The media toolbox

The public sphere theory was formatted by german philosopher Jurgen Habermas 1962. When Habermas first created the public sphere theory in 1962 he imagined to play out how a coffee shop would have in the 18th century. The basic premise being that it was a social space in which different opinions could be said by everyone in the room and that everyone was free and could be free to talk about relevant issues. Initially though in the 18th century there was a big exclusion of people that were poor and uneducated as it only made sense if you had the money to absorb or contribute to the public sphere in a meaningful way.

The definition of a theory states that it is a system of ideas with amendments being made to it throughout time. This is evident with the public sphere theory as it has become held online in a virtual world rather than in a physical situation. “the concept of the public sphere is constantly developing”. The number one reason for this is social media and the internet. Social media increases opportunity for political communication and enables democratic capacity for political discussion within the virtual public sphere. There are infinite public spheres online for example group chats, discussion forums and so on. A big part of my public sphere and where I engage in political discussion is on reddit.

Visual demonstration of how a public sphere might look like

Amazing video giving insight into the background of Habermas and how he developed the public sphere

Reddit is a great app that unites people across the globe to talk about common interests and post content and share to an audience who can relate to them and understand their feelings. It operates through subreddits which are groups that anyone can join and discuss and post content related to this topic of the subreddit. A lot of different subreddits are based for posted news related materials and there are entire subreddits based around political discussion. However in recent times a lot of subreddits have become more mediated in that there are more strict guidelines and criteria that users have to obey and keep in mind when producing content on subreddits. A lot of subreddits have implemented Auto moderator bots that are designed to filter content that doesn’t comply with the rules of the subreddit. This is a great example of how social media has affected the public spheres and users ability to express and open opinion without having to worry about censorship.

This is a screenshot I took from when I tried to post something into a subreddit and it was denied because it didn’t have enough karma points

Almost anyone can access reddit if they have internet and a device of some sort and an internet connection. Although it may seem at first like reddit is a completely inclusive app that allows anyone to post content within the subreddits this is not necessarily the case. A lot of subreddits have been set so that users require a certain amount of Karma points (Points you can gain from posting and commenting) to post something in the subreddit. This is mainly to stop spam but it takes away the freedom of a public sphere as anyone can participate in the discussion.

Share this: