Complutense Internacional Seminar

Media Nutrients and the Public Sphere Debate. A proposal between EUs North and South.

1.  About the cultural convergence in the EU

Under this proposal I intend to raise an inquiry on which I have already outlined certain hypothesis streams in previous occasions ("The convergence with Europe and the ‘natural space’ of Latin America", in Díaz Nosty, B. (dir.), Informe Anual de la Comunicación 2000-2001, Eds. Tiempo Madrid, 2001, pp. 11-37), accordingly, allow me to mention frequently previous works. I will relate to the analysis of the current correspondence among the processes of economic and cultural convergence within the European Union. And, in short, I will focus on the frailty that Spain exhibits in the cultural convergence, from the point of view of the media contribution to public opinion and the development of the ‘social interest’, according to the adlerian term and sense about the nutritive character of the media in the public sphere debate.

At this point I set off from the experience of the continuous analysis of the Spanish fact, through a diachronic vision that allows us to evaluate, with a solid precision, the transformations of the last two decades. During this lapse of time, it has been observer a significant evolution of the media scenario and the economic and social impact of the civic and cultural industry. Altogether throughout an immersion and technological speeding up period that, in one way or another, is similar to other European nations.

I start from the disparity of this evolution and other interpretations of the European media systems, that let us make a hypothesis about the perception that the process of media convergence, in its cultural and civic impact, is not taking place. On the other hand, we could be witnessing the appearance of structural obstacles to the convergence and, furthermore, that these end up enlarging the differences among nations included on a same supranational space.

Let me reiterate that when I talk about cultural and civic impact, I make a wide semantic interpretation and I’m not only referring to the classic concepts of culture, but to what is colloquially known as the ‘common culture’ of a country and to the additional form of ‘democratic culture’ that should be acknowledged as the grade of development of the public sphere.

The investigations concerning the media impacts, in their very diverse disciplinarian lines, from the sociological to the psychological and cultural studies, have analyzed the audience considering individual features or regarding the individual’s membership to segments, groups or social classes, generally in circumscribed demographic scenarios: national or local. These perceptions commonly accept that the media reception is a process of negotiation of the individual or the group facing the stimulus of the message. This is a ‘digestive’ dynamic of the receiver of the media ‘nutritionals’ whose synthesis depends on the vectorial definition that different actors have in the process of the communication action.

Nevertheless the personalized scope of the effects on the individuals who shape the audience is defined in statistical terms as segments, objective audiences and socio-demographic stadiums with a certain degree of homogeneity.

From these categories of audience analysis in groupings included in the national or local levels, it is endeavoured to make a methodological conversion - also a statistical synthesis- from the distinctions of social classes, segments or ‘life styles’ in one single country to the distinctions between nations that reveal different behaviours and cultural projections.

If in two countries, Spain and Sweden, towards witch I will be focusing the proposal, in the merely theoretical case that the media offer were similar, it is not foreseeable to suppose, however, that the effects (those ‘media footprints’) shall not be identical, in systemic terms, because the cultural atmospheres is different and different are the contextualizing and assimilation instruments.

2. Analyzing the ‘media footprint’

It is in the analysis benefit, for this reason, to deal with the cultural convergence from the audiences viewpoint, this is, from what we have identified as ' the footprint' (here we could say that the “footprint is the message"...) and to comprehend how this footprints defines attitudes, builds cultural habits (‘common culture’) and reaches a public dimension in the civic and ethical values level (democratic culture). And, in addition, in which way the footprints from both countries articulate or not convergent tendencies. It is not to be perceived, in the insight of this restlessness, a whim guided by the aspiration of cultural standardization or of detachment from the differential features of countries, but as a process of measurement of extra-economic cultural values, those that point the evolution of societies towards conceptions of progress that are external or complementary to those of the market, elsewhere, on a strictly economic dimension.

In economic terms, the convergence is evident, because Spain has reduced to half its differential with Sweden during the last two decades. According to Eurostat, in 2002 the Spanish GDP per capita was 17 percent below than Sweden and, at the end of this decade, it will have decreased according to the forecasts, to 10 percent. Therefore, we are not dealing with major differences.

Is that convergence taking place in terms of cultural projection from the media footprint?

Initially, according to the statistical records available, obvious differences are, in consumption values, between the north and the south of Europe. These values, of quantitative character, make us think that they also have a qualitative projection of the different media footprints in the field of cultural values.

For example, when we know that only 32 percent of the Spanish population over 14 years regularly reads daily papers (general information) and that this figure rises in Sweden to 89 percent, it is compulsory to infer, or at least to suppose, that the projection of the media nutritionals is very different in both scenarios. Figures, by the way, not very different from those concerning the habits of books reading in these countries. Is it not revealing that in Spain two of each three newspaper readers are men and only the third is a woman, in contrast with the virtually gender symmetry that is observed in Sweden? (89 percent of men and 88 percent of women defined themselves as regular readers in 2000. Figures for Sweden taken out from Tidningsstatistik AB and SIFO consultant).

Among the elements of the hypothesis, that confines the analysis to the dissimilarities between Spain and Sweden, the idea is that different media nutritionals emanate different behaviour rules and, in general, different social agendas, different levels of innovation, and different ‘statistical’ perimeters of the collective imaginary...

I propose a compared research of two scenarios starting from a presumption: the scarce or null cultural convergence of Spain with Europe in relation with the media footprint in two countries which display clear signals of contrast. Position that can be lengthen, later on, to macro-regional scenarios as are the north and the south of Europe, where also significantly differentiated statistical features of consumption are noticed.

The proposal's interest exceeds the one that can come from a merely comparative analysis of two nations belonging to a similar supranational political map, as Spain and Sweden have. Fascination that increases because the dominant ideology of the European Union traces the indicators of the new society on rates of ‘information and knowledge’. Superior cultural wealth can also be identify, in accordance with the scientific literature, with a higher degree of social innovation, lesser dependency and uncertainty, wider autonomy and interlocutory ability.

The risk of non convergence, consequently, is to be evaluated in terms of democratic degradation, cultural dependency, vulnerability of the identity features, etc. That is to say, smaller genuine interlocutory ability.

Theoretical arguments and empiric studies that link the audience cultural stratification with media dependency, as well as its degree of vulnerability facing the inducements of the media are abundant, and it is from this crux that we will be developing suggestions and hypothesis lines.

3.  A first theoretical analogy as reinforcement for the hypothesis level

It is necessary to add to the ousting concept, in the same instance of the hypothesis, a theoretical analogy that could demonstrate that the ‘gap’ between the two nations doesn't tend to shorten, but could rather increase... I relate to the confirmation in the contrast analysis between two different scenarios made by the ‘knowledge gap hypothesis’, already outlined in the seventies, that has been used as a foundation for new hypothesis as the most recent on the ‘digital divide’.

Tichenor, Donohue and Olien, of the University of Minnesota, formulated the hypothesis on the ‘knowledge differences’ in relation to the media effects (‘Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge’, in the Public Opinion Quarterly, 34, pages. 159-170). A proposal based on empiric analysis and linked to the diffusionist positions on rural and depressed environments innovation, as well as in non developing countries.

The hypothesis comes to infer that the receptive ability, of comprehend and assimilation of media messages is directly related with the previous knowledge of the receiver. At the same time, the socio-economic stratification establishes a relation with the population's information interest, so that the less privileged classes are those that receive smaller quantity of information, and not because it is not within their reach, but because they prove smaller reception dexterity and higher understanding impediment, circumstances that, in consequence, generate self-privation. But it is also the lowest classes, for their lessen contextualizing and judgement rationalizing abilities, the most vulnerable to persuasive effects. The most privilege classes don't only have easier access to the sources- this would not be the decisive element-, but rather their widest knowledge is the one that enhances interest and the predilection towards a better information quality; also, their previous knowledge enables them for a structured contextualization of what they receive.

The social classes’ discrimination in the reception of the information increases their power position, from the time when the privation of knowledge increases uncertainty and insecurity. According to this observation, the gap tends to grow, so as the media flow increases, the chances that the difference of knowledge will also increase becomes bigger.

4. On the difference of knowledge and the consumption of media

Starting from these notions, it is a question of transferring analysis from the scope of the cultural and receptive differences among the social classes in a given place and their knowledge effects in terms of ‘media footprint', to the frame of two nations with different degrees of cultural development, according to the logic of the media-cultural consumption. Are not signals of informative and cultural self-privation in Spain that more than 65 percent of the population don’t read newspapers or books regularly? In our country, the prevalence of audiovisual consumption, with very low quality standard, won't it be determining a cultural impoverishment that reduces or sterilizes the interest for a more purified demand? Are these factors, that the dominant audiovisual footprint expresses, decisive of the Spanish non convergence?

How can we measure the effects in two scenarios so to assess the contrast and describe the reach of habits and media consumptions on cultural convergence? Establishing the relationship between consumptions and cultural and social habits in controlled spaces; this is, studying to what degree nutrients operate in the social projection of both nation’s collectives or groups with a certain degree of homogeneity or identification (university students, for example).

5. Some North/South contrasts

 The interest of the proposal, as I previously pointed out, from the statistical perception of different media practices in the North and the South and, consequently, from the assumption that the media footprint is also different and, at the same time, has a different social and cultural scope. And, all at once, from a local restlessness in the presence of a degradation of the public sphere debate (with the impoverishment of a democracy with a short historical journey), to which seemingly are contributing the contents of a media system merely focused on its mercantile dimension, where the principle of ‘everything for the audience’ magnifies the statistic and neutralizes the civic facet of the receiver.

But, let us see some facts. In a recent essay we compared two significant areas in the North and South of the E.U. in terms of their consumption standards. The territory form by the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, with little more than 35 million inhabitants all together, was selected as the Northern area; the Southern one incorporated Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, with 120 million inhabitants, this is 3,4 times more populated that the first one. In spite of population's difference among both areas, a surprising fact was certified: the daily press flow in the north area (12 million copies) overcame lightly that of the south (11, 7 millions). So, while the northern nations had a circulation index of 341,3 copies for each 1.000 inhabitants (2000), in the southern nations the figure fell down to 97,3 copies (Díaz Nosty, B., La prensa diaria en la UE, Fundación Vodafone, Madrid, 2003, pages. 36 and 37), with a difference of 244 points between the major areas.

This gap is yet larger between Sweden and Spain, since Spain, with a population 4, 5 times higher than Sweden, accomplishes, in absolute terms, a similar flow to the Scandinavian country. In 2000, the Swedish circulation index was 421 copies for 1.000 inhabitants, four times higher than Spain (105), with a fissure of 316 points. What's more, internal dissimilarities are noticeably accentuated between regions in the southern countries, where they make a replica, to scale, of contrasts that project unequal development degrees and allow to, once again, formulate the hypothesis of the 'knowledge gap' resulting from different consumption, disposition or attitude facing the media. It is surprising, for instance, travelling from north to south through the maps of Spain and Italy and discovering an almost absolute parallelism in the figures of press consumption, so that in certain northern areas of these countries the indexes of circulation multiplied for four the south ones (Díaz Nosty, B., “España e Italia, rasgos similares”, en Informe Anual..., p. 85).

From the analysis of the Spanish and Swedish press is not reasonable to infer big differences between the professional practices, with standards agendas, in both cases, established from the highest perspective of the media’s traditions, despite of the biggest degree of this evolution in Sweden (ethical codes, ombudsman, professional organization, public system of information transparency, etc.). It is not acceptable to deduce that those differences are comparable to those that distinguishing both audiovisual systems and the political and cultural awareness that define them.

The wider media dependency exhibited by audiences of low profile (to establish an analogy with the most economic concept of ' low class’), is necessary to point out that in Spain that dependency settles with television. Here is another distinction, the superior consumption of television in Spain, with an approximate average exposure 25 percent times higher than the Swedish. In Spain, the daily average consumption oscillates something like 210 minutes, a ratio that comes across the fact that the Spanish spectator spends in front of the television, averagely, a bit more than 53 days per year.

[The analysis that we hereby put forward is certainly interested in the quantitative statistical aspect of consumption, but it much more centres around the 'footprint' standards established by the media consumptions and the contents transmitted during exhibition].

Development of Internet, in hardly a decade of expansion, already exhibits a clear breach between the North and the South. In 2002, the percentage of clients in Sweden multiplied for two the Spanish ones, although those differences were somewhat more muffled among the youngest generations. Here, the percentage of clients is in fact relevant, but, as happens with the circumstances of television, it is not so much about defining an application (access to the net) as to know the contents that are related to that application and what social level is it supporting (training, leisure, interpersonal communication, trade, etc.). The footprint is not determined by the media or, at least, it is less decisive than the characteristics of the content.

These statistical data, only reflecting different media consumptions and habits in Spain and Sweden, enhances interest to the proposal and points out further queries.

6. Other theoretical analogies as reinforcements in the hypothesis stage

a) The primacy in Spain of the ‘audiovisual culture’, especially when it gives the impression of being nourished by very low profile programs, bounded by or wholly incorporated, during the prime time interval, in what is commonly named as ‘telebasura’ and, at the same time, by some news programs excessively governmental, reduces the audience’s cultural and political immunologic system defences and establishes a greater dependency, in accordance with the ‘theory of dependency’ of Sandra Ball-Rokeach. Ball-Rokeach points out that the effect of the media is marked by the degree of the individuals' dependence and the social structures of the information presented by those media. A vulnerability in which the concept of ‘priming effect’, addressed by Leonard Berkowitz, is accentuated.

b) Leon Festinger's same assumptions on the ‘knowledge dissonance’ could explain the affected ignorance of an audience numb or dependant on low profile programs, which reject acquaintance that ‘could obscure their lives’.

c) When Albert Bandura analyzes violence derived from exposure to television, he doesn't believe that the footprint is immediate, but he understands that social learning through the media can precipitate that, in certain environmental circumstances, the individual reproduces images coming from the audiovisual memory. For similar reasons it should be recognized that in an audiovisual dependant country, with low programming quality, media social learning leads to mediocrity, to an impoverishing ‘reciprocal determinism’. This aspect acquires vital importance in stages of special intensity of 'social knowledge observation'- according to Bandura's term -, as childhood and adolescence, therefore media fix a footprint of limitations and cultural and social self-privations because of a lack of profundity and variety of the knowledge nutritionals.

d) Gerbner, among many others, has examined the relationships between media and ‘cultural differential’. The lack of protection of the audiences dependent on a mono-mediatic repertoire increases, as a general rule, in relation to the time of exposure [We outlined that the average of exposition in front of the television of a Spaniard, dependant on a single media, is significantly higher to a Swedish, who develops more diversified and complementary consumptions]. Gerber’s theory proposes one more case of the hypothesis argumentational contextualization, since the cultural disparity observed within a single society is also transferable to the frame of the contrast between two nations with different cultural and social features.

Following this paradigm, we would locate in Sweden an average standard of ‘light’ audiovisual consumption, less dependent and exposed to complementary amalgams of access to information and knowledge. The x-ray in Spain would turn up, using the gerbnerian terminology, as ‘heavy’, which presumes media dependency and bigger propensity to the influence.

e) And it is certainly necessary to stretch out the contrast study, particularly for the evident interest in the public projection, to the sphere of agenda effects, within the scope of analysis on agenda-setting.

7. An approachable proposal

As an approach to this position, whose first steps were designed during the evolution of the subject ‘European Structures of the Media’ in the Communication Faculty of Málaga, one may suggest hereby the projection of an approachable investigation on school level tend to ascertain various lines in the complex orography of the hypothesis.

So, we can analyze the problem of convergence through the media nutritionals in two scenarios fairly homogeneous or, at least, equivalent in terms of valid contrast. I’m talking about the study of two relatively reduced samples, one in Sweden and another in Spain, defined by university students of Journalism, intended to measure, along a semester, two seemingly related phenomenons: the media nutritionals, with chronological and qualitative scrutiny, and customary activities during the remainder of social time (This is, cultural and collective activities, leisure, consumption, etc.). Trying to establish a relationship between the type of media consumptions and the ‘life styles’. In addition, setting out from the observed cultural projection, knowing to what degree spaces that are sociologically homologated, regarding generational and cultural terms, if not economical, can make a replica, in the contrast of two national realities, of the knowledge frontiers that induce discrimination that could tend to increase in case of verification of the Tichenor, Donohue and Olien hypothesis.

[In 2001, within the ambit of a school work, the analysis of young student’s conversations during the breaks inside the university enclosure was brought about on a small sample of 50 students of Journalism in the University of Málaga, throughout a period not distressed by exams. It was revealed that the thematic of their conversations mainly turned around the contents of television programs seen in the eve, or predictions about what could happen in the day in course emissions (At that time the fashionable programs were ‘Big Brother’, ‘Operacion Triunfo’ and similar). Also, a certain mimesis with the ‘opinion leaders’ of these programs was observed in some students, even affecting oral expression forms, touched all of them by the stamp of supposed modernism, vanguard or epatante fashion that the mediatic trail of television seemed to cast out.

From a shallow analysis on the conversations about the ‘Big Brother’ serial- which experienced minor progress in its thematic ambit – it was set up a hypothesis integrated in the agenda of concerns noted at this point. The intention was to discern to what degree the profile defined by the program’s producers was contaminating the public sphere debate, and which were the adhesion/repulse mechanisms in audiences analogous to the contestants regarding generational terms. Also, there was something more chased to be achieved: contrasting dialogue arguments in the program put on air by Tele 5 in Spain with those of the German youths in the program broadcasted by the RTL, assuming clear differences occurred, in both cases related to the cultural and social environments, with both nations’ public sphere].

8. A contrasted vision of Europe

The foreseeable results of the comparative analysis can nourish new hypothesis and new studies in the sphere of communication. In previous essays (Díaz Nosty, B. (dir.), The European Union in the Media 1996, Fundesco/AEJ, Madrid, 1997), we notice the current problems in the process of cultural convergence in Europe, always from the media contribution in the making of footprints that go beyond the collective imaginary. That aspiration didn’t lead in any case to the creation of a common European culture, but to a fluent interlocution amid the elements that compose its diversity.

The intense contrasts among different nations of the E.U., which cannot be compared with the more attenuated ‘economic gap’, keeps the refractory dissonances to integration in the rank of the ideas, of the imaginaries, the symbolic representations of reality. Europe seems to suffer from that esquizoide pathology that Bateson observed beginning from the contradictions in the information matrix, which underlie now hidden by the veil of the cultural and communication differences.

The research scheme that I hereby propose will put forward, I reckon, appealing and enlightening findings, releasing at the same time a novel string for a better understanding of difficulties of the European identity. Therefore, I trust that it would be very stimulating for the communication research if this kind of projects became an assessment restlessness that spread to the overall European Union, beyond the undeniably necessary studies that restrict the depth of the analysis to standards related with market, with consumption, with the consumptive nature of the audience.

Madrid, September 18, 2003.