IS THERE REAL PUBLIC OPINION?

In India, where I live -- a country that prides itself on being a collective, rather than individualistic, society -- it is intriguing that there is a dearth of public movements based on rational and intelligent thinking. Recently, a seminar I attended on the partnerships between the media and modern democracy brought out interesting facets of popular reactions to the embedded issues. At the end of the two-day event, the audience was invited to forward recommendations. Among them was one that sounded the most intriguing to me, and triggered a small debate—one that was seconded and supported by a large percentage of the 100-odd people who had gathered, mostly young, urban people from various backgrounds. The recommendation was that the media should help create a positive image of India. The audience felt that our media indulge in portraying too many negative images of India, and that this critical projection would hamper our country’s economic and political prospects abroad.

The audience actually wanted the media to bring up images, not realities.

Over the past week, there were two major instances of communication patterns in our democracy (the Fanaa and The Da Vinci Code controversies). Both represent characteristically our reaction to arbitrariness. They are also striking by their contrast. But most interestingly, they are case studies in representations of image and reality. The question is, do people want to see or read the truth, or would they rather have image representations?

Modi and the BJP are trying to create an illusion of reality. The BJP has now started propagating that while the BJP has nothing against the film’s screening, it is the theatre owners who have shut out Fanaa. Using a clever “Third Person Effect” method, the BJP now claims that most people on the street want the ban. Had the BJP managed this stunt before the proclamation on banning the film, it would have indeed succeeded in public eyewash. But now let us hope that citizens find their voices above this silencing act.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting took a long, hard look at The Da Vinci Code decision before cleverly establishing a panel comprising Christian theologians and educationists to pronounce a verdict on its ban. Without doubt it was a master stroke, convincing conservatives who wanted the ban, as well as those who did not.

As Stuart Hall, the British communication scholar argues, it is the articulated thought that survives in society. Protests (to be polite) in a cultured city like Pune against a book on the life of Shivaji by a US scholar is indicative of the fact that a small but violently powerful propaganda can silence the majority. (How many protests have we seen so far against banning a film or a book?) Politicians and other communicators, usually via the media, have always attempted to create images in audiences’ minds. As media consumers mature in a choice-making environment, however, communicators had better be wary of the images they create. But in an increasingly localising media environment, audiences like their messages close to their own real to be meaningful.

If public opinion were to mould our policies, we must first ask ourselves which public we mean. We seem to believe that public opinion is the side of the coin that is voiced. We also need to ask ourselves whether by democracy we mean that major decisions must be taken with the consent of the people at large. That would not only be unrealistic—it would be hazardous for our general understanding of democracy. More hazardous will be our increasing dependency on the media to do our job.

The fall from this euphoric faith may at least partly explain why, in countries where media consumption has a reached a level of maturity, impressions of media audiences towards political communicators at an abysmal low. In the USA, journalists are ranked fourth from the bottom in credibility levels. (No prizes for guessing who figures in the last three.) Unlikely public representatives seem to draw much more attention and fear among policymakers than the public that they represent. Local democratic participation through public opinion has mostly been substituted with publicised opinion, as in the case of the Fanaa controversy. If the media’s endeavour has traditionally been earning public trust, consumers of the media must bear in mind the inherent and deliberate manipulations that ‘mediated truth’ is capable of.