Towards Infocracy: The Fate of Journalism from the News Product to the Crisis of the Public Sphere

Abstract

In the digital age, the concept of news relevance seems to be fraying, and the activity of selecting what is considered most important collides with much more complex problems of defining meaning, caused by less compact and coherent visions of the world. If it becomes increasingly difficult to arrive at a shared understanding of what is relevant, important, and interesting for the public to know, as worldviews and benchmarks proliferate, then the only possible measure seems to be to reward what is popular, what is successful, and what produces market-driven journalism. This is an example of what then led to the definition of so-called public journalism, a form of journalism that is attentive to the demands of the public and willing to give more space to the considerations and perceptions of users. However, by transforming itself into a “product”, journalism also changes the public’s sense of use, which is no longer to use information to acquire what one needs to know, but what one wants to know. The public exposes itself to what is culturally closest and shared, often allowing subjective emotions to prevail over the evaluation of facts. Through an analysis and critical comparison of recent international readings on the subject, this paper attempts to reconstruct, from a socio-mediological point of view, the path taken by journalism in the digital age, focusing on the value of news, the relationship with the audience, up to the crisis of the public sphere and the birth of infocracy following recent global crises.