Matthew Allen

Willson: public sphere and protocol

Notes that Habermas’s public sphere concept originally tied to physical space and embodied interaction; cites 1992 Habermas, however: uncouples the public sphere from space in this way.

“Protocol is a language that regulates flow, directs netspace, codes relationships and connects life-forms” (Galloway) – protocol is both enabling and disabling – [ Foucault - power? protocol as language of power]

Basically, paper presenting a nice comparison of H’s public sphere and G’s protocol as two ways of conceiving this space outside of the structures and forms of state and citizen interaction. Suggests code is a layer between structures of politics and participation.

Jensen: Public Sphere 2.0
New data – internet as mediator.

contrasts Public Sphere 1.0 – classic political citizenship, old media; Public Sphere 2.0 cultural citizenship, new media – Denmark as the case study; presents information showing different kinds of media use – [problem - claims that the Internet is media - is it?]; focus is on how people get the news – TV 1st, Internet 2nd. Presents usual kinds of ‘what people do online’ data; deploys the old media / new media divide consistently.

Does this work? Perhaps not. Could the social media approach (Bruns for example) work better? – In other words, the difference between (say) TV and (say) Youtube is not old and new, but mass and social? A critical recent piece on the way the Internet doesn’t easily fall into dichtomous comparisons is Luders work on personal media, NMS 2007

Preliminary analysis presented considering the shift from classic political citizenship to cultural citizenship; not entirely clear whether there is a shift (but I am unsure if the survey is precisely acquiring information about this difference). Suggests the Internet is more important for cultural citizenship than political citizenship – there’s something about the information presentation and availability online that makes it work better for cultural citizenship.

Survey preliminaries suggest old media important (as it moves to the INternet for delivery).

Discusses online and offline particiation [is this the right question?]

[note the practical use Public Sphere 2.0 in Australia by net-guru politician Kate Lundy]

Breindl: Democractic potentials of the Internet
Early discussions – utopian / dystopia themes in 1990s discussions; they were flawed (based on techno-determinism, not empirical). 2000s – better literature which is more empirical and less pre-determined.

Internet – horizontal notion emerges more strongly. [Question: was hierarchy as important and dominating as it now appears in retrospect?]

Information is linked to citizenship – having information allows participation; has an implicit critique of mass media and governments not being open. Breindl emphasises that the internet doesn’t necessarily mean more better or other improvements in information. [Moreover, i'd add, the link between information and participation is dubious, politically - the search for information (eg its absence) probably motivates as much as having info; plus you need point of view!]. PLus, you still get overload and disinformation via the Internet in any case.

Reviews the public sphere idea, emphasising how public sphere is an often-deployed concept in analysing the internet and politics. Has some critical points – empirically hard to see net as public sphere; also theoretically public sphere has problems. Aligns interactivity and debate [not sure about this?]. Then moves to social capital and the whole strong ties idea for participation. Mobilisation / reinforcement hypotheses – networked ICTs can mobilise change or reinforce status quo – literature tends to favour latter, but both h. are common