The Public Sphere

Deliberative democracy and the digital public sphere: Asymmetrical fragmentation as a political not a technological problem

The present-day popular advocacy of the 'European public sphere' is not only a normative-theoretical endeavour, but largely also an expression of the general (political) dissatisfaction with a neoliberal domination of economy over other political issues essential for democratic citizenship in the 'New Europe', or a reaction to an imbalance between the intense economic and rather sloppy political integration, and the democratic deficit in the decision-making. The idea of a pan- European post-national political public (sphere) contains an enlightened humanist ideology focused on its emancipatory potential, but it may also denote the fabrication of a fictitious Europe of elites without citizens if not deep-rooted in the concept of the 'strong' public sphere. The genealogy of the 'public (sphere)' demonstrates that the contemporary concept should be considered neither selfevident nor coherent. The article relates the concept to its late-18th-century ancestors and delineates main currents of thought in the subsequent two centuries. The concept of the weak public sphere dominates both in theory and in empirical research, and thus also in many contemporary media-centred studies of the/a 'European public sphere', which tend to reduce its definition to 'the lowest common denominator'.

The public sphere is the space of communication of ideas and projects that emerge from society and are addressed to the decision makers in the institutions of society. The global civil society is the organized expression of the values and interests of society. The relationships between government and civil society and their interaction via the public sphere define the polity of society. The process of globalization has shifted the debate from the national domain to the global debate, prompting the emergence of a global civil society and of ad hoc forms of global governance. Accordingly, the public sphere as the space of debate on public affairs has also shifted from the national to the global and is increasingly constructed around global communication networks. Public diplomacy, as the diplomacy of the public, not of the government, intervenes in this global public sphere, laying the ground for traditional forms of diplomacy to act beyond the strict negotiation of power relationships by building on shared cultural meaning, the essence of communication.

The idea of the “European public sphere” is part of the ongoing discussion about European integration and the further development of the European system of democratic governance. The question of whether there can be an overarching European public sphere alongside the existing national public spheres in European member states is the subject of lively scientific and political debate. In several publications on European Governance, the European Commission has clearly stated that it regards the “inadequate development” of a European public sphere and the public’s disenchantment with EU politics as deficiencies of European democracy. This chapter summarises the debate concerning the need for a transnational European public sphere and how to develop this as an integral, intermediate, democratic structure between European policy-making institutions and the European constituency. Conceptual arguments are discussed concerning the role of the public sphere and related concepts—citizenship and civil society—in transnational democratic governance, and empirical evidence is provided for the Europeanization of the political public sphere. This is set against a consideration of political communication on the Internet and the Internet’s potential to support the emergence of transnational forms of citizenship and transnational political publics.

This article aims at shedding light on how civic engagement matters for the emergence of a European public sphere. It investigates the citizen's role in constituting it and asks how citizens, being located in different cultural and political contexts, participate in and appropriate EU political communication. First, the article develops a pragmatic approach to the European public sphere emphasizing the importance of citizens' communicative participation and, moreover, considers the transnational and transcultural character of European political communication. It is assumed that the constitution of public spheres – representing social constructions fulfilling democratic functions – ultimately relies on the citizen audience's (media based) perception of the impact of common problems and the EU's political decisions as well as on their subsequent participation in public discourses. The second part of the article presents the findings of empirical case studies conducted in France, Italy and Germany to explore citizens' engagement in and appropriation of the European constitutional debate.

Introduction - Page 17 - Ib Bondebjerg and Peter Madsen Chapter 1: 'The Political Economy of the Media at the Root of the EU's Democracy Deficit' - Page 25 - Sophia Kaitatzi-Whitlock Chapter 2: 'Media: the Unknown Player in European Intergration' - Page 49 - Hans Jorg Trenz Chapter 3: 'Social Networks and the European Public Sphere' - Page 65 - Hannu Nieminen Chapter 4: 'Journalistic Freedom and Media Pluralism in the Public Spheres of Europe: Does the European Union Play a Role?' - Page 83 - Deirdre Kevin Chapter 5: 'The Berlusconi Case: Mass Media and Politics in Italy' - Page 107 - Paolo Mancini Chapter 6: 'European Journalism and the European Public Sphere' - Page 121 - Peter Golding Chapter 7: 'Telvision News Has Not (Yet) Left the Nation State: Reflections on European Integration in the News' - Page 135 - Claes de Vreese Chapter 8: 'The Europeanization of the Danish News Media: Theorizing the News Media as both National and Transnational Political Institution' - Page 143 - Mark A rsten Chapter 9: 'Just Another Missed Opportunity in the Development of a European Public Sphere: The European Constitutional Debate in German, British and French Broadsheets' - Page 157 - Regina Vetters Chapter 10: 'Rare Birds: The 'Why' in Comparative Media Studies. Nordic Ideal Types of Good European Journalism' - Page 177 - Vanni Tjernstrom Chapter 11: 'The Cultural Dimension of Democracy' - Page 197 - Jostein Gripsrud Chapter 12: 'The European Imaginary: Media Fictions, Democracy and Cultural Identities' - Page 215 - Ib Bondebjerg Chapter 13: 'Writing the New European Identities? The Case of the European Cultural Journal Eurozine' - Page 237 - Tessa Hauswedell Chapter 14: 'Intellectuals, Media and the Public Sphere' - Page 253 - Peter Madsen Chapter 15: '(De)constructing European Citizenship? Political Mobilization and Collective Identity Formation Among Immigrants in Sweden and Spain' - Page 267 - Zenia Hellgren Chapter 16: 'Misrecognitions: Associative and Communalist Visions in EU Media Policy and Regulation' - Page 287 - Richard Collins Chapter 17: 'Between Supra-national Competition and National Cultures? Emerging EU Policy and Public Broadcasters' Online Services' - Page 307 - Hallvard Moe Chapter 18: 'The Effects of the Membership Processes of the European Union and Media Policies in Turkey' - Page 325 - Mine Gencel Bek Chapter 19: 'Re-conceptualizing Legitimacy: The Role of Communication Rights in the Democratization of the European Union' - Page 341 - Julia Hoffmann

Being a master of metaphors

A recent trend in communication studies has seen increased attention to delineating the rhetorical dimensions of publics, public spheres, and public opinions, a project largely inaugurated by Gerard Hauser's (1999)Vernacular Voices. This intervention has shifted the focus from elite discourses of public officials in institutional spaces to everyday acts of discursive engagement in more quotidian and diverse public fora. Meanwhile, theories of “deliberative democracy” have come to be a dominant strand of democratic theory among political scientists and political philosophers. Proponents of the deliberative turn consider deliberation, plurality, and public participation essential to a healthy democratic polity and argue that “consensus based on reason-giving” should be the goal (Dryzek 2010, 322). As such, and continuing a long line of criticism that runs from Plato to Kant, Rawls, Habermas and others, rhetoric is often treated in deliberative democratic theory as the opposite of rational deliberation and as a tool to be used merely to persuade rather than to prove (Dryzek 2010, 322–23).More recently, however, there has been an upsurge of deliberative democratic theory that employs a rhetorical lens or rhetorical concepts and that seeks to emancipate rhetoric from its Platonic and Kantian shackles, such as Bryan Garsten's Saving Persuasion (2009) and Robert Ivie's “Rhetorical Deliberation and Democratic Politics in the Here and Now” (2002). Seeing see deliberation as necessarily rhetorical, these theorists shed light on the essentially controversial and agonistic nature of political debate, dialogue, and decision making. They view rhetoric not as merely monodirectional or a form of deceit but instead recognize that rhetoric occurs across multiple public settings and circulates throughout various publics.Continuing to push this dialogue further, Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation, a collection of essays edited by Christian Kock and Lisa Villadsen, adopts a rhetorical lens to consider public deliberation, political discourse, and democratic society. In a well-crafted introduction, the editors advance the concept of rhetorical citizenship as a unifying perspective for developing a cross-disciplinary “understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon.” In this connection, they argue that “discourse is not prefatory to real action but in many ways is constitutive of civic engagement” (1). Through eighteen chapters divided into three sections, the contributing authors use rhetorical citizenship as an umbrella term to engage a number of discursive sites, citizen actors, and various publics and public controversies in both theoretical musings and practical, international case studies on deliberative democracy. Overall, the essays marshal “a diversity of actual deliberative practices” in considering “how everyday people participate in and practice citizenship, and how everyday practices might be enhanced” (8).The authors proffer citizenship as a mode of political activity and as a discursive and deliberative process that requires public reflection and entails a rhetorical orientation to the arguments and debates that take place in democratic society. Enacting rhetorical citizenship is thus not merely constituted by “deliberative exchange among representatives and citizens across multiple sites” (4). It also requires “internal deliberation” by citizen actors with regard to the public arguments put forth by their political representatives and other public officials. Rhetorical citizenship is a process that requires both citizens' rhetorical output and their discursive, critical engagement with political discourses. To these ends, the individual authors consider “actual civic discourse” that occurs across multiple sites and through a multiplicity of actors at the same time that they interrogate notions of rhetorical agency and issues of “voice, power, and rights” (7). Further, although proponents of deliberative democracy take consensus and the elimination of conflict as their end goal in public debates and controversies, this collection affords a space for considering the productive and emancipatory nature of conflict, contention, and agon in the public sphere and within public spheres—while also looking ahead to rethink consensus and deliberative norms in general.Throughout the collection, the authors draw heavily on rhetoricians and political philosophers, including Gerard Hauser, Robert Asen, Robert Hariman, Kenneth Burke, Jürgen Habermas, and John Dryzek, among others. While the overall themes of the book are centered on deliberation and rhetoric, scholars from communication studies, discourse analysis, and political philosophy, along with fields outside the humanities such as political science and sociology, all contribute to the dialogue. Developed initially for the 2008 “Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation” conference in Copenhagen, the individual chapters in this collection represent this disciplinary diversity while bringing together academic voices from throughout the international community as well. Each chapter is prefaced by a brief introduction written by the editors, effectively organizing and clarifying the objectives that tie the essays together. As a brief review does not afford space to consider each of the eighteen individual chapters in this collection, my aim here is to reflect on several essays from each section, all of which serve to illuminate the book's broader themes and contributions.The book's first section provides the historical precedents for deliberative democracy, rhetorical citizenship, and the idea of the public forum. Kasper Møller Hansen, a political scientist, traces the origins of deliberative democracy through political thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey. While contemporary theories of deliberative democracy are often regarded as constituting a new scholarly trend, such dialogues have their roots with these historical political thinkers and with earlier conceptions of the republican tradition. While Hansen provides a historical background for deliberative democratic theory, Manfred Kraus traces the origins of rhetorical citizenship to ancient Greece. Kraus persuasively argues that the Sophists' “analysis of operational truth with respect to the contingencies of human life,” along with their belief in the “constant negotiation between contradictory points of view as observed in the Athenian practice of political assemblies and law courts, laid the ground for the concept of citizenship” (40). Kraus argues that there was never a Sophist philosophy of rhetoric per se, but when brought together the individuals who identified with sophistry constituted an intellectual movement that presaged Aristotle's later inauguration of rhetorical theory. Finally, tracking and comparing the development and ultimate failure of forums, town halls, and public meetings in France and the United States, William Keith and Paula Cossart tease out some of the fundamental tensions that complicate the ability of citizens to enact their rhetorical citizenship in various discursive contexts. Together, the essays in this section productively set the stage for the remainder of the collection, offering a historical grounding for the main themes of the book as a whole: deliberative democracy and its republican roots; citizenship as a fundamentally rhetorical, discursive, and agonistic practice; and the need to identify alternative discursive sites where citizens can and do participate in political discussions and perform strategies that mitigate the problems and pitfalls of the formal political sphere.Broken up into three parts, the twelve essays in section 2 break some new ground in terms of theory building and for considering non-discursive norms for engaging in political action and public deliberation. Part 1 of section 2 is perhaps best represented by Marie Lund Klujeff's essay and case study on what she calls provocative style. Political debate can be messy. It does not often live up to the ideals or follow the conventions espoused by political theorists and academics. In the political arena, participants may meet discursive challenges that limit or diminish their ability to effectively contribute to debate and thus must adopt unconventional rhetorical strategies that afford an agentive capacity. Klujeff argues that employing a provocative style in public debate can serve as a “deliberate violation of the norms of official communication and communicative action,” instantiating a “stylistic parody [that] functions as refutation by mockery” (105–7). In the internet debate that Klujeff tracks in her case study, the use of such a non-normative stylistic tactic indeed resulted in “offense and irritation.” However, it simultaneously gave “rhetorical salience to the conflict” for a much wider audience that would have otherwise not been engaged. It also allowed for the citizen provocateur to participate and contribute to the deliberative process. Similarly, in “Virtual Deliberations” Ildiko Kaposi also looks to an online forum to argue that “the criteria for judging deliberative talk need to be treated and interpreted flexibly, and modified according to the circumstances in which deliberation and discussion occur” (119). In all, the four essays in part 1 of section 2 argue that breaking the rules of decorum in public deliberations can serve important rhetorical functions. Such non-normative, provocative strategies do not necessarily seek consensus but instead aim to further community building, help circulate political discourse, and foster moral respect between both debaters and broader publics.The four essays in part 2 examine elite discourse in order to “study how notions of citizenship are portrayed and realized by agents in positions of power and influence” (63). The authors look across multiple public settings and interrogate political subject matter from the literary public sphere to gendered war rhetoric and from political statements concerning a terrorist attack against the Danish embassy to a case study of constitutional law and political philosophy. Challenging the discursive and deliberative norms of the formal political sphere, the elite citizens (including Barbara Bush and Tony Blair) discussed in part 2 are seen to undertake disruptive discursive acts in the midst of formal political settings. The authors demonstrate that while one is able to exercise one's rhetorical agency through such destabilizing acts, the norms in such institutionalized settings are not so easily challenged or subverted. As Lisa Villadsen writes in her exemplary essay “Speaking of Terror: Norms of Rhetorical Citizenship in Danish Public Debate Culture,” in such an “a-rhetorical debate culture” as the formal political sphere, the rules of deliberative conduct determine the standards of “proper” rhetorical citizenship (179). Any deviation from these norms is considered a breach of one's citizenship status. Given this, Villadsen calls for the need to “continue questioning the norms—spoken or unspoken—that underlie notions of rhetorical citizenship in a given national or cultural setting” (179). Using a rhetorical lens to examine why modes of communicative action may succeed or fail allows for greater opportunities to understand citizenship across multiple settings. Part 3 of section 2 continues the collection's broader goals of examining rhetorical citizenship, deliberative practices, and rhetorical agency across a variety of public contexts. From public hearings held in Quebec, Canada, to grassroots groups in New York and Washington, DC, online debates over Danish real estate economic issues, and public engagement with a song from a popular Danish revue, the four essays extend and add to the diversity of sites in which public deliberation occurs and to what effect.The final section offers a set of future-oriented proposals for how rhetorical citizenship and deliberation can be productive for democratic society in ways that are not agonistic or confrontational. Effectively bookending the collection, the three chapters advance strategies and conceptualizations for reducing contentious debate and transforming competing political arguments in such as way as to encourage a more dynamic and constructive public sphere. As an exemplar, Christian Kock's, “A Tool for Rhetorical Citizenship: Generalizing the Status System” reappropriates and reformulates status theories with the aim of identifying how “present-day debaters” and “observers of debate” may find new grounds for building consensus or mutual understanding between otherwise opposing viewpoints (279). In deliberative contexts where “partisanship and polarization rule,” Kock provides a tool for fostering “normative metaconsensus” through narrowing down party-line disagreements to “more specific points—in which either side might have a better chance of persuading people unsympathetic to their positions” (294). This is not only a tool for debaters and the elite, Kock argues, but also a means of building awareness of the nuances of political disagreements among both citizens who consume these discourses as well as the media that represents them.On the whole, the notion of rhetorical citizenship is a timely intervention that aims to rethink the standards and practices of public deliberation and thereby contribute to a healthier pluralistic democratic polity. Perhaps especially in the context of U.S. politics, where the vitriolic bifurcation of present-day partisan lines leaves little to no room for rhetoric and deliberation in the formal political sphere, such a discussion is not only warranted but necessary, providing a way to think through this antagonistic gridlock. Rhetorical citizenship affords a critical space in which to theorize new practices of public engagement and deliberation and to move beyond deliberative democratic theory's insistence on rigid discursive norms and consensus building. We should attend to and take seriously agon, agitation, destabilization, and other nonnormative dissentious acts in order to better understand alternative sites of democratic instantiation. The nature of conflict, contention, and competition is not always derisive and dividing. Instead, as many of the essays in this collection argue, agonistic enactments can be productive and provocative, building communities, circulating discourse to multiple publics, and affording an agentive modality for civic engagement and citizenship. At other times, as the essays in the concluding section argue, there is an evident need to rethink the meaning of consensus in itself and consider rhetorical strategies for orienting oneself to oppositional positions. Across multiple sites, from online fora, grassroots enclaves, and more formal institutional settings, the international case studies taken up in Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation speak to the broad applicability of rhetorical citizenship as a concept.This variety in case studies is indeed one of the strengths of the collection, especially when paired with the disciplinary diversity represented by the individual authors. A concept like rhetorical citizenship, as demonstrated by this diverse collection, produces an opening for various other academic traditions to look to the tools and theories cultivated within rhetorical theory and apply them to cases across cultural and political settings. While the concept of rhetorical citizenship in itself requires the reader to extrapolate in order to see how it might be defined across these ostensibly disparate applications, the editors' introductory chapter and prefatory remarks at the start of each section strategically orient the essays to this larger theme. Moreover, as this disciplinary promiscuity speaks to the broad appeal of rhetorical citizenship, Kock and Villadsen do not provide a justification for why these various fields are represented and what this contributes to the overall dialogue. Interdisciplinarity should not be taken as an end in itself, although that is not necessarily to say that is the case with this collection. The diversity of the authors is likely symptomatic of this being a conference proceedings rather than the editors' attempt at diversity for diversity's sake. Given that the topic of the collection is deliberation and democratic society, however, it seems fitting that a range of disciplinary voices would be represented in this dialogue, especially when humanistic disciplines, while sharing much in common, often are insular and speak in their own respective vacuums.Finally, the collection attends to a wide spectrum of public and political sites where deliberation actually takes place. As the editors state in the introduction, “Focusing on how citizens deliberate allows us to consider both macro and micro politics, but always with an eye to the significance for the individuals involved” (6). In this regard, the editors advance a set of research questions that speak to the larger themes of the book, such as “What forms of participation does a particular discursive phenomenon encourage—and by whom? How are speaking positions allotted and organized? … What possibilities are there for ‘ordinary’ citizens to engage in public discourse?” (6–7). Despite the repeated insistence on the collection's commitment to “vernacular rhetoric,” the public settings and political fora addressed in the individual case studies are not quite as representative of a pluralistic democracy as one would hope. The issue of gender is only explicitly taken up in one essay, while questions of how and where racial, ethnic, and LGBTQ minorities are able to perform their rhetorical citizenship are not addressed.The four essays that engage online deliberation are perhaps the closest the volume comes to exploring vernacular discursive contexts, and indeed these critical engagements are valuable. Participation in such online dialogues, on the other hand, still requires an availability that allows for free time to deliberate as well as the economic security that affords ready access to the internet. The editors assert that “a rhetorical focus has a special regard for individual actors in the public arena, not just the eloquent politician or NGO representative but also the person watching an election debate on TV, chiming in with a point of view through a blog on civic issues, collecting signatures from passerby on a windy street to stop municipal budget cuts, or deciding to join a local interest group” (6). And while each of these sites and settings are addressed, the rhetoric and deliberation that is endemic to the streets, down on the corner, in the market, and even in the local pub are left out of this discussion. The reader is left to wonder who we should and should not consider a citizen, what publics the concept of rhetorical citizenship includes and excludes, who has the capacity to enact their rhetorical agency, and more pointedly, whether access to the public arena and the deliberative process necessarily entails a relative position of privilege. As such, while the disciplinary diversity may be one of the strong points of this collection, this openness is contained by a mostly straight, white, male representation of deliberative democratic society.Despite these omissions, however, Christian Kock and Lisa Villadsen's Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation offers an excellent portfolio of case studies and theoretical insights that will surely contribute to future discussions across a range of disciplinary sites. The bridging of rhetorical studies and deliberative democratic theory is an important intervention that is promising for future cross-disciplinary scholarship and for extending the scope of the discourses and deliberative practices that actually do occur outside more formal political settings. As such, this collection would be well suited for graduate seminars that focus on rhetorical theory, civic engagement, and the public sphere, or as source material for scholarship that aims to expand on discursive theories of citizenship across multiple public and international contexts. It also bodes well for nascent scholarship that aims to bridge the divide between political science and rhetorical studies, a mutually beneficially relationship that offers many opportunities for advancing theories of contemporary democratic society.

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

1. The European Union and the public sphere: a communicative space in the making? John Erik Fossum and Philip Schlesinger PART I: Communicative practices and a European public sphere Philip Schlesinger and John Erik Fossum 2. Conceptualizing European public spheres: general, segmented and strong publics Erik Oddvar Eriksen 3. The public sphere and European democracy: mechanisms of democratization in the transnational situation Klaus Eder 4. A fragile cosmopolitanism: on the unresolved ambiguities of the European public sphere Philip Schlesinger PART II: Assessing Europe's general public(s) Philip Schlesinger and John Erik Fossum 5. 'Quo vadis Europe?' Quality newspapers struggling for European unity Hans-Jorg Trenz 6. Political communication, European integration and the transformation of national public spheres: a comparison of Britain and France Paul Statham 7. The European void: the democratic deficit as a cultural deficiency Abram de Swaan 8. Political integration in Europe and the need for a common political language Lars Chr. Blichner 9. EU enlargement, identity and the public sphere Maria Heller and Agnes Renyi 10. Religion and the European public sphere Francois Foret and Philip Schlesinger 11. The public sphere in European constitution-making John Erik Fossum and Hans-Jorg Trenz PART III: Institutional conditions and the European context John Erik Fossum and Philip Schlesinger 12. European commissioners and the prospects of a European public sphere: information, representation and legitimacy Andy Smith 13. Transparency, audiences and the evolving role of the EU Council of Ministers Deirdre Curtin 14. Transnationalising the public sphere? The European Parliament, promises and anticipations Ulrike Liebert 15. Conclusion Philip Schlesinger and John Erik Fossum Bibliography

A comprehensive examination of the European public sphere must consider Europeanization from below, of, and by civil society. As Jurgen Habermas argues, civil society has a key role to play in a democratic public sphere: civil society actors at the periphery of the formal political arena have the potential to bring new groups of citizens into the political debate and to highlight problems that may become central to the agenda (Habermas 1996c). If this potential were undermined, it would seriously exacerbate the democratic deficit in the European Union (EU) (Habermas 2006c). This chapter takes stock of the European public sphere with a focus on organized civil society and civil-society actors’ digital communication beyond the mass media. Earlier studies have found that civil society is weakly represented in the European public sphere, leading to concerns about the lack of broad public engagement or citizen-level political contention. When the capacity of the (national) mass media to employ Europeanized frames and attend to transnational issues or actors is analyzed, the picture that emerges is an issue-driven European sphere in which a few issues or claim makers may reach different national media using similar frames during common periods. However, there is little civil society in this picture: claims are overwhelmingly made by elites who communicate to largely passive audiences. For example, when the European financial crisis erupted in 2010, national papers across the EU were filled with similar pronouncements from various officials, including national leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU officials such as the head of the European Central Bank. Civil society tends to be sketched in terms of voters in Greece or demonstrators in Spain, with few concrete authoritative claims attached. Beyond demonstrations and elections, there is little in the way of media characterizations of broader public engagement with the crisis and other policy issues that cut across both EU and national-governance processes. The question is whether civil society engagement in European public spheres is weak in itself or whether it is simply not captured in these analyses of mass-media content. We suggest that part of the answer may be the latter possibility. To analyze civil society dimensions of European public spheres, it makes sense to look beyond the mass media to the increasingly common alternative forms of public communication that civil society actors utilize.

The ability of the European community to respond to the multiple crises threatening the European Union and Europe depends in part on citizens' shared European identity giving legitimacy and support to communal action. Men's elite European club football is an example of a cultural practice that is highly Europeanised, reaches diverse audiences and is a known carrier of collective identities. This article examines the emergence of a European public football sphere through the convergence of football coverage across national media spaces, serving as a foundation for European identity constructions. It connects the concept of a European public sphere to the Europeanisation and mediatisation of football and its potential effects on European identity formation. Results indicate a convergence of football coverage around high‐profile and high‐status aspects of European football, creating a strongly aligned, homogenous but exclusive European public football sphere that leaves many parts of Europe on the sidelines.

Gripsrud, J. and H. Moe, eds. 2010. The digital public sphere: challenges for media policy. Goteborg: Nordicom, 167 pp (ISBN 978-91-86523-02-2) The concepts of 'the public', 'public sphere', 'civil society' and media regulation have dominated media studies for some time. Scholars have attempted to explore the nexus between regulation and the audience/public's access to the media/public sphere (Curran 2000; Eribo & Jong-Ebot 1997; McChesney 1999; Venturelli 1998). In most of these writings, regulation is seen as hindering access to the public domain and as stifling freedom of expression. However, these scholars are concerned with traditional media, (1) while the authors in The digital public sphere: challenges for media policy extend the critique to the digital public sphere. They examine the problems of regulation in a digitised environment and conclude that political and commercial interests take precedence in the crafting of media policy, mainly because end users of such digitised media are not perceived as a public (2) but as audiences or consumers. The issues discussed in this collection are relevant across the world, even though the digital public sphere in most Third-World countries is not as developed as it is in Europe, largely because of political, economic and technological challenges. In Chapter 1, Slavko Splichal grapples with the concepts 'public', 'public sphere' and 'civil society'. The author looks at the movement from the angle of one homogenous public sphere to many public spheres. He argues that the public may be 'dispersed physically but mentally/spiritually tied together' (p. 32). The public is distinguished from the crowd in that its members act rationally. The public is distinguished from public opinion, which safeguards against the 'misrule of those in power [and] is also a means of coercion in the hands of the majority against any minority of those who would not share the majority opinion' (p. 26). He adds that the public is only a social category, while the public sphere is the infrastructure which enables public opinion to flourish. Therefore the public's infrastructure is the public sphere. On the other hand, civil society is said to generate the public sphere and to enable citizens to wield power over those in power through 'public discussion and persuasion' (p. 30). He also rightly notes that through this persuasion and discussion 'civil society influences regulative forces of the state and corporate institutions' (p. 31). He aptly sums up the problem by stating: 'There is no public sphere without civil society, but there is also none without the public' (ibid.), then points out that the Internet popularised the concept of the public sphere and helped launch the notion of an international/global public sphere. However, this is debatable as stories broadcast via satellite, radio and digital technology before the advent of the Internet, were able to cut across geographical boundaries and spark debate worldwide. As Thussu (2006: xvii) argues: 'Although the Internet has received greater attention in recent public debates on international communication, television, being much more widely accessible, is perhaps more influential in setting the global communication agenda.' For example, The Beatles were a worldwide phenomenon. Besides the above, Splichal (2010) corrects the misconception that all mass media are public spheres, by pointing out that some are not and that there are other actors (such as the state, political parties, interest groups, media gatekeepers and businesses) who are already in the public sphere to influence it. Finally, Splichal points out that the 'citizens qua citizen--either as publics or as audiences--are not among key actors in the public sphere anymore but rather, as in the old Lippman's theorization, spectators observing the public stage from the balcony'. In Chapter 2 Hannu Nieminem looks at global copyright law by taking a case study of the Finnish TVkaista. …

The Role of Social Movements in the Governance of ICT Commons in Times of Crisis

The chapter starts with an outline of outstanding recent contributions to the discussion of the EU democratic deficit and the so-called “no demos” problem and the debate about European citizenship and European identity—mainly in the light of insights from the EU crisis. This is followed by reflections on the recent discussion on the state of the mass media-based European public sphere. Finally, the author discusses the state of research on the Internet’s capacity to support the emergence of a (renewed) public sphere, with a focus on options for political actors to use the Internet for communication and campaigning, on the related establishment of segmented issue-related publics as well as on social media and its two-faced character as an enabler as well as a distorting factor of the public sphere. The author is sceptic about the capacities of Internet-based political communication to develop into a supranational (European) public sphere. It rather establishes a network of a multitude of discursive processes aimed at opinion formation at various levels and on various issues. The potential of online communication to increase the responsiveness of political institutions so far is set into practice insufficiently. Online media are increasingly used in a vertical and scarcely in a horizontal or interactive manner of communication.