I just finished reading through the Sean Aday and Steven Livingston article (Taking the State out of State), and I'm a little confused.
Not about what Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) or as I'm assured, is an interchangeable term, Epistemic Communities are. I'll come back with my issues on that in a moment.
Aday and Livingston have a valid question; is the media, which is supposed to inform the public biased or been stagnated to depend solely on governmental sources for the presentation of their reports? What hangs me up is this though; what are they're talking about when they say media? Are they referring to "mainstream" media? National media? International media?
Their primary example is a 1973 study of The New York Times and The Washington Post, which found that those media in particular favored government sources over TANs, and was often limited in discussion to the extent that the issue was controversial within government. I'm going to presume they were talking about national popularized media coverage, particularly in the U.S., within the context of during and after the cold war. The chief problems as I see it with their thesis then is this: There are thousands of groups that fit under the authors' definition of TANs in the U.S. (many of them often founded here), but it's questionable whether that all of them would correspond to their own definition of Epistemic Communities. Even if they do, are they relevant?
If we go by the idea that Epistemic Communities are "networked advocates possessing particularly expertise," (Aday and Livingston, 103) we have to define what qualifies as "expertise" and whether or not it's appropriate to associate it "interchangeably" with non-state actors who "develop information that is transmitted, printed and broadcast around the globe." PETA is under this definition a TAN, but I would argue against the idea, based on some of their bizarre and extremist propaganda (not to mention actions), that they are necessarily as reliable and objective a source as other organizations like The International Fund for Animal Welfare on matters of animal protection.
Admittedly, that example was probably biased. But my point is, should news organizations start to quote TAN's on every issue that they report on, it requires a lot of work. Which TAN is an Epistemic Community on any given issue, and which one is not? Which TANs are a proportional counterpart/complement with something of substance to add to an argument and which ones are spouting talking points they read online or in other media? Within the limited amount of space in a newspaper column, who deserves a soapbox and who doesn't?
I'm not arguing against coverage of different views of an issue. All I'm saying is that the government position is orderly and reliable. TANs are not, and we may need a new model entirely before they can be made relevant.
Despite the infinite capacity of the internet (which is a whole different can of worms, but we weren't talking about that medium), I'll get off the soapbox now, and let somebody else have a turn.
The not-for-profit sector has professionalized a LOT since the 1970s - I wonder whether the predominance of government views mentioned in the survey has anything to do with the fact that very few NGOs at the time had professional PR/public communications strategies?
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated by your comment that "the government position is orderly and reliable." Do you mean this as a normative statement, ie that the government position is a good one to promote BECAUSE it's orderly and reliable? Is the problem with TAN analyses that they are disorderly and unreliable? Maybe I'm reading too much here, but it's a very interesting rabbit hole to jump down...