The Crisis of Public Values in the Age of the New Media

This article argues that with the rise of market fundamentalism with its emphasis on privatization, commodification, and unbridled individualism, those social relations and values crucial to a democracy have been severely undermined and excised from public discourse. As public problems are abstracted from personal troubles, Americans have largely ignored public values, public spheres, and social relationships the provide the formative culture necessary for a democratic polity. I argue that the meaning, use, and effects of the new media cannot be understand outside of the privatizing logic of neoliberalism and that whatever promise it might have has to be understood as part of both the crisis and the promise of a substantive democracy. At the same time, I argue that the issue of public pedagogy has to become central to understanding the new media as a powerful educational force that is central to any viable notion of democracy.