Max is a LSE Fellow on LSE100 |his research interests lie in the area of public communication and democracy, international broadcasting, as well as journalism and networked communication. His work integrates concerns in deliberative communication and decision-making, network theory, and news processes. The empirical context of his work is Persian language international broadcasting and civil society communication in the Middle East.
Thesis title: Publics, News & International Broadcasting: A decisionist approach to the structure of public communication and the concept of the public sphere.
Thesis advisors: Prof. Robin Mansell, Dr. Bart Cammaerts and Dr. Myria Georgiou
Thesis abstract:
Contemporary approaches to the public sphere are characterised by two main challenges: (1) defining the normative purpose and function of public communication in democracy, and (2) addressing the disjunctures between the trans-national condition of publicity and methodological assumptions of nationalism. The present thesis aims to advance understanding on both through a qualitative study of the way journalists working for Persian language international broadcasters respond to these very challenges. To contextualize this question, it also asks which contingent features describe journalists' agency as newsmaker. It is empirically based on a series of interviews with journalists working for the BBC and the Voice of America. Conceptually the thesis is located within a normative perspective that understands public communication as oriented towards decisions on matters of the common good, building on contrasting accounts of publicity found in Schmittian agonistic conceptions, and Habermasian deliberative ones.
The analysis is structured along the two outlined challenges, defining purposes, and navigating the disjuncture between conditions of trans-nationality and assumptions of nationality. It finds that journalist's responses can roughly be divided into three different types of purpose: means oriented, ends oriented and context contingent ones. Responses to the challenge of disjuncture can be divided into different criteria for participation in public communication, revealing multiple sites of allegiance: nationality, being affected by an issue, spoken language, and audience membership. These findings indicate that the same journalist can respond in multiple and contradictory ways, even within the same news routine and institutional context. This non-coherence of purpose and multiplicity of criteria for participation points to some well-documented aporias of globalization and pluralism. Nevertheless, the context of work remains important for explaining journalists' responses.
Overall the thesis argues that meeting the challenges of publicity through a set of internally coherent purposes and criteria for participation is discordant with contemporary communicative practices, which is why research must ask how a new coherence may be seen to emerge out of a multiplicity of purposes and sites of allegiance. The thesis also provides analytical innovations through its evaluative approach to public communication.
Publications |
CV|
Follow Max on Twitter|
Send an email to Max|