Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Public sphere: The public sphere is a abstract space where people can come together to discuss and debate issues of public concern, where public opinion can be formed and where citizens can hold their government accountable. See also Society, Community, Democracy, Deliberative Democraty, Social Media, Media. _____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Yochai Benkler on Public Sphere - Dictionary of Arguments
Benkler I 176 Public Sphere/Networked Public Sphere/Benkler: Modern democracies and mass media have coevolved throughout the twentieth century. The first modern national republics - the early American Republic, the French Republic from the Revolution to the Terror, the Dutch Republic, and the early British parliamentary monarchy - preexisted mass media. They provide us with some model of the shape of the public sphere in a republic without mass media, what Jürgen Habermas called the bourgeois public sphere. However, the expansion of democracies in complex modern societies has largely been a phenomenon of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries - in particular, the post–World War II years. During this period, the platform of the public sphere was dominated by mass media - print, radio, and television. In authoritarian regimes, these means of mass communication were controlled by the state. In democracies, they operated either under state ownership, with varying degrees of independence from the sitting government, or under private ownership financially dependent on advertising markets. I 177 Networked Public Sphere: The Internet as a technology, and the networked information economy as an organizational and social model of information and cultural production, promise the emergence of a substantial alternative platform for the public sphere. The networked public sphere, as it is currently developing, suggests that it will have no obvious points of control or exertion of influence — either by fiat or by purchase. Def Public Sphere/Benkler: For purposes of considering political freedom, I adopt a very limited definition of “public sphere.” The term is used in reference to the set of practices that members of a society use to communicate about matters they understand to be of public concern and that potentially require collective action or recognition. [However], not even all communications about matters of potential public concern can be said to be part of the public sphere. I 178 The public sphere is, then, a sociologically descriptive category. It is a term for signifying how, if at all, people in a given society speak to each other in their relationship as constituents about what their condition is and what they ought or ought not to do as a political unit. I 181 Def Public Sphere/Habermas: Habermas defines the public sphere as “a network for communicating information and points of view (i.e., opinions expressing affirmative or negative attitudes)”; which, in the process of communicating this information and these points of view, filters and synthesizes them “in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions”.(1) >Habermas/Public Sphere. Taken in this descriptive sense, the public sphere does not relate to a particular form of public discourse that is normatively attractive from some perspective or another. It defines a particular set of social practices that are necessary for the functioning of any complex social system that includes elements of governing human beings. There are authoritarian public spheres, where communications are regimented and controlled by the government in order to achieve acquiescence and to mobilize support, rather than relying solely on force to suppress dissent and opposition. There are various forms of liberal public spheres, constituted by differences in the political and communications systems scattered around liberal democracies throughout the world. I 178 Mass Media/Public Sphere: Mass media structured the public sphere of the twentieth century in all I 179 advanced modern societies. They combined a particular technical architecture, a particular economic cost structure, a limited range of organizational forms, two or three primary institutional models, and a set of cultural practices typified by consumption of finished media goods. The structure of the mass media resulted in a relatively controlled public sphere—although the degree of control was vastly different depending on whether the institutional model was liberal or authoritarian—with influence over the debate in the public sphere heavily tilted toward those who controlled the means of mass communications. >Mass Media/Benkler, >Public Sphere/Schmitt. 1. Jürgen Habermas: Between Facts and Norms, Contributions to Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996)._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Benkler I Yochai Benkler The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom New Haven 2007 |
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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-27