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HAS THE INCREASING INFLUENCE OF THE INTERNET AND FORMS OF ‘CITIZEN JOURNALISM’ OPENED UP A NEW ERA OF A ‘RADICAL’ PUBLIC SPHERE? IF SO, WHAT CONSTITUTES ITS RADICAL CHARACTERISITICS?David AloDepartment of English and MediaAnglia Ruskin UniversityCambridge. UK. CB1 1 PTdavidalo77@10.12.2015‘’Only in the light of the public sphere did that which existed become revealed, did everything become visible to all. In the discussion among citizens, issues were made topical and took shape. In the competition among equals, the best excelled and gained their essence – the immortality of fame’’ – Jurgen Habermas.The Internet was originally developed for use by the military and government of the United States (APRANET), but has grown through different stages from web 1.0 to web 2.0 applications now used in almost all human endeavours. The internet is the global information system that is linked together by a globally unique address space based on Internet Protocols (IP), (Flew, 2008, pp. 4-17). Public sphere is a specific domain where the public and private interacts (loci communes) Harbermas, (1989, pp. 2). It is a space that mediates between society and the state where the public organises itself and where public opinion is formed. It is an intermediary between the public realm of the state and the private interests of the individual members of the bourgeoisie (Edgar, 2006, pp. 124). The face to face form of interaction is the earliest form of social interaction. Individuals come together and then start to exchange symbolic forms and other different kinds of actions within a shared physical locale (Thompson, 2014, pp. 81).2019630167143 Monarchy & Church Church 00 Monarchy & Church Church 1908313206900Public Sphere Town Crier00Public Sphere Town Crier190500206375Private Sphere 00Private Sphere Traditional Public Sphere 1908175220345Public Sphere Internet/Broadcast Media00Public Sphere Internet/Broadcast Media2178657181085 Elected Governm Go Government [Police, Courts] 00 Elected Governm Go Government [Police, Courts] 127221220842Private Sphere00Private SphereModern Public SphereThe use of ‘town crier’ with gong or bell is widely reported in most cultures all over the world. Public spaces such as pubs were used in mediating between the society and the state, where individuals identify and associate with each other (through the use of badges, clothing, as well as use of rhetoric), they were able to develop themselves and engage in rational debate about the direction the society is going (Habermas, 1989, pp. 6, 8). Picture 1: A Town Crier in a public sphere (Alphabet, 2015) Picture 2: A Family Listening to Radio in the 30s. (Alphabet, 2015) Picture 3: A young boy listening to a hand-held player (Alphabet, 2015)In Picture 1, a town crier will deliver message on the streets using his voice as loud as possible with gong or bell. His voice, bell and megaphone (even his bicycle and dog in this case) has become part of the media tools with which he practices his trade. The family of the 1930s (picture 2) shares the public sphere by listening to the radio, while the youngster in Picture 3, listens to the multimedia electronic set capable of accessing media in different formats on the same handle in ways the family of the 1930s may never have imagined. Citizen journalism has been described as a range of web-based practices whereby ‘ordinary’ users engage in journalistic practices (Goode, 2009, pp. 1288).This includes practices such as blogging, photo and video sharing and posting of eye witness account and commentaries on current events on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Bebo and blogsites such as the Huffington’s post and Sahara Reporters.The Internet opened up the media space once it became accessible to the mobile phone, enabling formation and sharing of public opinion and open access to all citizens. Once the mobile phones’ capability to link up with the internet was enabled, it got transformed to a media station that citizen journalists now use (Watson, 2008, pp. 283). Citizen Journalism enhances interaction between mass participants in a more opened and diverse space that face-to-face interaction or newspaper distribution cannot achieve or reach. According to the UK Office for National Statistics, in 2013, 36 million adults (73%) in Great Britain accessed the Internet every day and access to the Internet using a mobile phone more than doubled between 2010 and 2013, from 24% to 53% and in 2013, while 21 million households (83%) had Internet access in the UK in 2013 (ONS. UK, 2015). It is no doubt therefore, that a new public sphere has evolved on the internet. Habermas (1997:105) in Alan, (2005, pp. 6) posited that when the public is large, there is need for a kind of communication that requires certain means of dissemination and influence. So, considering the reach and diversity of users on the internet, it has become the new media of the public sphere. Habermas described public sphere in the light of coffee houses, clubs, and opera houses etc. as structures that allow for effective mediation. But, they cannot hold as many audience or participants within the same time and space as the internet would (Mckee, 2005, pp. 5). We can reason along with Habermas, that the internet does not exist on its own or in isolation, but its existence and efficiency is rooted in massive infrastructural development and servicing industries that has been built over the years, not only on the ground here on earth, but also in space. So, we can say in a sense, Habermas is right in a way, for not only is the Citizen Journalist able to receive news and messages anytime and anywhere, using a media handle powered by extensive network of structures, he is able to respond and contribute to news and events more readily than the Journalists of old were able to.The Society and the State for the first time in the history of the world have a level playground on which they can express their philosophy and ideology. Complaints about public services, officials and scandals are lodged via the internet, where various state services equally can be accessed and moderated (Thompson, 1995, pp. 144). The internet is filled with private and government information and the government alone can no longer be the sole bearer or harbinger of information. Access to the internet is guaranteed to all citizens in most places and citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion in an open space where freedom of assembly, association and freedom to express and publish their opinion about matters of general interest (Gigi and Durham, 2012, pp. 76).The radicalism the internet brought to the political space can also be seen in the case of the public campaign against big businesses not paying taxes. Recently, Starbucks Company bowed to public pressure by paying above the minimum 20% UK corporation tax after years of non-payment. This obviously is to curry the favour of the public after the bad publicity and public outrage orchestrated by citizen journalists from all over the UK in 2013 about big companies’ tax avoidance and attendant call for boycott their goods. Assessed 01.11.2015. Accessed 10.10.2015The Guardian News Online (2015) : Accessed 12.10.2015. Starbucks Amazon EBayAlphabet (2015): EBay, Starbucks and Amazon logosThe spontaneity, speed and reach with which citizen journalists break news has radicalized the public sphere. The internet based newspapers such as Huffington Post and Sahara Reporters can be read all over the world, with breaking news feed being read while at the at same time receiving reactions and additional reports from the audience from near and far; a marked difference between what was obtained few years back when the paper-based news media normally carry news that broke one or two days before.The desire for breaking news reporting even made some newspaper houses to publish evening newspapers, but many of the evening newspapers have either stopped production or changed into a soft-sell advert oriented publications. The surviving ones like the London Evening Standard has been delivered free of charge to readers, with advertising being the main focus of the publication. The Playboy Magazine has recently stopped the publishing of paper magazine and now entirely publish online, while the content itself has been altered to reflect the reality of today’s internet access, for nudity is been made open by the internet and so has less value as it used to be. (Playboy Magazine Online, 2015). Accessed 12.11.2015 The homepages of internet service providers now compete with the terrestrial media in news coverage round the world. The Paris attack was broke and covered not entirely by the mainstream television houses, but by citizen journalists, whose postings were generously used by the mainstream television in their broadcasting and subsequent news analysis of the tragic attack. This is a radical departure from the view of Habermas regarding the bourgeoisie public sphere, where he submitted that the media has been commodified in such a way to exclude others (Habermas, 1989. pp, 44). But, we are seeing that the citizen journalists are actually the ones now feeding the news into the mainstream capitalist media via the internet. It is now not un-common to have television and radio stations breaking news with Facebook or Twitter feeds with established broadcasters appealing to citizen journalists on the ground (or witnesses) to send in streams of information in the form of pictures or audio of events happening real-time.Another radical characteristic the citizen journalism constitutes is its threat to big media institutions like B-Sky-B, BBC and CNN; in that their editorial views can now be challenged or out-matched even in terms of news reporting, the citizen journalists may break the news faster and more efficiently than the established big media houses, as a result of the ease to which the internet has been made accessible. For example, the London Leytonstone tube station arrest of a man with a knife went viral on the social media and the established media only had to use the citizen’s reporters’ video clip to support their reporting. (The Daily Telegraph, 2015) Accessed 14.12.2015 Citizen journalists are not confined to an office building or a town, but are spread all across international borders makes it difficult to oversee or effectively sanction their news content. However, it is increasingly getting clear that the idea of the Citizen Journalist being free from official or state interference may not be entirely true (Barker, 2012, pp. 476). For; if indeed the public sphere is a space for free and fair debate based on rational equality, then the state would not have made attempts to gag the WikiLeaks publication. The Fact that the state can (acting) in conjunction with big capitalist businesses’ attempt to curb the influence or the reach of certain internet servers or blogsites of certain citizen journalist, leaves much doubt about the freedom of the public sphere autonomous from the government; despite the states’ defence citing national security reasons for the need to conceal information (Dillon, 2014, pp. 214).Watson, (2008, pp. 287) observed regarding the freedom of the internet is prone to contesting realities from marketization of the net and the ambitions of profit-centred commerce, as well as the establishment who sees networking (citizen reporters) as a threat to their control. Increasingly we are beginning to see the leaders of the big online media like Google and Facebook being invited to the G20 meetings. This is a classic example of a situation whereby the state and the market work hand in hand to influence the public sphere and this can lead to undermining the public sphere both in the short and long run (Susen, 2011, pp. 50). Finally, there is no doubt, that given a Citizen Journalist can now rationally operate in the new public sphere of the internet without the stifling or limiting power of the state; a new era of journalism and public sphere is continually being shaped. Especially; bearing in mind that “the states’ unlimited power would undermine the very security it was designed to protect and would make civil society impossible’’ as expressed by (Ehrenberg, 1999, pp. 84) and that a citizen journalist can own the medium with which he can shape and express his own opinion and ideology. There is a radical departure from the old era of media ownership and ideology, whereby only the government and wealthy or influential businessmen and politicians dominate the public sphere. Bibliography:Alphabet, 2015: Alphabet Google Inc. website.LAPRANET: Advanced Research Projects Agency Network Barker, C., 2012. Cultural Studies.: Theory and Practice 4th Ed., Sage Publications Ltd. London. BBC: British Broadcasting CorporationCNN: Cable News NetworkDaily Record, 2015. )Ehrenberg, John., 1999: Civil Society: The Critical History of An Idea. New York University Press. New York. US. Flew, T., 2008. New Media: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. Oxford. UK.Goode, L., 2009. Social News, Citizen Journalism and Democracy. Online ArticleHabermas, G., 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public sphere: An Enquiry into a Category of bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Polity Press and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. UK Playboy Magazine Online, (2015): , Alan., 2005: The Public Sphere: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, UK ONS., UK., 2015: UK Office for National Statistics US: United States of AmericaSusen, S., 2011. Critical Notes on Habermas Theory of the Public Sphere and Sociological Analysis. City University, UK. Online Publication. The Daily Telegraph, (2015) : Thompson, J., 1995. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory Of The Media Polity Press, with Blackwell Publishing Ltd. UK.Watson, J., 2008. Media Communication: An Introduction To theory and Process. 3rd Ed., Palgrave Macmillan Publishers. Basingstoke, UK.Gigi , M., and Kellner, D., 2012. Media and Cultural Studies2nd Ed., Wiley-Blackwell Publications. UK. ................
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