scholarly journals CommentaryMediating the Public Sphere Democratic Deliberation, Communication Gaps and the Personalization of Politics

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Mansell
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Personalization Of Politics

Democracy and public communication: A Durkheimian lens on Habermas

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-33
Author(s):  
Atle Møen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Communicative Rationality ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rational Discourse ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

The article proposes a comparison of Durkheim’s and Habermas’s views about public communication and democratic deliberation. They seem to share an understanding that democratic deliberation requires support from the public sphere. Nonetheless, Durkheim believed that rational public communication must gain strength from ceremonies, whereas Habermas essentially focused on communicative rationality and rational discourse within the public sphere. The article thus asks whether Habermas’s theory of rational discourse implies a rationalist fallacy, largely because he offers no plausible explanation of the way in which social actors are emotionally motivated to participate in rational discourses, rather than resorting to violence and manipulation. Could Durkheim’s view about public communication, and its need to gather strength from collective ceremonies and collective sentiments, resolve this theoretical conundrum in that Durkheim’s view is complementary to Habermas’s?

scholarly journals Media discourse and the public sphere

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (spe) ◽  
pp. 45-71
Author(s):  
Lilie Chouliaraki
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Prime Time ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Right To Privacy ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Empirical Material

In this paper, I am attempting to throw into relief significant aspects of the function of television debate as a public sphere. My working assumption is that public dialogue, including its televised versions, involves primarily the establishment of a meaning horizon which delimits what is to be said and known, and which authorises as true certain meanings and knowledges at the expense of others. Put differently, there is a 'politics of truth' at play in every mediated debate which is central in the constitution of the debate as a public sphere. It is precisely this politics that I want to examine in this article. Using empirical material from a prime-time debate programme in Danish television, which is concerned with the right to privacy of public personalities, I analyse the forms of interactional control and dialogic organisation employed in the debate, so as to address the following questions: What are the communicative practices which confer upon the television debate genre the legitimacy of public debate? Which are the principles by which communication is regulated? Which are the domains of meaning construed by this regulation? And which is the potential for democratic deliberation released in these domains?

Mechanisms of Deliberation in the Formal Political System

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-51
Author(s):  
Ana Tanasoca
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political System ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
System P ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Citizen Deliberation ◽  
And Function

Chapter 2 examines the mechanisms of deliberation at work in the empowered space. The chapter discusses several institutions, such as legislatures, executive cabinets, and courts. It points out that the nature, structure, and function that these institutions fulfil in a democracy makes them poor sites for genuine democratic deliberation. Instead, the public sphere, which does not exhibit the same limitations, can better accommodate genuine democratic deliberation. Coupled with periodic accountability mechanisms to ensure it is consequential, mass citizen deliberation must be the currency of a deliberative democracy.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

The Dynamics of Egypt’s “Semi-opposition,” 2004–11

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-103
Author(s):  
Mai Mogib Mosad
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political System ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

This paper maps the basic opposition groups that influenced the Egyptian political system in the last years of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. It approaches the nature of the relationship between the system and the opposition through use of the concept of “semi-opposition.” An examination and evaluation of the opposition groups shows the extent to which the regime—in order to appear that it was opening the public sphere to the opposition—had channels of communication with the Muslim Brotherhood. The paper also shows the system’s relations with other groups, such as “Kifaya” and “April 6”; it then explains the reasons behind the success of the Muslim Brotherhood at seizing power after the ousting of President Mubarak.

I Think We’re Alone Now

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 183-210
Author(s):  
Erin Nunoda
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Images ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
Youtube Videos ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article examines YouTube videos (primarily distributed by a user named Cecil Robert) that document so-called dead malls: unpopulated, unproductive, but not necessarily demolished consumerist sites that have proliferated in the wake of the 2008 recession. These works link digital images of mall interiors with pop-song remixes so as to re-create the experience of hearing a track while standing within the empty space; manipulating the songs’ audio frequencies heightens echo effects and fosters an impression of ghostly dislocation. This article argues that these videos locate a potentiality in abandoned mall spaces for the exploration of queer (non)relations. It suggests that the videos’ emphasis on lonely, unconsummated intimacies questions circuitous visions of the public sphere, participatory dynamics online, and the presumably conservative biopolitics (both at its height and in its memorialization) of mall architecture.

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