Airtime: the public sphere, the public screen, and AIDS activism in contemporary North America

Abstract

Through a complex web of technological innovations, social and political changes, and market forces over the last century, we have witnessed vast changes in the arrangement and environments of public and private space. Douglas Kellner observes that "a media culture has emerged in which images, sounds, and spectacles help produce the fabric of everyday life, dominating leisure time, shaping political views and social behavior, and providing the materials out of which people forge their very identities" (Media Culture, 1). The introduction of visual media such as television and personal computers, as well as the popularization of the internet over the last two decades, has brought about major shifts in our conception of the public sphere. Most notable is the transformation, outlined by Jurgen Habermas, from the bourgeois public sphere to a public sphere marked and shaped by mass media and spectacle. Ideally, Habermas' bourgeois public sphere is structured as a social space in which private citizens may assemble to discuss, debate, and come to consensus in order to mediate between the state and civil society. According to Habermas, however, this ideal has been brought to its demise largely because of the influence of the mass media. Habermas' ideal public sphere rests on notions of consensus brought about by rational debate which has been replaced by consumption and uncritical reception. He concludes that the "world fashioned by the mass media is a public sphere in appearance only" (Structural Transformation 171).