Jürgen Habermas: The Public Sphere

• German sociologist and philosopher

• Focuses on social theory, democracy, law and contemporary politics

• Believed that there existed a possibility for community, through "communicative action", that strives for agreement between others - this is rationality itself

• He stressed the importance for having an "ideal speech situation", in which citizens are able to raise moral and political concerns, and defend them by rationality alone

• He expressed the idea of a "Public Sphere" in his book 'The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere - An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society'

The Public Sphere

• Habermas defines the public sphere as the sphere of private people who join together to form a "public"

• Emphasises the role of the public sphere as a way for civil society to articulate its interests

• The public sphere existed in the Middle Ages, involving the king/lord representing himself before an audience; the king was the only public person, and all others were spectators.              - The public and private realms were not separated.

• The public sphere developed out of the private institution of the family, and from what Habermas calls the "literary public sphere", where discussion of art and literature became possible for the first time

• Habermas argues that the world of the mass media is cheap and powerful, and that it attempts to manipulate and create a public where none exists, and to manufacture consensus

• Habermas: Public opinion is manipulative and critical - A strong public sphere is needed to check domination by the state and non-governmental organizations

David Gauntlett

David Gauntlett

Gauntlett recognises that the internet and digital media have fundamentally changed the ways in which the audience engages with media and each other.


Web 1.0 & Web 2.0

This picture reflects how Web 1.0 is like users owning individual gardens and how Web 2.0 is like users sharing gardens and working together to look after them. 

Web 1.0...

• Closed, individual publishing
• One-to-many communication
• Passive involvement
• Read-only content
• Personal websites

Web 2.0...

• Collaborative
• Group participation
• Many-to-many communication
• Active involvement
• User-generated content

Differences Between Web 1.0 & Web 2.0 ...& Web 3.0

Reception Theory

Stuart Hall

• Active audiences with individual differences
• Questions why different people interpret media content in different ways
• Idea that the media producer will encode the text in a certain way to convey a message
• Considers that the audience is an essential element in the creative process
• Explains that the audience interprets a media text according to their individual life experience, cultural background, social statuses, etc.
• The meaning of a media text is created within the relationship between the text and the reader

Stuart Hall argues that the process of representation itself forms the world it aims to represent, and explores how the shared language of a culture - i.e. its signs and images - provide a "conceptual roadmap" that gives meaning to the world, rather than simply reflecting it.

According to Hall, audiences 'read' media texts in three different ways:

Preferred/Dominant Reading

Individuals accept the reading that the producer of the text intended for the audience to have

For example, someone who likes McDonald's will see an advert for McDonald's and think that it looked really good, and may choose to eat there as a result.



Oppositional Reading

Individuals do not share the view of the text, and therefore, oppose what the producer wanted them to think

For example, someone such as a vegan, or an athlete, may see a McDonald's advert and think that it looked disgusting, which is obviously not what the producers of the advert intended for the meaning to be.



Negotiated Reading

Individuals accept some of the preferred reading of the text, but may modify it so that it reflects their own opinions and experiences

For example, someone who likes McDonald's, but knows that it isn't very healthy, may think that it looked really good, but they will only go and eat there occasionally.

The Hypodermic Syringe Theory

• 1920's
• Explains how mass media influences audiences
• Idea that information is 'injected' into the brains of passive audiences
• Assumes that everyone is the same - no individual differences
• Media content forced on mass audience who are believed to decode messages uniformally

Criticisms

• Theory is outdated
• Theory does not consider the fact that the mass audience is made up of individuals from different cultural backgrounds, social statuses, occupations, etc.
• Therefore not all audiences can be engaged or appealed to
• Modern advances in technology mean that audiences can clarify pieces of information through a number of resources
• This means that the mass audience is now almost independent of the mass media

Two Step Flow Model

• 1940s
• Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson & Hazel Gaudet
• Development of the Hypodermic Syringe Theory
• Takes into consideration that communication is a complex process
• Idea that we are more likely to be influenced by other people than the mass media
• These people are known as 'opinion leaders'
• Theory suggests that opinion leaders pay close attention to the mass media, and pass on their interpretation of these media messages onto others

Criticisms

• Opinion leaders are very dependent upon the mass media
• Opinion leaders are likely to intepret media content in a baised way, according to their personal influences and background
• Therefore, by the time media content reachers the 'opinion seekers', it may have lost its value

Uses & Gratifications Theory

• 1974
• Blumler & Katz
• Developed from theory by Lasswell in 1948
• Idea that people have various needs and they decide how to satisfy these needs, using the media
• Active audience, rather than passive audience

Criticisms

• The relationships we form with media icons are only mental relationships
• The mass audience do not always use the media
• Does not take into consideration society as a whole, only focuses on individual needs