This recent definition, from "A Normative Turn in Political Science" by Boston University's John Gerring and Joshua Yesnowitz (Polity 38, no. 1, January 2006) seems a fine starting point:
. . .although the academy can lay claim to social utility, only social science must pursue that goal in a fairly direct and unmediated fashion. Art for art's sake has some plausibility, and science for science's sake might also be argued in a serious vein. But no serious person would adopt as her thesis social science for social science's sake. Social science is science for society's sake. These disputes look to provide answers to questions of pressing concern, or questions that we think should be of pressing concern, to the general public. We look to pursue issues that bear upon our obligations as citizens in a community -- issues related, perhaps, to democracy, equality, justice, life-satisfaction, peace, prosperity, violence, or virtue, but in any case, issues that call forth a sense of duty, responsibility, and action.
And, indeed, I approach the study of Media and Politics with a bias -- not a left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican bias (although I do have my own policy preferences, to be sure), but with a normative bias about the role of mass media in a healthy democracy. I align myself on this with Alexis deTocqueville, one of the most thoughtful early observers of the nascent American republic:
The argument has been made more recently, and more entertainingly, by Jon Stewart, in his infamous appearance on the now-defunct Crossfire.WHEN men are no longer united among themselves by firm and lasting ties, it is impossible to obtain the co-operation of any great number of them unless you can persuade every man whose help you require that his private interest obliges him voluntarily to unite his exertions to the exertions of all the others. This can be habitually and conveniently effected only by means of a newspaper; nothing but a newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. A newspaper is an adviser that does not require to be sought, but that comes of its own accord and talks to you briefly every day of the common weal, without distracting you from your private affairs.
Newspapers therefore become more necessary in proportion as men become more equal and individualism more to be feared. To suppose that they only serve to protect freedom would be to diminish their importance: they maintain civilization. I shall not deny that in democratic countries newspapers frequently lead the citizens to launch together into very ill-digested schemes; but if there were no newspapers there would be no common activity. The evil which they produce is therefore much less than that which they cure.
The effect of a newspaper is not only to suggest the same purpose to a great number of persons, but to furnish means for executing in common the designs which they may have singly conceived. The principal citizens who inhabit an aristocratic country discern each other from afar; and if they wish to unite their forces, they move towards each other, drawing a multitude of men after them. In democratic countries, on the contrary, it frequently happens that a great number of men who wish or who want to combine cannot accomplish it because as they are very insignificant and lost amid the crowd, they cannot see and do not know where to find one another. A newspaper then takes up the notion or the feeling that had occurred simultaneously, but singly, to each of them. All are then immediately guided towards this beacon; and these wandering minds, which had long sought each other in darkness, at length meet and unite. The newspaper brought them together, and the newspaper is still necessary to keep them united.
Watch the clip, think about Tocqueville, and ask yourself: how deep is the harm that lazy, simple-minded, contentious and insipid journalism (or, as the bloggers say, journamalism) has done and is doing to the republic?
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