From Habermas’ “Public Sphere” to DeLuca & Peeple’s “Public Screen”

In this shortened version of Habermas’ outlining of public sphere, we get a definition of the concept public sphere as: “a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed.” The concept is that in a public sphere, people assemble together as one acting public body, leading to public reason which contrasts to the governing state body. It is essentially organized discussion, creating public consensus which then can in turn influences political action. Habermas also argues that with the historical change from a feudal constitutional society the public sphere was able to come about and as it did, public broadcast media like newspapers played a vital role.

Historically, public sphere is associated with the “coffeehouse discussions” where you see groups assembling for debate and discussion. It was open, disregarded status, and based on rational thought with a goal of reaching consensus. Although on the surface the sphere is understood as open and free to anyone, of course it wasn’t like modern society. The sphere was free to white educated middle class males as far as my understanding goes. But that aside, the public sphere is still where the people have the position to influence action and influence the governing bodies. Other important historical events that you see as the public sphere emerges is the growing idea of a separation of church and state, which arguably only came about after the Reformation and the idea of a person having an individual and direct relationship with God, taking away much of the power of the Church.

The public sphere has and is continually changing. It was once about a physical space that could be occupied, now there are fewer coffeehouse meetings. Media was once just a source of information, but as the capitalistic society grew, the more the media realized it’s value as another capital-making system through advertisement and news-managing. If you follow along the arguments of intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, the broadcast medias [newspapers, news stations] are purely a medium of “manufacturing consent.” They exhibit the news in the interests of their monetary-backbone, the corporations who own them. In our society, the majority of media is controlled by a few companies, and their interests correlate with the products of their medias.

In my past studies, I came across this concept of public sphere through “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the Lessons of Seattle” (2002) by DeLuca and Peeples, which looks at the transitioning of the concept of public sphere with the onset of new media. They use the common definition of public sphere as an open, public, physical space where public opinion is formed. The transition is that public opinion is formed out of a new, pseudo-physical “public screen.” They talk about how the way information is shared nowadays, that you can’t really distinguish between public and private spheres. The separation between public and private is slimmer because of the mobility of our technology, as you can carry the “screens” with you. This new way of information transfer is based around the inception of new media.

One of the other points to DeLuca and Peeple’s argument, is that events can be staged for the screen, as another way of manufacturing consent, or just drawing attention to something. “Image Events” can be very persuasive, cause the public to empathize with an event, or make them hardened against a subject (like violence). Image events exist to ask the public to watch and to see their point of view. And the audience isn’t just an objective public observer, but they are immersed in the images and thus will form an opinion of the situation. DeLuca and Peeples talk about the 1999 WTO protest and riots in Seattle in their article. The media predominantly showed images of violence instead of debate and delegation, which does grab the attention of the viewers, so whether that’s good or bad, it is successful in getting viewership. Not as much information was given to the public as the event happened so any kind of hope for public consensus is lost.

The contributions of new media to the public sphere are varied. For one thing, “screens” are widely available, and can lead to instantaneous social action. Social movement can happen much more rapidly than ever, and be more widespread. There is also some difficulty in getting social action to spread, like for instance when the topic of action is against established structures which people are hesitant to change. New media doesn’t work face-to-face, it does not necessarily occupy a physical space like the public sphere did. With the screen you don’t have to necessarily plan or produce flyers or anything tangible. There are less limits on who can be a member of the public screen - basically anyone with a screen. And anyone can be both a sender and a receiver. This can be seen in the alternate reality game “World Without Oil" where the spectators were also producers.

Do these differences lead to more consensus? Hard to say. The principles of how people come to a consensus don’t necessarily change with new media, however it does lead to more shared information, and increased availability of information. When working at it’s full potential, the screen works like the media used to work, as an information sharing medium. There is still a danger that the screens can become what old forms of broadcast media have, and there can still be bias in the information, and still some consent manufacturing. The ability to be more free though, is still there, and that is a positive difference.