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Digital Culture: The Changing Dynamics
potentials of the audiences, etc. Some authors linked electronic media, and more
particularly public service broadcasting, with the idea of the public sphere in an
affirmative mode. In their opinion, the public sphere became accessible, even though
mediated, to a large number of citizens. Authors such as Paddy Scannell (1989), and
later John Keane (2000), pointed out the positive aspects of the emergence of
electronic media that fundamentally changed the modes of communication among
people, as well as the structural changes that searched for a different framework of
analysis. Scannell opposed the idea of broadcasting as a “pseudo-public sphere” or its
role as an “ideological apparatus”. He also dismisses the claim that the audience
represents a body of fragmented individuals that are exposed to a one-way
communication without any possibility to give feedback on the message (Scannell,
1989: 153). He supports this by a comparison between the idealized public sphere that
Habermas advocated and the actual possibilities that a spectator within it had.
Scannell argues that in public spheres, as Habermas defines them, locations such as
theatres, libraries, salons and cafes that opened up for private persons only provided a
spectator role to these participants, where they were not in a position to discuss or
give feedback. The latter is more likely to happen in a circle of friends and family, in
front of a television set. As he puts it “what life public events have is undoubtedly the
“aura” of presence, but aura is as low in communicative properties as it is high in
ritual characteristics” (Scannell, 1989: 154).
Keane focuses his critique on Habermas’ reductionist view of the existence of one
“single, spatially integrated public sphere” (Keane, 2000: 72). In Keane’s view,
public life is subject to “re-feudalization” – not in Habermas’ sense but in the sense of
“development of a complex mosaic of differently sized, overlapping and
interconnected public spheres” (Keane, 2000: 77). Keane distinguishes between
micro-, meso- and macro-public spheres. Micro-public spheres represent a bottom-up
perspective, local spaces in which “citizens enter into disputes about who does and
who ought to get what, when and how” (Keane, 2000: 79), and represent a similar
space as the one Habermas described: discussion circles, publishing houses, the
churches, clinics, cafes … These forms of interaction are usually latent and they
become publicly visible only occasionally (Keane, 2000: 79). Meso-public spheres
appear in the form of the nation state and they are mediated through electronic media
and newspapers with a large circulation (Keane, 2000: 80). Finally, macro-public
spheres are formed on global or regional levels that can be identified in the form of
industrial concerns which cross national state boundaries or in the form of
satellite-linked communication systems. These public spheres represent a “modular
system of overlapping networks defined by the lack of differentiation among spheres
… which is a useful reminder of the dangers of reifying the distinction among micro-,
meso- and macro-public spheres” (Keane, 2000: 87).
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