The changing public sphere on Twitter: Network structure, elites and topics of the #righttobeforgotten

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 1983-2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuzhe Yang ◽  
Anabel Quan-Haase ◽  
Kai Rannenberg
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Information Diffusion ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Public ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
European Court ◽  
Latent Topics ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
The Right

Since the ruling of the European Court of Justice, the right to be forgotten has provided more informational self-determination to users, whilst raising new questions around Google’s role as arbiter of online content and the power to rewrite history. We investigated the debate that unfolded on Twitter around the #righttobeforgotten through social network analysis. The results revealed that latent topics, namely Google’s role as authority, alternated in popularity with rising and fading flare topics. The public sphere, or Öffentlichkeit, that we observed resembles the traditional one, with elite players such as news portals, experts and corporations participating, but it also differs significantly in terms of the underlying mechanisms and means of information diffusion. Experts are critical to comment, relay and make sense of information. We discuss the implications for theories of the public sphere and examine why social media do not serve as a democratising tool for ordinary citizens.

scholarly journals Visibility in the digital age: Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Brantner ◽  
Helena Stehle
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Internet Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Privacy And Confidentiality ◽  
Scientific Debates

In the digital age, calls for transparency and openness as well as for privacy and confidentiality prevail: Struggles for visibility occur simultaneously with conflicts regarding invisibility and hidden battles for power and privileges of interpretation. Concerns about a loss of digital self-determination exist, just like those regarding the “right to be forgotten” or the right to become invisible and unseen. While the idea of a “transparent user” – as the ultimate notion of (in)voluntary visibility – has caused a broad outcry in society and in scientific debates a few years ago (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008), the discussion has shifted toward considerations of Internet governance and regulation (Camenisch, Fischer-Hübner, & Hansen, 2015). Brighenti (2010, p. 109) has pointed out that visibility has long been one of the key aspects “associated with the public sphere” and that in today’s digitized publics, the “project of democracy can no longer be imagined without taking into account visibility and its outcomes” (Brighenti, 2010, p. 189). Visibility and invisibility, along with their societal outcomes, are increasingly being discussed and analyzed, as they are becoming important dimensions in the accurate description and explanation of digital communication.

The Priority of Public Reasons and Religious Forms of Life in Constitutional Democracies

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Cristina Lafont
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
Political Deliberation ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Mutual Accountability

In this essay I address the difficult question of how citizens with conflicting religious and secular views can fulfill the democratic obligation of justifying the imposition of coercive policies to others with reasons that they can also accept. After discussing the difficulties of proposals that either exclude religious beliefs from public deliberation or include them without any restrictions, I argue instead for a policy of mutual accountability that imposes the same deliberative rights and obligations on all democratic citizens. The main advantage of this proposal is that it recognizes the right of all democratic citizens to adopt their own cognitive stance (whether religious or secular) in political deliberation in the public sphere without giving up on the democratic obligation to provide reasons acceptable to everyone to justify coercive policies with which all citizens must comply.

scholarly journals Privacy in Public: A Democratic Defense

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Titus Stahl
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Privacy Protection ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractTraditional arguments for privacy in public suggest that intentionally public activities, such as political speech, do not deserve privacy protection. In this article, I develop a new argument for the view that surveillance of intentionally public activities should be limited to protect the specific good that this context provides, namely democratic legitimacy. Combining insights from Helen Nissenbaum’s contextualism and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, I argue that strategic surveillance of the public sphere can undermine the capacity of citizens to freely deliberate in public and therefore conflicts with democratic self-determination.

scholarly journals Kepemimpinan Perempuan di Ruang Publik dalam Tafsir Al-Kasysyâf

Al-Ulum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 459-480
Author(s):  
Sulaiman Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

This paper explores al-Zamakhshari's thoughts on women's leadership in the public sphere in tafsir al-Kasysyaf's . Islam does not require the wife to submit to her husband as he is obliged to submit to God. On the contrary, with the existence of rights that must be fulfilled by the husband towards the wife, then as reciprocity of Islam gives the right for the husband to be obeyed as long as it does not conflict with the teachings of religion. However, in terms of leadership in the public sphere, az-Zamakhsyarîy is more likely to place the position of women under men. This is evident in his expression when interpreting the word فضل الله بعضهم علي بعض that leadership is given by Allah to men because of its advantages in several respects, even az-Zamakhsyarîy considers men to have many advantages over women

In and out of Othello

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poonam Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Indian Adaptation

Othello has been the play that seems to speak to current issues of racism and sexism for the last couple of decades. Recent Indian productions have stretched its relevancies further, particularly addressing the politics of identity, of individual and state, of belonging and othering. The 2014 award-winning Assamiya film Othello (We Too Have Our Othellos) appropriates and radicalizes the main concerns of the play to embody and critique the movements for self-determination that continue to rage in the state. The article examines this unusual Indian adaptation of Shakespeare that locates the play directly within the public sphere of the politics of the state through its singular focus on Othello as an ‘outsider’ figure paralleled by other such figures of contemporary Assamese society. It will contextualize the discussion of this film, its production and positioning within the film industry of Assam and attempt to define the nature of its adaptation. It will also glance at its similarities with the earlier film In Othello (2003), which too connected Shakespeare and Assam to illustrate the volatile configurations of the outsider/insider status in contemporary India.

The Freedom to Exclude: The Case of Israeli Society

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Israeli Society ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

The phenomenon of social exclusion in Israel is a vivid demonstration of the Basic Laws' failure to fulfil their integrative role. Despite the ‘constitutional revolution’ and the Supreme Court's ongoing endeavour over the last two decades to instil a bill of rights through its jurisprudence, Israeli society has failed to fully internalise values of equality. In terms of legal jargon, individuals continue to claim and exercise ‘sole and despotic dominion’ over their private property in order to avoid contact with individuals belonging to certain minority groups. In many cases, such behaviour in the private sphere results in exclusion from the public sphere.This phenomenon is especially astonishing considering the fact that many laws in Israel apply the right of equality to the private sphere. Furthermore, the Israeli Supreme Court has developed comprehensive human rights jurisprudence applicable to the private sphere. The gap between the law in the books and the law in action illustrates that effective implementation of human rights in the private sphere cannot be achieved solely by specific legislation or by jurisprudence that is sensitive to human rights. This argument is backed by several recent bills which preserve and enforce the exclusion of minorities, particularly of Arabs, from the public sphere. These bills illustrate that exclusion is indeed a growing phenomenon in Israeli society that cannot be overlooked. Moreover, they underscore the urgent need to entrench a direct obligation to apply human rights to the private sphere at the constitutional level. This will be achieved only when Israel adopts a full constitution.

Building democracy from below: a case from rural Tanzania

2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rural Village ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Rural Tanzania ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

ABSTRACTFocusing on events in a rural village in Tanzania during 2001–02, this paper examines the changing nature of state/society relations in Tanzania. Drawing on experience from previous years of fieldwork in the early 1990s, it becomes apparent that villagers are beginning to change the way they engage with the state. These new approaches are framed in part by the discourse of democracy, with which Tanzanians have become familiar since the economic and political liberalisation policies of the 1990s. These events reveal a new sense of the right to participate in decision-making on how to use key development resources. They also illustrate how local elites can threaten to capture benefits for their own gain. As Tanzanians begin to demand more rights to participate in the public sphere, their achievements enlarge our understanding of what might constitute civil society.

scholarly journals The Right to the City and the public sphere: between political participation and the renewal of the legal urbanistic order

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (51) ◽  
pp. 629-650
Author(s):  
Arthur Hirata Prist ◽  
Maria Paula Dallari Bucci
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Resumo Este artigo propõe uma análise dos aspectos políticos e jurídicos do Direito à Cidade sob a perspectiva do conceito de esfera pública. O Direito à Cidade é interpretado como um elo dinâmico entre a mobilização política, a democratização das relações sociais e do aparato institucional do Estado e a garantia de melhores condições materiais de existência no espaço urbano. A partir da revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema das lutas sociais urbanas no Brasil e na cidade de São Paulo, pretende-se demonstrar que o Direito à Cidade é exercido pela população a partir dos embates na esfera pública responsáveis por impulsionar a renovação da ordem jurídica e atribuir novos sentidos ao Direito existente.

scholarly journals The Limited Influence of Right-Wing Movements on Social Media User Engagement

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512110416
Author(s):  
Carsten Schwemmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Information Diffusion ◽  
User Engagement ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Online Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article generates new insights into the dynamic interplay between social media content generated by right-wing movements, user engagement, and the public attention movements receive. I argue that movement leaders seek to achieve high user engagement for utilizing mechanisms of information diffusion to increase both online and on-site mobilization. In a case study, I analyze the German right-wing movement Pegida, which uses Facebook for spreading its anti-Islam agenda online. Data from Pegida’s Facebook page are combined with news reports over a period of 18 months to measure activity on Facebook and in the public sphere simultaneously. Results of quantitative text and time series analysis show that Pegida cannot influence user engagement by simply creating more posts. Instead, it is the content of posts that matters. Moreover, findings highlight a strong connection between Facebook activities and the public sphere. In times of decreasing attention, the movement changes its social media strategy in response to exogenous shocks: Pegida resorts increasingly to radical mobilization methods by posting xenophobic content that is more likely to incite users to engage on Facebook.

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