of framing the same information. This type of analysis, related to political, economic, and cultural inequalities, tends to be absent from recent studies on media and public opinion, mainly because of a tendency for the literature to neglect issues of power. Studies on shortcuts and framing need to pay particular attention to Steven Lukes' (1974) third, or hidden, face of power, which emphasizes the shaping of agents' thoughts and desires.

As a contribution to the debates surrounding these paradoxes, I would like to conclude by presenting few brief and elementary proposals. In my view, ordinary citizens are able to fulfill the expectations of democratic theory if two conditions are met. First, such expectations have to be understood in terms of citizens' ability to interpret the political reality with the use of shortcuts or frames, instead of the demand of being well informed; and second, a plurality of shortcuts or frames should be available in the public sphere, particularly in the mass media. According to this approach, a major task of political communication research is to investigate to what extent the media contribute to narrow or to broaden the range of frames available in the public sphere. The assumption is that citizens must have access to different interpretive frames - and not only to information - in order to make consistent and satisfactory choices.

To be effective, remedies for the problem of public ignorance and competence will have to focus on ways to improve the plurality of points of view available in the public sphere. In the case of the United States, free access to prime time television by a broad spectrum of political parties and candidates would not only diminish the costs of the campaigns and limit the influence of money in politics, but might also expose citizens to a more diverse range of viewpoints. Media organizations and journalists might also change professional norms and routines, going beyond the traditional dependence on official sources, to ensure that more attention is given to the interpretive frames that emerge from civil society. Political communication research can play an important role in addressing these often-neglected problems.

Mauro P. Porto is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego, and an assistant professor at the University of Brasilia, Brazil. In his dissertation, the author analyzes the role of three popular TV programs (a newscast, a telenovela, and a variety show) in the process by which audiences make sense of politics in Brazil. For more information, see the author's home page.

References

Lukes, Steven. Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan, 1974.

Sniderman, Paul. "The new look in public opinion research." In Political Science: The State of the Discipline II, pp. 21–-245. Ed. A. Finifter. Washington D.C.: APSA, 1993.