2. The public sphere is the arena
where citizens come
together, exchange opinions
regarding public
affairs, discuss, deliberate, and
eventually form public opinion.
This arena can be a specific place
where citizens gather (for
example, a town hall meeting), but
it can also be a communication
infrastructure through which citizens
send and receive information and
opinions.
3. “Network for communicating
information and points of view . . . the
streams of communication are, in the
process, filtered and synthesized in
such a way that they coalesce into
bundles of topically specified public
opinions.” : -German sociologist
Jürgen Habermas
4. Actors in the Public Sphere
The Individual
The individual who is concerned on a
certain social or political happening
The public
The traditional understanding of the
public refers to an imaginary group of
people that are connected through their
mutual interest in one or several issues
of public concern.
5. Civil society
Civil society is constituted by
organizations and activities that have
no primary political or commercial
character, and are not motivated by
profit or power.
The media
The media, provider of a medium to
discuss issues.
6. INTERNET AND PUBLIC
SPHERE is a medium that has allowed
The Internet
equal opportunity for all participants to share
information. In this sense it has functioned as a
mass medium without the limitations imposed
by other forms of mass media
(eg. – development of web 2.0)
Television and newspapers, in
particular, require large and expensive
infrastructures, and are therefore restricted in
who can afford to own and operate
them, Space and time.
In this sense, comparing the net and other
former media the internet is much a flexible
medium of fostering public discourse on a wide
variety of issues related to the common good.
7. Internet the Medium
For a fully functioning public sphere, it
is necessary to have discussion where
there is two way flow of
communication.
Internet was originally established as
cooperative, non-
hierarchical, communications
system, it was designed to facilitate
the sharing of information both
between individuals and among
groups of individuals.
8. This capability, plus the fact that the
underlying digital technology
supports the whole gamut of multi-
media communications, has made
the Internet the first general
purpose, interactive medium
available to the average person (at
least in the industrialized nations). As
such, it seems natural that it have a
propensity to foster activity in the
public sphere.
10. Access
With the popularity of the Internet
and the Web growing daily, more
and more people are turning to
online media for
news, information, and
entertainment.
Unlike traditional media, most
online media sources offer their
content via the Internet free of
charge, which makes obtaining
news online less costly than
obtaining it from offline sources
11. Interaction
When people get their news from
online sources, they often can also
ask questions, offer comments, state
their opinions, engage in political
debates, or communicate with other
readers, which are all features that
make online media appealing to
readers.
12. 1. Public spheres are spaces of
discourse, often mediated.
2. Public spheres often allow for
new, previously
excluded, discussants.
3. Issues discussed are often political
in nature.
4. Ideas are judged by their merit, not
by the standing of the speaker.
13. Given that there are multiple public
spheres, there are potentially multiple
choices available for study on the
Internet. Online social networking meets
those four criteria, as will be shown. But
that the four criteria do not make
allowances for a radically different form
of public merely because the public is
online. An online public sphere is still a
form of public sphere, online or not, and
so must meet basic public sphere
criteria.
