THE free trade of ideas, the exchange of ideas, the competition of ideas on truth and falsehood. Perhaps, this is how history works in what becomes history. It is the same with democracy.
We are sorted into political communities made possible by the media, evolved from the idea of modern journalism beginning in early 1800s, and some decades henceforth appearing on our shores.
What we have now become is being plugged into disparate, often contradicting media outlets. Have we talked to each other? Can we discuss, debate, and perhaps deliberate, across our differences?
Media studies scholar and former broadcast journalist Geoffrey Baym explores the question on how media relate to and impact democracy and democratic practices.
To ask that question is also to reconsider the role of media in a democracy, shifting our focus from the media's work in providing information or inculcating identities, to their role in facilitating communication, circulating ideas, and connecting voices.
In a recent issue of JSTOR Daily, a digital newsletter for scholars, researchers and students, Baym in "How Media Stifles Deliberative Democracy", explores the critical mode of democratic communication.
He returns to the power of an idea, competing itself in the market, invoking the ideal of the Athenian agora, the Greek space of commerce and assembly. He proposes a different space. That space is not a marketplace, but a public square.
Both metaphors imagine a gathering place, but unlike the market and its functions in facilitating commerce, the public space provides space for the reasonable discussion of public affairs.
Democracy itself can be reconsidered. It is not a victory for one side or the other, nor the accumulation of capital (either financial or symbolic), but a communicative back-and-forth.
Baym argues on a truly public opinion. He explains that a public space is a space for the deliberative exchange of ideas and arguments and the mutual pursuit of a common good.
The emphasis is on deliberation — thoughtful and reasonable discussion aimed at understanding.
This is also structured in Malay society in the Archipelago, the deliberation of action through verse and prose. The pantun and the various forms of orality in the Minangkabau tradition are examples of the deliberative exchange of ideas.
Enabling rational-critical discussion among the citizenry is what philosopher and social theorist Jurgen Habermas once described as "the unforced force of the better argument".
From this perspective, Baym argues that the democratic function of media is to fuel, host and model deliberative exchange: Fuel by offering an array of ideas and arguments, host by creating formats in which public representatives can engage in conversation, and model by enacting and demonstrating deliberative practices.
We see this in the practice of letters-to-the-editor, and that the daily newspaper's op-ed pages as a mediated form of the public square.
The same goes for public affairs television and radio programmes. In the social media, many were hopeful that new communication technologies would empower voices and enable spaces of democratic deliberation.
That early idealism, however, would appear to be negated by the emergence of filter bubbles — self-affirming opinion enclaves, which may lead to incivility and extremism.
We are indeed exposed to differing voices and opinions online. But, encounters with the other rarely result in deliberative exchange, however. Instead, contrary positions function as dramatic foils — a them to our us, the enemy around whom we are called to rally.
Partisan positions hardened. Exchanges in the (social) media must be deliberative, rule-governed. And that free speech, including press freedom, has never meant all speech. There is the all-to-established slander, libel and sedition.
Let this be explicit in the nation's public discourse. Public conversation about social media is missing the point that these need to be governed. Decorum and democracy, either in Parliament,or in cyber space, cannot be divorced.
The power of social media lies in its ability to broaden the discursive field. Groups should enable radically more participants, voices and perspectives.
At the same time, chaos, and perhaps anarchy, of free speech absolutism, can lead to deliberative dysfunction. As such, we need to deliberate on the deliberative processes for and within the ecosystem of social media.
The processes must be structured to encourage inclusion, measured by reasonableness — what in the Malay psyche goes with the parlance of patut (reasonable and proper), and timbal (balanced, both sides). It is talking to one another, not to other the other.
Remember, modern journalism, and through the social media, remains a public and a national document.
The writer is professor of social and intellectual history, International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation, International Islamic University Malaysia