Blog Post Public Sphere
Social Media platforms let us communicate with each other and get closer to people and to know each other better. Media, television, press and the internet plays an important role in informing the public about what happens in the world, mainly in places in which people do not have data about or experience. However, media simply tell us what to think and how to take things into consideration. Public sphere is an imagined community that does not necessarily exist in any identifiable space, made up of private people, gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society through acts of assembly and dialogue (Habermas, 1991, p.176). It also generates opinions and attitudes that affirm or challenge the affairs of state. The public sphere facilitates democratic participation depending on the extent of access as well as the degree of autonomy, the rejection of hierarchy, the rule of law and the equality and quality of participation. Habermas’ concept of the public is rooted in the idea of the common, in Gemeinschaft, community, the shared use of resources like a marketplace or a fountain, and communal organization (Habermas 1989c, 6). However, Equal access, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and the unrestricted expression of opinions about matters of general interest are critical dimension of the public sphere (Habermas 1989b, 136, 1989c, 27).
Social Media have intensified the unequal distribution of social and material capital, commercialization and propaganda in unprecedented ways. The new platforms pose one of the the biggest threats to a democratic public sphere today. The manipulation of public opinion through targeted disinformation campaigns and fake news are a direct consequence of social media‘s business model. Reach means traffic, that leads to ad revenue. The business logic of Facebook, Twitter click baits, trolls and sensationalist shock content, unsupported by facts. These incentives have turned social platforms into a centerpiece of the business model of fake news.
According Fuchs, in his article he says that the traditional public sphere is a “Society engaged in critical public debate.” He claims that entertainment is only half-way the case on social media, we can see that when we compare the amount of followers between of celebrities and political actors and influencers. We can see that celebrities has the biggest amount between the three. He also claims that social media did help organizing the public protests, but mentions also that they cannot replace traditional protest that are made on the streets that are way more powerful than online protests. Holders of power can only ignore online discussion. Furthermore, Fuchs says that in order to facilitate the social media’s physical protests, it should have organization, resources and high interests.
Second, fake news and trolls account plays a major role in our society. It can manipulate the public’s opinion without one knowing or feeling it. Blake (2018) showed that this happened in the Anti-Clinton Campaign in the America’s elections back in 2016.
Moving on, to Jan-Henrik Schmidt (2013), twitter has eased a personalized public, and ensure that what is seen on twitter is also valid to other social media sites such as Facebook. Many things characterize this personalized public, the information that we see on social media platforms are based on what is relevance to our searches and us. Also the way it’s communication works is between the senders and the receiver, they communicate through a conversation rather than a traditional one-way communication. From the point of view of Jan-Henrik Schmidt, these tendencies rely on what a certain person decides on what is applicable and what is not to them according to what the user’s follow. However, hashtags associate tweets that talks about a certain topics together, creating a controllable conversation that is accessible for people who are not taking part of the users chosen followings. Schmidt also claims that social media has created many customized micro-public. Social media is varied compared television, radio and others.
In a nutshell, social media is a great platform to debate and to organize events on. However, social media does have some harmful and drawbacks to the democratic public. People should be careful and know how and when and for what to use social media for.
Reference:
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. Rutherford, Paul. Endless Propaganda: The Advertising of Public Goods. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, p. 18.
Fuchs, Ch. (2014) ‘’ Twitter and Democracy. A new Public Sphere?” in Fuchs, Ch Social Media. A critical introduction, Sage, London. p. 182
Rutherford, Paul. Endless Propaganda: The Advertising of Public Goods. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. p. 18
Schmidt, Jan-Henrik (2013). “Twitter and the Rise of Personal Publics”
Blake, Aaron. (2018, April 3). A new study suggests fake news might have won donald trump the 2016 election. Whashington Post. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/03/a-new-study-suggests-fake-news-might-have-won-donald-trump-the-2016-election/?utm_term=.049d11c4ad57
