The public sphere is a place for people to express the views and opinions, and the internet carves a path in order for people to be able to do this. However how easy is it really? We live in a country with freedom of speech, but many countries around the world are unable to freely express themselves as they wish, with governments able to oppress any opinions that they do not agree with.
Take Iran for example; in 2009 the government blocked any access to facebook, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/24/facebook-banned-iran . Should the government really be allowed to do this? The internet opens up many doors for people to find others that share their views with; Habermas describes the public sphere as “bourgeois” (1962), although the concept of the public sphere does not take into account the masses, and only applies to the elitists.
The public sphere can be incredibly useful though, it helped to arrange the student protests of November 2010; http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2010/nov/10/demo-2010-student-protests-live. Before the internet big protests would have taken a lot longer to organise and nowhere near as many people would have been able to have access to the information and arrange their own ways there. There was a lot of negative press coverage from these protests unfortunately, and again the public sphere was there for people to voice their concerns over the “youth of today”.
Whether the public sphere has a positive or negative impact on society is left to be seen, but it is a place for people to share their thoughts with like – minded individuals.
No comments:
Post a Comment