Public Sphere and Blogs

You may have heard of “Public Policy.” We use the term “public” a lot related to public transportation, or public utilities. Basically, all of these terms seem to suggest that these are not privately owned services or resources in a society. These belong to some collective. But, is that all it is? Or is the public something else when we think about the public?

John Dewey defined the public as:

“all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for” – John Dewey

In other words, the public is everyone. It's all of us who are affected by decisions that are being made in our name.

The Public Sphere and Jurgen Habermas

The theorization of the public really gained ground in the idea of the public sphere, which was developed by Jurgen Habermas, a German social theorists in 1962.

Public Sphere is a space to discuss social problems, to debate solutions, and to form agreements about collective ideals and goals. For Habermas, it encompasses institutions, it encompasses spaces, public opinion and discourse/debate. It is not a space in which everyone always agrees. There is not a unified public space, but the public sphere is a space where the public is formed.

Habermas describes the emergence the public sphere in the 17th century based his ideas on this enlightenment ideal.

And really, Habermas situates the public sphere within this entire history of communication.

He understands that the earliest human civilizations were based on the life world. These were tribal affiliations, where people all knew each other. They were often almost all related to one another through, through blood or marriage. And so, everyone was connected in the life world. You were, you're seen as amongst your tribe. Everyone was interconnected through your life's work.

And in the earliest civilizations, what started to happen (as society evolved), there was a splitting of part of the functions of society from the life world – from this sense of your everyday life. A separate sphere emerged as government separated to take on what he called the steering functions of society. So, members of society formed in the elite cast or group within the society. And so in the earliest civilizations you started to see a splitting of government from the rest of people's lives. People would have their lives in one sphere, and then you'd have a government sector that split off to define society (through a social stratification system).

Later with the post enlightenment era, and in the Late Middle Ages, the mercantile class also split from the life world to form the bourgeoise, or the market class. The idea of markets formed, especially in the British colonies, and in the United Kingdom, Germany and France. All saw the establishment of these markets systems or this mercantile class, which split from the life world, in that, it took the economic activities that were going on previously entirely, in the family, and move them out of the home. And you started to see this more and more with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, people no longer worked on their farm which was a family activity – all family member worked together working - and instead, they would go to work at a industry or factory of some kind.

So, you had the life world split yet again. The first time the lifeworld split for government and the second time, the lifeworld split for the economy. These two sections of society – government and economy - basically form what Habermas refers to as the system. The system is constantly trying to colonize the life world - to take parts of what were private family experiences, and, take ownership of them; to colonize those parts of the lifeworld. That's Habermas’ argument.

So part of what became a buffer zone between the private life experiences of your family, your friends, your neighbors – your lifeworld experiences (on the one hand), and the systems of the government or economy (on the other hand) was this space - the public sphere. The public sphere emerged as a space for this discourse between the forces of the system and the forces of the lifeworld. And, that's the theories that Habermas introduced when he introduced the public sphere.

For him the public sphere was really an idealized sense of the world. It was represented in things like pamphlets, and coffee houses, and the New England Town Hall especially became a model for what we understand as the public sphere. In principle, the public sphere was open to all people, and it was based on the principles that rather than being exclusive - in an office or you had to be knighted to be at the round table- right? If you weren’t part of the government or part of a royal family to be in the House of Lords - you had a space in which everyone can come and debate and participate in public life and this was the foundation of democracy.

This is what we mean by democracy in large part today. Is that everyone has the free access to participate. Democracy depends on this idea of a public sphere. It depends on the idea that people can engage together in deliberative decisionmaking in society.

So, for Jurgen Habermas, these participatory ethics depended upon our ability to communicate with one another. The public sphere was based on a set of communicative ethics, he described it as, and he wrote a his Opus Magnus on this notion of communication, and the different forms that communications take in looking at the way which democracy functions. So that's, that's the idea is that the public sphere of Habermas.

Critics’ of Habermas’s ideas of the Public Sphere

And, of course, you can probably already guess, he was not without his critics. He's still has a lot of critics who have looked at his idea and said well that's a very nice story. Dr. Habermas, we very much appreciate the narrative that you're unfolding but it wasn't really ever true.

The critics of Habermas note that women, poor people, non-white ethnic and racial groups were all excluded from this concept of the public sphere. The analysis of the early Enlightenment period and the industrial revolution, generally excluded many groups from those discussions. Feminists such as Nancy Frazier and others have been critical of Habermas for this universal ethic of communicative rationality - this idea that we communicate through a rational means that is primarily and if not entirely based-on white spaces. So Habermas’ conception of the public falls under a lot of criticism.

Another criticism that is has, is it established the “public” within the boundaries of the nation state, rather than this idea of the public sphere as a trans-national component. Many nations were participating in creating spaces. So the public sphere notion really rests on being situated within the nation state according to Habermas, but that's not necessarily the only space in which we can have these discourses - as Nancy Frazier points out again in a separate critique.

And finally, we can imagine, also, that because the public sphere is not this unified definition of the public, people disagree. So there are also spaces for counter publics or subaltern spaces that challenge the hegemonic (dominant) public opinion.

The public cannot be defined as this homogenous force, but because you have this dominant hegemonic space, groups are going to create spaces for those who are excluded - to form their own discussions, their own means for having their subaltern counter publics.

Alright, so the colonization of the public sphere by the market in the late 20th century let’s look at the history of the public sphere.

Colonization of the Public Sphere by the Market – 20th Century Media

We, we see that the history of the public sphere has been one in which many of the public sphere institutions such as newspapers, radio and television didn't develop the kind of free access to participation the way we'd hope they might. Throughout the 20th century, basically the media became corporate owned entities. For example, the radio or televisions were not something that anyone could just broadcast. And we saw this previously with the rise of the printing press. With early printing presses many people could access them and print various communications newspapers start their own. But the rise of the printing presses 18th 19th century led to the monetization of the press by people like Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst who created tabloid journalism - the precursor to today's fake news. In the 19th century precursor this idea of tabloid journalism was already with us –and it was in the hands of a few people.

Likewise TV in the 1950s led to declines and civic participation. While we had this space that was meant to be a public sphere - you had a group of people who were controlling and gatekeepers to that discussion. The news media provided a certain amount of discretion as to what was being presented what – what we call agenda setting.

And so, those independent spaces for public discourse, we saw in the 20th century begin to decrease as the market expanded.

Promise of the Internet to Revive the Public Sphere

By the late 20th Century, the internet promised a new opportunity. Many people saw the promise of the internet as a way to revive the public sphere, it would promote a free exchange of ideas.

We believe that the internet would:

• end inequality

• weaken these unjust political institutions

• provide alternative opinions to the establishment

• improve journalistic quality because everyone could be presenting the news and not rely on mainstream stories and

• hold our political leaders accountable.

But so far it is not work out too well.

• Instead of ending inequality – we’ve seen inequality increased as the Internet has grown

• Instead of weakening unjust political institutions we continue to see the repression by institutions like police

• Instead of providing alternative opinions there's been a mistrust of experts, and as a result, so many opinions, we don't know what to latch on to

• Instead of improving journalistic quality to non mainstream stories, instead of that we've seen less trust, and the rise of this accusation of fake news as an issue. The truth itself has been questioned.

• Instead of holding political politicians accountable, thereby increasing democracy we've seen totalitarian tendencies around the world increase.

So, the peril of the public sphere and the Internet has been one, as we've seen, of this promise starting to fall short.

When we think about the public sphere today, the public sphere has become distinguished by

Algorithms. A lot of it has moved on to the internet. And so when we look at the spaces in which the public sphere is happening - people are discussing ideas on the internet, but Google, Facebook, Twitter and other have monetize the internet though they've created an illusion that there's a public sphere while actually dislodging rational person to person discourse that are the foundation of a common core base of knowledge through which discourse can be had.

So, even though we've had these shortcomings, we still can say, much of what we think of as the ideals of the public sphere can still be found online. That's where it's happening. And there remains the subaltern spaces on the internet that come a little closer to the public sphere in the space for person to person discourse

Where is it happening?

Blogosphere

Well, one is the blogosphere. Blogs have this sense of authenticity. A blog, of course, is a type of website that provides commentary or opinion about issues and can include links to images, videos and other sites. Blogs started out as kind of a public diary of sorts. Blog posts tend to be listed in reverse order with the most recent posting at the top. So, you can continue to watch over time, people's thoughts as they evolve. For groups of people blogs are designed to promote commentary by followers or members.

Now I mentioned this as your third blog is being posted to think about how you are now participating in a sense and an experiment on building your own mini public sphere your own part of the public sphere.

Podcasts

Another place where the public sphere is still today are in podcasts. A lot of people listen to podcasts. They started out as very low cost way to have shows that would be performative digital or audio files. They could be downloaded easily onto a computer or mobile device, and typically are presented as a series. Shows such as This American Life, Stuff You Should Know, and the Joe Rogan Experience are popular among a lot of college students.

And the thing with podcast is there is a very low barrier to entry. It doesn't require a full studio. Many people can do their podcast by finding ways to create a soundproof environment in their home. And it's this disembodied form of discourse, so it has very little time constraint. It's not like the newshole that we saw on the media last week. Podcasts create a sense of private intimacy with listeners that changes the kind of sense of the personal and the public.

It restores these boundaries of the public sphere with the life world. And because there's there's low barriers to entry. It doesn't require a big market investment.

That said, we're watching a similar thing happened with podcasts and with blogs that we watched happened to the newspapers years ago. As podcasters look for ways to monetize their work they bring in commercial influences. And as it become monetized, what is happening to that industry? What is that doing to the contemporary public sphere?

And so finally, I want to suggest that the public sphere is not only online.

• The public libraries around the world increasingly emphasize their role as part of the public sphere in society.

• We still have the growth of civic groups and associations they they've taken a decline, but in many ways these have returned.

• Local governments are a source of engaging public deliberation still

• And I like to believe that colleges and universities bring lectures and events to have conversations and engage with different people in discourse about important issues.

I like to think of a course like this Social Problems as a space where we maintain the public sphere, for us to discuss issues.

Future of the Public Sphere

The question though around the public sphere is whether or not we need to have a single national identity for a healthy public sphere.

This is part of the debate the 2020 pandemic, the reckoning around racism, the storming of the US Capitol on January 6th. These all expose long standing divisions in the United States.

And so there may not be a single public sphere, but perhaps there are multiple subaltern and counter public spaces in which we can get together to better understand one another - spaces in which we can discuss important issues of our day.