□ Abstract
A Study on the Types of the 'Public Interest' Concept which Broadcast Policymaking Participants Recognize
By Jina Bae
The 'public interest' concept is often discussed in the broadcasting policymaking process. However, the concrete and substantial definition has not been established yet. It results from the normal function of the concept. This study pays attention to hypothesis that it is due to the normal function of the concept and tries to verify it.
For this, the Q methodology, an unartificial and hypothesis-creative method, is adapted to analyze the subjective perception of the individual policymaking participants and also to discuss 'the consent area' and 'the conflict area' of the perceptions.
As a result, the three types of 'idealistic public interest', 'market-liberalist publid interest' and 'guidant public interest', are found among the participants. All of these types appear to agree on the normative concerns in the conceptual dimension, such as the independence from the political and economic influences and the pursuits for the audience welfare. However, obvious conflicts were found in the dimension of 'subjects' and 'methods' for the actualization of the broadcasting public interest. Each type accordingly argues that the public interest can be realized through the public regulation by citizen society (type 1), the self-regulation by market (type 2), and the institutional regulation by the governmental organization(type 3).
This disagreement reflects the diverse stances of the broadcast policymaking players, specifically representing, the type 1 for citizens as sociations, the type 2 for commercial broadcasting corporates and the type 3 for the public concept stems from the discrepancy of the interests that each policy maker pursues, and thus leads to the conflicts in the actual policymaking process.
This study also shows some implications concerning the broadcast policymaking process. First, the players need to develop more specified policy goals from the consent area, and also to minimize the conflict area by finding a systematic device that links the three perspectives of citizen's regulation, market self-regulation, and governmental regulation. This linkage can be established through the formation of pan-citizen group or the institutional guarantee of representativeness of regulation bodies. Secondly, the operation rules, which enable pluralistic consent, are required for the fair game of the players who are various in power and size.
Two limits of the study can be pointed out. First of all, it fails to provide sufficient explanations as to the complicated mechanism of the policymaking process. Also, it did not clearly find out the cause for the difference in the player's perception of the public interest. Nevertheless, this study is meaningful in that it analyzes the sources of the policy conflicts by uncovering 'the consent area' and 'the conflict area' and subsequently draws out policy implications.
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