Week 1: The Public Sphere, media and publicness (Geoffery Craig)
Tutorial
Lecture
Tutor: Racheal : racheal.perters@aut.au.nz
1. Locating the Public
Section One: Media, Society and Publicness
make questions from lecture for the next weeks tutor.
Ass 1: Media platform in comparison to the public sphere.
Public sphere
Definition: A neutral public space where citizens could mange inmoportant issues.
Video: Cambridge analytical donal trump winning election
Democracy - have a look at this more what is it?
NZ Heard how has it moved away from the public sphere and why?
Capatilisum
2. The public sphere history
NZ public
Three defining characteristics of a Public Space.
- Accessibility - Public parks, town squares, courts etc. Places where anyone can go no matter who they are or where they come from, no restrictions. Also, access not only to the space but also to associated rights to that space.
- Universality - Public space is a generalized space, providing "room for all voices, regardless of their status, background, or mode of expression." Coleman & Ross, (2010). Generalised space, space of diversity, universal.
- Visibility - Public spaces must be open to general scrutiny. Not behind closed doors.
The Public Spaces are visible and open to vernal scrutiny. (critical observation or examination)
We the public is an identity, we act as members when we are citizens. It carries certain social values, obligations to others in the community and privileges and responsibilities. Publicness "Fosters a particular ethico-political orientation to others" Craig (2004)
PS- normative?
Neutral arena. Quality of ideas not who you are. open and inclusive forum.
PS ideal where ration-critical discourse is produced. - not shearing what we already know but moving forward. Listening to toher and chnaging and trasnforming your vews.
PS decline
working class men got the vote. Inlargemnt of franchise more people get to vote. Isn't that a good thing? however, people no longer thoughabout communicating they where there for there own perticular intres. negonsaiation was how it moved forward instead of rationality.
Comershalized media.
rise of entertainment and decline in ??
debating to consuming
politions preform more then debate now linking back to how long kings used to be being the idea of the public.
3. Criticisms of the Public Sphere
He talks about THE public sphere. But there where others Public Spheres ?? Works best if it is sense as one public sphere that is surrounded by other public spheres.
4. The Mediated Public Sphere (modern technology)
The media are not observes. They consitiue life in contem society.
People where reading the same things all over the world so it created commonness
Public screen - metaphor in contrast to the public sphere.
ideas of everyone having the same thoughts and reding the same things
Screen is random. (slide)
P Spher been sublimated by the screen idea.
Virtual SP Sphere which relates to containment is it still appropriate. Is networks nor approbate now for the way that it is. Yes it is.
Definition of Public Space
Don't think about it as a physical space, public space is where we congress and intact with one another.
"A social configuration comprising practiced and experienced relationships of interaction." Coleman & Ross, (2010)
My definition: A non defined social space for relationships to interact.
Physical examples of a public space are state entities such as public hospitals, public schools.
Jürgen Habermas
Wrote: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Translated into English in 1989 from German.
Habermas’ study of the public sphere is both
a historical and normative account. The Public Sphere is not his original idea.
The idea of "the public" arose around the mid 17th and early 18th century where individual/private people came together to debate the regulations of civil society.
The middle class people then demanded that the courts/governing of the state be made open to the public.
“Habermas maintains that this bourgeois public sphere of the 18th century was the nearest historical approximation we have ever had of the ideal of the public sphere” Craig, (2004).
The Public Sphere is a neutral arena, where ideas are promoted, considered and evaluated on the basis of merit and their contribution to the public good.
The public sphere is an open and inclusive forum, allowing (and requiring) full participation and scrutiny of all issues relating to the public good.
Modern world - Increase on journalism means a decline in political news and leads the public from "culture-debating" to "culture consuming"
Reasons Habermas's ideas are flawed
Dose not work with the idea of power
Jürgen Habermas only like transparent, rational, face-to-face, print-based communication and do not like emotion and rhetoric, mediated forms of communication and visual based media.
“Habermas prizes conversa7on, reading and plain speech as worthy forms of discourse for a democra7c culture and is frankly hos7le to theatre, courtly forms, ceremony, the visual, and to rhetoric more generally. The brief flowering of the bourgeois public sphere is sandwiched, in STPS’s narra7ve, between two moments of ‘representa7on’: feudal pomp and modern PR” Peters, (1993)
People think that neutral area is not possible - when we speak we are coming from a cetin position.
Principles of what should make it a good public sphere
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