Public Sphere

Abstract

Abstract Public spheres may be defined as the collection of places and spaces – from neighborhood cafes to mass media and Internet chat rooms – where private individuals can express their opinion in public, pass judgments, and have the possibility of becoming independent agents in governing the state (Habermas 1989). Ideas about how to transfer this national model to the transnational and even global scale are widespread and have not been restricted to the twenty‐first century. The concept has been extended increasingly from the nation‐state to an international, transnational, cosmopolitan and global level. Public spaces are built from condensed networks of communication. The idea of a public sphere can be found in many modern social theories (for example, Luhmann's concept of a functionally differentiated society) but it was Juergen Habermas who first introduced the idea of a public sphere into modern social theory. In a normative manner, he conceptualized the public sphere within the nation‐state as a sphere of private individuals discussing freely and rationally, where all matters are oriented to the common good, and serving to crystallize public opinion. Public spheres should legitimize the political system, control it and produce transparency. A well‐developed, pluralized and vital media system is one of the conditions for establishing a public sphere and thus democracy within nation‐states. In contemporary modern society, the news media are important in determining who communicates with larger publics. The structures and contents of public spheres are determined by the production routines of the media. The mass media permit the circulation of opinions. We emphasize the role of the media, although some scholars state that the mass media themselves are dominated by money and power and therefore cannot be an independent societal force (Herman & Chomsky 1988).