Public Sphere

The German sociologist Habermas developed the notion of “public sphere” in his book in which he defined it as “an arena, independent of government and also enjoying autonomy from partisan economic forces, which is dedicated to rational debate and which is both accessible to entry and open to inspection by the citizenry. It is here, in this public sphere, that public opinion is formed.” (Holub, 1991).

It is because of the expansion of the capitalism that people develop the ability to do the separation between the church and the state. This phenomenon leaded to a big increase in autonomous businesses followed by the creation of powerful political performance used to expedite the development of these business. The facility of printing news paper and the reduction of its cost has promoted the greater exchange of information and ideas within the public sphere.

However, as the capitalism has grown and attained the world dominance, the public sphere has been transformed to public interest. Indeed, public sphere became a place where entrepreneurs show their power rather than using it as a “free market of ideas”.  The media was also used as a tool to contribute to capitalists’ interests.

In addition to that, the public sphere was also criticized for being Eurocentric (the fact of focusing and being inspired by the European culture), for giving much importance to the bourgeois and valorizing the male society. However, thanks to the globalization, a “global public sphere” has been created in order to focus on the international issues that the public sphere has known over the past. Environment, human right, equality between gender and ethnic equality are given more importance nowadays.

The public sphere has been criticized for being a kind of public interest, where people use it to increase their power and to promote their capitalist interest rather than using it to expose information between people from different background.

 I think that the situation is still the same today. Powerful people use the media tools to manipulate people’s mind in order to become more powerful and to get the monopole. Also, the public sphere gives so much importance to futile information such as sex, pornography, scandals and celebrities’ lives rather than contributing on the population’s culture and intellectuality.

Moreover, we are facing today, a kind of the Americanization and Europeanisation of our societies. This situation shows that people view America and Europe in the form of a model.  Indeed, they have a big influence on other countries such as in technology, cuisine, attitudes, ideas… I’m totally against those ideas since I believe that each country must be connected to its proper norms and values. The influence is sometimes positive in the sense that some population become “more open minded”, but the influence can lead sometimes to a loss of a country’s identity or to an egocentric society. Therefore, I think that it is essential to each country to preserve its culture. For this, the public sphere has to be internationalized and should grant importance to all countries.

In addition to that, the public sphere has to give importance to the smallest business also in order to create a kind of competitiveness, so the monopole can disappear. Also, the public sphere should focus on more important topics to increase our population’s intellectuality and allow everyone to participate within the public sphere since it is supposed to be public and not restrained to the richest and the powerful people.