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The Virtual Public Sphere
Abstract
The public sphere does not exist and operate in the same way everywhere. Every country is different with regard to its own economic, social, political, and cultural characteristics and relations; therefore, each country’s public sphere has its own roots which grow and develop within a unique set of conditions and circumstances. As a result, the impact of information technology (IT) on a public sphere will also vary considerably from one country to another. According to the German social theorist, Jürgen Habermas (1989,1996), the public sphere serves as a social “space,” which is separate from the private sphere of family relations, the commercial sphere of business and commerce, and the governmental sphere, which is dominated by the activities of the state. Its importance is that it contributes to the strengthening of democracy by, in effect, serving as a forum for reasoned discussion about politics and civic affairs. Furthermore, Habermas regards the public sphere as embodying such core liberal beliefs as individual rights, that is, the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and communication, and “privacy rights” (Cohen & Arato 1992, p. 211), which he thought were needed to ensure society’s autonomy from the state. Thus, for the purposes of this article, public sphere is defined as a “territory” of social relations that exist outside of the roles, duties, and constraints established by government, the marketplace, and kinship ties. Habermas’ conception of the public sphere is both a historical description and an ideal type. Historically, what Habermas refers to as the bourgeois public sphere emerged from the 18th century Enlightenment in Europe, for example, England and France, as well as early America, and which went into decline in the 19th century as a result of the increasing domination of the mass media, which transformed a reading public that debated matters of culture into disengaged consumers (Keane, 1998, p. 160). Along the way, active deliberation and participation were replaced by passive consumption of mass culture. As an ideal type, however, the public sphere represents an arena, absent of class and other social distinctions, in which private citizens can engage in critical deliberation and reasoned dialogue about important matters regarding politics and culture. The emergence of IT, particularly in the form of computer networks, as a progressive social force coincides with the apex of mass media’s domination of the public sphere in liberal democracies. Since the creation of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the early 1990s, various observers have touted IT’s potential to strengthen democratic institutions (e.g., Barber 2003; Becker & Slaton, 2000; Benkler, 2006; Cleveland, 1985; Cropf & Casaregola, 1998; Davis, Elin, & Reeher, 2002). The WWW, it is thought, provides citizens with numerous opportunities to engage in the political process as well as to take a more active role in the governance process. Benkler (2006), for example, asserts the WWW encourages a more open, participatory, and activist approach because it enables users to communicate directly with potentially many other users in a way that is outside the control of the media owners and is less corruptible by money than are the mass media (p. 11). Fulfilling the promise of the virtual public sphere, however, depends on political will; governments must commit the resources needed to facilitate public access to the technology and remove legal and economic barriers to the free flow of information inside and outside national boundaries.
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