Matt Cotton
COM 521
In Simone Chambers’ article “Rhetoric and the Public Sphere”, the author explains that, according to Platonic rhetorical theory, participants in the modern democratic process cannot fully participate in democratic deliberation. This is the result of the mass public’s inability, for various socioeconomic reasons, to fully engage in traditional dialogue with those in office or currently seeking office. Deliberative democratic theory concludes that the mass public has been separated into smaller independent groups labeled mini-publics (324). These mini-publics can enter into Socratic debate concerning specific issues, but often lose their ability to be heard in the wider political realm. This has, possibly, led some to question the effectiveness of traditional dialogue in the divisive atmosphere that has defined the political process recently.
This shift in the political landscape could be blamed for the emergence of a harsher, more competitive level of discourse. Mini-publics become marginalized and often resort to strategies that abandon ethos in favor of currying favor and winning elections. The resulting rhetoric is labeled plebiscitary and its practitioners emphasize winning before all other concerns. Complicating the issue in 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United against the Federal Election Commission. By doing so they allowed corporations and unions to contribute political campaigns with almost no accountability or disclosure. Disregarding the larger state of a democracy, this ruling opposes the theory of deliberative democracy and allows for unchecked democratic deliberation. Consider the approach taken by Citizens United in the following clip. With its sensationalistic flourishes, it typifies the tone of the messages emerging from these special interest groups. http://youtu.be/2jXmweoX-VI . Would one be inclined to label this as plebiscitary rhetoric or simply a more aggressive form of democratic deliberation?
On the other hand, ads designed in a deliberative democratic style tend to appeal to one’s calmer sensibility and are not as prone to use an inflammatory rhetorical style. This approach may stress the importance of a healthy sociopolitical climate where, ideally, all are welcome to voice their opinions and be heard. Consider this 1992 Clinton/Gore ad as an example of this type of approach. http://youtu.be/9pc7uApCDNA . Chambers writes that, although flawed in some ways, deliberative democratic rhetoric could positively influence a democracy through more instances of “citizen-citizen encounters”. These “semi-Socratic” forums have partly become virtual forums with the growing influence of digital rhetoric, social media, and other on-line alternatives to face-to-face debate (340). Digital rhetoric presently exists, in a sense, as a tool used in both democratic deliberation and deliberative democracy but could it become more than that? More exposure to “semi-Socratic” debate, via digital rhetoric, might educate an audience and thus raise their awareness of plebiscitary rhetorical methods employed by today’s politicians. www.debatepolitics.com Websites such as these gain credibility by remaining non-biased and non-partisan but they also deny the researcher any means by which to measure their influence. In the digital sphere one can only gauge effectiveness by election results, movements such as Occupy Wall Street, or the multiple Arab Spring demonstrations where real and tangible change was demanded by a measurable group of people. Although difficult to accurately estimate, digital rhetoric could be seen to be growing in its influence. Just as Chambers points out that democratic deliberation can hardly be imagined as rhetoric free, digital argumentation will inherently contain substantial amounts of all forms of rhetoric. These wildly diverse styles in digital rhetoric may again separate the mass audience into mini-publics (324). Acceptance of the formation of these mini-publics in the digital realm directly contradicts conventional wisdom that views the internet as a uniting force. It may seem that as issues in a democracy elicit an increasingly polarized response, the more society’s focus narrows and the entire debate spirals into an incomprehensible mess. For instance, try to gather any actual substance concerning specific issues in this Fox News assessment of a current Republican presidential debate. http://youtu.be/UhjkLOvD40E . It is hard to believe that the segment goes on for 4 minutes and 56 seconds. Their reliance on audience members to submit their opinions via Twitter is hardly a new concept, but in this case, shows how attempting to include digital rhetoric in a television news segment can be very ineffective and uninformative.
Concerning plebiscitary rhetoric, Chambers claims that Plato viewed its use as a threat to the deliberative process and to democracy itself (338). Devices such as pandering to the audience, crafting a message to appeal to a specific audience, framing issues to further one’s agenda are all ways in which a rhetorician can influence an audience in a plebiscitary manner. Accordingly, these methods can easily be translated and applied to gain influence in the digital rhetorical universe. Whether or not this is a positive turn of events remains to be determined. The size and scope of the issue is intimidating at the very least. Consider that political forum/debate websites claim to have millions of contributors and political candidates assert that they have an equal amount of “followers” on Facebook and Twitter alone. But just as the Habermasian metaphor of the double-edged sword helped prove Chambers’ point concerning public opinion poll results, it can apply to the influence of digital rhetoric on deliberative democracy and democratic deliberation (343). Its influence can easily be seen as positive and negative concurrently. Ponder the possibility that the same political advisors that write speeches and manage public relations are simultaneously taking the pulse of the mass audience, the mini-public, and the individual via the internet.
Finally, if one can assume that plebiscitary rhetoric is a permanent fixture in the political realm, could the audience use digital rhetoric to sharpen their sense of rhetorical manipulation and consequently neutralize much of plebiscitary rhetoric’s power? While participating in the political process through digital rhetoric people could, unconsciously, become knowledgeable concerning the rhetorical tactics that politicians and others use to gain influence over their audience. Digital rhetoric has the potential to inform, educate, entertain, and involve one in the political process and the myriad issues surrounding it. Hopefully, these website are more than adequate examples of this ideal.
Good thoughts Matt. Here's my two cents...
ReplyDeleteThe Chambers article shows how rhetoric has gotten a bad rap since the time of Socrates and Plato. So much so that many scholars today do not think true deliberation is possible if rhetoric is involved. Chambers pokes plenty of holes in this kind of thinking. (I, for one, find it funny that statesmen like Madison and scholars like Kant defend American institutions such as the Senate as places of rational discourse and level-headedness in need of protection from the passion and artifice of rhetoric. Seriously? Has any of these guys watched C-span lately? There is more grandstanding, pandering and artifice happening there as anywhere in the world on.) Like Aristotle, Chambers believes that rhetoric can be either good and just, or manipulative and deceitful, depending on how it is used. And that a so-called "neutral" speech that does not take into account the emotions of the audience or character of the speaker is not likely to be very effective. But as Chambers says, Plato’s problem with rhetoric was not that it appeals to passion over reason so much as rhetoric is used as a means to power rather than a path to the truth (328).
Plato’s main attack on rhetoric, as stated by Chamber, is that it is monological rather than dialectical. Because of this notion, it is a widely held belief among deliberative theorists today that the public sphere cannot be deliberative because it cannot be dialectical. This has led to the rise of democratic deliberation theory which focuses on very specific acts of deliberation by so-called mini-publics (Think juries and citizen assemblies). For Chambers, it is not even monological speech that is the problem. It is a certain type of monological speech which he calls plebiscitary rhetoric that is the true threat to deliberative democracy. This is the kind of “say anything to get elected” method of speech-making that defines modern politics and modern politicians. I agree with Chambers that face-to-face dialogue is only occasionally reached in our “media-dominated, survey-driven public sphere” (325). With the exception of the more hard-hitting and issue-oriented news programs like 60 Minutes and Meet the Press, the news media as a whole embraces the kind of poll-watching, horse-race coverage that Chambers decries. I believe this, in part, has led to the popularity of infotainment shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report which, under the guise of news reporting, expose the pandering and priming efforts, and overall hypocrisy, of politicians(For an example, check out http://www. thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-26-2012/indecision-2012---2012--a-space-oddity).
So can mass democracy or the mass public sphere ever be truly deliberative? Chambers thinks it can to a degree, but only if we provide citizens more opportunities to engage in the political process and only if we begin to consider all types of discourse – be it conversations between neighbors, a protest rally, or a Twitter or Facebook post - as part of the deliberative process. Maybe deliberation as Plato would describe it cannot happen on a mass scale, but every time a citizen comments on a public issue, he or she is engaging in a type of political speech. And that is good for democracy.
When Chambers talks about the scarcity of face-to-face discourse in our media-driven world, I couldn't help but think about that scene in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
Delete..."We ain't one-at-timin' here. We're mass communicatin'!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR-URUS0WLM&feature=related
John
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about what Chambers is trying to get across in this article. Can democracy be truly deliberative? Chambers seems to think so through the use of a more engaged audience where citizens come together to discuss and decide on public policy, "mini publics".
ReplyDeleteMini publics are used to some extent. It is used all the time in smaller forms of govt such as village and cities. Town hall meetings are very common. Even President Obama had "town hall meetings" during his 2008 campaign. Check out this particular video; (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0xL4c79Xds&feature=pyv&ad=2844466240&kw=barack obama town hall meeting)
And this video is interesting because a 24 year old actually hands over a plan to assist the country to President Obama. Which I think fits perfectly into Chambers idea of mini publics.
I definitely believe that many political figures use Plebiscitary Rhetoric. Since Chambers defines it as; speech strategically for the purpose s of winning. The idea of plebiscitary rhetoric is broad; it is open to anyone with access to polls and public opinion research. But "the audience" must learn how to be critical in order to avoid falling for this type of rhetoric. The audience cannot remain passive and uneducated in the political arena. This form of rhetoric in a written format can also be seen in “email forwards”. Many uneducated or “naïve” individuals fall for these. ( I can’t stand email forwards and I cant stand that I actually know people who think of them as fact).
Deliberative Rhetoric uses Aristotle's three artistic proofs. It deals with political questions that have to choose a collective course of action. Rhetoric is deliberative when it engages our capacity for practical judgment. Chambers states that reasoning itself takes cue from what we care about and care about deeply. Emotion is not always threatening.
Are we a deliberative democracy? Between blogs, twitter, facebook and all the other sources of social networking I think we are getting closer to being deliberative than we were 50 years ago.
. Nice first post matt! I liked how you brought up plebiscitary as an obstacle that gets in the way of deliberative democracy. With a country as large as ours, it is necessary to have elected officials make decisions for us while we make the decision of who these officials may be. I think that these mini publics are as close as we as Americans can come to direct deliberation on policies. I thought that the anti-Obama ad was a good example of plebiscitary rhetoric because it seems to attack an individual or group rather than calmly persuade the viewer of better ideas for the American economy. The ad seems to try to scare the viewer into thinking that the way things are now are chaotic or even apocalyptic meanwhile the Clinton Gore campaign presents the viewer with facts and results that speak for themselves. The presidential election campaigns have become so expensive that elections have become a competition. The presidential candidates have so much invested in their campaign that they don’t dare say that they feel that another candidate is better suited to be the leader of our nation and then bow out. I personally don’t think that the average voter is critically minded, so these campaigns try to reach the more emotional side of them rather than the logical or rational side.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I think that citizen to citizen encounters are really quite important today in our day and age. Digital forums provide an outlet for us to deliberate outside of what is presented to us in main stream media. I browsed around on the debate site you posted and one thing that came to mind was the lack of credibility that these bloggers could have. With television there is some jurisdiction that keeps ads from slander. Not all readers will check the credentials of the person who wrote the post or even research to see if their facts are true. A person could still potentially be influenced by the thread or post.(just a possible draw back)
I think you are right and we will be able to see the effects of digital rhetoric with the outcome of this upcoming primary and general election. I think we are going to see how the effects of digital rhetoric can influence election results in 2012. The larger our country gets I think the more there is a need for deliberation amongst the citizens and social networking sites are providing us with a way to reach and impact citizens from coast to coast.
(don’t judge my spelling and grammar it’s a blog)
Would you say that political campains resort to plebiscitary rhetiric because they are so invested in it that they can't turn back? Sometimes we forget that a political campaign is not just one person but an entire group of people who have a lot on the line if the canidate succeds or fails. I think it is far more easy to persuade an audience through strong emotional representations such as the anti-Obama ad and the more dumb-minded our society gets the more persuasive these types of ads are on society as a whole.
Delete"Would one be inclined to label this as plebiscitary rhetoric or simply a more aggressive form of democratic deliberation"?
ReplyDeleteIn some ways it is both...it certainly is more aggressive but to really judge whether it is plebiscitary rhetoric we need to look at how it affects the public. Chambers says about plebiscitary rhetoric,(337) that while it is sometimes possible to point to an individual speech or statement as an example of plebiscitary rhetoric, it is really a malaise that afflicts the public sphere as a whole.
I don't know about you but I find it very hard to distinguish between what is plebiscitary rhetoric and what is deliberative. Certainly there are some cases that are far more plebiscitary than others but for the most part it seems that a lot of rhetoric is a mixture of both.
The first example is clearly more plebiscitary as it portrays O'Bama as a sort of villian by juxtiposing him with negative symbols such as polution and loss of finance as well as many others. However, wouldn't your second example of the Clinton campaign be plebiscitary as well? The only difference I see is one is more flashy than the other, but in the end the top priority of both campaigns is to gain voters.
-DK
I thought it was rather interesting to read about this topic and Chambers' viewpoint on rhetoric. One of the ideas that was highlighted is something that I do not believe we have considered to this point. On pg. 326, Chambers highlights some individuals who have attempted to rehabilitate rhetoric. One of those highlighted is Iris Marion Young. Young states, "The claim that dispassionate speech is somehow neutral and rational is itself often a rhetorical move to dress up self-interested claims in the guise of neutrality". I believe this happens a lot in today's media and today's politics. Individuals try to appear neutral and meet everyone where they are, when in reality it is just a technique of persuasion. I think you can see this in a lot of places. The pacifist or the neutralist claiming to be right down the middle and not taking a side, but by making those statements, you are in fact taking a side. Hopefully that made sense.
ReplyDeleteI really liked everybody’s responses to this article, I personally had difficulty reading this piece and everyone’s feedback helped me to grasp the piece better. I do agree that since America is such a large country the democratic process cannot be fully realized unless we form into mini-publics, but sometimes these mini-publics become skewed and lose sight or they have no power and our voice can be lost. I really liked John’s statement about C-Span and what Matt said about the ultimate goal of mini-publics is to win. It reaffirms the idea that the more money you have the more likely you are to win, that could be why the NRA and the AARP are some of the largest mini-publics which makes me wonder if change is possible and if the average person will ever be allowed more affordability and access or if we are doomed to let the more power mini-publics have their way in politics.
ReplyDelete