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The main purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of the contention that, over the past few decades, the public sphere has undergone a new structural transformation. To this end, the analysis focuses on Habermas's recent inquiry into the causes and consequences of an allegedly 'new' or 'further' [erneuten] structural transformation of the political public sphere. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part considers the central arguments in support of the 'new structural transformation of the public sphere' thesis, shedding light on its historical, political, economic, technological, and sociological aspects. The second part offers some reflections on the most important limitations and shortcomings of Habermas's account, especially with regard to key social developments in the early twenty-first century. The paper concludes by positing that, although the constitution of the contemporary public sphere is marked by major—and, in several respects, unprecedented—structural transformations, their significance should not be overstated, not least due to the enduring role of critical capacity in highly differentiated societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the conflicts related to the public sphere. It states that social media becomes a place to conduct news and public debate. According to the author, research are being conducted on the concept of citizen media which are sites of participation in journalism and news that also highlights novelty and disruptive innovations.

The phenomenon of public intellectuals (PIs) continue to be debated, as their status and significance evolve under changing historical circumstances. I suggest PIs still play an important role in democracies, despite alterations in their circumstances, activities, and practices. While most of the familiar questions remain, it is important to take into account a number of changes that impact on PIs, their situation, and their activities. I explore the contingencies that make possible, as well as delimit and alter, the phenomenon of PIs in contemporary democratic societies. The discussion is organised around three sets of evolving circumstances in which PIs are inexorably embedded: the structural setting of mediated public spheres, with a particular emphasis on the online sector; the dynamic realm of practices associate with online civic participation more broadly; and lastly, the cultural and political climate of democratic societies confronted by serious dilemmas. The interface of these circumstances is ushering PIs into a new historical phase, where the web obviously looms large yet where the contours are still taking shape. These circumstances put new demands on PIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights as a pragmatist in the Daweyan thought on the concept of orientational transformations in any public sphere as conceptualize by Jürgen Habermas. It mentions that Habermas' concept of public sphere transformation gained interest among those who are inclined in the intersection between argument, communications and the ideal kind of society. The author mentions that he does not disagree with the view of Habermas and cites the argument of Lenore Langsdorf on the same idea. Moreover, the author argues that the Deweyan pragmatist suggests that what is important in the transformation of public sphere is not the interaction patterns nor the political power or the advertising but the democracy and the procedures relative to political decisions.

As a critical concept, the public sphere has always been premised on two idealizing assumptions: in principle, public opinion should be normatively legitimate and politically efficacious. Yet these assumptions are hard to associate with the discursive arenas we today call 'transnational public spheres', which neither stage communication among equal citizens nor address it to sovereign states. In this context, public sphere theory is in danger of losing its critical thrust and political point. Aiming to recover its critical potential, this article revisits the ideals of legitimacy and efficacy in three steps. First, I explicate the implicit Westphalian presuppositions of Habermas's original formulation and show that these have persisted in its major feminist, anti-racist and multicultural critiques, including my own. Second, I identify several distinct facets of transnationality that problematize the understandings of legitimacy and efficacy that informed both the original theory and its critical counter-theorizations. Finally, I suggest a strategy for reconstructing the ideal of legitimate and efficacious public opinion for a post-Westphalian world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the philosophical underpinnings and development of the Alternative Radio program in Australia. It has been contended that the prevailing corporate radio become an inherent system and due to its production values. The Alternative Radio is considered to be possible when broadcastings nature is lessened to system imperatives opposed to people's lifeworld experience. It can be found to present programming that recognizes its potential audience as active agents in creating public sphere. It also demonstrated that some within the audience are prepared in accepting counter arguments and engage with them in public sphere reconstruction.

The present paper is framed within current debates about the need to rethink citizenship, especially with respect to the question of whether there is a legitimate place for emotion in the public sphere. Emotion has not traditionally been seen as a key to good citizenship, and there has been a fair amount of aversion among media critics towards the “emotionalization” of the public sphere and spectacular outbursts of public emotion. This paper looks at the coverage of the murders of Dutch filmmaker and journalist Theo van Gogh in 2004 and Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002, and shows that the issue is not simply whether emotions should be allowed in the public sphere or not, but rather how they are articulated and how they achieve different understandings of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article situates the issue of the public sphere as a phenomenon that is historically bound and culturally specific. According to this point of view, the Western practices and the Western way of thinking about the public sphere appear as a historically particular way of dealing with the more general phenomenon which is the creation of a social bond beyond the family. Looking at the self-contradictory effects of the ‘modern’ Western public sphere, the question is asked whether the public association of self-interested or self-governing individuals might have to be theorized as a partial and insufficient solution to the social bond. A comparative perspective shows that it is not individuals but cultural forms that link people in the public sphere. They do so by providing a narrative basis of discourses and/or markets that in the self-understanding of modernity shape social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a comparative analysis of the constitution of public spheres and civil societies in three pre-modern civilizations which include the Islamic, the Indian and the European Christian. Characteristics of the public sphere in Islamic societies; Background on the Indian social order; Relationship between the different social sectors and the arenas of rulership.

On November 25, 2002, thousands of people marched through the streets of Mexico City and demanded, in the name of social justice, an end to the violence against women in northern Mexico. ‘Ni Una Más’ (not one more) was their chant and is also the name of their social justice campaign. Their words referred to the hundreds of women and girls who have died violent and brutal deaths in northern Mexico and to the several hundred more who have disappeared over the last ten years. These Ni Una Más marchers, many working with human rights and feminist organizations in Mexico, are protesting against the political disregard and lack of accountability, at all levels of government, in relation to this surging violence against women. And the symbolic leaders of their movement are the Mujeres de Negro (women wearing black), who are based in Chihuahua City. In this article, I examine how the Mujeres de Negro demonstrate how feminist politics so often plays upon the negotiation of spatial paradoxes in order to open new arenas for women's political agency. For while the Mujeres de Negro of northern Mexico are galvanizing an international human rights movement that is challenging political elites, they are also reinforcing many of the traditional prohibitions against women's access to politics and the public sphere. And I explore how the Mujeres de Negro devise a spatial strategy for navigating this paradox in an increasingly dangerous political environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the public sphere concept. Stance on the Habermasian public sphere; Results of the changes and variations in the historical rendering of the public sphere; Opinion of Jürgen Habermas on the aspects of public sphere.

This section comments on the article Public Sociologies: Contradictions, Dilemmas, and Possibilities, by Michael Burawoy, which appeared in the June 2004 issue of the journal Social Forces. To be fair, Burawoy deserves credit for trying to change the discipline's norms on this matter, and if he is successful, his efforts may do something to change the culture of sociology. The major domain in which Burawoy anticipates sociology making a contribution is in civil society. In fact, Burawoy has argued that civil society is indeed the only, terrain for sociologists to organize their public initiatives, and states and markets are of great interest to sociologists but from the standpoint of their connection to civil society. However, he offers little evidence for his claims of the primacy of civil society. Instead, Burawoy just asserts that sociology has a comparative advantage in civil society and that sociology is born with civil society and dies with civil society. The final concern I have with Burawoy's public sociology is that he offers no tangible measures of success. Articulating some tangible measures of success will force sociologists to craft a concrete plan, and any concrete plans should be oriented by those goals.

The riddle of how to democratize the multi-level polity of the EU is answered by pointing to the empirical impact of an unfolding European public sphere. It is argued that there is a self-constituting dynamic of a European public sphere which abets the coupling of transnational spaces of communication with the institutional integration of the EU. From this perspective, democracy is not external to the EU, it is already part of the logic of European institution-building and governance and is fostered by collective learning processes in which definitions of the collective good as well as conditions for appropriate forms of political participation are negotiated. In discussing the case of the EU's constitutional reform, a theory of democratic functionalism is proposed which accounts for this specific form of democratization of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the function of media in the public sphere of Islam. The public sphere of Islam has been a ground for dispute, where activists and militants argue with the traditional interpretative practices and authority to speak for Islam. Giving new people and practices an opportunity to the social field do not only challenge authorities but it also distort the boundaries between private and public. Moreover, it promotes new habits of production and consumption related to media. Certain ideas and issues start to circulate in intellectuals' books, audiocassettes and televisions.

A healthy public sphere is necessary for a healthy democracy. While most diagnoses currently point to an ailing public sphere, we currently have very little empirical information about the functioning of this discursive realm. To enhance our empirical understanding, the present essay analyzes discussions from nationwide focus groups and argues that the major ailment confronting the public sphere is the predominance of egocentrie arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article criticizes the theories on public sphere. The sudden emergence of new democracies encouraged the transfer of the Habermasian model of the public sphere in order to understand the civic engagement traditions of new eastern states. According to the author, the uncritical transfer of Habermasian theories to analyze non-western societies remains questionable on methodological grounds. It is clear that theories and concepts designed for European and Anglo-American examples should not be applied to non-western cases. The author clarifies that she is not rejecting the notion of public sphere nor proposing a revision of the Habermasian model to accommodate Asian cases but merely proposing a sociological reevaluation of the term "publics" with ontological depth.

El artículo presenta una discusiόn teόrica sobre la dicotomía entre lo público y lo privado como instrumento de análisis político y social. Aunuqe la deficiniciόn de los términos está influenciada por diversas tradiciones y aparece en vocabularios diferentes y es por lo tanto equívoca, si se toman con flexibilidad y cautela, los términos se tornan en instrumentos útiles del análisis sociolόgico y de la reflexiόn moral.

The article discusses a case study of public sphere and civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. It discusses the three groups of countries in the region including the 7 leaders composed of Poland, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Lithuania, the 12 laggards including Romania, Croatia, and Ukraine. It also discusses the aspects of public sphere as one that include an integrated global market, and the strong communications between politics and communication.

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay than"... "What giants?" asked Sancho Panza. "Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length." "Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone." Cervantes, Part 1, Chapter VIII. Don Quixote [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article criticizes the view of professor Alan Gross on public sphere. He notes the claim of Gross that there was an absence of public debate before the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was implemented in the U.S. He claims that for Gross, debate seems to consists only of logos and is not the holistic rhetorical act that Aristotle, a philosopher, and other rhetorical theorists have seen it to be. He adds that Gross restricts his opinion of debate to argumentation that involves values shared by all members of an audience.

The author analyzes the views of professor Alan Gross on public sphere. He notes that Gross posits a platonized Jurgen Habermas and admonishes rhetoricians to understand Habermas aright in the service of restoring a mythical Golden Age of the public sphere and deliberative democracy. He claims that the public sphere valorizes by Gross has never and can never exist, despite the purported concern with the world of the people's everyday experience. He states that Gross's view on public sphere sacrifices rhetoric on the altar of moral idealism.