Page 206 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

PUBLIC SPHERE

excluding interests, cultures and tastes that do not conform to the
privileged depiction of the public service broadcasting citizen
(Hawkins, 1999).
In recent years, theorists have challenged the assumption that public
service broadcasting has an exclusive claim in creating the conditions
necessary for democracy. As Keane writes, the case for public service
broadcasting is weakened by ‘its unconvincing attempt to justify
publicly the public service model against its enemies’ (1991: 116).
Although public service broadcasting has played a large part in the
development of innovative television, commercially produced pro-
grammes have also extended our public debates, our acceptance of
difference and our national identities (see Hartley, 1992a).

Further reading: Murdock (1992)

PUBLIC SPHERE

Ju ¨rgen Habermas’ theorisation of the public sphere, most thoroughly
explored in his work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
(translated 1989), was an attempt to find possibilities through which
democracy could be realised. Influenced by his experience of fascism
and his apprenticeship with the Frankfurt School as Adorno’s
research assistant, Habermas held little hope of being able to identify a
political philosophy that could resolve the consequences of capitalism
or state control (Calhoun, 1992). As such, the public sphere is not an
attempt at a prescriptive political theory, but a conception of the
conditions within which healthy and just political conditions may be
realised.
The public sphere is the arena within which debate occurs; it is the
generation of ideas, shared knowledge and the construction of opinion
that occurs when people assemble and discuss. Although real and
experienced, the public sphere cannot be located in particular place or
identified as an object. It ‘cannot be conceived as an institution and
certainly not as an organisation’, writes Habermas, rather it is ‘a
network for communicating information and points of view’
(Habermas, 1996: 360). The public sphere is where ideas and
information are shared. It is where public opinions are formed as a
result of communication.
For Habermas, the public sphere was most constructive when not
influenced by commercial interests or state control. In its original
conception, the public sphere must be insulated from the interests of

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