Page 435 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

1 | Publ c Sphere

a gloBal PuBliC sPhere?
Following Habermas’s analysis of the emerging public sphere in England, France, and Ger-
many, the concept of the public sphere continues to center on the modern nation-states.
However, over the past half century, various transnational or even global spaces of public de-
bate have formed: shortwave radio stations such as BBC World were aimed at a global audi-
ence during the Cold War and continue to do so today; the arrival of multichannel television
in the 1980s led to an internationalization of televisual content and the rise of transnationally
transmitted news networks such as CNN; and since the 1990s the Internet has provided an in-
creasingly universally accessible forum of political information and debate alike. At the same
time, pressing political concerns ranging from environmental risks such as global warming;
the threats of nuclear technology and genetic engineering; questions of security and politi-
cal or religious violence; and concerns over human rights, equality, and poverty all expand
beyond national boundaries as well as the influence of individual nation-states and are com-
monly taken up in form of social movements and nongovernmental organizations (such as
Greenpeace, Amnesty International, etc.). Whether, however, these spaces of transnational
communication constitute a meaningful public sphere remains hotly contested: On the one
hand, such transnational dialogue appears vital in the face of global challenges and risks. On
the other, transnational public spheres—like other alternative public spheres—do not map
onto transnational legislative and governmental structures. Conversely, supranational and
region states such as the European Union have so far failed to establish a single regional
public sphere to inform their democratic institutions.

political authorities assume certain functions in the sphere of commodity ex-
change and social labour, but, conversely, social powers now assume politi-
cal functions. . . . Large organizations strive for political compromises with the
state and with one another, excluding the public sphere whenever possible”
(Habermas 1989, p. 141.) This collusion between the state and other large-scale
organizations, including broadcasters and publishers, leads in Habermas’s
words to the “refeudalization” of the public sphere, a state in which citizens are
once more marginalized or even excluded from meaningful public debate. The
public debates that take place in and through mass media such as television
(for example, during televised parliamentary debates, in news programs, or in
talk shows) or radio (for instance, in phone-ins) are thus a “pseudo-public and
sham private sphere of cultural consumption” (Habermas 1989: 160) that, by
being part of a privatized nexus of mass production and mass consumption, are
inherently apolitical.

CriTiquE oF haBErmas’s work

Following the belated translation of Habermas’s analysis of the structural
transformation of the public sphere, it quickly became one of the most widely
used sources in the analysis of contemporary political communication in the