Page 37 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

short, ‘the bourgeois realm of politics’ (Ibid.) which has gradually
expanded from its elitist beginnings to include absolute majorities of
the population in modern democratic societies.
The public sphere, as can be seen, comprises in essence the
communicative institutions of a society, through which facts and
opinions circulate, and by means of which a common stock of
knowledge is built up as the basis for collective political action: in
other words, the mass media, which since the eighteenth century
have evolved into the main source and focus of a society’s shared
experience (see Figure 2.1). The modern concept of ‘news’
developed precisely as a means of furnishing citizens with the most
important information, from the point of view of their political

Figure 2.1 The public sphere

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