Television town hall meetings: Publicity and democratic deliberation in the public sphere. A case study of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporationu27s 1996 u22Town Hall with the Prime Ministeru22.

摘要

This thesis is a study of u27television town hall meetings.u27 The term television town hall meeting (TTM) refers to television programmes that feature political discussion between political leaders and a live studio audience of citizens. Public participation in this type of discursive forum appears to represent a democratization of the process of political media coverage and the process of public opinion formation itself. The purpose of this study is to investigate the television town hall meeting as a genre of public political interaction within the public sphere. Livingstone and Lunt (1994: 4) suggest that the mass media are attempting three roles with audience discussion programmes such as television town hall meetings. First, they can u22act as spokesmen for the people to both government and experts, conveying opinions, experiences, information and criticism upwards to the elite.u22 Second, they can u22allow the public to hold politicians to account directly, rather than by proxy.u22 Finally, they can u22provide a social space for communication among the lay public itself, both in the form of the audience and in its relation between studio and home audiences, and thus give everyday experiences and opinions a new and powerful legitimation.u22 This study examines the contributions of television town hall meetings to deliberative democracyu27 in the public sphere according to their ability to promote public advocacy, command political accountability, and provide an adequate social space of public communication.Dept. of Communication Studies. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses u26 Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1999 .B43. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 39-02, page: 0312. Adviser: Myles Ruggles. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1999.