Virtuous Circle, A.

The title and subtitle of this book, A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies, attest to an ambitious program. The book promises an overall picture of political communication, not an extract, a case study, or a snapshot. In using the term virtuous circle—a control loop of mutual strengthening processes—Pippa Norris, McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and presently director of the Democratic Governance Group at the United Nations Development Program in New York City, has chosen a metaphor which is perhaps destined to become a token with a similar sustained yield as it was granted to twostep flow, agenda setting, or videomalaise.

The many facets of videomalaise theory—from Langs via Robinson to Patterson and Putnam—have been applied in research on political communication in the past 10 years. Some claim the media are responsible for the increase in public apathy, mistrust, and cynicism, and television's portrayal of politics is said to undermine the foundations of society. Norris vehemently objects to conventional wisdom, although not always with the necessary differentiation.

The main focus of Norris's argument is developing an effect theory regarding the recipients. She hypothesizes that the more citizens turn their attention to political media information, the more political knowledge, trust in the political system, and civic commitment increase; at the same time, knowledge, trust, and commitment increase the attention directed toward the media. Norris fashions an interplay between the use of political media contents and the formation of political virtues.

Norris tests her hypothesis through secondary analyses of surveys and cannot find any confirmation in the data for the correlations conjectured by theories [Page 811]that suggest that exposure to media result in political disillusionment. Instead, she finds evidence for her assumed mutual positive correlation which she fashions as helical dynamics. Her spiral model rests on empirical groundwork in which the weight is spread out evenly. Norris finds only weak correlations in the single analyses at different points throughout a long period of time, and with different data sets from different political contexts with different variables and methods of inquiry. She relies on the fact that none of the many multivariate analyses is persuasive when looked at individually, but the position is convincing through cumulative evidence.

Logically, the opposite of the upward spiral is the downward spiral: The less people turn to the media, the less knowledge, trust, and commitment they have regarding it. And here, too, mutual amplification would be a plausible interpretation, but Norris only touches on it. Instead, she concentrates on the good side of the coin, or the virtuous circle. However, only the downward spiral can explain the result that political commitment and general use of television correlate negatively. This simultaneity of downward and upward spiral not only is important for the evaluation of the digital divide but suggests other complex relationships between access to information and political attitudes.

Thus, her theoretical figure consists of four elements:

• 1
  The identification of statistically positive correlations between the turn to political media contents and political knowledge, interest, and commitment
• 2
  The assumption of a mutual causal relationship between variables
• 3
  The assumption of a dynamic sampling of this relationship as a result of mutual amplification
• 4
  Assessing this process as politically positive

This Norris subsumes under the metaphor of the virtuous circle, a twofold positive term: A control loop with positive feedback (a process building itself up) is evaluated as positive. Coined by Edith Simon in 1953, virtuous circle is the opposite of “vicious circle” (circulus vitiosus). Both have the same logical structure, but in the vicious circle the vices are amplified, and in the virtuous circle the virtues are amplified. Anyone thinking about cybernetic control loops must ask where the positive amplification, praised by Norris, leads. Where is the negative feedback, or the stabilization through backlash? One possibility could be ceiling effects in committed people or bottom effects in indifferent people. It is also conceivable that the correlation levels off in the time lapse caused, for example, by a decrease in participation. Although Norris does not pose this question explicitly in her book, she hints at it in the most inconspicuous location: the book's dust jacket, which prominently features Pieter Bruegel's painting “The Tower of Babel” from 1563. A spiral escalates into the sky, but the painting does not show where the spiral ends.

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