Slightly late to this, but just before Easter I attended #psa2022 #psa22 @polstudiesassoc general conference at the @UniOfYork. My first real world conference in nearly three years, so was very excited.
I just wanted to share the slide deck from the talk in thread format.
I was trying to respond to a reframed idea of a "crisis in public communications" (a familiar concept from literature). However, I define it as being about boundaries and limits of debate, and whether and how they should be imposed.
This is obviously a recurring issue in contemporry discussion in a lot of areas. To name some examples: online regulation, higher education, what we do about fake news and misinformation, so-called "cancel culture" etc.
One way of trying to understand this challenge better, I argue, is to draw on Isaiah Berlin's tripartite distinction between three different types of systems of thought: monism, relativism and value pluralism.
Monism is the idea that there is a universal truth. The most important monist thinker is Plato, but in Berlin's own lifetime he was clearly thinking about Marxist-Leninism as the key Monist system of thought.
What does this have to do with boundaries of speech and news media? One of the key arguments often made about 20th century / mass media media was that it devolved authority over truth to a relatively small class of professional (i.e. journalists).
It would be a stretch to argue that mid-20thC journalists were Platonic philosopher kings. After all, they didn't always agree on things. However, what they did share (largely) was a set of professional values. This imposed some boundaries on debates within a society.
This argument has been made by people like @swaisbord and @lancebennet1.
And entirely shameless plug at this point, but I make a version of this argument in my own book on fake news. I give a brief overview here.
twitter.com/NickAnstead/status/1362776260129210372?s=20&t=NLKTizF451kiExrHxXqPwQ
So if we aren't monist anymore, then what are we? An alternative answer that could be offered based on Berlin's work is relativism. Indeed, quite a few communication scholars have used the term when describing the contemporary media environment.
But I'm not sure that it fits for a few reasons. First plenty of the ideas that circulate because of a so-called "rise in relativism" aren't relativist at all. They are really from would-be monists who lack the power to enforce their will (for example, the far-right).
In the case of autocratic governments like Putin's regime in Russia, relativism (or the fostering of relativism) is a strategic tool designed to sow division and undermine their political opponents (on this, see @peterpomeranzev's remarkable work).
So this takes us to Berlin's key idea and his major contribution to liberal thought - value pluralism. Broadly, this is the idea that there are multiple truth systems. They are contradictory and incommensurate (i.e. there is no way to adjudicate between them).
One question dogged Berlin throughout his working life though: is value pluralism really different to relativism? He argued there was a difference - specifically that a value pluralist set of ideas needs to at least be internally consistent. Relativism is a free for all.
What then are the tests we should impose on debate and information in a value pluralist setting? I argue that there are three.
1. Do beliefs come from a value community? (i.e. a set of individuals with a shared set of values and ideas?).
2. Are the ideas of this value system internally logical and consistent? In other words, do they work on their own terms?
3. Does it undermine other value communities? That is, does it prevent co-existence with groups of citizens?
Here's an example of what this might mean in practice. A few months ago, there was a big debate about Covid vacination on a yoga forum which for some reason came across my Twitter feed.
The rough story was that a yoga instructor had posted on a web forum saying getting the vaccine was their act of "ahimsa" (roughly: love). This led to a big debate, drawing in some elements of the community which were anti-vaccination.
The key thing about this debate though is that it take place wholly in the term of that value community, within the context of its internal value system.
To conclude: value pluralism is not relativism nor is it a free-for-all libertarianism. It is not the case that anything goes.
The argument I have offered leaves questions open. What actually defines a value community? Do practitioners of Western yoga count, for example
But Berlin does something very important. He forces us to ask some different questions. Not just what is right or wrong, or true or untrue. But rather rather how do we live together in societies where people do disagree with each other.
Nick Anstead
@NickAnstead
Assoc Prof working on political communication & political ideas @MediaLSE. Also 🧵 nickanstead.
