Discuss to what extent do the news media fulfil Habermas' definition of the public sphere? The author will talk about the internet and the public sphere.

by vogue23 (student)

11059354

INTRODUCTION

In this essay the author will discuss to what extent do the news media fulfil Habermas' definition of the public sphere? The author will talk about the internet and the public sphere.

MAIN BODY

The concept of the public sphere has had a long tradition, both in philosophy and also social sciences. The main understanding of the term is based on the work of the German sociologist Jurgen Habermas, whom provided a comprehensive analysis of the nature of the public sphere and also its historic transformations. Habermas defines “the public sphere as the network for communication and points of view, the streams of communication are, in the process, filtered and synthesised in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions”. The public sphere is situated between households and the state. It is a space where free and equal citizens come together and share their opinions and information and also discuss their common concerns.

Habermas’s social theory is interpreted as moving over the years from a Hegelian Marxist orientation to a sort of Kantian orientation, thought not without truth; this view underestimates the unity in his intellectual project. Kant occupies a central place as the theorist who offered the fullest articulation of the ideal of the bourgeois public sphere. However, in this public sphere practical reason was institutionalized through norms of reasoned conversations in which arguments or traditions were to be decisive. Even though, Habermas rejects Kantian’s theories, and its collary historical exaltation of philosophy as arbiter and foundation of all science and culture. In his current work he argues that something remains crucial from the Kantian view of modernity.

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The notion of the public sphere is at the centre of participatory approaches to democracy. The public sphere is the arena where citizens come together and exchange opinions regarding public affairs, discuss and therefore form a public opinion. This arena can be a specified place where citizens gather for instance, town halls where they meet and deliberate these issues they feel needs looking into. This can also be a communication infrastructure through which citizens send and receive information and their opinions. The public sphere can also be good governance, and without a good public sphere, government officials cannot be held accountable for their actions and citizens will not be able to assert any influence over political decisions. Moreover, the idea of a public sphere is normative since it is an ideal of good and accountable governance. Some historical roots of the public sphere will include the ancient Greeks where citizens directly participated in political discussions. The public life was tied to a specific local where their citizens will discuss and exchange their opinions on certain issues. European monarchies where the royal court was the public sphere and only the king would determine what should be said in public. Today, the public sphere is even more strongly tied to the media; it is also defined in relation to the mass media, since the mass media permits the circulation of information and also offers the conditions were forums can function.

Internet and The Public Sphere; the internet is the single most important communication breakthrough of the latter half of the last century. It has revolutionalised how individuals communicate, access information including the mass media and how they respond to and comment on social and political issues. It has been argued that the internet facilitated the philosopher Jurgen Habermas. The internet is singularly the most important development in contemporary communication, which has produced a global public sphere. Every individual has direct access to global forums where they are capable of expressing their personal opinions and arguments without mediation or censorship.

Facebook and a vast number of blogs, chat rooms and discussion boards could fulfil the conditions of a public sphere as a forum for rational and critical debates. One of the theoretical perspectives is that Habermas argues that publicness or publicity of representation was not constituted as a social realm that is a public sphere; rather it was a status attribute. Representation in the sense in which the members of a national assembly represent a nation. (Habermas, 1962). Habermas goes on to argue that European society in the Middle Ages showed no indication of a public sphere as a unique realm distinct from a private sphere, and each stratum of power acted as mere spectators of the authority greater than theirs

However, changes in the Europe’s political structure in the eighteenth century largely embodied in capitalist modes of production and the enlightenment philosophy culminated in the collapse of feudalism heralding the entry of the bourgeois into the centre stage. Whereas the feudal system which made no differences between the state and the society, private and public, the new social order defined the boundaries of state and private lives. More accurately a bourgeois public sphere where members of a property owning, educated reading public were engaged in rational debates on issues primarily relating to politics and literature (Habermas, 1989). Furthermore the bourgeois public sphere worn once again through structural and economic changes paving the way for what Habermas calls the modern mass society of the social welfare state, were critical debates the life blood of the public sphere has been replaced by leisure. In order words the state and society have become in twined into each other’s sphere. Horkheimer and Adorno both argue that the change is the direct result of the mass produced, and the mechanically reproduce culture, which have been manufactures through structural changes in cultural industries. Horkheimer and Adorno suggest that the man with leisure have to accept that the cultural manufacturers offer him (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1995). Horkheimer and Adorno views are simply based on Marxist arguments which suggest the ideas of a ruling class are in every period the ruling ideas (Marx and Engels, 1976). These arguments suggest that the class which controls the means of material production also would control the means of mental production therefore the ideas of those who lack the means of production are subjected to it.

Another sociologist called Antonio Gramsci argued the social groups attain hegemony; this is the dominance by inducing consent of the majority of the subaltern classes, the classes in the subordinate political position within a given social theatre. Horkheimer and Adorno’s views on contemporary culture suggest the cultural industries treatment of culture as commodity and the mass media as a product filtered and packaged for customers based on the market statistics. This has created a media culture where every individual response has been carefully planned by the cultural manufacturers, since as this limits the possibility for any critical though outside of a prearranged equation. The contribution of cultural manufacturers including advertising and also public relations. Habermas arguments have manifested into refeudalisation of the public sphere, where the people in the public have been reduced to the status of spectators whilst the expert opinions have taken over the true public opinions.

Every aspect of culture has been subjected to commercial imperatives of advertising entertainment and public relations and also the mass media to such an extent that any attempts of even creating the illusion of a public sphere by the mass media continue to be governed by bottom lined finances, therefore failing to conform to the broadest notions of public opinion in the public sphere. Moreover, public opinions published in mainstream media continue to be influenced by a series of commercial needs from availability of column space to consideration of possible increases to circulation figures. The internet is a freely accessible medium of mass communication; it has been introduced to this heavily commercialised theatre of mass communication and sparking great expectations in the public’s minds that support the reinvigoration of the public sphere.

Furthermore, it also should be stressed that while mass media have largely failed to create a public sphere, mass in itself at times play a very significant role in gaining and retaining democracy in numerous political threatens.

CONCLUSION

It can also be argued that the internet’s potential in creating the public sphere can be and has to be harnessed by the public intellectuals, if the internet is to fulfil its potential as a forum for public spheres, this arguments can be presented in spite of the risk of over generalization as need for cyber analogues with the cafes and taverns which brought the intellectuals together, however creating an environment favourable for the sharing of ideas and hence the nourishment of a public sphere.