TV news media as a catalyst for democratization in Pakistan
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Date
2016
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Publisher
University of Management and Technology Lahore
Abstract
This study sought to underlines the escalation of the public sphere in Pakistanafter the liberalization of broadcast media sector its implication for public participation in policy making and the potential for democratization of Pakistani institutions as a result. This research is guided by Habermas' concept of public sphere and theories of deliberative democracy and analyzes the validity through examining the interrelationships among the four components of the public sphere i.e. news media, interpersonal communication, opinion formation, and political participation. The data were amassed from three major cities of Pakistanby conveniently distributed survey questionnaires and sufficient evidence is found to bolster the principal hypothesis, that news channels are promoting political debate among the masses, especially identified with the issue centered in the media; the quantity and type of conversation were measured by three variables: political talk, personal talk, and sit-ins issue talk, and the second hypothesis, that this as a result crystallizes their quality of opinion; measured by consistency, opinionation, and consideredness with regard to the sit-ins issue. On the other hand the results provide a modest support for the third hypothesis that TV news media consumption, frequent political conversation, and ameliorated quality opinions catalyze political participation, anticipating a direct relationship between the news media use and political participation; alternative explanations cannot be ruled out.
The significance of this study is that unlike other media effects studies, its dependent variables are not just of opinion positions or attitude changes, but also opinion quality; it does not just consider media alone, but rather also deals with the combined effects of interpersonal communication (conversation) and mass media (news media use) and it assumes that the impacts of mass media do not stop at people's attitudes, but are extended to their activities. The findings suggest that although media have strengthened civil society by successfully extracting public out of ordinary citizens in relation to any specific issue or event and ameliorating their comprehension regarding democratic trends and requirements but for sustainable and dynamic deliberative framework to work in Pakistanjust TV news channels watching and incessant political discussion is not enough, however it also demands appropriate approaches to enhance the strategy and conditions to bring out all sorts of more active political participation of the citizens.
Description
Supervised by: DR. Prof Mujahid Mansoori
Keywords
Habermas, Media effects studies, M.Phil Thesis