scholarly journals Private/Public Space of New Media

Author(s):  
Alla Drozdova ◽  
◽  
Natalia Stepanova ◽  

Today, we have a situation that the new media environment has reshaped our conception of reality while changing social spaces, modes of existence, and the functional mechanisms of the private sphere. In the space of new media, the boundary between privacy and publicity is redefined with the emergence of multiple network communities having become a subject of observation and evaluation, collective discussions, and even third party interventions. In the current situation, the privacy/publicity boundary can be defined both through the societal/the individual, and through such concepts as visible/invisible. The new media era sees the personification of online publicness, therefore the very sphere of private life gets consumed by the public sphere open both for being discussed and for being controlled by the government, market, and advertisement. The public sphere has fallen under the power of certain private/vested interests, which only transiently become common, coinciding with the interests of other groups, but not the public sphere. The ambivalent nature of new media, while based on personalisation and filtration, obviously determines the ambiguous and controversial relationship of the public and the private. Thus, the private not only reflects, but also represents the public, whereas the public implements privacy up to its inherent special intimate atmosphere and intonation. This fast-changing virtual reality requires the development of conceptual tools for analysing new content and forms of social and personal life, one of which is the relationship between publicity and privacy.

Author(s):  
Antonina A. Batsenkova

Individualization is the process of distancing and relief an individual from any form of collectivities: collective consciousness, traditions, traditional group membership — and obtaining own, specific, only inherent characteristics by individual. Individualization as a historical and sociological category has various forms of its manifestation. One of the aspects of the individualization process is the detraditionalization of life spheres and the emergence of new “spaces of freedom”, which give rise to new challenges for society and for the individual. The such a challenge for society is the drop of the social institutions importance as traditional guidelines for “life strategies and life situations”. There are so — called “phantom institutions” that keep their external form but stop performing their tasks and change their meaning.The individualization process has affected all spheres of society, including the public sphere. In the sociological tradition, the theme of change and decline of the public sphere is devoted to the work of J. Dewey, J. Habermas, H. Arendt, R. Sennett, W. Lippmann, etc. Researchers say about the public sphere crisis in modern Western society. It is associated with the fusion of public and private life, the consideration of the public sphere through personal interests and its description in the categories of intimacy. People treat to public affairs too personally, which can be properly managed only with the impersonal, in terms of personal feelings. Society becomes important for the individual as a psychological system.The purpose of this paper is to show the fall of the public sphere as a reflection of the individualization process. If initially the public space was formed under the impact of mass media, political and legal systems and state systems, in the XXI century the public sphere becomes a space of expression of individual freedom and independence through the blogosphere, video portals and social networks. It is necessary to revise the concept of the public sphere because of the global communication networks development and the development of digital technologies.


Author(s):  
Zizi Papacharissi

The objective of this article is to sketch out the profile of the digital citizen. The premise for this article rests upon utopian views that embrace new media technologies as democratizers of postindustrial society (e.g., Bell, 1981; Johnson & Kaye, 1998; Kling, 1996; Negroponte, 1998; Rheingold, 1993) and cautionary criticism that questions the substantial impact new media could have on reviving a dormant public sphere (e.g., Bimber & Davis, 2003; Davis, 1999; Hill & Hughes, 1998; Jankowski & van Selm, 2000; Jones, 1997; Margolis & Resnick, 2000; Scheufele & Nisbet, 2002). Concurrently, declining participation in traditional forms of political involvement and growing public cynicism (e.g., Cappella & Jamieson, 1996, 1997; Fallows, 1996; Patterson, 1993, 1996) position the Internet and related technologies as vehicles through which political activity can be reinvented. Still, conflicting narratives on civic involvement, as articulated by the government, politicians, the media, and the public, create confusion about the place and role of the citizen in a digital age. The digital citizen profile, therefore, is defined by historical and cultural context, divided between expectation and skepticism regarding new media, and presents hope of resurrecting the public sphere and awakening a latent, postmodern political consciousness. This article outlines these conditions, reviews perceptions of the digital citizen, and proposes a digital citizen role model for the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 678-705
Author(s):  
Di Wang ◽  
Sida Liu

In authoritarian contexts where the state is the primary performer in the public sphere and legal mobilization is constrained and repressed, activists often seek to carve out a public space to confront the frontstage and backstage of the state’s performance in order to pursue collective action. Comparing the online legal mobilization of feminist and lawyer activists in China, this article investigates how performance arts are used by activists to challenge the authoritarian state in the age of social media. Performing “artivism” is to create conspicuous spectacles in the public eye for the purposes of exposing the state’s illegal or repressive backstage actions or promoting alternative values and norms different from the official ideology. By subversively disrupting the evidential boundaries set by the state, Chinese activists have been able to gain momentum and public support for their legal mobilization. However, it was precisely the success of their artivism that contributed to the government crackdowns on both feminists and lawyers in 2015.


Author(s):  
Z. Papacharissi

The objective of this article is to sketch out the profile of the digital citizen. The premise for this article rests upon utopian views that embrace new media technologies as democratizers of postindustrial society (e.g., Bell, 1981; Johnson & Kaye, 1998; Kling, 1996; Negroponte, 1998; Rheingold, 1993) and cautionary criticism that questions the substantial impact new media could have on reviving a dormant public sphere (e.g., Bimber & Davis, 2003; Davis, 1999; Hill & Hughes, 1998; Jankowski & van Selm, 2000; Jones, 1997; Margolis & Resnick, 2000; Scheufele & Nisbet, 2002). Concurrently, declining participation in traditional forms of political involvement and growing public cynicism (e.g., Cappella & Jamieson, 1996, 1997; Fallows, 1996; Patterson, 1993, 1996) position the Internet and related technologies as vehicles through which political activity can be reinvented. Still, conflicting narratives on civic involvement, as articulated by the government, politicians, the media, and the public, create confusion about the place and role of the citizen in a digital age. The digital citizen profile, therefore, is defined by historical and cultural context, divided between expectation and skepticism regarding new media, and presents hope of resurrecting the public sphere and awakening a latent, postmodern political consciousness. This article outlines these conditions, reviews perceptions of the digital citizen, and proposes a digital citizen role model for the future.


Author(s):  
Godwin Ehiarekhian Oboh

This paper explores the tripartite relationship between the media, elections and good governance in the contemporary Nigerian politics. It examines the growing impact of the media (especially with the emergence of the new media) on the various ways in which Nigerian political parties, politicians as well as governments present themselves to the electorate both for the purposes of electioneering campaigns and promotion of government policies as agenda for development. The paper foregrounds the critical roles that the media have to play in order to open up the public sphere and facilitate mass participation in governance with the implication of enhancing democratic values and cultures in Nigerian democracy. In this regard, particular focus is paid to reporting the 2007 general elections and the influence of the Nigerian newspaper proprietors and the government on the editorial stance of the media on the elections. It was noted that the government owned newspapers tended to reflect the position of the authoritarian model, while their private owned counterparts operated along the lines of the libertarian perspective while reporting on the elections.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 441
Author(s):  
Alla V. Drozdova

Today we exist in a situation in which the new media environment has resulted in paradigm shift in our conception of reality, altering public spaces and communities, as well as functional modes and mechanisms of the private sphere, through the creation of new digitally-intermediated methods of communication. In a mediatised culture, the boundaries between public and private have been fundamentally transformed. Multi-screening has created a new mode of visibility for social cultures and subcultures, which, if it does not exactly abolish the boundary between private and public, at least allows us to rethink this dichotomy. Having thus established a new mode of visibility, the advent of new media has led to the sphere of private life being absorbed by the public sphere, in the process not only of facilitating discussion, but also in becoming a means by which control is exerted by the state, the market and advertising. In turn, in coming under the domination of specific private or group interests, the public sphere itself has been transformed. While, in coinciding with the interests of other groups, these interests may achieve temporary commonality, they cannot be truly public in the original universal sense. The use of multiple Internet portals in living reality creates a distinct or alternative level of virtual publicity. No longer requiring the usual physical spaces to regulate his or her inclusion in both virtual and traditional public spheres, a user of contemporary gadgets creates a remote and individually-tailored model of public interaction. This process of virtual individualisation indicates the ambivalent nature of the networked public sphere. While, on the one hand, in engaging in collective interaction and concern for common affairs, politically-active people need the presence of others, on the other, the fact of being rooted in their own experience results in the creation of burgeoning personalised and fragmented hierarchies.


CosmoGov ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 232
Author(s):  
Jannus Timbo Halomoan Siahaan

The public sphere popularized by Jurgen Habermas is the result of a review of the reality of 18th century European society. In his work, Habermas mentions that capitalism at that time succeeded in liberating European society from its dependence on the influence of feudalism imposed by the church and monarchy, whose form was a community discussion room aimed at critiquing traditional power (Church and Kingdom). In other words, the power of capitalism has succeeded in creating a space of social debate that was once influenced by feudal power until it switched to a social area free from the domination of feudal power where in that public sphere society has a right in giving criticisms of social problems. If in Europe the development of the public sphere is influenced by the development of capitalism, then what about the implementation of the public sphere in transitional society in Indonesia or especially in the East Luwu community? This paper seeks to explore how the implementation of public space as a concept in transitional society, especially in the East Luwu region in particular related to the process of making a Regional Regulation no. 03 of 2007 on Hazardous Solid Waste. The results of field research indicate that people are still having difficulty in accessing information related to policies related to public life in real terms. At the same time, the government itself also difficulties in distributing information that is actually needed by the community. The government, the DPRD or the people of East Luwu have indeed agreed to provide a discussion space to the public regarding the making of the solid waste management regulation. However, the implementation did not find the appropriate way from the formulation process until the socialization of a local regulation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar

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.


Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko

The subject matter of research interest here is the movement of sociological reflection concerning the interplay of public and private realms in social, political and individual life. The focus is on the boundary constructs embodying publicity, which are, first of all, classical models of the space of appearance for free citizens of the polis (H. Arendt) and the public sphere organised by communicative rationality (Ju. Habermas). Alternative patterns are present in modern ideas pertaining to the significance of biological component in public space in the context of biopolitics (M. Foucault), “inclusive exclusion of bare life” (G. Agamben), as well as performativity of corporeal and linguistic experience related to the right to participate in civil acts such as popular assembly (J. Butler), where the established distinctions between the public and the private are levelled, and the interrelationship of these two realms becomes reconfigured. Once the new media have come into play, both the structure and nature of the public sphere becomes modified. What assumes a decisive role is people’s physical interaction with online communication gadgets, which instantly connect information networks along various trajectories. However, the rapid development of information technology produces particular risks related to the control of communications industry, leaving both public and private realms unprotected and deforming them. This also urges us to rethink the issue of congruence of the two ideas such as transparency of societies and security.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.


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