‘They Just Make Sense’: Tabloid Newspapers as an Alternative Public Sphere

Abstract

At the centre of media controversy, tabloids continue to be the best-read newspapers in the UK. But in spite of their popularity, these papers are often accused of debasing democratic communication. Indeed, tabloid journalism in the UK and elsewhere has been placed at the forefront of a ‘dumbing down’ of the media, whereby popular, commercial media fail to measure up to Habermas’s seminal idea of the public sphere as a forum for debate on matters of public interest.KeywordsPublic SpherePolitical KnowledgeCurrent AffairPolitical NewsSocial PrivilegeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.