Habermas Public Sphere Quotes

The parliament no longer is an 'assembly of wise men chosen as individual personalities by privileged strata, who sought to convince each other through arguments in public discussion on the assumption that the subsequent decision reached by the majority would be what was true and right for the national welfare.' Instead it has become the 'public rostrum on which, before the entire nation (which through radio an television participates in a specific fashion in this sphere of publicity), the government and the parties carrying it present and justify to the nation their political program, while the opposition attacks this program with the same opennes and develops its alternatives.

The expansion of the public sphere, from the 18th century onward, has led to a growth of democratically elected political institutions, independent courts, and bills of rights. But Habermas believes that many of these brakes on the arbitrary use of power are now under threat. Newspapers, for example, can offer opportunities for reasoned dialogue between private individuals, but if the press is controlled by large corporations, such opportunities may diminish. Informed debate on issues of substance is replaced with celebrity gossip, and we are transformed from critical, rational agents into mindless consumers.

In New York University media scholar Jay Rosen’s definition, journalism is a report on “what’s going on” in the community with which one identifies but outside the scope of individual experience: what happens in a place where you are not, at a time when you are doing something else. Journalists report on people who are unlike the people you know personally but whom you still consider your countrymen; on the proceedings and decisions of your government; on plays, movies, books, and music that you have not necessarily experienced firsthand but that form the culture in which you live. Journalism is essential to democracy because it creates a sense of shared reality across a city, a state, a nation. Without this shared reality, a public sphere—the term philosopher Jürgen Habermas uses to describe the space where public opinion takes shape—cannot exist.

As for our own age, Habermas speaks of “a refeudalization of the public sphere,” what with the fusion of news and advertising, the corporate ownership of media, the return of government secrecy, the intrusion of celebrity into politics,

The public sphere invented during this time period, which Habermas writes is “always already oriented to an audience,” even in its moments of reading and private media consumption, is not observed by an eye that watches from above. Rather, it is inspected and scrutinized by other self-governing actors within the public sphere, creating the feeling of having to perform for invisible eyes while in public spaces all of the time.

Besides striking it rich, Day accomplished something else, too. For even more than the business model, the long-term social consequences of a newspaper for the masses were profound. Large numbers of people taking in daily news gave rise to what Jürgen Habermas has called a “public sphere”—a more quotidian term for this effect is “public opinion,” but by whatever name, it was a new phenomenon, and one dependent on the nascent but growing attention industry.