The Perfect Public Sphere?
As well as this FTVMS paper, I’m also doing FTVMS211, “Watching Television.” Our lecture yesterday was on the public sphere and how TV has changed this. The ideas of T H Marshall were brought up, explain the era we are in today of post-modernity, where television gives us the notion of a right to have our culture diversity appreciated and protected, as television shows diverse identities and invites us to recognise our identities, through choosing what we watch.
This then led to the ides of Jurgen Habermas and the public sphere. To sum it up, the conclusion come to was that current affairs shows, such as Campbell Live and Close-Up have presenters that ‘stand in’ for the public, they are considered representatives of the public sphere, as the shows normally consist of an issue being debated, where the presenter argues a point or questions someone from what is seen as the public perspective. The point being, that can the media be considered a perfect public sphere? One where there is no deliberation, as the media comes to conclusions about issues that are derived from the public.
These theories had not taken into account the internet. As we have recently talked about in class, with all the blogging sites and user controlled news sites; I began to think that the conclusion above is not necessarily true. The media may have seen themselves as a perfect public sphere, but with the way media has changed, to become a very user based phenomenon, the public may even have power over the media and more deliberation is created, creating an even less perfect public sphere that there was before television. In my opinion this is because so many people these days can post blogs and use blogging news websites to gives their thoughts about issues they think are relevant, or to debate issues or even just to rank which issues are most relevant at the time. Therefore taking the power away from the media, which intern destroys this so called perfect public sphere and creates an even less perfect one, with more debate and conflict as to which opinion is correct. One of the conditions for a public sphere to work was that the members share the same norms and values; this does not occur when you have the wide variety of user based content provided through the internet.
So who has the power? And can we really have a true public sphere?
This then led to the ides of Jurgen Habermas and the public sphere. To sum it up, the conclusion come to was that current affairs shows, such as Campbell Live and Close-Up have presenters that ‘stand in’ for the public, they are considered representatives of the public sphere, as the shows normally consist of an issue being debated, where the presenter argues a point or questions someone from what is seen as the public perspective. The point being, that can the media be considered a perfect public sphere? One where there is no deliberation, as the media comes to conclusions about issues that are derived from the public.
These theories had not taken into account the internet. As we have recently talked about in class, with all the blogging sites and user controlled news sites; I began to think that the conclusion above is not necessarily true. The media may have seen themselves as a perfect public sphere, but with the way media has changed, to become a very user based phenomenon, the public may even have power over the media and more deliberation is created, creating an even less perfect public sphere that there was before television. In my opinion this is because so many people these days can post blogs and use blogging news websites to gives their thoughts about issues they think are relevant, or to debate issues or even just to rank which issues are most relevant at the time. Therefore taking the power away from the media, which intern destroys this so called perfect public sphere and creates an even less perfect one, with more debate and conflict as to which opinion is correct. One of the conditions for a public sphere to work was that the members share the same norms and values; this does not occur when you have the wide variety of user based content provided through the internet.
So who has the power? And can we really have a true public sphere?
posted by Salkz at 2:50 PM
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