He’s just a harmless little guy.
- Habermas - you need to do two things. One – read “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: by Habermas.
- Two - Using the discussion questions posted to Blackboard as a guide, write a short report on the Habermas book 4 pages, typed, double spaced.
Discussion questions:
- How does Habermas define the public sphere? From where or how did the public sphere originate?
- How does he define the public?
- How does he say the bourgeois public sphere developed? What factor, more than any other, allowed the BPS to develop?
- Hoe does JH define public opinion?
- Contrast “civil society” to “public authority”.
- How does Habermas feel about publicity and public relations?
- Does the public sphere, as Habermas originally conceived of it, still exist? Why or why not?
- Consider the following quote from a blog by Howard Rheingold:
I recently asked Jurgen Habermas in a public forum what his current opinion is about the state of the public sphere, now that the broadcast era has been supplanted by the many-to-many media that enable so many people to use the Internet as a means of political expression. He blew off the question without explanation, and a little further investigation into the very sparse pronouncements he has made in this regard has led me to understand that he simply does not understand the Internet. His ideas about the relationship between public opinion and democracy and the role of communication media, and the commodification and manipulation of political opinion via public relations, are still vitally important. But I think it’s important now to build new theories and not simply to rely on Habermas, who is signalling his ignorance of the meaning of the changes in the infosphere that have taken place in recent decades. He did his part in his time, but the ideal public sphere he described — a bourgeois public sphere dominated by broadcast media — should not be taken as the model for the formation of public opinion in 21st century democracies. Some background on my interest in this subject and Habermas’ personal opinion follows. And then I’ll briefly describe my recent encounter with the man himself.
When I wrote The Virtual Community in 1992, the most important question to me was whether or not the advent of many-to-many communication via the Internet would lead to stronger or weaker democracies, more or less personal liberty, which led me to the work of Jurgen Habermas on what he called “the public sphere.” I quoted him in the final chapter:
Here is what the preeminent contemporary writer about the public sphere, social critic and philosopher Jurgen Habermas, had to say about the meaning of this abstraction:
By“publicsphere,”wemeanfirstofalladomainofoursociallifeinwhichsuchathingaspublicopinioncanbeformed.Accesstothepublicsphereisopeninprincipletoallcitizens.Aportionofthepublicsphereisconstitutedineveryconversationinwhichprivatepersonscometogethertoformapublic.Theyarethenactingneitherasbusinessorprofessionalpeopleconductingtheirprivateaffairs,noraslegalconsociatessubjecttothelegalregulationsofastatebureaucracyandobligatedtoobedience.Citizensactasapublicwhentheydealwithmattersofgeneralinterestwithoutbeingsubjecttocoercion;thuswiththeguaranteethattheymayassembleandunitefreely,andexpressandpublicizetheiropinionsfreely.
In this definition, Habermas formalized what people in free societies mean when we say “The public wouldn’t stand for that” or “It depends on public opinion.” And he drew attention to the intimate connection between this web of free, informal, personal communications and the foundations of democratic society. People can govern themselves only if they communicate widely, freely, and in groups–publicly. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights protects citizens from government interference in their communications–the rights of speech, press, and assembly are communication rights. Without those rights, there is no public sphere. Ask any citizen of Prague, Budapest, or Moscow.
Because the public sphere depends on free communication and discussion of ideas, as soon as your political entity grows larger than the number of citizens you can fit into a modest town hall, this vital marketplace for political ideas can be powerfully influenced by changes in communications technology. According to Habermas,
When the public is large, this kind of communication requires certain means of dissemination and influence; today, newspapers and periodicals, radio and television are the media of the public sphere. . . . The term “public opinion” refers to the functions of criticism and control or organized state authority that the public exercises informally, as well as formally during periodic elections. Regulations concerning the publicness (or publicity [Publizitat] in its original meaning) of state-related activities, as, for instance, the public accessibility required of legal proceedings, are also connected with this function of public opinion. To the public sphere as a sphere mediating between state and society, a sphere in which the public as the vehicle of publicness–the publicness that once had to win out against the secret politics of monarchs and that since then has permitted democratic control of state activity.
What do you think Habermas is trying to say as evidenced the in above quoted material? Based on what he has said in the above two quotes,, would he be likely to welcome in Internet and social media as part of the NEW public sphere?
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