The prism of the public sphere: The COP15 coverage by the Brazilian media system

Abstract

Current studies of political communication offer valuable contributions to assessing and measuring mediated deliberation. But in our understanding of the news media's role in a deliberative system a number of questions remain unanswered, especially concerning problems posed by social complexity. This paper aims to contribute to closing this gap by conducting an empirical analysis on how distinct contributions to public deliberation-namely the provision of publicity and intelligibility-are articulated via outputs offered by different types of media outlets, specifically in the case of the Brazilian coverage of the 15th UN's Climate Change Conference (COP15). Our results suggest that this coverage seems to have fostered citizens to search for more information about this Conference and augmented the visibility of UN's climate negotiations. This gives support to the idea that news media system works like a prism of the public sphere, promoting accountability of complex governance processes by offering information and public scrutiny adequate for a heterogeneous citizenry.

Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy

“…Examples include public debates on abortion , gun control (Callaghan and Schnell 2001;Maia 2009), same-sex marriage (O'Connor 2017), voting systems (Pilon 2009), education public policy (Saraisky 2015), and technological issues (Peters et al 2008;Schneider 2008). More recent studies (Häussler 2018; Lycarião and Wozniak 2017;Maia, 2012aMaia, , 2018 incorporated conceptual tools of deliberation, that when properly conceived cannot be conflated with face-toface interactions, adapted code schemes Steiner 2012), and distinct forms of operationalization.…”

Mixed Methods

“…Examples include public debates on abortion , gun control (Callaghan and Schnell 2001;Maia 2009), same-sex marriage (O'Connor 2017), voting systems (Pilon 2009), education public policy (Saraisky 2015), and technological issues (Peters et al 2008;Schneider 2008). More recent studies (Häussler 2018; Lycarião and Wozniak 2017;Maia, 2012aMaia, , 2018 incorporated conceptual tools of deliberation, that when properly conceived cannot be conflated with face-toface interactions, adapted code schemes Steiner 2012), and distinct forms of operationalization.…”