Political Communication as a Tragedy of the Commons
| Published date | 01 May 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00323217221138414 |
| Author | Benjamin Farrer |
| Date | 01 May 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217221138414
Political Studies
2024, Vol. 72(2) 701 –718
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00323217221138414
journals.sagepub.com/home/psx
Political Communication as a
Tragedy of the Commons
Benjamin Farrer
Abstract
In this article, we argue that many contemporary challenges to democracy can be traced
back to how political organizations compete for attention. We begin with the idea that these
organizations appeal for attention both by mobilizing their own members, and also through media
that reaches a wider audience, such as social media and mass media. But since many organizations
are competing for the limited attention of this wider audience, they all have an incentive to
send “too many” and “too sensational” messages. This overwhelms the audience and leads to
polarization and populism. Our article describes the conditions necessary for this “tragedy of the
commons” to occur and also reviews empirical evidence demonstrating that these conditions are
met. We find that social media is not a necessary condition for the model, but does accelerate
it. We conclude that Elinor Ostrom’s theories of the commons are important for understanding
political communication.
Keywords
political organizations, political communication, common pool resources
Accepted: 26 October 2022
Every politician wants to engage the public more honestly, but every political party would rather
win on a 20% turnout than lose on an 80% turnout.
—Matthew Taylor1
There is a big [cultural] challenge that we have . . . where, ok, we’ve created these new digital
spaces, and they are privatized. They have some kind of a public role. A lot of journalists are on
them, a lot of people are on them: those conversations do ultimately matter. And I think so much
of our struggle is around how we analogize what those spaces are, right? Elon Musk, I think
because he is a creature of the internet, and bored, sees it as the public square. Of course it’s not.
Is it a chatroom? Is it a bulletin board at a coffee shop? How we analogize it, the stories we tell
about what Twitter actually is, what all of these digital spaces is, is actually a really big and hard
conversation because it’s not intuitive. Those analogies do a lot of work.
—Jon Lovett2
Department of Environmental Studies, Knox College, Galesburg, IL, USA
Corresponding author:
Benjamin Farrer, Department of Environmental Studies, Knox College, Galesburg, IL 61401, USA.
Email: bdfarrer@knox.edu
1138414PSX0010.1177/00323217221138414Political StudiesFarrer
research-article2022
Article
702 Political Studies 72(2)
Introduction
Populism and polarization are frequently labeled the defining challenges of contemporary
democracy. Much of the blame for both has been left at the door of social media (Bak-
Coleman et al., 2021; Benkler et al., 2017; Bimber and de Zúñiga, 2020; Chambers, 2021;
Dryzek et al., 2019; Forestal, 2020; Franklin-Fowler et al., 2021; Illing and Gershberg,
2022; Klein, 2020; Mason, 2018; Nguyen, 2021; Tufekci, 2017; Vaidhyanathan, 2018;
Van Aelst et al., 2017). However, in this article, we argue that social media has only
exacerbated an underlying problem. This deeper problem is created by the way political
organizations communicate. Most political organizations need public attention in order to
succeed. But since public attention is limited, they must compete for it. This competition
leads to a flood of sensationalist messages, which can overwhelm people’s capacity to
pay attention. The end result is that most people will disengage from politics, and those
that remain will become more polarized. This parallels the problems often encountered in
natural resources, particularly in common pool resources (CPRs). We argue that this
means the “public sphere” (Habermas, 1989) is subject to a tragedy of the commons
(Hardin, 1968; Ostrom, 1990).
The goals of this article are to explain theoretically why this tragedy of the
commons—henceforth TOTC—occurs, and to review the evidence for whether it occurs
in practice. By doing this, we add to existing explanations of populism (Berman, 2021;
De Vreese et al., 2018; Engesser et al., 2017; Mudde, 2019; Norris and Inglehart, 2019;
Waisbord, 2018) and polarization (Guess, 2021; Guess et al., 2020; Klein, 2020;
Levendusky, 2013; Mason, 2018; Munger et al., 2020). We also link these phenomena to
the literature on mediatization and agenda-setting (Bennett and Pfetsch, 2018; Couldry
and Hepp, 2013; Esser and Strömbäck, 2014; Green-Pedersen and Walgrave, 2014; Van
Aelst and Walgrave, 2017). This delivers additional original conclusions. In particular, it
highlights how social media accelerates and extends the tragedy (Benkler, 2006; Blumler
and Coleman, 2010; Farrer et al., 2017; Guess, 2021; Jungherr et al., 2020; Matz et al.,
2017; Rathje et al., 2021), but is not entirely responsible for it in the first place.
We begin with the idea that for actors on the political stage, attracting the audience’s
attention is crucial for success (Barberá et al., 2019; Binderkrantz et al., 2020; Chadwick
et al., 2018; Esser and Strömbäck, 2014; Halpin et al., 2020; Jones and Baumgartner, 2005;
King et al., 2017; Van Aelst et al., 2017). They need it to fundraise, they need it to influence
policy, and they need it to win elections. While it may be going too far to say that “all
publicity is good publicity”; it is true that for most political organizations—parties, interest
groups, and social movements (Farrer, 2017; Fraussen and Halpin, 2018)—public atten-
tion is vital.
Yet it is also limited. Most people are not avid followers of politics (Converse, 1964;
Downs, 1957; Krupnikov and Ryan, 2022; Prior, 2020; Zaller, 1992), and even those who
are, have only a finite cognitive budget of attention (Fisher et al., 2018; Franck, 2019;
Lang and Bailey, 2015; Ocasio, 2011; Prior, 2020; Simon, 1971; Wang et al., 2014). If this
budget is overwhelmed, their attention will be degraded and harder to access in the future.
In economic theory, this makes attention a “rivalrous” resource.3
This rivalry sets two processes in motion, each gradually affecting people based on
their prior interest in politics. First, for people who only follow politics occasionally, it
works almost like the boy who cried wolf. When confronted by too many and too sen-
sational appeals for their attention, these people become alienated and disengaged. This
contributes to the growing divide between the interested and disinterested (Groenendyk
To continue reading
Request your trial