OPINI PUBLIK FAKULTAS ILMU KOMUNIKASI UNIVERSITAS GUNADARMA

PUBLIC OPINION

HABERMAS: PUBLIC OPINION KONTEKS tTEORI DEMOKRASI, PUBLIC OPINION merupakan tindakan individu secara kolektif/bersama dalam menentukan siapa yang akan menjadi pemimpin mereka. Jurgen Habermas = opini politik pribadi dari setiap individu berubah menjadi opini publik seluruh masyarakat, yang tercermin dari pemilihan suara dan digunakan sebagai saran oleh pemimpin politik yang berkuasa.

PUBLIK NO.KLASIFIKASIKETERANGAN 1 Publik internal dan publik eksternal Publik internal = publik yang berada di dalam lembaga, publik eksternal = Publik yang berada di luar lembaga 2 Publik primer, sekunder, dan marjinal Urutan dan prioritas publik yang perlu diperhatikan lembaga 3 Publik tradisional dan publik masa depan Pegawai dan pelanggan adalah publik tradisional, sedangkan seperti konsumen potensial, pemerintah adalah publik masa depan 4 Proponents, opponents dan uncommited opponent: kelompok yang menentang lembaga, proponents: yang memihak, dan uncommited: tidak peduli. 5 Silent majority dan vocal minority Ditinjau dari aktivitas publik dalam mengkomplain/mendukung lembaga. Contoh: penulis di koran: vocal minority, mayoritas pembaca: silent majority.

THE MEDIA & THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS Five functions of the communication media in ‘ideal- type’ democratic societies: 1. First, they must inform citizens of what is happening around them (what we may call the ‘surveillance’ or ‘monitoring’ functions of the media). 2. Second, they must educate as to the meaning and significance of the ‘facts’ (the importance of this function explains the seriousness with which journalists protect their objectivity, since their value as educators presumes a professional detachment from the issues being analysed)

THE MEDIA & THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS Third, the media must provide a platform for public political discourse, facilitating the formation of ‘public opinion’, and feeding that opinion back to the public from whence it came. This must include the provision of space for the expression of dissent, without which the notion of democratic consensus would be meaningless. The media’s fourth function is to give publicity to governmental and political institutions – the ‘watchdog’ role of journalism. Finally, the media in democratic societies serve as a channel for the advocacy of political viewpoints. Parties require an outlet for the articulation of their policies and programmes to a mass audience, and thus the media must be open to them.

THE MEDIA & THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS Furthermore, some media, mainly in the print sector, will actively endorse one or other of the parties at sensitive times such as elections. In this latter sense, the media’s advocacy function may also be viewed as one of persuasion. For Habermas, the political discourse circulated by the media must be comprehensible to citizens. It must also be truthful, in so far as it reflects the genuine and sincere intentions of speakers (one may, for example, have disagreed with the politics of Margaret Thatcher, while acknowledging that she genuinely believed in the positive effects of an unrestrained free market)

THE MEDIA & THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS Hauser summarises Habermas’s views thus: First, the [public sphere] must be accessible to all citizens.... Second, there must be access to information.... Third, specific means for transmitting information must be accessible to those who can be influenced by it... [and] there must be institutionalised guarantees for [the public sphere] to exist. (Quoted in Cooper, 1991, p. 32) In short, democracy presumes ‘an open state in which people are allowed to participate in decision-making, and are given access to the media, and other information networks through which advocacy occurs’ (ibid., p. 42). It also presumes, as we have stated, an audience sufficiently educated and know- ledgeable to make rational and effective use of the information circulating in the public sphere.

The Media & The Democratic Process: A Critique A Failure of Education Absence of Choice Capitalism & Power Manufacture of consent: consent, as Walter Lippmann observed in the work cited above, can be ‘manufactured’. ‘The manufacture of consent’ (1954, p. 245), indeed, had as early as 1922 become a ‘self-conscious art’ in which politicians combined the techniques of social psychology with the immense reach of mass media.