Introduction
The word authoritarian as defined from the Cambridge dictionary means to demand total obedience from and to refuse freedom to act as with ones wish. On the other hand social responsibility is defined from Wikipedia as a duty every individual has to perform in order to maintain balance between the economy and eco systems.
In real sense authoritarian rule and social responsibility both relate to issue with independency and direct control. The earlier being the direct rule imposed on subjects or citizens of a state or country by the government and the latter being the freedom of speech granted to the media to freely air information to the public with no control whatsoever from anyone. Some few examples where Authoritarian rule has been exhibited can be seen in Europe , Britain monarchial system and Arab countries where the king is the sovereign ruler.
Authoritarian rule
Authoritarian rule was characterized by non-democratic treatment of elements, organizations, opinions and policies of the state. Through scientific method we will be able to study on Authoritarian rule which will be through observation, understanding and making a hypothesis prediction and further experimentation to base our conclusion.
The characteristics of authoritarian rule includes:
- No contribution from members of group.
- Leaders prescribe what is to be done, when, how and who to do.
- Decision is made by the leader.
- Members of group are not entrusted with important roles
This power was vested in the autocrats and kings who would then upon advisory from his legal advisors pass the authority to a few media practitioners. The passing of this power acted as if they were licensed by the king himself to carry out their duties. These practitioners would be held accountable for any contravention of the licenses issued to them and this led to many of them being imprisoned and their licenses being invalidated. This led to practical obedience to the powers in the land and close trust and sanction to those who did not follow the set rules or failed to observe respect.
The state took priority over individuals’ right of speech and freedom and the state justified this through all manner of ways. The government held the following concerning the freedom of media agencies:
- The media was obligated to affirm all the regulatory policies the government issued to the public and activities of the government.
- The press was to hold common union of interests with the government in all its operations and induce national cohesion.
- The media was to portray a good image of the government at all times.
- The government had exclusive rights to manipulate the media for the good of the state.
Control by the government meant bureaucracy on what to report, when to report and how to report to ensure not embarrassment to the state, to subdue and smoother any criticism and critics and general control of freedom. The authoritarian government can be best exhibited in areas of Europe in the 1700s. where freedom of the media was limited by persistent government intervention. This form of governance is still being practiced to date in autocratic and monarchial types of government. This led to the free press theory being introduced. The free press theory is also known as libertarian theory which pushed for the rights of the individual against the government. This theory was set by a philosopher of England known as John Locke, a poet and philosopher by the name Lao Tzu and political economist known as John mill. They advocated for freedom of speech to be exhibited in the media. They wrote articles to try and push the government to allow independent media broadcasters to offer information to the state freely as they wished. This would pave way for room of criticism and safeguard the publics’ interests. This theory would to try to reason out that a market of free ideas was effective in the long term although the benefits would not have been realized in the short term.
The study of authoritarian government may be approached under 3 main approaches:
- Individual Authoritarianism as a personality trait.
- Crowd Authoritarianism.
- Authoritarianism as brought by beliefs of individuals/psychological
- Authoritarian rule in intergroups
Individual Authoritarianism is defined as a personal disorder where people have an inclination to be more inhuman, intolerant to changes, strong belief on self-values and culture, and strict adherence to rules lay out by superiors. Theodore Adorno et al. (1950) suggested that bias is as a result of one’s own personality after carrying out a series of studies. He issued a sample test to 2000 Americans who were asked a series of questions that would highlight their feedback on religious views, political views, and moral views among other views. This test was known as F- scale. The F denoted fascism meaning a political ideology present in authoritarian governments.
Roger brown (1965) criticized this view since the respondents were prone to agree with one view because they agreed with other view. Furthermore, Robert Rosenthal (1966) criticized the study by stating that the interviewers knew the test scores and theory therefore the research was biased clearly in the study.
Crowd Authoritarianism can be defined as a situation whereby groups start to reason out and do things together. Andre Lebon (1895-2012) termed Crowds as large number of people who individuality mentality crept into and lost ability to control emotions and thoughts.
The crowd referred to an entity, trade organization, church and family guided by authoritarian influence and losing individual reasoning capabilities. The coming together of people leads to acquiring of new set of values and beliefs that erode personal values and views. The crowd becomes independent of leader and his thinking and cannot be able to do anything without placing their own views (Andre Lebon (1895-2012) on page 87).
Psychological beliefs are later studied by Freud (1920-1998) who has a different view altogether. In his study he comes up with the view of phenomena being influenced by past experiences and childhood factor in their growth. Feud views personality of a mature individual being influenced by self-attempts and to control behavior in an ethical way. Different individuals would have different levels of Libido in stages of growth and it would be upon them to be able to react to them positively. Self-individual is viewed by the theory as affirming right to control the mental state though, the id, ego and super ego is emphasized. The crowd leader is viewed as the figure head, holding super ego and all individuals are to submit fully to thee.
Authoritarian rule phenomena in intergroup
William Graham Sumner (1906) studied the phenomena of authoritarian leadership in inter-groups. Graham studied in-group and out-group feelings and how they led to judging of culture, language, customs, behavior and religion. He argues that ethnocentrism is a disease which affects people causing them to view other people, cultures, race and religion as being inferior to owns. (Sumner 1906; LeVine and Campbell 1972). He further expresses how the individual views his own tribe, culture, race, religion as being superior and virtuous. Ethnocentricity cuts across all angles that may define people and are observable.
Ethnocentrism is viewed to include cognition abilities which make a clear fact that individuals will be able to control their biasness in favor of different groups. ( (Sumner 1906; Simmel 1955; Sherif and Sherif 1956;) Studies undertaken in cognitive psychology have stemmed out that discrimination on groups is conducted with conscious mind.
Abilities to differentiate out-group and in-groups has been related to social groups within the same goups. The in - group and out- group membership is explained to be shaped by culture by (Kurzban, Tooby, and Cosmides 2001).
Conceptualization of inter-group or personal based attribute was later to be brought into existence thanks to Downing and Monaco(1986). Other writers had used the F scale test to deduce the relationship between personal attributes and situational factors. Downing and Monaco found two main conclusions from there study:
- Individuals who had low authoritarianism were deduced to have no clear bias towards in-group and out-group differences.
- Individuals who had high authoritarianism were deduced to have very clear bias towards in-group and out-group differences
Downing and Monaco held that the relationship between personal attributes and situational factors would increase when individuals would make distinction between in-group and out-group differences. This conclusion favored the theorem of authoritarianism personalities in place of hypothesis of information on towards in-group and out-group differences (Downing and Monaco (1986)). They also found that inter group relations did not prefer decrease or increase of authoritarianism. John Duckitt (1989) suggested previous research analyzed authoritarianism as linked to intergroup and a personal attribute. ( Grabb, 1979, Carter 1956, Couch,
Haefner, Langham, Katz & Benjamin, 1960). Failed in to justify empirically or theoretically, primarily because on the psychological assumptions made which were dynamic in nature. Therefore the research conducted by John Duckitt (1989) criticized research done by Ardono et al (1950).
John Duckitt raises awareness on need of emphirical analysis backed by proof to study the
Authoritarian rule in group.
Social responsibility theorem
The free press theory had faced many criticism leveled by different philosophers which led to the creation of social responsibility theory. The social responsibility theorem was formulated in the United States of America in the 20th century by Robert. M. Hurchins, Theodore Paterson and Wilbur Schramm (1940). It was actually commissioned by the Freedom of press movement in 1949. According to the Hurchins report (1947) the media freedom was at stake if the power was in the hands of a few regulators.
It had advocated for the media to safeguard the public in all avenues. The commission instituted had found that allowing the free press theory to govern itself would lead to self-interest among other things governing the media. By the Press being independent and individually owned it would have fit the following requirements:
- Press should govern its self.
- Duty to cover all areas and to touch on serious issues affecting consumers.
- Media is obligated to create democracy in communication
- Press was to ensure high levels of professionalism was observed
- Media was to be independent in terms of race, color, religion, sex, nationality among other things.
- The government and entire public had expectations of press adherence to code of ethics and maintain professionalism in their undertakings.
- The media had a role in fighting and prevention of crime
- Had a duty not only to entertain the public but positively inform them
This theory therefore shows the accountability of the press towards the general public governed by social responsibilities. The general public had a role also to play in ensuring that they were aware of what was being reported by the press.
The theory also held that the burden of weight was not on the media stakeholders only but also on the consumers and government. If the theory would
Development Media Theorem
The development media theorem was leveled by Siebert et al (1956) in the book, Four theories of press and it advocated for support of a government reign and attempts to initiate economic development. This theory revolved along the socio-political and philosophical views held between the media, government and the society. The theory tried to influence the media to positively support the government rather than critiquing all its efforts.
Objectives of this theory includes:
- The importance of national developments.
- Backing of the government.
- Regulation of press institutions.
- Close supervision of practitioners through licensing and development.
- Pursuance of socio-cultural and information independency.
- Control of aired materials through censorship.
- Forming of regulatory authorities.
- Support nationalism
Development media theory argues that the press should be supportive to the government until a nation is developed fully.
Criticism of the theory.
- The theory is a modification of the authoritarian theory.
This shows that the media will be silent even in the wave of poor performance and poor policy making by the government.
- Media has no regulatory watch over it.
This means that the press is left with no one to look into what they do and why they do? This may lead to the media creating a view of profit making rather than safeguarding
Sources
Frezza, D. (2007). The leader and the crowd democracy in American public discourse, 1880-1941. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Norris, G. (2012). The developing idea of the authoritarian personality an historical review of the scholarly debate, 1950-2011. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row (pp. 228).
Four theories of the press: by William Schramm, Sieber and Theodore Paterson
Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation.
Modern France, 1789-1895. Av Andre Lebon. Nettpris: 212
On, M., & Ariel, R. (2008). Freud: Dobrodružství psychoanalýzy (Vyd. 1. ed.). Praha: Garamond.
Margaret A Blanchard, The Hutchins Commission, The Press, and the Responsibility Concept, Journalism Monographs, Association for Education in Journalism, 1977.
