This article considers the potential of television as a public space in which democratic debate might be instigated, stimulated, or promoted. It asks whether television could do a better job at opening up intelligent public debate—and how opportunities to do so have been constrained historically by policies of political timidity. It considers three types of pseudo-debate commonly organized by television producers and concludes by arguing that television’s most significant capacity as a communication medium may well be its capacity to produce a civic mix between forms and techniques of popular culture and ideas relevant to democratic public deliberation.
ChaffeeS. H.KanihanF. S.1997. Learning about politics from the mass media. Political Communication14:421-30.
4.
ColemanS.SteibelF.BlumlerJ. G.2011. Media coverage of the prime ministerial debates. In Political communication in Britain: The leader’s debates, the campaign and the media in the 2010 general election, edited by WringD.MortimoreR.AtkinsonS.London: Palgrave.
5.
ColemanS.BlumlerJ. G.2009. The internet and democratic citizenship: Theory, practice, policy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
6.
ColemanS.2003. A tale of two houses: The House of Commons, the Big Brother house and the people at home. Parliamentary Affairs56(4): 733-58.
7.
ColemanS.2006. How the other half votes: Big Brother viewers and the 2005 general election. International Journal of Cultural Studies9(4): 457-79.
8.
DuttonW. H.2009. The Fifth Estate emerging through the network of networks. Prometheus27(1): 1-15.
9.
DayanD.KatzE.1994. Media events. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
