Question

According to Habermas, what role does the mass media play in shaping the public sphere? How might the corporate consolidation of media outlets and growing use of the internet affect public debate?

Answer 1

The mass media, Habermas argues, have mutated into monopoly capitalist organisations. Their role in the public debate has shifted from the dissemination of reliable information to the formation of public opinion. Habermas stresses the importance of a vital and functioning Öffentlichkeit, a sphere of critical publicity distinct from the state and the economy, consisting of a broad range of organisations that represent public opinion and interest groups, to counter these developments and as a conditio sine qua non for a pluralist democratic debate in an open society that is not entirely dominated by the mass media. Habermas notes the contradiction between the liberal public sphere constitutive catalogue of basic rights of man and their de facto restriction to a certain class of men. The character of the public sphere is increasingly restricted; the media serve as vehicles for generating and managing consensus and promoting capitalist culture rather than fulfill their original function as organs of public debate. Publicity loses its critical function in favour of a staged display arguments are transmuted into symbols to which one cannot respond by arguing but only by identifying with them. The debate that emerges as a reaction on Habermas work goes in different directions. Important focal points are the significance of the public sphere for democracy. Growth of information inequality threatens basic human rights the power of state and corporation to engage in electronic surveillance in civil society threatens both the rights of groups to speak and organise and the privacy rights of individuals. New forms of citizenship and public life are simultaneously enabled by new technology and restricted by market power and surveillance. One might, for example, draw from Foucault’s concept of the panoptic society to argue that the spread of information technology is likely to lead to a loss of autonomy in many realms of political, economic, cultural and social life.