Des Freedman: Media Policy Fetishism
CAMRI Seminar
Wed, March 11, 2015
Univ of Westminster, Harrow Campus
14:00
Room A7.01
http://www.westminster.ac.uk/camri/research-seminars/des-freedman-media-policy-fetishism
Registration: e-mail to [log in to unmask]
Why do ordinary users have so little input into or interest in the
formal decisionmaking processes that shape our media systems? This
presentation suggests that we focus on the fetishism of the media policy
process, understood as the loss of control over the decisionmaking arena
and as the outsourcing of political agency to external forces. It
focuses on both the dimensions of ‘everyday fetishism’ (its capacity to
naturalize commodification processes and to reify social life) as well
as its relevance to media policy in particular. It reflects on how a
fetishistic policy distorts key policy principles, restricts access to
policymaking arenas and mystifies the process as a whole so that it
becomes a ‘spectral’ activity from which ordinary citizens are largely
excluded. Des Freedman invites us to consider ways in which publics can
re-connect themselves to the policy process and, in doing so, to
invigorate and democratize the struggles for media justice we face today.
Des Freedman is professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths,
University of London and chair of the Media Reform Coalition. He is the
author of The Contradictions of Media Power (2014) and The Politics of
Media Policy (2008).
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