Could The Internet Be The Public Sphere

1792 Words4 Pages

From the variety of hot topics that are covered by news, we can see that influence of the public opinion from the Internet cannot not be underestimated, but the scholars have a different view against ‘Could the Internet be the public sphere’. In this essay, commenting function in Yahoo News articles will be used to evaluate its performance of opinions expressions with Habermas’ normative standard for public sphere, and to discuss the limitation of Habermas’ deliberative approach of the public sphere within the Internet.

In Yahoo News , there is a function for users commenting on news articles. At the bottom of every news article page, users can use the form to comment on the news, and read other users’ comment of the thread, and interact with each others’ opinions. With the help of the commenting function, users can express their views on public incidents from any where and time, therefore news possess dialectic again, from one-way transmission of information into a two-way or even multiple ways.

Habermas’ proposition is that public sphere are spaces created through logical communication, that is to allow people from independent fields to have rational debates on common problems, and results in the formation of public opinions to influence or inspect policies. Yahoo News’ commenting section is such a space where people can debate on problems in the articles and by increasing numbers of people posting different contexts of opinions against the problem of the article, create discussion on the news article, thus forming public opinions. Habermas emphasizes public opinion is dependent on the formation of public logic and deliberation, and the public sphere involves two important processes: the transformation of privately-oriented ...

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...relied on local citizens, how they form their culture identity by differentiating their own cultures from the others. If the collective culture identity is strong enough, global companies like Yahoo would be respecting the local culture by providing service suiting the need of the local culture, in order to keep their local consumers.

Works Cited

1 Theodor Adorno (1991) The Culture Industry:. Selected Essays in Mass Culture London:. Routledge.
2. DK Davis and SJ Baran forward , Su Heng translation, " mass communication and everyday life " (Mass Communication and Everyday Life). Taipei: Yuan-Liou .
3 Linling Han ( 1997 ) , "Cultural Industries and Cultural Identity > , Stephen CHAN series , " cultural imagination and ideology . " Hong Kong : Oxford University .
4 Dr Stephen SZE ( 1992 ) , " Dr Stephen SZE mass cultural criticism ." Hong Kong : Subculture Church.

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