Media, capabilities, and justification

Abstract

In this paper, I evaluate the 'capability approach' developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum as a normative perspective for critical media research. The concept of capabilities provides a valuable way of assessing media and captures important aspects of the relationship between media and equality. However, following Rainer Forst's critique of outcomeoriented approaches to justice, I argue that the use of capability approach in media studies needs to pay more attention to questions of power and process. In particular, when it comes to deciding which capabilities media should promote and what media structure and practices should promote them, the capability approach must accept the priority of deliberativedemocratic processes of justification. Once we do this, we are urged to situate the concept of capabilities within a more process-oriented view of justice, focused not on capabilities as such, but on outlining the conditions required for justificatory equality. After discussing the capability approach, I will outline the process-oriented theory of justice Forst has developed around the idea of the 'right to justification'. While Forst does not discuss media in depth, Iargue his theory of justice can provide a valuable alternative normative standpoint for critical media research 1 I would like to express my thanks to John Corner, Nick Couldry, David Hesmondhalgh, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.2

Normative foundations of media welfare: Perspectives from the Nordic countries

“…The list-based approach to defining basic needs has been criticized, however, on the grounds highlighted by Sen (see above); for instance, it can be argued that lists escape public deliberation and tend to be insufficient and provisional at best and rigid and paternalistic at worst. Moss (2018) argues that a focus on capabilities misses the crucial deliberative and democratic process of justification, which is necessary for establishing a normative foundation for critical media policy scholarship.…”

The great get together as an experiment in convivial politics

“…As Alan Finlayson (2019) has recently concluded, digital technologies have changed the means of communication and the social relations between people: ‘In altering the stages, scripts and dramas with which we perform our politics for each other, it is also altering what people know (or think they know) about politics, and how they feel about it’ (p. 88). But the question remains of how far the realisation of a convivial politics committed to social justice is constrained by a market-based media system (Moss, 2018). Can the scripts for convivial politics be cultivated using the digital media platforms currently available?…”

Freedom Without Idealization: Non-Ideal Approaches to Freedom of Communication

“…While theoretically and normatively attractive, the operationalization of the approach is not without its problems. The problem of how to identify and select the relevant capabilities or functionings to compare and with what criteria their realization can be assessed through remains, especially in the context of media and communication (Hesmondhalgh, 2017;Moss, 2018). What are the basic communicative capabilities that most people would have reason to value?…”

“…Since theorists of the capability approach have so far had relatively little to say about communication or media more concretely, more work is needed to develop the framework for the purposes of theorizing or operationalizing communicative freedom. Beyond general values, such as having a voice, the substance of what basic communicative capabilities would entail in different contexts thus remains an open question to be discussed (see, Moss, 2018).…”