Question

What is soft public sphere? How is it different from other types of public spheres? (400 words) Gene: Media Studies

Answer 1

-> The public sphere are the groups or the specific committee of the people that gather to resolve many societal issues. These are less formal as compared to the legal authorities driven spheres. The debates, mass media communication, presentation etc comes under this

* There are two categories of public sphere naming soft public sphere & hard public sphere.

- Soft public sphere are less complex and includes issues which are in general in nature or frequently arises in day to day life.

- These are more focussed on less formal ways of issue demonstration & solving like it pays more emphasis upon the awareness of the issues by general discussions over meetings. Media communication also plays a very important role in this type of the public sphere.

- It is different from the hard public sphere in an aspect that the hard public spheres more or less envisage the legal or government authority based issue resolution processes which are rigid and very complex, less sophisticated and the political inferences are made from them . The intimate debates over issues by a group of people who decide the significance of the issue and directly connect it with the political or legal environment of the locality & then try to find out the resolution on primary level before sending it in the court. They decide the political reliability by mean of heated debates.

- The hard & soft public spheres are interconnected better to say rather then different. In fact the hard public sphere is a segment or part of soft public sphere.

- The informative debates of groups over media, case studies, general committee discussions on single topic, presentation etc comes under the soft public spheres, these are more virtual.