Media accountability
tion – cultural, political, economic, social,
aesthetic and, in terms of prevailing systems
of communication, more guerilla warfare than
something preplanned and formalized; it tends
to be DIY action, ‘micromedia’ being a useful
label. What activist groups have in common
is a commitment to bringing about change
in society; they see themselves as agents of
change, their aim to draw public attention to
issues, their target to convert attention into
public action. Their endeavours are generally
small-scale, collective, often ephemeral and
dependent for success on the media literacy, or
awareness, of potential users, subscribers and
followers. See bricolage; facebook; global
scrutiny; mobilization; networking:
social networking; open source; twitter;
wikileaks; youtube.
▶Jill Posener, Spray It Loud (Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1982); Dick Hebdige, Subculture: Th e Meaning
of Style (Routledge, 1979); John D.H. Downing (with
Tamara Vallareal Ford, Geneve Gil and Laura Stern),
Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and
Social Movements (Sage, 2001); Jonah Peretti, ‘My
Nike media adventure’, Th e Nation (9 April, 2001);
Chris Atton, Alternative Media (Sage, 2001); Sean
Cubitt, ‘Tactical media’ in Katharine Sarikakis and
Daya Kishan Th ussu, eds, Ideologies of the Internet
(Hampton Press, 2006); Manuel Castells, Communi-
cation Power (Oxford University Press, 2009); Leah
A. Lievrouw, Alternative and Activist New Media
(Polity, 2011).
Media control Four categories of media control
are generally recognized: Authoritarian, Pater-
nal, Commercial and Democratic. Th ey can apply
to an individual communications system, such as
ownership of a newspaper, or to a state pattern
of control. Th e fi rst indicates a total monopoly
of the means of communication and control over
what is expressed. Th e second is what Raymond
Williams in Communication (Pelican, 1966)
terms ‘authoritarianism with a conscience’, that
is authority with values and purposes beyond
those concerning the maintenance of its own
power. Th e third relates to control by market
forces: anything can be said, provided that you
can aff ord to say it and that you can say it profi t-
ably.
Democratic control is the rarest category,
implying active involvement in decisions by the
workforce and, indeed, the readership or audi-
ence. Control works at diff erent levels – at the
operational level (editors, producers, etc.), at the
allocative level (of funds, personnel, etc.) and
at the external level (government, advertisers,
consumers).the small screen, content analysis tells us, crime
rages about ten times more often than in real life.
Heavy viewers (see mainstreaming), accord-
ing to Gerbner in a series of published analyses
since 1980, overestimate the statistical chance of
violence in their own lives (see resonance) and
consequently harbour a heightened mistrust of
strangers. However, Gerbner’s conclusions have
been challenged by recent researchers.
While granting that Gerbner’s scenario of TV
cultivating in viewers a fear of crime is interest-
ing, Guy Cumberbatch and Dennis Howitt in A
Measure of Uncertainty: Th e Eff ects of the Mass
Media (Broadcasting Standards Council/John
Libbey, 1989) write, ‘All in all, few empirical
studies lend full support to the original Gerbner
hypothesis, while there are many failures to
replicate.’
Th is position is reinforced by Jib Fowles in Th e
Case for Television Violence (Sage, 1999), who
refers to ‘substantial studies done outside labo-
ratories and with large numbers of respondents
that could find no evidence of a relationship
between television violence and real-world
aggression’; further, such evidence indicated that
‘exposure on a large scale to violence was linked
to reduced aggressiveness and criminality’. Th e
debate continues. See effects of the mass
media.
Media accountability See mcquail’s
accountability of media model, 1997.
Media activism A term that in the main refers
to a variety of online critiques, protests and
revelations directed at authority, big business,
corporate practices and mainstream media – by
either individuals (as for example in blogs – see
blogosphere) or by groups operating websites,
online newspapers, etc., the nature of such
protests being satirical, iconoclastic and subver-
sive; often employing modes of popular culture
in order to subvert it.
An offl ine example of activism would be the
addition of graffi ti comments on public posters,
the adding of words or images to existing text or
image, thus appropriating the original, offi cial
message. Online activist tactics such as culture
jamming (see genre) and hactivism (see genre;
hacker, hactivist) tend to be the work of
issue-committed groups possessing advanced
computer skills and seeking to get their message
across in face of the traditional dominance of
mass media; hence the need to shock, startle,
provoke, entertain (sometimes to sabotage) with
a view to creating a swift and growing volume of
popular support.
Media activism is essentially about interven-