The concept of the public sphere is one that is extremely contested. Habermas, considered an important figure in discussions of the public sphere, suggests that (Habermas, 2006: 27):
The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public… to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.
This means that the public sphere can be thought of as a space – both virtual and material – where citizens find out about the social, cultural and political issues that face their communities (McKee, 2005: 5). However, critics suggest that the ‘deterioration’ (or ‘trivialisation’) of the media has led to the deterioration of the public sphere (McKee, 2005: 1). On the other hand, I would argue that the fact the media is becoming democratised and decentralised, especially in blogs, actually improves the public sphere in terms of representativeness, as more views are being represented (McNair, 2006: 144). Habermas’ notion that the ideal public sphere ‘should be unified and homogenous, refusing the fragmentation of niche markets’ is one that explicitly ignore public spheres outside of the main sphere, one that is conscious of ignoring others’ ideas that do not fit the white male middle-class ideals, and to me, this is a problem (McKee, 2005: 14). Thus, this essay works from the assumption that the public sphere should aim to represent as many views as possible in order to make meaning of politics in community, and that media that is considered ‘trivial’ (such as Perez Hilton’s celebrity gossip blog) is just as essential to the public sphere as those considered ‘serious’ (such as Raed Jarrar’s blog).
The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public… to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.
This means that the public sphere can be thought of as a space – both virtual and material – where citizens find out about the social, cultural and political issues that face their communities (McKee, 2005: 5). However, critics suggest that the ‘deterioration’ (or ‘trivialisation’) of the media has led to the deterioration of the public sphere (McKee, 2005: 1). On the other hand, I would argue that the fact the media is becoming democratised and decentralised, especially in blogs, actually improves the public sphere in terms of representativeness, as more views are being represented (McNair, 2006: 144). Habermas’ notion that the ideal public sphere ‘should be unified and homogenous, refusing the fragmentation of niche markets’ is one that explicitly ignore public spheres outside of the main sphere, one that is conscious of ignoring others’ ideas that do not fit the white male middle-class ideals, and to me, this is a problem (McKee, 2005: 14). Thus, this essay works from the assumption that the public sphere should aim to represent as many views as possible in order to make meaning of politics in community, and that media that is considered ‘trivial’ (such as Perez Hilton’s celebrity gossip blog) is just as essential to the public sphere as those considered ‘serious’ (such as Raed Jarrar’s blog).
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