Becoming Pure: The Civil Sphere, Media Practices and Constructing Civil Purification

Abstract

This paper integrates the US civil sphere, European media as practice, and social psychological literatures to demonstrate how people construct their own civil purity and become pure. It uses in-depth interview data to uncover a language of civil purity that people draw on to construct their own belonging in civil society. It argues that some people create an imagined public-at-large that they infuse with polluting qualities associated with the binary cultural codes of civil society. This image functions as a mental heuristic, against which people compare themselves and see themselves as ‘better than’ on a number of moral values associated with civil society. This process of constructing civil purity is linked to one of the civil sphere’s two fundamental social institutions, namely communication. As a form of nonfiction media with record lows in trust and credibility, the mainstream news serves as a social topic through which we can witness the construction of civil purity.