Centre for Digital Citizenship

A recent poll by the Institute of Public Policy Research showed that support for a switch to the Alternative Vote system (AV) from First-Past-The-Post may be growing in the UK. One of many, often contradictory, polls this one is just a small part of the growing debate and speculation over the potential switch to a new voting system. Various arguments have been made by the ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ campaigns, touching on issues such as public engagement, enabling voices, empowering the people, representativeness, extreme views and minority parties. This list of discussion topics is by no means linked only to the technicalities of a voting system, however. Indeed, one might wonder whether the issues are actually a product of the voting system at all.

Poor public engagement and voter turnout have been cited as examples of a failing democracy in the UK and reasons for the lack of public engagement have been discussed. Some blame a lack of voting choice but others hold to account the perceived lack of accountability of MPs or distrust and cynicism amongst the public as well as a feeling of detachment from decision making, often linked to the limiting of public involvement to a single vote per parliament. Such public disengagement can negatively affect either voting system by encouraging poorly informed voting and agonistic politics. Indeed, some have argued that a weakness of AV is its potential to give greater power to extreme views through increased support of minority parties. This is a debatable theory rather than a fact and perhaps misses the point about our democratic failings. The debate should not be about how can we constrain, silence or deny these extreme views through design of a voting system but how can we encourage the public to engage deliberatively, exploring issues and exchanging opinions so that individuals can participate in a more informed and enlightened way. Improving governance through informing and consulting the public, encouraging deliberative and collaborative interaction and integrating public feedback into policy making are popular topics raised by many scholars. Coleman and Gotze (2001) addressed the issue, showing how engaging the public in more deliberative activity can transform political involvement from preference assertion to preference formation. They described how online spaces have the potential to facilitate mass conversation and deliberation, exchange of views and information and ultimately more considered political involvement.

While electoral reform is currently all over the UK blogosphere, there seems to be a lack of formal public deliberation about the issue. Interestingly, a series of offline debates has been held to allow citizens to deliberate electoral reform. Recorded and made available on the internet, it is notable, however, that this is not accompanied by an online debating facility to allow a wider community of citizens to discuss the issues themselves. The current focus on the voting system itself is perhaps hiding the issue that needs our attention – whatever the voting system, voters should be encouraged to form considered, well-informed opinions.

Ref: Coleman, S. and Gotze, J. (2001) Bowling Together: online public engagement in policy deliberation, London: Hansard Society, 2001

Leeds Trinity College’s Centre for Journalism is joining forces with Guardian Local to launch a new local community news project here in Leeds. The Local Community News Hub will, among other things, seek to bring together local community organizations, citizens, and professional journalists in order to discuss ‘collaborative journalism’ and how members of the community might contribute to the local news agenda.

Catherine O’Connor, Head of Journalism at Leeds Trinity College, said:

We are very pleased to be working with Guardian Local on this project because of their pioneering approach to collaborative journalism. It is the ever-changing relationship between journalists and audiences which inspired the thinking behind the Community News Hub.

The Community News Hub will be launched on Wednesday 17 November. 

The recent licence-fee settlement for the BBC negotiated by the coalition government, which is estimated to amount to a 16% cut in the BBC’s income, has significant implications for citizenship in the UK. Not only will the cuts inevitably affect the quality of the service the BBC provides to the public in future. More damaging, perhaps, is the fundamental threat that the settlement represents to the institutional independence of the BBC. In order to respect the BBC’s constitutional independence from government, the change in the licence-fee settlement should have been considered separately from general departmental cuts in government spending and it warranted a proper period of public consultation and debate with citizens as licence payers. As Steven Barnett and Jean Seaton have argued in a recent letter to the Financial Times:

The brutal arm-twisting which this week appears to have taken place over a period of three days, using government cuts as an excuse for transferring a raft of departmental spending to the BBC while freezing the licence fee, has demonstrated a contempt for the principle of BBC independence which is unprecedented. The notion that the BBC should “suffer” the same pain as government departments is itself revealing evidence of the government’s determination to treat it as an arm of its own fiscal policy. The BBC belongs to the licence payers. Who asked them if they agreed? Do they approve of the reduced investment in television and radio programmes that must inevitably follow?

The Centre for Digital Citizenship, Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds

At their best, democracies should be noisy, reverberating with pluralistic voices, competing explanations, diverse values, ever-broader sources of information and illumination, all competing to fill the public sphere with their calls to attention and urgent demands to make a difference.

But more than just noise. To be truly effective, democracy requires structure, so that speaking can lead to hearing; so that articulations of unexpected and unwanted views are not drowned out by the blindingly obvious; so that the nuance of qualification is not crushed by the blunt force of dogma; so that the voices of the marginalised, neglected and unconfident are allowed room to emerge and impress; so that the ratio between volume and meaning can favour the latter. In short, democracies should be noisy, but not cacophonous. Out of the incessant buzz of storytelling and debate, discernible outcomes must transpire.

Contemporary democracies are too often characterised by the frustrating vacuity of the angry headline, the over-dramatised incident, the denunciating mob and a prevailing mood of cynical resignation. From the US healthcare reform debate to the public furore surrounding EU deficit controls, the prospect of effective civic reflection has all too frequently been abandoned in favour of a carnival of unrestrained uproar or virulence. All of this has had troubling consequences for the practice of citizenship. Firstly, when politics is made to seem either fraudulent or futile, the most likely public response is to disengage. Secondly, even when citizens do feel motivated to engage with public affairs, there is a growing gap between the long-term character of socio-political problems and the short-term pressures that tend to dominate the political agenda. This leads too often to a public discourse framed by the pragmatic priorities of immediacy, with both politicians and journalists strategising in ways that ignore underlying problems and durable consequences. Thirdly, as the media have come to be characterised by intensified competition for public attention, their messages have tended to become increasingly consumed by sensationalism (in the case of mainstream, offline journalism) and extremism (in the case of online blogging and debate). None of this looks good for the prospects of a democratic public sphere, within which citizens ought to be free to engage in an informed, balanced, meaningful and consequential consideration of important public issues.

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