The construction of the public in letters to the editor : Deliberative democracy and the idiom of in... Deliberative democracy and the idiom of insanity

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
Beteiligte: Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin
In: Journalism, 3, 2002, 2, S. 183-204
veröffentlicht:
SAGE Publications
Medientyp: Artikel, E-Artikel

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Umfang: 183-204
ISSN: 1464-8849
1741-3001
DOI: 10.1177/146488490200300203
veröffentlicht in: Journalism
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagwörter:
Kollektion: SAGE Publications (CrossRef)
Inhaltsangabe

<jats:p> Drawing on an ethnographic study, this article describes how the editorial-page staff at one San Francisco Bay newspaper think of the letter-writing public. It is suggested that the staff are skeptical about the value of the letters section as a site for democratic communication because of what they perceive as the poor quality of public participation, as well as the non-representativeness of the letter-writers. To be more specific, the editors speak the ‘idiom of insanity’, which plays off the idea that contributors to the section – the members of the letter-writing public – are insane or ‘crazy’. This article examines the manifestations of the idiom of insanity and analyses its implications for deliberative democracy; it also suggests that the use of the idiom of insanity is a way for the staff to distance themselves from their work on letters to the editor, and renounce their responsibility to make democracy work. </jats:p>