Page 41 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

The State/Government/Political Establishment

Trade unions Public opinion

Editorials Features
Political
parties

Pressure News Media
groups

Business
TV debates Current affairs

Public Terrorist
organisations organisations

Citizens
Figure 2.1 The public sphere.

function as an instrument or a forum for the enlightened, rational,
critical, and unbiased public discussion of what the common
interests were in matters of culture and politics’ (ibid.).
For Josef Ernst, the public sphere is that ‘distinctive discursive
space’ within which ‘individuals are combined so as to be able to
assume the role of a politically powerful force’ (1988, p. 47). It is,
in 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

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