After reading Chapter 6, I was a bit dismayed to see that little elaboration was offered one of public discourse's most interesting applications: decision-making. Consider page 103, on which the authors describe that communication ethics in the public domain should never involve two unethical acts: refusing to allow contrary ideas to enter the public space, and "refusing to make a decision after grappling with contending ideas." However, in the same breath, the authors acknowledge that a vibrant public arena is marked by an unwillingness to subscribe to temporal decisions--the kind of ideas that come easily, after very little of what we might call careful consideration (Arnett et al. 103). So it seems that the proper context for decision-making is a middle ground; consider too little of the myriad voices in a public space, and the temporal decision of what is "right" or most valid risks the incorrectness of infancy. On the flip side, a conservative approach to decision-making risks the unethical act of refusing to make one, despite all the learning and new insight that might be generated in the extended process.
Decision-making's balancing act in the public sphere calls to mind what role, if any, the private domain should play in the process. It's fair to say that both competing communicative spaces act as authority checks against the other, with public discourse governing what's acceptable in private while private dialogue holds accountable cultural and social attitudes of the public. In the same vein, I'm tempted to see the private arena as a staging ground for decisions made in the public. Examples of this communicative transition in my life are numerous. I ask my girlfriend for her opinion on new University of Minnesota initiatives, comparing her thoughts to my own so we can come to a private understanding on a public matter. My parents express certain ideals and values in our home that come out very differently in public spaces, among strangers and peers. I take stances of hyperbole in private conversations about the same video games that, in my line of journalistic work, I need to approach with objective detachment.
As Arnett and company warn, it's important not to allow the public and private arenas to merge too much. After all, even though "public and private communication ethics support and enhance one another," the decision-making usefulness of the public realm "depends upon the natural dialectic of counterquestioning from public and private realms of human life" (Arnett et al.). But in that necessary counterquestioning, the value of the private sphere as a staging ground for ethical identity in the public sphere is clear. In our homes, intimate social circles, and trusted organizations, we simultaneously question the public arena and develop a preliminary consensus that aids broader societal decision-making when we take our feelings to the grander stage of opinion.
Kyle, I was in a different boat than you on this chapter. I felt they gave examples but they were just not very suitable for our everyday practice. You see I say this because as Americans we are so enthralled by convergence and what media thinks that we sometimes forget our bottom line, To show respect not only for each other but also the areas around us. The space we consume or our public discourse is held to standards and I believe you were able to address this well. It is sometimes hard to make sense of the terms in this book.
ReplyDeleteI do feel that public domain has been converged with the private in recent years with all the politics involved in media and especially around people like Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. I think we as the people put them in a light that forces them to make judgement calls on how they will react to private situations. Our ethical identities as you put it will always be on the chopping block if we allow people to tell us what is ethical and what is consumable by our people. Your examples have given us a clear cut idea of the chapter and I found you blog very useful in giving me some layman's navigation through the spectrum of ideas.