2.1: The Public Sphere

To understand the role and place of the mass media in society, we need to understand the concept of the public sphere. According to Media Texthack Group (2014), the German scholar Jürgen Habermas’ original definition of a public sphere is that it is a domain (or place, but not a real place – more like an imagined place) of social life where public opinion can be formed (see Habermas, 1991, p. 398). This means it is a space where people share ideas, form opinions and sometimes influence other people and the government on what the important issues in a society are and what people think of these issues. Habermas said that the public sphere should be open to all citizens and that the public sphere exists in every conversation in which individuals come together to form a public, in other words, a group of people. The public sphere should ideally be a space where people come together freely to express their opinions. The public sphere in the 21st century includes social media and other internet platforms (De Blasio et al., 2020; Ndzinisa et al., 2021; Sakariassen, 2021). We can see that people express opinions and form ideas in online spaces. Sometimes, these ideas are so strong that they lead to real movements that bring about social change, such as the #Rhodesmustfall movement, which led to the removal of colonial statues from some universities.

Public opinion formed in the public sphere can also influence the state and how the government rules. A public sphere is seen as a basic requirement to mediate between state and society, and in an ideal situation (in democratic societies), the public sphere allows citizens to exercise democratic control of state activities.

Habermas’ liberal model of a public sphere is a normative claim. This means that it is describing an idealised public sphere – how things should ideally be. Things are not always like that. Habermas himself admitted that the participation of women and the inclusion of minorities are not guaranteed by his model. His initial model relied on the circumstances of bourgeois (middle class) society in the early 19th century, when life was very different and women and minorities had far fewer rights. The idea of a public sphere has, however, persisted and changed over the years. It is still an important concept to understand the role of journalism in society. The mass media (journalists) have always claimed the role of representing the public in the public sphere – being the public’s voice. Mass media created platforms through their newspapers and radio and television stations for discussion and for forming public opinion in a society. In the internet era, this has changed; there are many researchers who now say that the public sphere has grown and spread to the internet (Friedland et al., 2014; Lima Quintanilha, 2018; Reese & Shoemaker, 2016), including to social media platforms. These researchers argue that ordinary people can now form their own opinion and express it freely without the need for the mass media. This means ordinary people, while they do not necessarily think of it in this way, play a public sphere role because they can also influence public debate and help form opinions in a society. For example, if a newspaper keeps publishing stories about a corrupt mayor, eventually this might lead to further investigation, and the mayor might be arrested. But nowadays, anyone can do that – if a community keeps talking about a corrupt mayor on a Facebook group and some people start providing real evidence, then that Facebook group is doing what newspapers used to do: they are creating a space for public debate to change something that is wrong.

The public sphere is a theoretically complicated concept, and there is no need to delve into this too deeply in this textbook (you will find many articles about the public sphere if you search online), but by understanding that, in a simplified way, the public sphere is an imagined space where debate takes place and opinions are formed, and sometimes these debates influence how the government rules a country, you will understand how, in the 21st century, both the mass media and ordinary people on social media represent the voices of the public in society. Many ordinary people express opinions and debate issues, from social media to podcasts to YouTube channels. Newspapers, radio, and TV are no longer the only ones who control the public debate.