This is a lecture delivered by John Keane on May 18, 2011 at University of Melbourne. Read the full text of the talk.
In this lecture, John Keane explores these conflicting trends and asks: when judged in terms of the democratic principle of free and equal communication, does the age of Google, Wikileaks and Facebook on balance proffer more democratic promise than risk? Or are contemporary media failures the harbingers of profoundly authoritarian trends that might ultimately result in the birth of ‘post-democracy’ – polities in which governments claim to represent majorities that in practice are artifacts of media spin, money, hidden power and force of arms?
Other Relevant Links
- Click here for the version of this paper to be published in The Australian Literary Review
- A review by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, a research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Click here to read the review
