Public Information and Field Theory

Abstract

Public information, dispensed by government and other social groups, has become an increasingly vital aspect of politics. In this article, we examine the prevailing views of public information that depict it either as an enlightenment process for citizens or as a government strategy to persuade the public that government policies are sound and deserve support. Because we find these views flawed in major ways, we develop and explain a different theoretical perspective based on a merger and reworking of Stuart Hall s "encoding/decoding model" and Pierre Bourdieu s "field theory." The new approach looks beyond the flow of messages from senders to receivers to the social and political context in which the exchange takes place. Unlike other approaches, it does not exaggerate the significance of public information messages. We illustrate the merits of our perspective with examples drawn from public information about employment opportunities for ethnic minorities in the Netherlands.

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