Democracy through "mass media"? - The right to be informed and the limits de facto to its full effectiveness

Abstract

The acknowledgment, in several legal systems, of the right to be informed has not been followed by an accurate assessment, by jurists, of the potential political effects resulting from this recognition. The factual limits to the full effectiveness of this right — the increasing complexity and specialization of State managements; the impossibility of identifying public opinion with "people's will" as conceived by Democratic Theory; and the problems brought in by the participation of mass media in the information process - have not been considered so far. Although these limits do not allow us to regard the right to be informed as politically ineffectual, they prevent the transformation of contemporary states into electronic ágorai.