Abstract:
The Institutional Limits of the Marketplace of Ideas
The market and the media are inseparable, or so it seems, at least when it comes to contemporary liberal democracies. The dissemination and production of political information, as well as public discussion on political affairs, occur in many countries via and within mass media markets. Private companies own and manage television news outlets, radio stations, newspapers, social media platforms, and news websites. These private companies supply their products for profit either directly through subscriptions or paywalls or indirectly through advertising (some do both). Even in countries where parts of the mass media are publicly owned or where there are policies in place that are supposed to ensure market-independent production and dissemination of information, these non-market-based measures are perceived only as supplements to the market—not as a comprehensive, independent, institutional design of the press. Furthermore, in recent decades there has been ‘a convergence toward’ the market-dominated model in most liberal democracies. So even countries where the market in political media is not yet dominant are seemingly on their way to full marketization of the media.
The market and the media are inseparable not only in practice but also, and more importantly for the purposes of this chapter, in normative theory. For more than 100 years, the dominant and developed normative account concerning what should be the institutional design of the press has been the ‘marketplace of ideas’. In brief, the idea is that open, uncensored, unregulated, fierce competition over ideas amongst individuals and media outlets in the market is the best way to achieve the main sought-after institutional functions of the media. The first of these is to foster the discovery of the truth through debate, the exchange of ideas and investigative journalism. The second institutional function is to act as a ‘watchdog’ for the people to prevent abuse of power and corruption by the governing elite. The third is to bolster the ability of citizens to self-govern by informing them about political affairs, providing them with a plurality of competing platforms to express their concerns and making the ruling elite responsive to their wishes. Against this apparently neat normative picture, in this chapter, I argue that for it to live up to its normative appeal, the marketplace of ideas should not, in fact, be fully marketized.
My argument is comprised of three parts. First, building on the distinction between the two concepts of competition that I have established elsewhere, I argue that arguments that appeal to the benefits of a marketplace of ideas fail to distinguish between two different ways in which ideas are designed to compete: parallel competition over ideas, and friction competition over ideas. Subsequently, I show that the marketplace of ideas is compatible only with parallel competition and can undercut friction competition—namely, prevent friction competition over ideas from functioning according to its normative justification. Thus, to secure the social benefits of friction competition (that are wrongly associated with the market), competition over ideas cannot take place exclusively within a market. Second, building on recent empirical work on echo-chambers and media bubbles, I show that although parallel competition over ideas is compatible with the market to an extent, it does not live up to some of its normative promises when fully marketised. That is, since profit-driven and preference-based media rarely promote the discovery of the truth, and although the media is independent of the state, it can lose its independence to players and interest groups within the market. Accordingly, I propose a plausible direction for future reform: a new kind of antitrust law that would focus on securing the correct functioning of parallel competition over ideas. Such a reform would have to be markedly different from existing antitrust laws, which focus solely on economic competition.
In the final step of the argument, I shift from focusing on the marketplace of ideas as an ideal institutional design to the actual market in mass political media. According to the ideal story, in a marketplace of ideas, there is literally a market in ideas. People sell their ideas, and the audience buys the idea that is most appealing to them. In contrast, the actual market in mass political media is, by and large, an advertising-based market of media platforms. Each platform tries to convince people to consume its content in the hope of selling advertising slots (i.e., viewers’ or readers’ ‘eyeballs’) to advertisers to turn a profit. Under such a model, people watch cable TV news (e.g., Fox News) or read a newspaper (e.g., The Guardian) but do not buy an idea per se. That is to say, they buy products from a platform that is associated with particular views, cultures, or values. Thus, my argument is that as long as one supports the normative appeal of the marketplace of ideas, the marketplace of platforms should function in a way that complements it. And to do so, contemporary markets in media platforms should be severely restricted and radically reformed.
You can learn more about Shai Agmon's work here: https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/shai-agmon.