Im Archiv der Öffentlichkeit

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Maresch
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Oder Eine ◽  
The Public ◽  
Postal Services ◽  
The Public Sphere

Durch den digitalen Medienwandel ist der Begriff der Öffentlichkeit problematisch geworden. Die Debatte fokussiert sich zumeist auf die Frage, ob die sogenannte bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit durch das Internet im Niedergang begriffen ist oder eine Intensivierung und Pluralisierung erfährt. Rudolf Maresch zeichnet die berühmte Untersuchung der Kategorie durch Jürgen Habermas nach und zieht den von ihm konstatierten Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit in Zweifel. Dagegen verweist er auf die gouvernementalen und medialen Prozesse, die jede Form von Kommunikation immer schon gesteuert haben. Öffentlichkeit sei daher ein Epiphänomen nicht allein des Zeitungswesens, sondern der bereits vorgängig ergangenen postalischen Herstellung einer allgemeinen Adressierbarkeit von Subjekten. Heute sei Öffentlichkeit innerhalb der auf Novitäts- und Erregungskriterien abstellenden Massenmedien ein mit anderen Angeboten konkurrierendes Konzept. Mercedes Bunz konstatiert ebenfalls eine Ausweitung und Pluralisierung von Öffentlichkeit durch den digitalen Medienwandel, sieht aber die entscheidenden Fragen in der Konzeption und Verteilung von Evaluationswissen und Evaluationsmacht. Nicht mehr die sogenannten Menschen, sondern Algorithmen entscheiden über die Verbreitung und Bewertung von Nachrichten. Diese sind in der Öffentlichkeit – die sie allererst erzeugen – weitgehend verborgen. Einig sind sich die Autoren darin, dass es zu einer Pluralisierung von Öffentlichkeiten gekommen ist, während der Öffentlichkeitsbegriff von Habermas auf eine singuläre Öffentlichkeit abstellt. </br></br>Due to the transformation of digital media, the notion of “publicity” has become problematic. In most cases, the debate is focused on the question whether the internet causes a decline of so-called civic publicity or rather intensifies and pluralizes it. Rudolf Maresch outlines Jürgen Habermas's famous study of this category and challenges his claim concerning its “structural transformation,” referring to the governmental and medial processes which have always already controlled every form of communication. Publicity, he claims, is an epiphenomenon not only of print media, but of a general addressability of subjects, that has been produced previously by postal services. Today, he concludes, publicity is a concept that competes with other offers of mass media, which are all based on criteria of novelty and excitement. Mercedes Bunz also notes the expansion and pluralization of the public sphere due to the change of digital media, but sees the crucial issues in the design and distribution of knowledge and power by evaluation. So-called human beings no longer decide on the dissemination and evaluation of information, but algorithms, which are for the most part concealed from the public sphere that they produce in the first place. Both authors agree that a pluralization of public sphere(s) has taken place, while Habermas's notion of publicity refers to a single public sphere.

scholarly journals Progressive Social Movements and the Internet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Power ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Because of the field’s foundational concerns with both social power and media, communication scholars have long been at the center of scholarly thought at the intersection of social change and technology. Early critical scholarship in communication named media technologies as central in the creation and maintenance of dominant political ideologies and as a balm against dissent among the masses. This work detailed the marginalization of groups who faced restricted access to mass media creation and exclusion from representational discourse and images, alongside the connections of mass media institutions to political and cultural elites. Yet scholars also highlighted the ways collectives use media technologies for resistance inside their communities and as interventions in the public sphere. Following the advent of the World Wide Web in the late 1980s, and the granting of public access to the Internet in 1991, communication scholars faced a medium that seemed to buck the one-way and gatekeeping norms of others. There was much optimism about the democratic potentials of this new technology. With the integration of Internet technology into everyday life, and its central role in shaping politics and culture in the 21st century, scholars face new questions about its role in dissent and collective efforts for social change. The Internet requires us to reconsider definitions of the public sphere and civil society, document the potentials and limitations of access to and creation of resistant and revolutionary media, and observe and predict the rapidly changing infrastructures and corresponding uses of technology—including the temporality of online messaging alongside the increasingly transnational reach of social movement organizing. Optimism remains, but it has been tempered by the realities of the Internet’s limitations as an activist tool and warnings of the Internet-enabled evolution of state suppression and surveillance of social movements. Across the body of critical work on these topics particular characteristics of the Internet, including its rapidly evolving infrastructures and individualized nature, have led scholars to explore new conceptualizations of collective action and power in a digital media landscape.

scholarly journals The corporate takeover of the online public sphere: A critical examination, with reference to 'the New Zealand case'

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Dahlberg
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Multiple Alternative ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

Much communications research is in agreement about the failure of mass media to adequately facilitate a public sphere of open and reflexive debate necessary for strong democratic culture. In contrast , the internet's decentralised, two-way communication is seen by many commentators to be extending such debate. However, there is some ambivalence among critical theorists as to the future role of the internet in advancing the public sphere. On the one hand, the internet is providing the means fot the voicing of positions and identities excluded from the mass media. On the other hand, a number of problem are limiting the extensiveness and effetivness of this voicing. One of the most significant problems is the corporate colonisation of cyberspace, and subsequent marginalisation rational-critical communication. It is this problem that i will focus on in this article, with reference to examples from what I refer to as the 'New Zealand online public sphere'. I show how online corporate portals and media sites are gaining the most attention orientated to public communication, including news, information, and discussion. These sites generally support conservative discourse and consumer practices. The result is a marginalisation online of the very voices marginalised offline, and also of the critical-reflexive form of communication that makes for a strong public sphere. I conclude by noting that corporate colonisation is as yet only partial, and control of attention and media is highly contested by multiple 'alternative' discursive spaces online.

scholarly journals Entangled in the Net? Would Scandals function under the Conditions of the Internet alone?

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Johannes Ehrat SJ
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Communication ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Public Sphere

Using semiotic method of consideration the article investigates judgement power of public sphere in traditional media and internet. The analysis reminds that news stories obey the narrative rules. They become an object for judgement only in a mediation that allows present public opinion. At the same time because of mediation and in accordance with functioning of meta-texts these stories become subject of moralising sanction to their heroes. For mass media, the mediation function creates the parallel universe of the public sphere. The aim of the article is to find an answer whether there exists something in the internet which produces a similar public universe.Theoretical argument lets to conclude that the tribunal of public opinion is not just a meaning apparatus; it also has to be narrated. That means, that the question of justice, of right or wrong, has to be turned into a pragmatic question of performance (how well?) and competence (by whom?). As publicity is only an idea, a meaning apparatus, for normative purposes need to hide behind narrative plausibility. As soon as actors are seen as pragmatic subjects, they are subject to sanctioning. Actually, a source is the direct will of the judging instance, which in the public sphere is the hypostasis of ‘all’.When internet lacks direct mediation instance, it is unable to turn information into narratives. Without public sphere produced by traditional media the internet lacks the meaning. Such stating together with the example of Wikileaks let to conclude that when there is no legitimisation of power, then, no realisation of the pragmatic subject, and in consequence – there is no scandal. Keywords: common sense, industrial meaning, internet communication, judgement, meta-text, meaning, meaning constraint, moralising, narrative, power (meta-text 1), pragmatic subject (meta-text 2), publicity, public opinion, public sanctioning, scandal, theatre meaning.

5 Digitalization: Another Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere?

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Celikates
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Digital Activism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractIs the Internet one of the causes of the crisis of the public sphere or does it rather provide a way to address this crisis? Do new forms of digital activism undermine the functioning of existing democratic institutions or open up new avenues for democratic participation? In this paper I address these questions by discussing the traditional Habermasian notion of the public sphere and the challenge that the digitalization of communication and collective action poses to it. After showing that digitalization indeed leads to a new structural transformation of the public sphere, I distinguish ways in which this development can be both detrimental to and beneficial for the project of a democratic public sphere in the 21st century.

On Waxen Wings: Challenges to the Public Sphere in the Network Age

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Francoeur
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Space ◽  
Multiple Viewpoints ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Communicative Space

There is a tendency, particularly among Western pundits and technologists, to examine the Internet in almost universally positive terms; this is most evident in any discussion of the medium’s capacity for democratization. While the Internet has produced many great things for society in terms of cultural and economic production, some consideration must be given to the implications that such a revolutionary medium holds for the public sphere. By creating a communicative space that essentially grants everyone his or her own microphone, the Internet is fragmenting public discourse due to the proliferation of opinions and messages and the removal of traditional gatekeepers of information. More significantly, because of the structural qualities of the Internet, users no longer have to expose themselves to opinions and viewpoints that fall outside their own preconceived notions. This limits the robustness of the public sphere by limiting the healthy debate that can only occur when exposed to multiple viewpoints. Ultimately, the Internet is not going anywhere, so it is important to equip the public with the tools and knowledge to be able to navigate the digital space. 

scholarly journals Occupy Judaism: Religion, Digital Media, and the Public Sphere

2015 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 759-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayala Fader ◽  
Owen Gottlieb
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Evidence of an Open Government Data Portal Impact on the Public Sphere

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Pedro Lourenço
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Open Government ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Open Government Data ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Google Search ◽  
The Impact

Data portals are being created as part of open government strategies to increase transparency. But although the potential of the internet to increase transparency (as data disclosure) has been widely considered in the literature, there is no reported evidence of any of the released data actually being used by their ultimate recipients (citizens) for public accountability purposes. This descriptive research effort aims to find evidence of the impact of open government portals, asserting whether data is indeed being used and for what purposes. One contract portal was selected and Google Search was used to find portal references on the internet. A qualitative content analysis approach was adopted, whereby references were examined with respect to its main purpose and data usage. Evidence was found of contract data being used, among others, to identify possible situations of corruption, nepotism and misusage of public resources, support argumentation on public policy debates and, in general, to hold public officials accountable in the public sphere through ‘blame and shame' sanctions.

scholarly journals The Influence of Mass Media in the Public Sphere

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-50
Author(s):  
Dr. Chandra Shekhar Ghanta Dr. Chandra Shekhar Ghanta ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

scholarly journals Hidden participation in the public sphere: Understanding Malaysian university students’ public discourse practices in cyberspace

First Monday ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mei-Yuit Chan ◽  
Shameem Rafik-Galea ◽  
Ngee-Thai Yap
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public University ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
The Public Sphere

A recent development in Malaysia was the unprecedented rise in young Malaysians’ participation in the country’s social and political affairs, facilitated almost entirely by the Internet. This phenomenon caught many by surprise considering that university students in the country had been barred through legislation from active involvement in political activities for more than 30 years. Through a survey of 514 university students in a Malaysian public university, supplemented by interview data and samples of students’ writing, this study investigated in which ways Malaysian tertiary students are participating in the public sphere through the Internet. Following Hauser’s (1999) conception of public discourse as personal, interactive, informal, and distributed voices among the citizenry, we argue for a perspective that explains how online interactions in the friendship frame among young people represent their participation in the public sphere in the context of contemporary society.

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